New Weapon Flags

Talos · Post by **Talos** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 8:22 pm

Awesome! Now some questions:

1) REFLECTIVE - about what chance of reflecting the spell are we looking at?

2) Can we have more than one flag per weapon? i.e. both THROWING and RETURNING, so I could have a returning throwable bastard sword?

3)VORPAL - about what chance of limb severing are we looking at?

Andreas · Post by **Andreas** » Sun Mar 28, 2004 6:40 pm

How about holy/unholy flags?

i.e. LG holy sword of Helm dealing out extra damage to evil PCs and specifically Sharrans, Talassans and Maskarrans?

Defender flag?

i.e. wielder gains AC bonus when holding weapon - or would that work better as an apply?

Tyr · Post by **Tyr** » Mon Mar 29, 2004 3:08 pm

1) Reflective has 0% atm as it is not coded yet but I am open to suggestions.

2) Yes you can have multiples in any combination.

3) Very good chance right now. Will need to be tested as I think it is every crit.

WFLAG_HOLY and WFLAG_DEFENDER are both added to my todo.

Stayne · Post by **Stayne** » Mon Mar 29, 2004 7:17 pm

For the flags that have an effect per instance of something (the reflection one for eg.), would it be possible that we have a number after the flag that would set the % chance for that weapon. This would give us the flexibility to make a low powered weapon of for eg. A Sword of Sharpness that severs a limb 1% chance every critical which may be easier to get than the ultra rare vorpal sword that severs a limb every critical?

If that is not possible I would like to see the %'s each weapon flag has for its effect happening (where neccessary) so that I can best judge what to use.
For suggestions of said %'s, well I do not have any yet, but would raise a concern over two flags.
The first is spell reflection. This is an extremely powerful ability because it takes the only advangtage a mage has over a fighter (magic) away from them. I personally would not want to see every fighter running around with even a dagger of reflection. To my mind, this discourages grouping.
The second concern is the speed flag. I may be wrong in how I interpret this, but does not it mean that every strike, a %'s chance (not yet set) of another strike will be generated. This gives the dizzying possibility of 12 strikes in a round. If it can only add one extra attack in a round then I have no problems.

While these two worry me alone, some combinations are also frightening. A vampiric sword of reflection is one example. A fighter who has the potential to heal during battle and reflect magic spells away comes to mind here. Don't need priests or mages in the game anymore.
Now - I know I am being a bit of an extremist, but I just wanted to make the point clear. I LOVE the flags and look forward to using them as I am sure others do too.

Just some other notes and questions -

Tyr - I noted that you have added "Holy" to the TODO list for flags (great suggestion Andreas), but I ask that an 'Unholy' be added as well. I personally would love to make a mob that is a warrior for evil and whose sword strikes hard at good (especially lawful good), even if said sword does scrap on dropping (which is a great way to use the powerful flags against PC's without giving them the power themselves

)

Also - will these flags show up in a mages identify? I am just curious a if they do not, unless we give some hint in our areas (which is fine of course?) then Talos's proposed 'Returning, throwable Bastard Sword' will never be discovered (because, lets face it, who in their right mind would think to throw one of those things!

)

Is the Venom flag cumulative with itself. Ie. Can the weapon poison someone multiple times (hence reducing STR, stamina, health and whatever other funky effects that poison has)?

Is it possible to get a flag_enchanted (or something similar) where we can enter a energy type (fire, cold,electricity etc) and on a % chance it does the weapons standard damage in that energy type. I think this would be more realistic for such weapons like the "long handled fiery mace", that instead of having a '+' to damage to represent the fire enchantment on it, it acts like I said? I don't know if its possible as I know there would need to be an echo for each energy type, but I can see it making a decent enchanters spell as well to add said flag of energy type to a weapon....

Hope this helps
-Stayne

Andreas · Post by **Andreas** » Mon Mar 29, 2004 8:19 pm

I'm sure you won't see every fighter running around with a spell reflecting vampiric dagger. Magic items are closely regulated. I built a bunch in one of my areas, but there's no way to buy them and I'm still working on quests to earn them.

*poke* I said HOLY/UNHOLY. Of course, it's all a matter of perspective. A dagger consecrated to Lloth is holy to worshippers of Lloth and unholy to worshippers of Corellon.

Will it be possible to put multiple flags on a weapon? i.e. Short Sword, Defender +1, +4 vs. Dragons in the classic D&D style of magic weapons?

