[Adonthell-general] Re: Special abilities as unequippable items

[Kai Sterker]

On 4/7/06, Andrew Phillips <address@hidden> wrote:

> I've been thinking about how to structure the rules and the wiki as
> they relate to special abilities. My original idea was this:
> Items:
> Items:Runes
> Items:Spells
> Items:Songs
> Items:Recipes
> All of these 'items' would be unequippable, though Spells could be
> used to produce Scrolls and Recipes could be used to produce Potions
> or equippable weapons and armour.

Looks good. Internally, all these would probably be implemented like
items. On the outside, we'd probably have a special 'inventory' for
them, like a spell book, song book, etc ...


> On a related note, how should we handle runemarking and how many times
> a given item can be runemarked? More specifically, how many tattoos
> can a person have applied to his or her body? I think a maximum of six
> - right shoulder, left shoulder, two on the chest or abdomen, and two
> on the back. I also wonder if the number of tattoos a person can wear
> should vary with their Power stats - for example, low power gets 2
> slots, highest gets 6, and varies within that range.

I guess for characters it should be somehow related to the runecraft
ability and power. The higher the rank, the more slots. Although I
think six slots could to be a bit too mucht. It probably depends on
the design of spells, songs and alchemy. How many of those can be
applied to a character simultanously.

Also, I guess we will have to distinguish permanent and temporary
runes. I imagine that low level runecrafters can only apply temporary
runes, inscribed with blood or dye. Starting with rank 3, it might
become possible to make permanent inscriptions on items, but only
runecrafters of highest level should be able to tattoo themselves
permanently. (Need to properly balance this, of course).


Something else that occured to me when thinking about runes: we have
those four ability systems for the four races (with the limeted
possibility to use abilities of other races). Wich is great. But we
should be careful to not make them all different on the outside and
all the same on the inside. Instead, each of them should have at least
one area of effect that should not be present in any of the others.
Like

* Spell:
  - mostly affects the target (with the exception of healing?)
* Song:
  - mostly affects the caster
* Alchemy:
  - potions and powders can be prepared beforehand and are not limited
by caster's power
* Rune:
  - permanent alteration of equipment/caster (runes, tattoos)

I really would like to invest some more thoughts into this, especially
when we are going to come up with spells, songs, recipes and runes.

Kai