Disintegration and energy drain Options

[Romulas]

Kudo's to you for making IA, even though I might not think so when my party gets blasted a few hundred times <g>.

Here is a thought and mainly because I am not sure how it works from a game mechanics point of view.

I know we talked earlier about disentegration destroying powerful items and as we know the energy drain from vampires and such will do the same thing. However how does this affect "mission" critical items such as keys and so forth?

One of the times I was running through I remember using dragonlord and destroying the bad guy who as it were had one of those mission critical items that I needed to continue. I could not find it and chalked it up to having it destroyed with the bad guy. Regardless, I had to play the battle over and not use dragonlord to win and continue.

I think this energy drain (destroying everything) kinda limits the use of items like dragon lord, if you are facing a horde of gnolls that don't have anything anyway it would be ok but against the really tough opponents it can stop the game so to speak, it could be a bad end to a good battle.

Thanks,

Romulas

[Sikret]

Critical items are not destructable, but they are not sellable either. Making an item "critical" has the bad side effect that you won't be able to sell it.

Moreover, keeping such items destructable can be taken as part of the challenge. If a character is so incompetent against (say) a vampire, why should he/she have such important items in his/her hands. (Just an alternate way to look at the issue)

[Romulas]

Yes, a good point made. I have stopped letting my lesser character holding important items for that reason, sucks when they blow up and everything is gone.

The other point that I make is using an item like dragonlord or blackrazor in a tough battle only to have the enemy be destroyed and all of his stuff. This brings to light a point, do I risk making this item (after all dragonlord is expensive) and using it knowing that I might be destroying the reward?

It seems to me this would make the forging of these items less likely and hence not very productive in the game. Another point, the whole point behind vampires and energy drain is that they drain life energy through sucking blood, how does a classic vampire suck the blood from a magic item.

The P&P dungeons and dragons had an item called a rod of cancellation that was for this purpose, it just seems to me that even though there needs to be a danger for magic items getting destroyed, it seems that its overboard due to all of the energy draining/disentegration casting monsters in the game.

Just in my opinion.

Thanks,

Romulas

[Demivrgvs]

Energy drain isn't suppose to destroy the target...am i wrong?

And about Disintegration...is up to you to chose when a spell like that should be used...and if an item of yours gets disintegrated usually it's not the big problem cause one of yours NPC is just being disintegrated as well!!

[Romulas]

The issue is when your character is drain to zero level, he/she then explodes and all things that they carry (except for critical items) get destroyed.

The concern her is not necessarily the spell disentegrate or energy drain but some items have the ability to do this but there is only a chance of this happening, hence when dragonslord has a chance to drain levels. This makes it is difficult to control.

It sucks to survive one of these difficult battles just to have to reload because the item you were going for gets energy drained.

Romulas

[Sikret]

I understand your dilemma, Romulas! But what can be done? I cannot make a large number of items critical (and unsellable) just because of this small probability. You may be even more frustrated if you see that you cannot sell a big number of items in the shops.

[thetruth]

But what can be done?

Is it possible to tweak level draining and make it to not destroy items ?
Me too think that it doesn't make sense at all that level draining can destroy equipment.

For Disintegration and Cone of Cold it's logical and someone should not use them if he wants to avoid such effects.
Anyway are there any weapons which use Disintegration as a combat ability?

This post has been edited by thetruth: Jan 17 2007, 04:58 AM

[Sikret]

Is it possible to tweak level draining and make it to not destroy items ?

No.

Me too think that it doesn't make sense at all that level draining can destroy equipment.

I agree, but there is nothing we can do.

Anyway are there any weapons which use Disintegration as a combat ability?

I don't recall any.

[panama]

Black Blade of Disaster.. although it's not really a weapon per se. After each successful hit, the target must do a save vs death or be disintegrated.

[Sikret]

In the original game, the disintegrating effect of BBD didn't work as mentioned in its description, but I have fixed it in IA . Hnece, yes, it can disintegrate the target along with his/her equipments.

[Romulas]

Ok, so if energy drain cannot be fixed in the game then I will let it go. I am not a modder and unfortuneately don't know what can and can't be done.

I have used black blade of disaster once but never had it disentegrate anything, which is why I only used it once. If I had known it didn't work in the original game then I would have used it all the time.

Romulas

[Sikret]

BBD is fixed in V4.0.