Subject: Re: What Should Magic Items Do? Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 19:36:37 +0200 From: Peter Knutsen Group: rec.games.roguelike.development bear@sonic.net wrote: > I'm starting to experiment with magic items. Whenever I play the high-graphisc roguelike Diablo II, I get so fed up with the crappy magic items that it prompts me to work some more on the item creation subsystem for my tabletop RPG, trying to make it better, more flexible, more varied and more colourful. Magic items, whether for tabletop RPGs or computer games, have a huge potential, but very few games makes use of it, sticking exclusively to boring, generic stuff like Swords +1 or Arrows of Fire Brand. > Magic Weapons are pretty unambiguous, although I'm They don't have to be. > reusing some of my "scriptable monster" code to make > "scriptable weapons" that are arbitrarily complicated. > > I've got the generic +1 and +2 swords, and then a > bow that, when fired, polymorphs its arrows into > 'Shark Arrows' which are actually little monsters > with a "chaotic hungry" alignment; They circle around > to bite the target (or whatever they're close to) > again on subsequent rounds. They're dangerous to > anything near the monster they attacked last time, > including you if you're too close. But the bow > can turn them back into arrows, so you can stick > any survivors back into your quiver when the party's > over. Fun! Sounds a bit crazier than what I'd prefer, but compared to what goes on in traditional, huge-audience games like Nethack and Angband/variants, it's not particularly crazy. > I also made 'Speed Boots', which were fairly > obvious.... but I've tried them a couple of > different ways. In my system, each creature has > a number of "pulses" per round that defines its > speed. Different actions require different numbers > of pulses. If the speed boots increase a character's > number of pulses per round, they are a very powerful > item because they enable the character to attack > faster. If they decrease the number of pulses > required to walk, then they are strictly a 'tactical' > item and the character walks/runs faster but doesn't > get extra attacks. That's a very useful distinction. You could have weapons that decrease the attack cost in pulses too, so they become Weapons of Attack Speed. This works particularly well if the basic pulse cost for attacking is high, like 5 or 6, because then a -1 Pulse weapon wont be hugely powerful. In general, I'd advise high pulse costs for everything, because they you can get in fine distinctions; instead of Boots -1 Movement Pulse being a huge benefit, they just let you move 10% faster. When you want huge benefits, like from quest Artifacts, you can just give a bigger bonus, like a Sword -5 Attack Pulses, letting the character attack twice as fast as normal (assuming 10 pulses is the normal cost). You could also vary the pulse cost according to weapon, so that it's faster to attack with a dagger than with a two-handed sword, simply because of the structure of the weapon. > Then there are several different things I could > do with wands, rods, and staves, and I'm trying > to decide which should be which.... do they store > energy that can be used with any of N various spells, > or do they store "charges" of particular spells, or I like simpler items that can cast one spell, and bigger items with multiple spells, ideally themed ones. Like if you have a sword of Fire Brand, you can also enable it to cast three or four fire-themed spells. For tabletop use I've found that it's much more fun for the players to have items that can cast a given spell a number of times per day (or hour or week...), rather than an item with strictly limited charges which will run dry eventually. It gets too tense if you have a Wand with 50 charges of Magic Missile, compared to if you have a wand that can cast Magic Missile ten times per day, because when it runs out, you aren't sure you'll get another one. It is a bit different for roguelikes in that the expectations of loot are higher, particularly because loot is so random - a Troll might drop a Wand of Magic Missile, even though it is very thematically wrong. > do they just focus your mana so you can cast blind > or without books or in other adverse circumstances, Or cast faster? I think casting time is a very underused axis of differentiation. In Angband and Zangband, all spells take 1 Round to cast. Why not have some spells that take multiple Rounds? And others that are intrinsically very quick to cast (essentially taking no time) balanced by a high mana cost? (Balancing it mostly by fail chance would not be good for a computer game) > or do they reduce the mana cost for all of a class > of spells, or.... Any of the above. I like the idea of Foci, which makes one type of magic easier, maybe by both lowering the fail chance and lowering the mana cost. So you could have a Focus for Fire Magic or a Focus for Healing or Illusion Magic. Maybe make it wieldable so that the character has to choose which Focus he currently wants to benefit from...? > My first impulse is to just use the "scripting" code > I made for monsters and spells arbitrarily and make > every item have a different combination of effects > and powers and a different mode of operation. But I prefer more systematized systems. If you create it flexible enough (in other words, not like Diablo II), it will work very well and not feel too much like a "system" but still evoke some sense of wonder. One advantage of systematized systems is that you can give items general stats, for instance in my tabletop RPG system all items have an Activation rating, which shows how reliable the item is. Usually you'd prefer an item that is very reliable, but if you've found this not-quite-reliable Wand of Fireball... are you gonna use it? Most players would only use it in emergencies. But isn't your game going to contain randomly generated items? If it is, that's the big challenge, to make an algorithm that generates appropriate items, often according to a theme ("fire item", "frost weapon"). Being into tabletop RPGs, I luckily don't have that problem. > without any unifying principles, I'm afraid the game > would feel too much like a circus and the interface > would be a bugger to get right. Perhaps. But I'd be more concerned about random item creation. Secondly, are you going to let the player create his own items? The old CRPG "Daggerfall" did this and it worked after a fashion, and I've heard that there is a similar feature in the sequel "Morrowind" which I'm unable to play on my far too old computer. All the new CRPGs based on Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition also ought to let the players create their own items, as the new rules are very explicit about how one does it. > It would also become very hard to predict things well > enough for game balance, although that could be > mitigated by having magic items like armor, rings, > etc, actually have to *FIT* the character in order > to be used. Thus you could run into a lot of neat > items and some of them would be usable and some not, > but you couldn't easily make arbitrary combinations > that destroy game balance. > > Amusing/annoying sequence.... > "Identify what item?" > ... > "In your pack: The One Ring." > ... > "Wear/Wield what item?" > ... > "The One Ring is too small for your finger! -more- " > "This ring is size 10. Your pinky is size 12." Nah, that sucks. I could see doing it,in the name of realism, for widely different species, so that you'd have Small humanoids, Medium sized Humanoids and Large humanoids, and a suit of chain mail sized for a Hobbit would not fit on a Human or a Troll. But getting too detailed that way is nothing but player harassment. Especially since almost all men are the same size, and almost all women are the same size. Widespread obesity/skinniness is a very new phenomena that is not appropriate to a low-tech setting. One thing you could do is implement Disadvantages, chosen during character creation. One such disad could be "Larger than normal" or "Smaller than normal", and would make it impossible for the character to use normal sized gear fitted to the size class of his species. But with 90% to 99% of items being randomly generated as opposed to store bought, I can't see how you could balance it out so that it becomes a playable choice. > ... > "Really destroy the One Ring?" > ... > "You cannot destroy this object! -more-" > "In your pack: The One Ring {indestructible}" > ... > "You drop the One Ring. -more- " > "The One Ring disappears from the floor! -more-" > "You feel something in your pack! -more- " > "In your pack: The One Ring {indestructible, cursed}" > ......... Is that an example of item scripting? I think it sounds neat, but the game would feel a lot better if most items were just items, and only a few ones had any "behaviour" or "attitude". > And somewhere in here, I need to address the question > of the kind of feel and balance I want in the game. And the duration you want. Angband, for instance, takes a really long time to play. Nethack is, reputedly, much faster. I think longer games makes it much easier to "get into the game", get involved with the character and the world. But I'm sure there's a market for short and very short duration games too. > Bear -- Peter Knutsen