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

[Rabain]

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?

What i meant in my previous post was that the gem names be completly replaces by the "component" names i listed. Its easy enough to believe that using a demons heart to enchant a blade to have some fire resistance would work, demons being from one of the lower hells etc Or that using a Yeti's pelt to line a suit of armour would protect you from the cold would work.

At least the components in BG2 are magical items, the Eye of Tyr or Hand of Vecna etc have reasons for being magical and aren't just some rare gem lying in a horde somewhere that happen to have a sticker attached to it that says "Poison Gem : Handle with Care" so you know what it does. If on the other hand you knew a smith would upgrade things for you if you ask and you find an Adders Tongue there is at least a reason for thinking it might be of use!

Any upgrade feature that is part of a mod will always be open to these problems but at least if the components are unique magical items with their own reason for being that way it lends some credibility to their use as an upgrade component.

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).

This i really like the idea of, if something can be used to create a poison weapon then it should be poisonous to the bearer too! That would bring a big negative side to carrying around all those upgrade items...i like it!