ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Smith - A new class!

Anyone can create a potion, anyone can create a scroll. You just need a few ingredients and so on for a potion and a quill and vellum for a scroll.

Smithing is not about creating these things, it is about crafting an item of apparel or weapon or other item... at the very highest levels it is about creating artifacts or items of beauty!

So what is required?

Knowledge of Smithing
Knowledge of Materials
Knowledge of Smith-Spells

A Forge (should be increasingly powerful as you achieve higher levels)
Metal-Working tools (should be increasingly powerful as you achieve higher levels)

Materials - Strange and wonderful metals along with the ordinary metals, natural materials like horn and shells and shagreen, jewels and other expensive items, potions and scrolls (which you cannot produce), the list may be endless...

Game-Play :

1) Starts with basic set of smith tools
2) Starts with a portable forge (very high encumbrance)
3) Starts with some basic materials

Do a house quest to obtain a house, place forge in there, produce basic stuff... Put them on!

Go adventuring to obtain more esoteric material, produce more advanced stuff...

Upgrade Forge
Upgrade Tool-Set

Rinse & Repeat

This is inspired by Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World series and by ToME2's Alchemy class.

Given the extreme Munchkinism of the original class, do we want to implement it?

Given the extreme Munchkinism of the original class,
do we want to implement it?

It is vrey possible to design a system such that it isn't an excercise in munchkinism. DBT Technomancers come to mind. That having been said, I'm not totally convcined that the ToME module is really the place for it.

If crafting does go into the ToME4 module, I would propose that it be reconsidered from scratch...and that it find a way to become a distinct playstyle rather than simply "spend points, make items over and over until get cool stuff." That was never a very fun part of T2 alchemy.

When I think "smith" I don't think "magic item building." Instead...we might consider something like an enchanting system that ties in with the magic system. Rather than "roll the dice" and make random magic items, allow enchanters to apply spells that they know to items they already have. For example, a blank wand could be enchanted with manthrust, and the enchanter could then drain spellpoints from himself to charge it. Or, for example, he might enchant a set of boots with speed to increase it's speed rating. The catch would be that while enchanting skill would determine the degree to which items could be enchanted, the enchanter would only be capable of enchanting spell effects he could personally cast. Eliminate the "disenchant" mechanic of alchemy, and make enchantted items permanent. Then, allow classes of items to be used to enhance the enchanting process. For example, something similar to T3's gems, that are available in finite quanity. For speed...maximum value of enchant might be skill / 4, so an enchanter with skill of 20 would be limited to applying a maximum possible speed enchant of 5, for example. But, gems could be used to increase enchant quality, but are used in the process. So, enchanters would consistently be able to make useful equipment, but the best items wouldn't be things they could make endlessly.

Just one idea. It could be implemented in many different ways. However it is done, if it is done, I simply suggest that it be given more thought and reasonably balanced as a functional playstyle rather than made wizard mode with micromanagement.

LordBucket wrote:It could be implemented in many different ways. However it is done, if it is done, I simply suggest that it be given more thought and reasonably balanced as a functional playstyle rather than made wizard mode with micromanagement.

Absolutlely, I bought it up, since their is a fairly active thread in the 2 Section on running an Alchemist, which shows the interest is there.

I agree about a functional play-style as well... of course, as ever the devil is in the details!

I think I would also prefer a from scratch re-design.

T2 alchemists are really fun at the start as I try to learn as many recipes as possible. But almost any experienced player is going to get bored after they make some uber-equipment and the rest of the game turns into a cakewalk. I usually suicide mine at this point. When you can kill Morgy in one round the only challenge is not making a stupid mistake.

Theme has a similar problem with Aule-worship. The enchant armor and enchant weapon spells are unlimited, so all you have to do is generate enough mana and you can enchant everything up to +100.

What if there were some chance of turning your +30, +30 Vampiric Blade of Chaos of Westernesse into a heap of slag while trying to add another brand to it? The higher your smith skill the lower the chance, but you should not be able to keep adding properties or pluses to it indefinitely. Nethack took this approach, if I remember correctly. You can keep reading scrolls of enchant foo, and they keep working, but at some point the foo vaporizes.

On the other hand, I do enjoy starting up T2 alchemists. I also enjoy starting up T2 lost soul sorcerors. I seldom try to win with either one, because at some point it isn't interesting any more, but that doesn't mean that I want them taken out of the game. There are other ways to play with the game besides the intended story line.

Yottle wrote: What if there were some chance of turning your +30, +30 Vampiric
Blade of Chaos of Westernesse into a heap of slag

This mostly just encourages players to spend more time doing repetetive tasks until the RNG gives them what they want.

Compare to DBT technomancy, in which if you can make it...you can make it. No failure chance at all. And re-making the same thing dozens of times doesn't give you random bonuses with every result, so there's zero incentive to scum item creation.

RNG is not a fun way to make things artificially difficult.

Theme has a similar problem with Aule-worship. The enchant armor and enchant weapon
spells are unlimited, so all you have to do is generate enough mana and you can enchant everything up to +100.

If smiths/enchanters/alchemists/etc are able to give tohit/dam/ac bonuses, simply tie maximum values to skill. And automatically apply maximum possible value based on that skill. Again with the above example, if AC bonuses are set at skill / 4, then a smith with a skill of 20 would create armor items with a +5 bonus. Always, and every time. No reason to make the same thing a zillion times, no incentive to scum, no getting lucky +30, +30 blades of westernesse that trivialize the game at low level, and no player boredom from performing repetetive tasks.

