Progress is being made!!

[Lansolyn]

Sorry for the delay all, I've been working on the upgrade stuff and here's what I've got going right now. You all will have to let me know what you think.

My current model has an alter which is called the Alter of Sacrifice. What happens is you must collect items in order to add bonuses onto your items. There are 2 basic types of items you need to collect.

A) The Blood Gem :: These gems are required to "unlock" the alter's powers. You use these like keys.

B) A Blood Emerald/Saphire/Ruby/Diamond :: These stones come in various strengths. Dark - Blinding.

Both of these types of items will have to be "activated" by sacrificing some of your blood (health) when you use the item. At the moment this damage can not be resisted or absorbed (IE it's not elemental) but that might change. The weaker upgrade gems require less blood then the stronger gems. The key's (Blood Gems) also require a sacrifice of health. (In Example: You obtain an Empty Blood Gem and your lucky enough to find an Empty Brilliant Blood Sapphire. You "use" the item like you would the emote wand or teleport stone and you suddenly take 10 damage from the Empty Blood Gem and 20 damage from the Brilliant Blood Sapphire. Those gems disappear and you now have in your inventory a Blood Gem and a Brilliant Blood Sapphire.)

The way the system is currently designed is that after you have a key, and a specific blood crystal, you go to the alter and you can select an appropriate item bonus. The different types of blood crystals will get you different types of bonuses. The basic catagories are [Skills and Feats], [Enhancement and Damage], [Defense], [Spells and Misc].

Keep in mind that you 'can' with this system add a damage bonus to any item, such as a shield. BUT please be aware that doing so will be useless!!! I did make it this way so that you could add defense bonuses onto a sword (eg a Sword of Defending) or put castable spells onto any piece of equipment. (Turn those boots of haste into boots of haste & cast delayed blast fireball 1/day)

The draw backs to this system are...

All changes to items are permenant. Don't whine to morrus if you mess up your enchantment and add a damage bonus to your helmet.

You WILL need to collect both items to upgrade your equipment and you will only be able to choose from the category that you have a gem for.

You 'may' die when trying to use a blood gem. Sorry, that's life. You'll probably have to get a warrior to use it for you and give you the gem. (Sorry wizards and sorcs, you knew you were more frail before you started adventuring.)

Any questions? Sorry about the delay, I am also in school so I'm trying to get this out as soon as I can

Lansolyn

 

[NPC]

First of all thanks for your work on this! I'd love to upgrade some items that I have.

I can see having to collect gems to add bonuses to items. Adds an element of adventure to upgrading. But I'm not sure about the damage part, though. What's the overall purpose?

Is the damage permanent? I can see permanent HP loss in exchange for item upgrading as an interesting idea, but if you can heal the damage, why even have it?

 

[Lansolyn]

It's all for story

The gems are called "Blood Gems" for a reason you can heal the damage, it's just an element of depth to the story aspect of the upgrades. =)

The Big L

 

[Neo]

The gems are called "Blood Gems" for a reason you can heal the damage, it's just an element of depth to the story aspect of the upgrades. =)

The Big L

What kind fo damages are we talking (min-max)?

 

[Chaz]

Well, if you are going to have the crystals do damage... it should be a percentage of the users health - not a fixed number. so people can use them without getting other chars with more hit points to do it for them...

But overall I dont like the idea. But thats just me.

Peace

 

[Lansolyn]

You just can't please everyone

Just kidding Chaz

In general I wanted to represent the upgrades costing something other than finding them. Mainly because once you get the items and find the alter you've got a new upgrade for any item you have. I could have the upgrades cost money, but as we all know money is too easy to find in the world.

However! If you guys all want me to ditch the damage I can do that or I can make it minimal (like 1 damage for the lowest gem or 5 for the highest.) Just let me know, I'm a yes man.

L

 

[dream66_]

Health is too easy to come by, Channita has tons of healing magic, potions and kits, hit point loss is simply nothing.

Money is definattly too easy to get your hands on in this mod so it's not a cut off

Why not an XP hit? Crafting Magic Items in the pen and paper takes XP and there's a reason for that. XP is the only resource characters have, everything else is fluff. The only thing of value that you can take from a character in exchange is XP. Call it a draining of Essence in character.

 

[Doshi]

I really like the blood gem concept: good flavour for the RP aspect. Percent would be better.

Were there going to be more than one of these altars in the module?

 

[valn]

Dream66_ makes good points! I think XP might be an interesting cost for magical upgrades. I was also thinking that those altars could work nicely with the PrC magic creation feats, but that depends on how easily available you want to make them...

However, traditionally in D&D, isn't magical creation the domain of spellcasters? Requiring a spellcaster of a certain level for each upgrades would be another way of making them harder to get.

All that said, thanks for all that time you have spent working on this!


EDIT: hmmm, I don't play there yet, but reading Layonara-Online player's book, they mention that putting, for exemple, an electrical damage bonus to a weapon will remove previous elemental bonus (ie, you can't build a weapon that does more than one type of elemental damage). Same thing for elemental protection, etc. I thought that was a good way to control the power-levels of magic items.

 

[Chaz]

The XP loss idea is no good. Lets keep it simple... Like in the HOTU game there is a smith that can add plusses and propertys to your weapon for gold. Plain, simple and gets the job done. Thats what id like to see.

Peace