Rethinking Wands

[Susramanian]

Hopefully the new inscription system has persuaded us that there's a better way to run a game than encouraging people to fill backpacks with consumables. Right now, wands are essentially stacks of old fashioned consumables. My idea for fixing this:

1) Make all inscriptions non-targeted effects. Most are like this now, but there are exceptions. They would have to be changed. All inscriptions should affect the user or do something in a radius around the user or something similarly non-targeted.

2) Make wands come with no default effect, similar to rods in ToME 2.

3) Allow inscriptions to work on wands. Inscribing a healing infusion on a wand permanently creates a wand of healing with all the characteristics of the healing infusion... except that it is targeted. You could use it to heal an escort, or point it at yourself. A phase door rune applied to a wand creates a wand of phase door, which of course can be targeted, eliminating the need for a separate controlled phase door rune.

4) Allow equipping of wands like other gear. Perhaps all characters get a single wand slot by default, and certain belts could grant an additional wand slot.

5) Only allow the player to use wands that they have equipped.

Some questions to consider:

Should these new wands use charges or cooldowns?
Should we consider dropping the max number of inscription slots to four to balance out the additional wand slot?
How should the material level of the base wand interact with the effect of the inscription? Surely a dragonbone wand of healing should be better than an elm wand of healing, assuming the same healing infusion was used on both.
What fun egos can we think of for base wand types?

[edge2054]

I like the idea of moving wands away from being consumable and requiring equipment slots. I really don't like the idea of them just being sticks with inscriptions slapped on. It doesn't really sound interesting to me or all that fun plus it'll require a lot of reworking, sure a lot of inscriptions are self targeted but most runes are not and now one infusion isn't either. Do we turn all attack inscriptions into AoE or aura effects? Do we make attack runes attack the user? Do we give wands to monsters so I can still be surprised when an armoured skeleton hits me with a heat beam?

I mentioned this in IRC earlier so I'll say it again here. I'd like to see all wands self-recharge and limited to two slots in the belt with an extra slot for the slotted belts and maybe a fourth slot if you're wearing the mighty girdle. This will discourage players from amassing a backpack full of wands (since wands recharge anyway you may as well just hang on to the best ones) and will also limit the use of wands in combat (since you'll have to swap a wand out once it's juice is gone or wait for it to recharge).

It also makes artifact wands easier to balance since you don't have to worry about a player having 10 different artifact wands they can use whenever they want. Other on use artifacts that can be used without being worn should be kept extremely rare.

As to egos, stuff like quick (less time to activate), double (two effects at once but drains twice as much power when used), charging (faster recharge rate), capacity (more power), and empowered (better effect) all come to mind. Also if they're equipped some more general ego types might make sense too like +magic and will or +saves, stuff like that.

[Susramanian]

Do we turn all attack inscriptions into AoE or aura effects?

That sounds good for the inscribed-on-skin versions. And when you inscribe them on a wand, they become targeted bolts or beams or balls.

Do we give wands to monsters so I can still be surprised when an armoured skeleton hits me with a heat beam?

Yes, please!

I don't want wands to feel like sticks with inscriptions slapped on. I want the inscriptions to have different-feeling effects when applied to wands, as with the attack effects I mentioned above. Maybe putting a phase door rune on a wand makes it teleport the targeted enemy instead of duplicating the current controlled phase door. Maybe certain egos on wands can control how the effect is projected. For example, a beaming elm wand will project as a beam the effects of whatever you inscribe on it. Such combinations of wand properties with inscription properties promise all sorts of interesting gameplay.

[marvalis]

Removing potions was clearly very very good.

Wands should be on global recharge of some sort and yes they should require equipment.

Personally, I do not like wands at all. I'd rather have something like a rune slot for a particular set of skills
Right now there are 3 slots for runes and inscriptions together.

