Eye of Ashenzari

[Nekoatl]

unrandart amulet
Curse binding (while equipping amulet, curses itself and all equipped items; equipping items while wearing amulet curses them)
Notice more treasure (small chance to generate a random item in each tile explored)

The idea here is to offer players the choice to accept tactical disadvantages to gain strategic advantages. The curse binding is meant to create pressure to remove the amulet beyond simply not being able to equip an amulet that's useful in combat; the more items the player finds, the more likely they are to want to change equipment, but the more they change equipment, the less they can afford to find extra items.

Tuning the item generation chance is key to making this trade-off a meaningful choice, but my initial guess is that 5-10 items per floor would be fair?

Of course, the question has to be asked, would the autocursing derail Ashenzari's gameplay pattern? I think there'd definitely be an advantage to not having to use remove curse scrolls to equip items, but even Ashenzari worshipers typically want to keep at least a slot or two uncursed to swap out rings & weapons to deal with specific threats, so I'm not sure how big of an advantage this would be. Also, considering the benefits Ashenzari worshipers gain from wearing cursed items decrease over time, and the likelihood of not yet having found the amulet starts at 100% and gradually decreases as the game progresses, I think this shouldn't be much of a concern.

[petercordia]

I'd definitely wear this item with Ash. Knowing the devs, I'm pretty sure that Ash would 'protect' his followers from this effect though. (I'm still salty that Ash 'protects' from the Scythe of Curses.)

More importantly, I don't think this item could be implemented because it would cause snowballing. (Snowballing is where a strong character keeps getting stronger). It might be interesting if it gave some kind of tactical advantage, in which case the tradeoff would be between the tactical advantage provided by the amulet against the strategical cost of slowly running out of RC scrolls.

[le_nerd]

I'd never wear this item over any other useful (rage/spirit/regen/acrobat/reflect) and I say this as a 99% Ash worshipper. If I'm weak enough to need good floordrop items I can't afford to take the hit in survivability. If I got enough good items to be powerful enough to cruise lair+, I don't need the items this gives.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

I'd be more likely to pick up and wear this if it gave a weak (2-4 tile distance?) Scry as an active effect rather than passive treasure generation but that might step on Ash's toes a little too much.

[Sorcerous]

Maybe even make the sight work both ways: Ashenzari sees and knows all. The enemies can also see the wearer while the active lasts? I'm not sure if *curse for all slots is that interesting compared to choosing the Shackled as the patron and playing normally.

[Vaamat]

I love the idea, and there's got to be some reasonable way to balance it.

What if you make it Fragile? Then once you run out of scrolls it becomes a push-your-luck game: how long do you dare keep wearing this crummy amulet instead of using the good items you found? If you can keep wearing it forever it might snowball, but at that point you might deserve it.

You could also bias it to produce amulets and rings. That way players REALLY have to do a lot of swapping—and burn through lots of scrolls—if they want to keep taking advantage of it. It also puts a ceiling on the overall power: (And it's thematic. Characters without the Eye would overlook a ring in the corner, but would they have overlooked a battleaxe?)

It's really good for Ash worshippers but is there anything wrong with that? If you took out every unrand that's broken with a certain god/species/whatever, the list would look very different. I'd be a little concerned if it's so good that it "forces" every character to switch to Ash, and thus reduces variety. But I don't see that.

Flavor-wise, it wants to have +SInv. I don't know if that's a balance problem or just an interesting strategic wrinkle. Some players will find this when they need +SInv and it'll feel like the best game of their lives. But most players will find other sources, especially once they're wearing the Eye (or playing Ash) and then it's either a moot point or an even more interesting decision. (Do I wear my good amulet, one artifact ring and a plain ring of see invis, or do I wear two artifact rings and keep the Eye? )

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[Shtopit]

I don't use money a lot when playing, so I don't really know how noticeable the effects would be, especially since you would not have a Gozag-like "buy shop" power. However, the idea of an item that more or less mimics the behaviour of Ashenzari made me think that it would be cool if, instead of having altars, wearing a cursed piece allowed you to convert to Ash.

[Nekoatl]

In my original concept, it was Fragile, but I thought that was too severe for an unrandart.

[Aean]

I like the idea. Like a lot of the more interesting aspects of the game, it involves a meaningful risk/reward calculation.

And I actually wouldn't be against making it Fragile - that makes the calculation all the more important, because you're passing up a lot of potential treasure if you remove it.