Singing sword

Some ideas for how to make the singing sword more interesting. It suffers a lot from being an unbranded +7 long sword. Personally, I'd love it if the new perk was related to singing or somesuch. — dpeg 2010-01-25 00:39

• Instead of shouting with tt, you sing if you wield the singing sword. And if you do this, the swinging sword will break lose and dance. (Animating it.) If we need some skill to govern something, Long Blades it is.
• The performance of the singing sword (what/how it sings and its brand) should depend on the character's performance. This would require putting Singing Sword speech into tiers, but that could be done.
• The sword does more damage when it sings.
• The sword loves heroic action (this is reflected in the speech already), so the worse off the character is, the better the sword. (That's reverse to the sword of power, but we could use something different than just enchantments, perhaps.)
  • It could activate a additional brand when you meet stronger monster
• It's been suggested that the sword get some extra properties. By general agreement none of the brands fit (except vorpal, I guess), but +Int or clarity would make sense.
• Wielding the sword could give you a special chance of avoiding attacks (with matching speech: “Watch out!” etc.) or the opposite: increase accuracy, not across the board like the enchantment but once in a while give a big bonus, again combined with speech. — jpeg 2010-01-25 16:33

lemuel: Interesting does not have to mean complicated. I suggest it stay a +7,+7 long sword when the wielder is at full health, but gain an additional +1,+1 for every 10% below max hp and another +1,+1 for every 10% below 50% hp, so maxing out at +20,+20 (=7 + 9 + 4) when the wielder is below 10% hp (so same max as the Sword of Power). Yes, players could deliberately keep their hp low to make the pluses higher, but that would increase the risk of dyiong and make for some nice nerve-wracking decisions. Or:

* A partial silence-type effect. Whenever a monster casts a spell in LoS, there is a chance (25%? 33%) that the sword sings and drowns it out, canceling the spell.

In any case, I would really suggest one clear effect for the sword, not some complicated mix depending on what it is singing. In actual play, that would just come off as random, and random is boring.

vitara: I have a few “Enchantment” ideas to improve the adorable Singing Sword:

• Give it a “Vorpal” brand
• Let its generation/presence on a dungeon/branch level be known to the player (“You hear singing in a distance”). Any monster nearby the Singing Sword cannot rest and will be forced to wander
• Allows the player to evoke “singing”, which randomly casts a spell from the following repertoire, making noise in the process: “Enslavement”, “Confuse”, “Cause Fear”, “Paralyze” or “Mass Confusion”. Spell power should be around moderate to (for high-level Enchantment-spellcaster-wielders) high
• The Sword's singing during battle has a small chance of it auto-casting any of the above spells, again at moderate to high spell power
• To curb abuse, the evocation of spells from the Singing Sword can be controlled like a rod, i.e. with a limited MP reservoir and is recharged using either the player's MP or a “Scroll of Recharging”. When the reservoir is (near) used up the Sword can say: “Hey give me a break, would you?” and the evocation fails; when recharged by a scroll or is otherwise fully recharged, it exclaims “I have the power!!” (He-Man pun…) No auto-casting if reservoir is low
• Has a small chance of deflecting an incoming projectile (“The Singing Sword catches and eats the [projectile]!” The Singing Sword sings: “Yum Yum Deedee Dum, Everywhere a Chum Chum!!”)
• Allows the player to evoke “dancing”, which casts “Tukima's Dance” on the Singing Sword, making it sing AND dance around and damage all nearby enemies (is this workable on a unique artefact though?)
• Has a small chance of casting Might, Haste or Swiftness on the player (“The Singing Sword sings your all-time favorite tune!”)
• Singing breaks the “Silence” spell if it currently affects the player (or alternatively, the “Silence” spell silences the Singing Sword as well!)

With these pluses, we can make it sing and talk more often, even with an odd chance of doing so while carried in inventory (if not already implemented), to balance out the “goodies”. We could even have monsters pick up and use the sword if they found it before the player! Or we could add a (re)curse to it so that the player gets stuck with it and the singing.

• It should scream LOUDLY, waking up the whole level if you destroy it by dropping it in lava or using Elyvilon's ability. It could also say something when you drop it in deep water or sacrifice it to Nemelex, both of which seem decidedly less painful than the previously mentioned methods of item destruction. — ledtim 2010-09-14 06:12