Artifact potions, scrolls and wands

[Strongpoint]

Was it ever considerided? If it was why it was rejected? There are many interesting one-time effects for such artifacts

[Blade]

One of the notable things about artefacts (and I'm speaking generally here, not specifically to Crawl) is their permanence. They are wondrous items of ancient craft, made to last through the ages.

One of the notable things about potions, scrolls, and wands is their impermanence. You can never rely on them because they will always run out. You can recharge wands and find more potions and scrolls, but they are anything but everlasting and unchanging. Giving them the potential to be artefacts would make little sense.

[Strongpoint]

I am not sure about the last forever part, for me artifact, in fantasy, is something powerfull made by someone really powerfull long time ago

[mageykun]

Putting aside the matter of permanence, what effects would you think make good candidates for artefact wands / potions / scrolls? I'd like to hear your specific ideas.

Since we need to define properties in advance, the only way I see to make randart consumables working is if you generate ones that combine two or more effects. ("You identify the scroll 'Xom's bathroom literature'! {curse weapon, torment, blink}"). I see this as problematic at best, especially if you have to worry about the order in which effects kick in, or if the effects contradict one another (would a poison of {healing, poison} heal then poison you, or do they cancel out- ie, heal everything but poison?).

Fixedarts seem more reasonable- single, predefined effects on specific consumables. Essentially the same as a normal one, just much rarer because of their artefact status. Balance is the tricky bit- you want an effect good (or at least interesting) enough to justify the rarity, without making it overpowered.

The biggest problem though is that even if you do come up with an idea for an awesome new rare wand, there's no reason we'd need to make it an artefact. We could just add the item, and make it wicked rare. Consumables already have weightings in place where certain ones are common and others you can fail to find even in a 15 rune game. The only way a fixedart consumable would differ from a really rare one is it would only be possible to generate the fixedart once.

[Strongpoint]

Well combining standard effects will not create something really interesting (it may work for wands) but order can be generated and noted in description so potion of healing (poison) will heal you and then poison, and potion of poison will poison you, then heal.

As for specific ideas

specific Ideas for randarts:

Wands

Any spell can be wanded (probably limited by level, because level9 spell wand is way too good)
God abilities can be wanded, too (probably not a good idea... I know)
Combining wand effects in one. ( As i said earlier it may work for wands)
Also, artifact wands can be limited either by making them impossible to recharge, (it's consistent with scrolls of enchantment) or by recharging only one shot per scroll

potions
Mutations. Specific mutations. maybe even unique ones (or demonspawn's)
Race changing potion, random or set race (yep it should be rare, very rare, but isn't it cool?)
Potions of gain\lose X skill ( Yep... too close to manuals and potion of experience, but it can be combined with another things)

Scrolls
Don't have any ideas that would be good for randart


And I prefer fixedarts to really rare items, because it's cool to see something with weird color

[dpeg]

If you want effects like that at all (god powers or strong spells as consumables), I'd suggested randart decks (or single cards). However, I am not sure about the wisdom of the whole project.

[dmurray]

I don't see this making much sense beyond scrolls having multiple affects. Maybe something like fear + summon butterfiles. Or summon a hostile monster (with a chance of it being friendly) and controlled blink.

Now that I think of it, Xom would seem to work well with some sort of helpful but *bad* effects at the same time that would make the outcome funny: such as a bunch of Ogres in fear from summoned butterflies.

Wands with level 9 spells is really scary. The last thing I want is being killed with a wand of fire storm on D:1. And don't say it wouldn't happen; randarts have dropped onto D:1 for me a few times. Plus if you find them (and yes, plural is a big problem) early enough... there isn't much that can kill you when you can just fire storm a bunch of Orc Priests or take out uniques by the groupful.

Race changing is way too broken. Especially if it would work by building your character from level 1 upwards. Going for a Troll Monk till level 27 and then switching over to a Deep Elf to get caster stats is insanely broken.

I could really see the artifacts having a chance of having a bad side effect with a very good effect. Like increasing a stat but reducing HP permantly or something. And you could use scrolls of identify numerous times to decrease the power of the bad part of the potion

[ximxim]

I don't see this making much sense beyond scrolls having multiple affects. Maybe something like fear + summon butterfiles. Or summon a hostile monster (with a chance of it being friendly) and controlled blink.