What if we break up alchemy into its component parts...

A Fighter and a Rogue can craft weapons and armour and boots and so on... but only to your level in alchemy...
A Mage can craft magical things... but only to your level in Alchemy and if it is a potion or scroll only if you know the spell and then the result is only to the level you know the spell.

So we don't get the extremes of the ToME2 Alchemist, but we do give a char an option to look at in the development of their character.

You might want to limit the crafting to only Good quality items until Level 5 of Alchemy is reached at which point Excellent articles can be created.

When I saw the thread title, I instantly thought "Hmm.... Making mithril chain-mail and axes with dwarves, bows of lothlorien with elves, swords with men." And then I read the thread, this seems like an alchemist that cannot only enchant an item, but make it as well. When I think of smith, I think of making weapons of war unique to the race being played. I don't usually think of a smith as magically enchanting an item (although it was often done), but rather crafting high-grade weapons and armor. If he has enchanting skills, he can of course make a mad skills weapon, but by investing skill/talent points into both, he is lessened in a different area. Sorry, just my humble opinions. By the way, I didn't read every word in every post, so sorry if I missed something.

bigfoot wrote:By the way, I didn't read every word in every post, so sorry if I missed something.

Don't apologise, its not necessary!

I was just playing with the ToME2 alchemist, and so came up with my concept... We are just playing with ideas, here! It might work it might not.

LordBucket wrote:...This mostly just encourages players to spend more time doing repetetive tasks until the RNG gives them what they want...

I will buy that. I was trying to figure out a way to prevent the repetitive task of bringing items to ridiculous levels, but my solution has the same problem.

The issue with a fixed bonus to foo enchantment is that the RNG is eventually going to throw out a foo that is better than what I can make, and at that point my investment has been a waste of time. Smithing has to be able to create something better than (or at least different from) I can find laying around.

I think that bigfoot has the right idea- different races can make race-specific items that don't naturally occur. Those items would be designed to maximize the advantages or minimize the disadvantages of that race.

Yottle wrote:

LordBucket wrote:I think that bigfoot has the right idea- different races can make race-specific items that don't naturally occur. Those items would be designed to maximize the advantages or minimize the disadvantages of that race.

Would that involve a lot of extra coding, or is it a relatively simple thing to implement?

madmonk wrote: Would that involve a lot of extra coding, or is it a relatively simple thing to implement?

That was actually Yottle agreeing with Bigfoot's suggestion, not me, but assuming T4 is no more difficult to work with than T3, and at least as flexible, the coding should be fairly trivial. Simply add crafting flags to items and egos you want to restrict, and have your crafting code check for those flags.

Yottle wrote: The issue with a fixed bonus to foo enchantment is that the RNG is eventually going to throw out a foo that is better than what I can make, and at that point my investment has been a waste of time. Smithing has to be able to create something better than (or at least different from) I can find laying around.

Just a balance issue. if +30 is the maximum possible bonus from the the drop code, you scale the crafting bonus to slightly better than that at max. Or similar, but with the possibility of adding gems for bonuses.

Another possible angle: smiths could be allowed to "enhance" items ac/tohit/dam bonuses as a function of skill, similar to the sword sharpening people.

madmonk wrote: A Fighter and a Rogue can craft weapons and armour
A Mage can craft magical things

I don't think that works. Introduces problems when you start adding hybrid class (if fighters make weapons and armor and mages make magic, can a ranger make everything? What do possessors make? Etc.)

If you're going to go that route I'd much rather see it tied to skill. For example, smiths can make axes based on their axe skill, rods based on ther magic device skill, etc.

Alternately it might be better to have multiple crafting skills. Smithing allows creation of metal weapons and armor, alchemy allows creation of potions, enchanting allows creation of rods, inscription allows creation of scrolls, etc. A T2 style alchemist could possibly be played, but point costs of investing in all the various crafting skills would make it prohibitive.

Actually...if we really want to do this properly, I'd suggest that we approach this from the opposite direction. Instead of making crafting able to make items...I'd suggest build a crafting system, and then design all items in the game around that crafting system. After all, swords and daggers had to have been made by somebody, right? So design a crafting system for each of the various crafts (rods/scrolls/armor/etc) and conform all items in the game to those systems.

LordBucket wrote: Actually...if we really want to do this properly, I'd suggest that we approach this from the opposite direction. Instead of making crafting able to make items...I'd suggest build a crafting system, and then design all items in the game around that crafting system. After all, swords and daggers had to have been made by somebody, right? So design a crafting system for each of the various crafts (rods/scrolls/armor/etc) and conform all items in the game to those systems.

I like that. Instead of making the crafting system conform to the item, the item conforms to the crafting system. So, a Sword of Gondolin (I'm thinking of a couple famous ones) would have to be learned from a Gondolin smithmaster?

bigfoot wrote:

LordBucket wrote: Actually...if we really want to do this properly, I'd suggest that we approach this from the opposite direction. Instead of making crafting able to make items...I'd suggest build a crafting system, and then design all items in the game around that crafting system. After all, swords and daggers had to have been made by somebody, right? So design a crafting system for each of the various crafts (rods/scrolls/armor/etc) and conform all items in the game to those systems.

I like that. Instead of making the crafting system conform to the item, the item conforms to the crafting system. So, a Sword of Gondolin (I'm thinking of a couple famous ones) would have to be learned from a Gondolin smithmaster?

I think the phrase "Yummy" springs to mind...

That makes a lot of sense on so many levels!