Dynamic weapons/armor

[Polak76]

Greetings all.

I've played PnP for many, many years and in most of my games I find that characters get attached to certain items, weapons or armor.  So rather than have them find something better I usually give them the opportunity to develop the items by adding magical properties, gems, abilities..etc.  Also I like the thought of people naming thier items, or that when an epic characer dies, their epic items bear the name of the predecessor as if it is some sort of artefact.

To that end even in the world of Layo, my characters get awefully fond of a particular item.  unfortunately to increase it's effectiveness one needs to move to iron, adamantium, titanium..etc, to gain better mods.  So rather than do that would it be possible or feasible to have a section in the crafting hall to modify items?  One could then modify a good copper sword, by alloying it with iron, adding an infused gem or two, name the sword, add some elemental enhancements and by lvl 20 turn that trusty old copper sword into a +2 longsword with +1 inteligence, elemental damage with darkness 1/day, while bearing the owners name.

Just a thought.  One would still need to refine the rare ingredients once found.  Failure in crafting might mean destroying the item so with high risk comes high return.

Anyway this is just a thought.

Cheers,
Polak76

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Sounds great! I just shot a message into IRC about something similar regarding enchantments ("boosting" it in-game by the OOC means of actually adding a higher-grade rod on it), but I like this even better.

Sadly, this would be a rather complex system... Up to the Team, I guess.

My idea was to just switch weapons, re-enchant, customize it right, and just call it the same thing. *Chuckles.* Not exactly logical, but I suppose it works. (We'll just ignore that Coldfire started out as an Iron Rapier; it was Addy the whole time, right?)

[Hellblazer]

Thats sound amazing actualy as an Idea. To be able to improve a weapon passed the adding of the mear cotaing and enchantment but making it better by imbeding them with Infused gems.
 
 The only thing I think of though, about this Idea, is that; to be able to alloy it you will have to Refoundry it then add the two melted metals together in a perfect evenly mix, no air bubbles etc.. so that point why just not make a new weapon that would be in the end stronger than both alloyw together. A weaker metal alloyed with a stronger one would weaken the better one and the risk of Breaking the sword, when in combat, after that is grater.
 
 But the idea of combining infused gems to a sword, giving it special proprieties is somethign that I find very interesting, no only because my char is a infuser  :p  but it would give special magical power to a sword that could become unique to teh player habits and abilities. Lets say that your a scout, now usualy that role would fall out to ranger or rogues, people who can hide better than others and travel light which makes them more silent and agile. If they were able to combine infused gems to their daggers or sword (other than having a armor with the camouflage gem in it) they could have some power that would proctect them or offer them better hiding capabilities. I was thinking of gems of camouflage for hte rogues and of Darkness for the Ranger, two spells they can not use without help, but the later one is not an infused gems that can be made unless modified Now having those and diferent kind that one could chose to make or have made for them could actualy bring a new sence into prefered weapon.

[silverdraco]

the gems infusing into a weapon part sounds good to me to. I wonder in what way it would be posible for the team to get such a thing working. and of coarse if they think it would be a good ad on to the layo we know today.

and they should have time for it ofcoarse.

[Polak76]

The main think I like is the sentimental value of an item.
I was given a gift by the black wizards a long while ago, which was a shortsword called - "Corath Wounds".  It was an Iron shortsword with wounding DC13 or something like that.  I absolutely loved it.  Unfortunately it became weak when I reached lvl 20 since i was using Greatsword +3.  I still carried it everywhere but wished to be able to increase it's potency as I went up levels.  
So asside from chaning or alloying the metals, how does one increase an enhancement from +1 to +3?  Gems are great for spells/day, ability modifiers etc.  Rods increase damage and visuals.  But the actualy enhancement bonus?

Also if we had some sort of name generator for items where we could give the item a unique name and description.  THis would be great, especially if someone picked up my old sword and viewed it, it would read something like this:

Ramanon's Afliction

Desciption: Short Iron sword with a black blade covered with alien silver runes.  A visage of a rams skull in engraved at the base of the blade while a blood red ruby emanates a soft red glow from its pommell.  The hilt is cold to the touch sending unatural shivers down your spine.

Something like this in my opinion would add a nice touch to the game.

Cheers,
Polak76

[Hellblazer]

Oh yeah I forgot about the naming part that would be just awsome.

[Hellblazer]

But to think of it to keep balance for all kind of players bow staff and crossbow would have to be equaly modifyable.

[silverblades]

to quote Leanthar taken from layonara server, the future of Layonara thread.

i think hes already working on this idea you might just be on the ground breaking of this idea for him, just a guess.
 We are going to concentrate on adding new high level content, high level loot and items and raid zones.
     a)  The current “+4” sort of high level item will go up to as high as +6 as loot drops and plot quest rewards will go up as high as +8 (very rare), +7 (rare), and +2 - +6 (common/uncommon).
     b)  CNR will not be increased; the adjustments in these items will be done via additional gathered material, dungeon loot drops, and crafting; these items would then have to be combined to create a new item.
     c)  The high end items will become artifacts and the wielder will be known as a “Legend”. These Legendary items and those that wield them will be quite rare and they will not begin to appear for at least a year but we are working on the system. These items will only be equipped by level 35 or 36+ characters.

[darkstorme]

And naming is possible - just use the Quill, thanks to the new "SetName(object oTarget, string strName)" command.

[Polak76]

THanks Dark, I'll try that out.

CHeers,
Polak76

[Hellblazer]

oooh thats so good to know thanks Dark.