The World of Layonara  Forums

Author Topic: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...  (Read 734 times)

Nehetsrev

Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« on: January 20, 2012, 10:34:23 am »
Okay...  Was reading another thread just a minute ago and part of the discussion was about how some new items wouldn't be added due to an already over-stuffed item palette and it got me thinking of possible solutions that might be easy to implement to relieve some of that item palette crowding.
 
 The most obvious was of course to look at 'flavor' items that are otherwise useless and lacking of value.  This would include removing things like the Stone Club or Rusty Red Light Dagger, which have penalties that make them undesirable for use by even starting characters.  However, I kind of like the flavor they add to the game-world with the descriptions they posess.
 
 So, then I thought, why not yank out all those different individual Material Spell Components and replace them with tiered Material Component Bags with a limitted number of uses (charges) each?  Here's what I mean (and it would require some re-scripting of the spells I'm sure), but each spell-level would have one of these Material Component Bags with say 100 uses, set at increasing prices for each higher level at the magic vendors.  Any spell of level 1 that required a material component would use 1 charge from it's associated component bag when cast, rather than this bit of twisted leather, or that bit of bat guano, or whatever.  Any spell of level 2 uses a charge from a Level 2 bag, etc.  Alternatively, there could just be one bag for each three levels of spells (matching the tiers of the Eschew Materials feats), and higher level spells within a tier would simply use more charges.  So, in the first example a level 1 spell uses one charge from a tier 1 bag, a level 2 spell uses 2 charges, and a level 3 spells uses 3 (or 4) charges.  Then at 4th level spells you'd use 1 charge from a tier 2 bag, and so on.  You now have a platform for an additional gold-sink system (yes, casters, feel free to grumble if you like, but we all know those spells you cast at higher levels give you serious gold-earning advantage over non-casters when soloing.  So it adds some balance, I think.), and another bonus to mages is that they don't have to scrounge the world over for sometimes hard to find materials.  Heck, if you wanted you could still set up the system so it only affected lower level spells, and retain the current material component requirements for spells of level 7 and up, but you wouldn't have the benefit of removing quite as many items from the palette that way.  The Eschew Materials feats would still retain their value also, since they would free casters from the need to buy component bags, and thus also the need to carry said bags (which might have a suggested weight of 2 - 5 lbs. each).
 
 Anyhow, it's an idea, and I'm sure there'll be other reasons than I've listed here as to why it can't or won't be implemented, but in my opinion at this moment it's still a good idea.    All constructive feedback, whether positive or negative, is welcomed.  However, let's avoid any heated flames, shall we?  ;)
 
The following users thanked this post: gilshem ironstone, Hellblazer, davidhoff, geloooo

wild_down_under

Re: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2012, 11:59:06 am »
One issue I can see right away:

For the "required spell components," you can craft them. For example, twisted leather strip can be made from deer skin. There are many others that can be crafted. If you take that way and replace them with "charges," it will negate or make less important of the lesser crafted items.

As for the higher spell components that are required, if they are so easily accessible at the shop, people will not take escew feats. Part of the reason why people take escew feat is because those higher spell components are hard to obtain. If all it takes is gold to obtain said "charges" to cast spells, I can say without a doubt all spell casters will not be taking escew feats.
 

Nehetsrev

Re: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« Reply #2 on: January 20, 2012, 12:44:54 pm »
How many people actually go through the trouble of crafting the craftable spell components?  In my own experience, with the exception of perhaps the leather strips, most of the craftable components are too much trouble to produce.  They take too much time, or too many resources, or the resources are too heavilly guarded or too out of the way to make it worth while to collect them.
 
In my own opinion, the current system practicly forces most casters to take the eschew feats in order to be able to function at their best, especially at higher levels.  I play a sorcerer/rogue with one character.  Though initially I tried hard to forego taking the eschew feats because I wanted to take feats that would make his castings more potent instead, I ended up taking the eschew feats anyway.  I attribute this choice because gathering components for the spells I wanted him to be able to cast at higher levels became too costly, too time-consuming, and/or too dangerous.  On top of that carrying around all those spell component supplies took up too much space in his inventory and used up too much of his encumberance limit.  He now isn't quite exactly the character I had initially wanted him to be, which is a bit disappointing to me.
 
