The Tavern

Hello,

I just had that idea: what if rings of fire and ice powered up their respective weapon brands? For good measure, the opposite brand would be weakened equally, I guess.
This would have two advantages: reduce the mage only item pool size, which can be frustratingly big at times and bring some consistency in the lore.

Rings of fire/ice already improve your defenses against a given element type, having them improve your offense as well would be a little over the top. I end up using a ring of fire/ice when I can't find a plain old ring of protection against fire/cold fairly frequenly with non-spellcasters, while limited in utility they aren't "mage only" by any means.

Also "weakening the opposing brand" isn't a limitation at all, you can only use one weapon at a time, and if you were using a weapon of the opposite brand, you just wouldn't use the ring at the same time, having to swap jewelry around *as well as* weapons would be more of an annoyance limitation than a tactical decision.

Finally, spells, themselves aren't "mage only" DCSS doesn't really have dedicated "roles" like some games do, your starting background is just that, your starting point, there's no reason my character that started off as a Fighter can't be slinging fireballs mid game if the things he finds on the dungeon floor have that be the easiest way to progress. So really trying to make an item "less magey" isn't really a goal of the game developers at all.

Would be good to merge them with rF and rC rings instead.

Honestly I'd ditch rings of fire/ice as enhancers; we already have staves, archmagi, brilliance, int, skills, wild magic, and augmentation which is maybe enough spell power modifiers

Ditching them is also a good option. It's just that I find strange that having a fire enhancing ring on does nothing to your fire imbued weapon. I guess my grip with "mage only" items (as in benefiting casters mostly/only) is indeed not a good reason.

I think there's a reasonable case that rings of ice and fire are too niche to be worth inclusion in the game, particularly in the numbers they generate. Removing the negative resistance and merging with the resistance rings as suggested above would definitely help there.

Bonus damage for matching branded weapons is too narrow and fiddly to be worthwhile. If you want a brand-related effect, just make the ring brand your attacks. I suppose you would want it to override any other brand and probably cancel in the event that both ice and fire are being worn. Some calls would have to be made on god conducts, potentially confusing, but probably workable.

As much as I'm always interested in boosts to spell power, it's always bothered me that they're available in ring form for Fire Magic and Ice Magic, but not for other schools. Also, it's weirdly inconsistent that every elemental resistance is available in ring form except electricity. So, why not replace fire and ice rings with protection from electricity and archmagi?