I like seeing players suggest new items for our CNR system. This process is one on which the whole community can participate by offering suggestions for recipes and new items. There are however some complex aspects of the system and matters of balance you need to consider when you suggest a new item. For this reason I have listed here a few steps that you should go trough before submitting new CNR content. Step one: Come up with the generic concept of the item. Take a while to think of the generic properties of the item and what inventory slot it's going to fill. Then do your best to remember what other possibilities we already have in CNR to be used in this inventory slot and how the item would balance-wise fit amongst them. Also think how this item would affect all classes and to which classes the item would be desirable. Step two: What crafts will creating the item require? We have 14 different tradeskills with varying amounts of content and levels of complexity. The item a player suggests is usually an end product, an usable item, so creating it should require the collaboration of at least two different crafts. The number of crafts required is highly dependent on the power of the item. If it is aimed to the higher level characters the recipe should require the collaboration of three to five crafts. If it is for the first ten levels two crafts should be enough. Also as I stated, other crafts are more fleshed out than others. Some of the crafts have hundreds of end products while others have less. Think of which crafts could really use new items and try to fit the item into that. For an example, currently you can make an item for almost every inventory slot trough tailoring, which is a good indicator that the craft might not need new content whereas armor crafting, while has many different types of armor options, offers only few end products that people are truly interested in. Also if you are familiar with the crafting levels of items you might want to spend some time specifying the craft level for the item. Craft level determines how high your skill in the tradeskill needs to be before you have a decent chance at creating the item. Step three: Recipe of the item There are at least four types of items that usually should be present in an end product CNR recipe. 1. The main material What the item is mostly made out of. The main material usually defines the crafting level of the item. This also means that it defines how powerful the item can be. This is usually a refined version of a CNR material you can collect. Examples: Polar bear leathers, ingots of platinum, oak branches or a fine sapphire. 2. The items from other crafts These items are in the recipe to ensure that you can't rely purely on a single craft to create an end product. This item usually needs to be in the same general power level as the main material. Good examples would be different essences from alchemy, enchanted or infused gems, scrolls, molds and spools of thread. 3. The item you need to buy from a craft vendor These items help to drain money from the world, something that is important to the balance of the world. You can usually also craft these but the prices on vendors are low enough that it usually isn't worth the effort. Examples: Armor patterns, tanning acids, sugar, crafted ropes and enchanting oils. 4. The limiting item This item is in the recipe to prevent the end product from being mass produced. Usually the item is of a specific type that can not be harvested in large quantities. If you want to limit the creation even further, just increase the required amount of these items. The recipe might require things such as three pinches of rye flour, mahogany sandpaper, random herb, dust from a rare gem or spools of silk. It might not be necessary for every recipe to have all four kinds of items. If the item is aimed for the starting levels then there isn't that great a reason to keep them rare and expensive. Thus you can most likely drop out either the limiting item or the costly one. At this point you should have enough information on which to base the suggestion. Now it's time to do some quality control and ask yourself the following questions: - Does the item make sense? Make sure that the properties on items are feasible, at least in a fantasy setting. Do the ingredients required make sense with the effects of the item? - Do the crafts required make sense? Even if there are some crafts that lack content, do not force the item to a craft where it does not belong. You can not make a suit of armor trough scribing. If the recipe includes working with miniature gears then include tinkering to the recipe. If it requires channeling magical energy, infusing or enchanting is needed. This does not mean that you can't be creative. Even if the main body of the item is made with some other craft the final recipe could belong to a completely different craft. For an example with a small stretch of imagination you could have a helmet made trough gem crafting. The base item, iron helmet, would be made trough armor crafting and then the enchanted gems would be placed on it trough gem crafting.
- Is the item possible with the limitations of NWN engine? The further you take the items properties from the standard NWN properties the more likely it will be that the Project Team will not be able to create the desired effect. Special effects or bonuses that the NWN toolset doesn't normally offer are usually a bad idea. - Are the properties balanced? There are some effects that the toolset offers that simply aren't balanced if you try to use them in a PW. Suggested items with effects such as haste, regeneration and certain feats will not be implemented due to their unbalanced nature. Suggesting items that cast spells once per day is also discouraged as these are extremely hard to balance within a system that allows the creation of the same item multiple times. Do not try to stick too many different kinds of effects into a single item. On the other hand do not be afraid to balance positive effects with negative ones. An helmet with a good bonus to AC might limit the vision and hearing thus giving you a penalty to spot and listen.
- Finally, does the item fit into Layonara? The item you suggest needs to be in line with all the other items that can be crafted and obtained in the world of Layonara. It also it needs to fit into the setting which is defined by the aspects of low magic and only fairly primitive technology. Craftable items in most cases should not have modifiers that surpass +3. Now after reading this all you think that the whole thing is a lot more hassle than you originally thought. Still these are all necessary steps to go trough and if you do not, then the Project Team needs to. This of course increases the amount of work the already busy Project Team needs to put into the item. Even if the ideas aren't commented on, that does not mean they are being ignored. The project team reads and considers all submissions. If the idea is a viable one and well developed it has a considerably higher chance of ending up in the game and the process will be quite a lot faster. If the Project Team would need to spend days discussing the balance aspects of the suggestion then it's likely that the suggestion will have to wait for a time when there's less things on the team's plate.