Thank you for your feedback.  I appreciate it.
 

miltonyorkcastle

Re: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« Reply #3 on: January 20, 2012, 12:47:12 pm »
Quote
The most obvious was of course to look at 'flavor' items that are otherwise useless and lacking of value. This would include removing things like the Stone Club or Rusty Red Light Dagger, which have penalties that make them undesirable for use by even starting characters. However, I kind of like the flavor they add to the game-world with the descriptions they posess.


As an FYI, A review of in-game items and work toward replacements/additions/removals is in progress already.
 

xsweetpeaxs

Re: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« Reply #4 on: January 20, 2012, 01:01:51 pm »
Quote from: Nehetsrev
In my own opinion, the current system practicly forces most casters to take the eschew feats in order to be able to function at their best, especially at higher levels.  I play a sorcerer/rogue with one character.  Though initially I tried hard to forego taking the eschew feats because I wanted to take feats that would make his castings more potent instead, I ended up taking the eschew feats anyway.


I think that is the design/purpose of the spell components and eschew feats. It is a pain to gather the spell components so that is why a lot of spellcasters pick eschew feats. Imagine a cleric not taking eschew feats and being able to purchase "charges," that cleric now has 3 extra feats to pick from (instead of eschew I, II, III). Some will say clerics will be overpowered because those 3 extra feats will enhance better combat (or whatever). Or wizard/fighter combo. Instead of eschew feats, the wizard/fighter combo will have 3 extra feats for whatever. And in your case, your sorceror/rogue combo gets 3 extra feats for whatever. In short, I think the system is there for balance. The spellcasters have to sacrifice 3 feats so that they can be better spellcasters.
 

Nehetsrev

Re: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« Reply #5 on: January 20, 2012, 01:48:35 pm »
That's certainly one way to look at it.  However, the other way to look at it is why limit the diversity possible for casters in the choices of feats they can take by nearly forcing them take three feats that they would otherwise rather not take?
 
Why does it have to be three feats?  Still spell, which eliminates the somantic component is just one feat.  Silent Spell, which eliminates the verbal component is just one feat.  Why can't Eschew Materials be one feat?  It might be more tollerable that way.  Though I suppose then we'd have to prepare our eschewed spells as X levels higher to maintain 'balance', and who would want that, right?  Now if Still Spell and Silent Spell had three tiers like Eschew Materials, and didn't require preparing the spells in slot of X levels higher, than that would be just as balanced, right?
 
Anyhow, I think I've gotten a little off-topic here.  The point was that this could be a viable, and in my opinion elegant, partial solution to an over-populated palette issue.  Like I mentioned in my initial post, if it was desired to retain the higher-level material compnents, then only the material component bags for lower level spell components would need to be implemented and it would still relieve -some- palette stress.         It's an idea, and like all ideas, not everyone will agree with it or like it, while others will. Thanks again for your feedback.
 

drakogear

Re: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« Reply #6 on: January 20, 2012, 06:39:13 pm »
Hm, not sure if I agree with this or not... part of me does yet another does not. Have a character I'm planing on being a pure sorc and thanks to this discussion reminded me of a rather interesting way to RP a spell caster. With the variety of components (though with some being a bit off in my opinion) getting me thinking quite a bit about well... traditional witchcraft. The spell components being as the reagents.

Ex. and a pop quiz: *Holds sand in one hand and imbues it with the sleep spell then blows the sand into the targets face*

Who am I? Hint: Sleep spell: Pinch of sand.

Putting them together in spell level bags however... mmmight take a bit of the RP from them, reducing the variety, but then again thats what they've done in DDO (Dungeons & Dragons Online) though they've only had the first few level component bags in shops. For the hire levels you'd either get them as loot or find some specialty shop (I think, not sure on the later) or get them from other players.

Note: DDO is not as much of an RP oriented game as Layo.

Quote from: Nehetsrev
Why does it have to be three feats?  Still spell, which eliminates the somantic component is just one feat.  Silent Spell, which eliminates the verbal component is just one feat.  Why can't Eschew Materials be one feat?  It might be more tollerable that way.  Though I suppose then we'd have to prepare our eschewed spells as X levels higher to maintain 'balance', and who would want that, right?  Now if Still Spell and Silent Spell had three tiers like Eschew Materials, and didn't require preparing the spells in slot of X levels higher, than that would be just as balanced, right?