Rhelian · Post by **Rhelian** » Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:40 pm

From an objective viewpoint as well as biased one, I'd say that the % chance of reflection should be low. No more than 5-10% - in my opinion anyway, with 10% being given rarely. Reasons for this would be that magical items, while regulated, would be available to a fair percentage of adventurers on the mud if not all (it won't be a quest limited to three people), and also so that the powerbalance doesn't shift entirely away from wizards if they encounter a fighter with five attacks dual wielding two Longswords of Reflection. Perhaps, although this might require a bit of coding, spell level and points in the spell penetration feat could cut down the reflection percentage (if it can be a dynamic number or not, I'm not sure - I'm not a coder :p). This would work that if a wizard had one slot in spell penetration and was adept at a spell, a 10% reflective sword would be whittled down to 5%, or so.

Also, as an idea that would need to be better developed, with tags such as HOLY, maybe the divine power surge on a hit would hurt the material it's contained in - for example, Helmite Holy sword strikes Sharran cleric, which does double damage or whatever, but also damages the sword 1 level with a 20% chance of the damage occuring. You can think of it as the holy smiting power blasting from the weapon, but the power is also strong enough to weaken the metal of the sword, staff, crossbowbolt, whatever. That way it would balance out to power of the sword without causing the weapon to trash in one round of combat. I would also assume holy weapons can only be wielded by those of the right faith, with the right favour level?

As a side question, will the tags be retroactive in some cases? I don't mean on all weapons in the game, just specific ones. The holy tag for example, on Morning Glory, A staff of Mystra (no, not fishing for myself :-p), supplicated weapons and so forth? Again with spell reflection, perhaps on some supplicated shields or specific faith items - Mystra and Shar come to mind, and probably Moradin. Vorpal added to the huge two-handed swords with magical properties - pretty much the same idea Stayne offered of fire-decripted weapons doing fire damage, etc.

I would also see that most of the quests for powerful weapons would require a chunk of kismet, or that's the way I'd be hoping to code them in my areas. Is that the accepted method for these?

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 1:56 am

I, for one, am not too fond of using those flags in areas right now before other things are changed and other problems are solved.

More powerful than what we already have. The current "standard" for magic items in the game is about +1 (+1 to hit and +1 to damage), with some rare exceptions that have +2 bonuses. The powers given by those weapon flags are way more powerful than what we have (because we don't have damage resistance according to the enchantment of the weapon amongst other reasons). That's why I think that introducing such weapon flags in areas right now will create a large imbalance with respect with what is already in the game (as quest rewards or supplicated items).

Making more powerful something that is already powerful. I see two main problems with the current combat code. First, a warrior can kill all the mobs of a whole area (granted, there are some exceptions) in next to no time. Second, a character clad in good metal armour is next to immune to most mobs (and especially to all unarmed mobs - all mobs end up unarmed sooner or later after a few repop). That explains why most fighters, paladins, clerics and rangers (especially rangers clad in metal armour) can solo most areas. All of those flags make weapons more powerful and pieces of armour more efficient and, besides, some of them - as Stayne pointed out - make the presence of characters of other classes useless.

That's just my opinion, based on what I observed in game. I am going to have a very hard time letting such flags go in new areas when reviewing them.

Andreas · Post by **Andreas** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 7:35 pm

Any of these special items I would personally restrict to token granted quests. That way the Imms control who gets the token to begin the quest, thus controlling who gets the items with those special flags.

Maybe an old code paladin can solo most areas, but I sure can't do it on Andreas! There's areas I haven't finished because I just (A)can't take the damage, (B)can't deal out enough damage in return and (C)don't have the necessary skills/spells to do everything that is required. Meanwhile, I see fighters/rangers pumped up on spells or mages/clerics that can solo areas such as OSOW or UM like a walk in the park.

With Imms being the ones to regulate who gets a token that will trigger a quest for one of these more powerful items, I don't think the balance of power will shift too dramatically. I completely agree with Rhelian about needing high kismet for these things. Unique and powerful items should be a reward for the good players and incentive for everyone else to behave themselves.

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 9:41 pm

I trust what you say about Andreas, but take a look at the majority of other characters out there. If they are given a choice between a nice non-magical armour with the symbol of their deity/group/order and a magical one, they would choose the magical one. I remember the two or three weeks after the temple of Tempus area was brought in: most characters were wearing the pieces of red steel armour from that temple, even those who had no IC reason at all do shop in a temple of Tempus.