Now that I think of it, Xom would seem to work well with some sort of helpful but *bad* effects at the same time that would make the outcome funny: such as a bunch of Ogres in fear from summoned butterflies.

Wands with level 9 spells is really scary. The last thing I want is being killed with a wand of fire storm on D:1. And don't say it wouldn't happen; randarts have dropped onto D:1 for me a few times. Plus if you find them (and yes, plural is a big problem) early enough... there isn't much that can kill you when you can just fire storm a bunch of Orc Priests or take out uniques by the groupful.

Race changing is way too broken. Especially if it would work by building your character from level 1 upwards. Going for a Troll Monk till level 27 and then switching over to a Deep Elf to get caster stats is insanely broken.

I could really see the artifacts having a chance of having a bad side effect with a very good effect. Like increasing a stat but reducing HP permantly or something. And you could use scrolls of identify numerous times to decrease the power of the bad part of the potion

About the race changing, if added I suggest certain drawbacks: all skill levels recalculated according to new aptitudes, and the new race should be random. Even your example doesn't seem broken though, unless you mean "broken" as in much weaker than before...

[greepish]

Honestly I think the big problem is just stacking. With randart weapons you either keep it or drop it. With regular potions if it's good you keep it and it starts getting stacked with other good potions. With randart potions, literally every character will have the stashing nightmare of nemelex worshippers since {heal,magic} isn't gonna stack with {magic, confusion}. Just imagine how awful your inventory would like if normal potions didn't stack!

[XuaXua]

Aren't RODS basically artifact wands?

[rchandra]

I guess so ... random spells on rods would be pretty neat.

[Galefury]

I think random consumables could be interesting. Mutations would be nice for random potions. One type of potion could give one or more specified (or random) good mutations in addition to acting as a normal potion of mutation. One thing that might make sense as a fixed potion is potion of evolution, which simply gives you the evolution mutation. This could be added even without random potions, and might be a more interesting replacement for the potion of mutation (drinking it might actually be an interesting choice, and harder to scum due to the delayed effect). Simply rolling multiple potion or scroll effects into one random potion wouldn't work well IMO.

I think consumables with permanent effects could be classified as artifacts. Whether their properties are random or fixed (and rarity) shouldn't make a difference. Also having certain indestructible (by cold/fire) potions and scrolls has come up in the discussion about making strategic potions and scrolls indestructable. Classifying them as artifacts would do that nicely, and adding randart scrolls and potions would only be filling in the gaps at that point (not a reason to do so on its own of course, but it would feel natural).

Regarding wands, i think permanent effects don't make a good distinction in this case, because multiple charges of permanent effects rarely make sense. Instead, artifact wands could simply be non-rechargable. This would make balancing random spell wands much easier, and would make wands with purely beneficial and noticeable long term effects possible. For random spell wands something that could work is max amount of charges = 11 - spell level, no recharges.

[greepish]

Well for random spell wands, they don't necessarily have to be non-rechargeable, their recharge efficiency could scale by spell level, like how recharging haste is much less efficient than recharging frost (although who seriously recharges tier-2/3 wands :/) E.g., a wand of mass abjuration may get a max of 1-4 charges per scroll, a wand of orb of destruction 1-2 per scroll, necromution 1-1, firestorm 0-0

[umrain]

What about scrolls with one random pre-identified mid to high level spell. A single-use, no-failure, no-MP cost, no-hunger, high power, cast of that spell. The selection could be narrowed down to remove spells that aren't interesting as one shots.

It would be a handy one-time save for melee users, heavy armor hybrids, and casters who just aren't high level enough to cast them or have specialized in different schools. For example in a pinch a fighter could pull out that emergency shimmering scroll of Death's Door/Firestorm/Dragon Form that they were lucky enough to find (or save it for later).

Trog probably wouldn't like these. And good gods still dislike necromancy of course.

I don't know much about balance for high level spells, but I'd imagine these could be rare enough that you'd only see 0-2 in a game. That'd keep inventory clutter in control too.

[XuaXua]

What about scrolls with one random pre-identified mid to high level spell.

SCROLL OF BANISHMENT TO THE ABYSS

[greepish]

Heh, scroll of Xom