Crypt Cleanser
Posts: 720
Joined: Friday, 7th January 2011, 01:43
Iron vulnerability: a mutation and/or a gimmick for elves
1) you cannot wear or wield anything that contains a meaningful amount of wrought iron
2) when hurt by iron weaponry the damage is split half between HP and between MP; MP points lost that way takes longer to recover.
I've come up with this idea while thinking about a species that somebody suggested about being only able to handle primitive weapons (slings, clubs ... ). As a first idea I thought about a kind of wild spirit like satyrs or wildmen or woses, that could be included as a new species or replace either halflings or sludge elves...
But then I realized that this can be used as a gimmick for the elvenkind because traditionally they are affected by iron. My idea is that at least one elven species have fear of iron as an innate mutation. In this case elven items are made of an alloy that does not contain iron (bronze, copper, mithril, orichalcum, whatever else) so their magic is not affected. This yields to a more concrete idea to point 1:
1) you cannot wear or wield anything made of iron: (mundane, orcish, dwarven) maces, blades, polearms, armour, helmets, shields and gauntlets.
* Artifacts and demonic weapons/gear probably can be worn so as not to limit them too much
How this would apply to the elves ? My options are:
a) High elves. They are plain boring now and somewhat questioned as a species for that. This gimmick makes them more interesting because of some limitation in the things they can use; usually elven gear can be found without many effort in the dungeon, but this may encourage to visit the Elven Halls for better equipment. In addition, the restriction of finding a suitable AC is compensated by the split of the damage between MP and HP, which sometimes can be good to save your life and sometimes can be bad if you plan to cast some spell.
HE are users of SB, LB or polearms rather than of maces or axes; the first three have elven manufacturing, the other two not (at least as I remember they are not so common), so they are not affected really much.
*The idea of split the damage came from the Protoss in Starcraft, by the way. In the game, we can think of iron as interfering and damaging both body and magic energies.
b) Sludge elves: My second option to gimmick. Seeing how they are designed, it comes naturally for them to not to rely on iron items. They are better with projectiles, staffs, light armour and unarmed. The damage split may help them during melee combats at the price of limiting their spellcasting in some situations.
c) Deep elves: I think they are good designed as they are, so I would not touch them. The idea here is to let them use iron items (if they wish) because they have been attuned to the iron energies by their subterranean habitat so iron has lost its damaging effect on them. This way the deep elves foes remain as they are.
Alternative:
The concept can be added as a acquired mutation instead of an innate for species.
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