Daenks/Meridian59_103 — pull request #256 by M59Gar (2014-01-26 02:35:27+00:00)
Title: Rods, new magic items

Rods are a new type of magic item that share several characteristics.

* Rods can be used while held, blind, or dazzled.

* All rods begin with zero charges, and lose their charges if they
change hands. Rods gain a charge whenever their owner kills a monster,
or whenever their owner visits a safe place.

* Rods are wands that only work on their owner, and thus do not require
targeting. Pressing space or double-clicking one will use their
abilities immediately.

* A player **may only carry five rods at any one time.**

* Rods' descriptions will show how many charges they have, how many they
consume per use, and how many they can hold total. For instance, Gnarled
Staves consume one charge per use and can only hold three charges, while
a rod of armor of Gort consumes 20 charges per use and can hold 20
charges.

The design behind these items is to give players interesting gear
choices. Heal wands, vamp wands, and gnarled staves have been
significantly upgraded and converted into rods. In addition, four
critical buffs have been implemented as spell rods: bless, super
strength, detect invisible, and armor of Gort. These spell rods cannot
be recharged by visiting an inn; thus they can only be recharged by
killing monsters, granting builders the ability to employ critical buffs
at a moderate spellpower and without burning reagents.

Of course, heal wands are the baseline rod. Choosing to carry a rod of
armor of Gort means you are carrying one less heal wand. Heal wands have
had their variance reduced, but their average heal amount is still 6.
Five charges per heal wand means 30 health per wand average; five heal
wands total means a player can hold 150 health in reserve with heal
wands. Each specialty wand is therefore a choice made over having
roughly 30 more health. Is it worth it to build with armor of Gort?
Probably. Is it worth it to build with Detect Invisible? Maybe...

In addition, this should help significantly with player downtimes
between monsters. Players who are zooming along don't need to bother
with healing, but if you're getting low in between each fight, a charge
per heal wand may help with resting downtime, which is boring for everybody.

**Specific workings:**

* Instead of their old stupid code, Gnarled staves now actually cast the spell Flash,
along with using all relevant safety checks. These CAN turn you outlaw if you turn off your safety!
Spellpower 60, and can only hold three charges, but these are recharged by inns.

* Vamp wands are now 'rods of vampiric shock', which can't be charged by an inn.
Instead, they can only be charged by the murder of mobs with good karma. However,
each use of a vamp rod now has a far more dramatic effect on your karma. Players
wishing to 'fix their karma' can grab a few of these, chop down a few trees, and be
well on their way to -80.

* Heal wands are now 'rods of healing', which return between 4 and 8 health per charge.
They can hold up to 5 charges, and are recharged by inns. This means any given player
can have up to 150 health in reserve if they are only using heal wands. You may ask:
"Why are you doing this? I freaking hate heal wands! This is crazy!" Well, I'll tell you why.
Farming heal wands constantly is annoying, and most players don't do it. However,
there was no limit on those who did, so some players had 0 health in reserve, while others
with 40 heal wands had roughly *1200 reserve health.* Obnoxious and stupid? Yes.
This new system should eliminate pointless grind, balance out heal wand reserve health,
and also give us some very interesting future options for rod effects. What kind of ability
would YOU choose over 30 reserve health?

* Spell rods can give you bless, SS, DI, or Gort, for different amounts of charges respectively.
Notably, gort requires 20 charges (aka 20 kills) and none of these can be recharged by inns.

**What does the future hold for rods?**

Here are some ideas that I am NOT pushing or trying to get in, but just throwing out there
for you to think about. Remember, each of these comes at an opportunity cost of 30 reserve health:

* A 'rod of freedom' that has only one use at a time, but breaks hold, blind, and dazzle,
and possibly gives you 2 seconds of immunity to those three spells. You would not be able
to cast them yourself during that immunity. This would be the ultimate gank-escape rod,
assuming you're within 2 seconds of safety...

* A 'rod of magical lock' that gives you a few seconds of immunity to Purge?

* Rods of resistance that can give five seconds of 50% resistance to mundane elements like slash, thrust,
bludgeon, or pierce (kind of like the way resist rings give resistance to magical elements).

Do these sound like interesting combat mechanics at all? If not we can totally ditch them,
but the point is, there are a ton of possibilities with this kind of structure.