Item Craftsmanship, Not all smiths are equally skilled. Options

[dragon_lord]

All craftsman/blacksmiths are not equally skilled in the art of forging weapons and armour. And so throughout the land varying qualities of equipment can be found:

-Normal items will have 3 levels of quality: Poor, Average and High.
Poor: THAC0 Penalty and damage penalty(in regards to average quality), a chance of breaking.
Average: Normal
High: THAC0 Bonus and speed bonus. No damage bonuses. Those are for magical
items

- High quality normal items can be upgraded through gems.
- 4 different gem types - the elements fire/poison etc
- There can only be one gem per item (stops it from getting too complicated).

Magic items of course can still have things added to them just like in bg2.

This post has been edited by dragon_lord: Nov 28 2004, 06:08 AM

[igi]

I dont mean to sound negative, but:
1) Doing such a large amount of work, if these gems are to be so rare, seems pretty silly
2) If a gem by itself isnt magical, why does it have a magical sounding name (Hellfire, Wildfire, Toxin etc)?
3) Taking a generci gem and adding a component to it shouldnt really do anything, unless the component is magical (and the gem acts as some sort of focus). So, how does this work? You stick an adders tongue on top of a Green Gem, and the gem suddenly does poison damage?
4) If your not going to have any originallity in the gem names, how about some in the gem components? It's hard to get more cliche than asking for a Demons Heart...
5) Upgrading to Holy/Unholy versions of something - surely this should require a Cleric of some sort? A generic smith and a few lumps of stone (however cool their name is) cant really make something Holy.

Acid and poisons are completely different, except for the fact that they are both often portrayed as a green liquid, hence the confusion.

Suggestions:
1) If your upgrading is done by sticking a gem on to the hilt of a sword or some such, how about a small chance it can be knocked off in combat?
2) If your going to use "Poison Gem" and "Toxic Gem" and so on, how about actually making the gems act like their name? E.g carrying/handling a poison gem has a chance to poison the holder, bringing 15 Storm gems together in close proximity will attract a lightning storm (and I dont just mean lightning strikes on nearby enemies).

Questions
1) Will you be able to un-upgrade enemies weapons, and use the compoments to upgrade your own gear?
2) Will you be able to un-upgrade your own gear?

And I still maintain that 15% is too high. You'd rapidly turning character into BG2 level, where they run around as ground-shaking super-people who can decimate the entire annual convention of Particularly Mean and Powerful Liches (and thier Beholder Pets. Who summon Pit Fiends to play with).


I know this probably sound pretty negative, but, I am broadly in favour of this, I just feel if your going ot do it, try and avoid clichess and try to make it feel like something real, as opposed to "heres a cool idea we can put in our mod".
/igi