There is a way to cast with Still, Silent and even Quicken Spell regardless of spell level and that's through the Automatic versions witch are however only for epic casters. (NOT epic characters) Though note that Clerics, Rangers and Druids do not need Still or Auto-Still because they can already cast in armor. Though Still does allow casting wile held/paralyzed.

If perhaps Eschew I-III were given the same Req. (Caster 21+) and perhaps a slandered  Eschew that had to be prepared like the other Meta-magics then that might be good.
 

Hellblazer

Re: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« Reply #7 on: January 20, 2012, 06:46:32 pm »
Quote from: xsweetpeaxs
I think that is the design/purpose of the spell components and eschew feats. It is a pain to gather the spell components so that is why a lot of spellcasters pick eschew feats. Imagine a cleric not taking eschew feats and being able to purchase "charges," that cleric now has 3 extra feats to pick from (instead of eschew I, II, III). Some will say clerics will be overpowered because those 3 extra feats will enhance better combat (or whatever). Or wizard/fighter combo. Instead of eschew feats, the wizard/fighter combo will have 3 extra feats for whatever. And in your case, your sorceror/rogue combo gets 3 extra feats for whatever. In short, I think the system is there for balance. The spellcasters have to sacrifice 3 feats so that they can be better spellcasters.


In this case I don't think it actually prevent the balancing, if.. and I strongly say if.. the spell component bags for the high level spells is taking into account the power they bring. 100 Charges is a good idea, but am I wrong to assume that charges are calculated exactly the same as stacked Items? Or would you need a version of the item for each use.. 99 use left.. 50 use left.. etc?

But for those spell bags, there need to be a downside, and unfortunately, unless it's again gathering cnr to craft those spell bags (yes there's more than a few people that grind their gems, pick up (or buy boxes) of gum Arabic, and the stuff alike, the only other balancing act that could be done for the higher tier bags would be costs.

That in essence could be the balancing act. Yo pay the price to be able to use spells without the eschew.. or you take the eschew and be less potent in other aspect.

darkstorme

Re: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« Reply #8 on: January 21, 2012, 03:39:58 am »
From an implementation viewpoint, I should point out that reconfiguring the spell hook scripts (and 2das, and anything hardcoded into the spellscripts themselves) to _not_ use material components would be nontrivial.

In addition, consider all the spellcasters who already took Eschew I/II/III.  I guarantee that they'd all want rebuilds for their suddenly far-less-useful feats... again, a non-trivial task.

Personally, I rather like material components.  It reminds me of days around a kitchen table, with my wizard going into town to pick up components.  *chuckles*
 

Hellblazer

Re: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« Reply #9 on: January 21, 2012, 04:20:48 am »
Quote from: darkstorme


In addition, consider all the spellcasters who already took Eschew I/II/III.  I guarantee that they'd all want rebuilds for their suddenly far-less-useful feats... again, a non-trivial task.


Personally I'm not so sure about that. My spell caster do like their ability not to have to carry the ingredients, so they like eschew. I'm probably not the only one, but again, a change like this could be made through some RP that it's a ingenious gnome who found the way to make those magical dust, and not grant rebuilds due to this change.

Nehetsrev

Re: Idea To Free Some Item-Palette Space...
« Reply #10 on: January 21, 2012, 06:15:21 am »
Quote from: darkstorme
From an implementation viewpoint, I should point out that reconfiguring the spell hook scripts (and 2das, and anything hardcoded into the spellscripts themselves) to _not_ use material components would be nontrivial.
 
 In addition, consider all the spellcasters who already took Eschew I/II/III.  I guarantee that they'd all want rebuilds for their suddenly far-less-useful feats... again, a non-trivial task.
 
 Personally, I rather like material components.  It reminds me of days around a kitchen table, with my wizard going into town to pick up components.  *chuckles*
 
Ah.  Well, there you go then.  If the coding would be too cumbersome to accomplish, that's an understandable reason not to do it.  Being that I have almost no knowledge whatsoever of how to code scripts for NWN, I didn't realize it would be a monumental task to do so.  I figured it would be a simple thing to change the scripts to point to a different item so that instead of referencing item x they instead pointed to item y.  (The only coding language I've ever learned really was the C64 version of Basic, and also a bit of GW Basic for IBM PC's.  Of course that was decades ago when they still used line-numbers in the coding...)
 
Thanks again to everyone who's contributed input regarding pro's and con's for this idea though.