Introducing a token (or kismet) system for quests might be a partial solution (it won't solve anything about characters who ran through all the quests, have next to no roleply, and are already fully equipped), but it also creates some problems, mainly for the newbie council members and the well-known players who are generally observed and rewarded less often. Besides, that would introduce a lot of work for imms if they had to distribute quest tokens in addition to what they already have to do. I do not have any alternative solution to suggest though.

Andreas · Post by **Andreas** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:11 pm

Restricting temple mobs to selling in faith only is one solution to the mad rush for cool stuff. I wasn't here when that new stuff went in, but I don't doubt you at all. I do agree - most people tend twink out on stat boosting EQ that looks like garbage rather than a nice, matching set of plain stuff for roleplay purposes.

Hmm... pursuing the kismet idea a bit more... would it be possible to code a mob that triggers such a quest when a character that meets certain requirements? I.e. high kismet, minimum skill requirements, minimum level (hero levels only?), minimum hours played. Mind you, these are ONLY ideas - brainstorming is welcome

For example:

Jane Doe is a 50th level Cyricist fighter. She's a good player and lots of good, long term RP, she finally has a kismet of 5,000 (just a random number!). Now when she goes into the temple, the priest remarks on what a faithful servant she's been and offers to induct her into the elite ranks of the church. If Jane accepts the offer, she'll begin a quest which will ultimately result in being awarded the Blackguard prestige class.

Let's say Jane succeeds and is now a Blackguard. She'll loose some kismet in gaining the prestige class, so we'll say she's now at 3,000 kismet points. After more good RP, she's back up to 5,000 kismet and happens into another temple where the weapon master tells her about a legendary greatsword that was concecrated to the Prince of Lies but stolen and hidden away by followers of Mask blah blah blah... Will Jane go fetch this sword? If she accepts the quest, she'll eventually wind up with the sword - we'll call it a vampiric holy sword of Cyric

just for giggles and another loss of kismet for having completed the quest.

I strongly believe that these quests should be difficult and have choices that could lead to failure without reward. Automating the quest to trigger on high kismet relieves the Imms from having to screen everyone and take the time to give the PC a token or otherwise trigger the quest. The assumption here being that only good players would have high enough kismet to trigger the quest.

Rhelian · Post by **Rhelian** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:44 pm

You can't set a mprog to check for good RP though, and hours_played would be a bad variable to start a quest on.

As for a token system, I agree with Dalvyn, that it would cause more hassles than it was worth, and also, not everyone is on the same time as an imm (or one who is free enough to hand out quests), and some people are less watched than others, or their timing is way off skew - for example, to be involved in an imm-run RP run in the American nighttime, I'd have to be on in the middle of the day - if/when I log on at night times, the mud is running at less than 6 people on average. I know there are others who are in similar or more drastic timezone shifts, and I'd suggest, through no fault of anyone, that tokens for quests would be far and few between for those people, who are probably less watched due to time differences

. Also it would add to the imm workload to hand out tokens to individual characters.

Personally I hope quests for things like this would be kismet and IC based, but however they are triggered, I'd hope the availability of these weapons was very low - not low enough that the same group of players get the new weapons and become even more powerful, but not high enough for them to be seen on every second or third adventurer.

Most of those tags are powerful, in my opinion at least. Some too game unbalancing if triggered with a high percentage (25% vorpal, 15% reflection, etc) unless compensation was made, but that would be for another topic

Andreas · Post by **Andreas** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 11:41 pm

I didn't say time based, I said KISMET based. Kismet is a function of a player's behaviour. Good players will naturally accrue high kismet while bad players will have low or even negative kismet.

Having a quest set to trigger for a player with high kismet takes a lot of the guesswork out for the staff. I used the kismet (karma system as I designed it elseMU*) with great success in determining awards and player applications.

This also allows for people who are on at odd times the same chance of cumulating high kismet and triggering the quest.

Rhelian · Post by **Rhelian** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 2:08 am

I fully understand how kismet works. I also stated twice tht I think such quests should be tied to kismet.

What I said was that you can't set a program to check for good RP on behalf of the character - that would get resolved through kismet points from other players or mostly imms, which again brings in time difference/less watched problems, if only slightly. I also said that I believe that starting a quest on hours played or minimum hours played, as you stated in your own post, would not, in my opinion, be a good idea. Even though the hours will contribute to the kismet score, or part thereof.