Possible suggestion:
1 slot for a healing skill or damage reduction, suppose these are the inscriptions => one inscription slot
1 slot for a damage or debuff skill, suppose this is a run => one rune slot
1 slot for a utility spell (like teleport)
1 slot you can use for whatever you want
And remove wands

[Grey]

I agree with Edge that having wands with rune/infusion effects would be dull. *Really* dull. Wands should be their own thing, with individual effects that make them feel less trivial compared to inscriptions and talents.

I like the other ideas you suggest, Edge, though I think the recharge time on wands should be fairly long.

An important consideration I think is that wands are pretty pathetic right now, except for Healing and Teleport. The damage ones do utterly trivial amounts after level 20 or so. Gwai's Burninator should be renamed Gwai's Warm Fart for the effect it has (uh, sorry Gwai). The fact that all except Teleport don't activate until the end of the turn makes them exceptionally bad to use.

Material level has to have a serious effect on the power of the wands. At the same time powerful wands should be carefully restricted from appearing early in the game. We could also do with having wands that produce more interesting effects.

Ooh, and one idea, though it's a little out of place in the current system - wands should all be unided until used. That way you have the fun of trying it out on an enemy to see if it heals or teleports or flames or whatever...

[martinuzz]

Gwai's Burninator should be renamed Gwai's Warm Fart for the effect it has (uh, sorry Gwai).

This made me laugh out loud, in full agreement.

At the same time powerful wands should be carefully restricted from appearing early in the game.

If they are going into an equipment slot, just set a stat requirement, or to keep it class-independant, a player level requirement for being able to equip them, as already is the case with weapons and armor.

[Grey]

Or perhaps wands shouldn't do damage at all beyond some rare artifacts, and in general should inflict status effects or other tactical effects. Some thoughts:

* Wand of Time Freeze - does exactly what it says on the tin
* Wand of Crushing - digs walls in a ray and knocks back any enemies in its path
* Wand of Enslavery - controls the target for x turns
* Wand of Lethargy - puts all of an enemy's talents/runes/infusions on cooldown
* Wand of Weakness - temporarily lowers all of an enemy's resistances
* Wand of Power - temporary boost to all stats

[benli]

Another idea:

Wands as equipped weapons. They could act like one-handed staves that tend to have fewer bonuses and a built in spell or a melee-like attack. Melee/archer classes could swap weapons to use them while non-fighting classes could wield them as primary equipment (dual wield or with a shield).

[yufra]

Another idea:

Wands as equipped weapons. They could act like one-handed staves that tend to have fewer bonuses and a built in spell or a melee-like attack. Melee/archer classes could swap weapons to use them while non-fighting classes could wield them as primary equipment (dual wield or with a shield).

Plus one from me.

[Sirrocco]

One particularly simple answer: have a "use wand" power, that goes on cooldown different amounts for different wands, and make wands chargeless.You carry whichever wands you think you'll actually want to use, because carrying more wands doesn't let you use wands any more often.

Possibly replace "wands" with "charms", so as to explain why they're working when you have one hand on your sword and the other in your shield. this also lets us have charms with multiple sources (like everything else is going to). "use wand" would be replaced by "activate charm"

If you're going that far, having charms be things you equip on your belt could be pretty cool - and it would give you a reason to wear even unenchanted belts - no belt, no charms. Better belt materials might augment charm power in some way, or perhaps alter the cooldown for the "use charm" power. The old "slotted" ego would let you hold three charms rather than two, and the mighty girdle having four. You could swap in any charm you had in your inventory for a standard action - but if your "use charm" power was on cooldown, it still is. Charms would be designed to be the random utility things that you want sometimes but not often, and the attack powers - stuff like the sun infusion, the mapping rune, and the various blast runes would work much better as charms than as inscriptions. You might even have sustained charms - as long as the charm is sustained, your "use charm" power is locked, and it goes into cooldown when the sustain is released. You could quite easily fit a series of summoning charms in that worked that way - entering cooldown when the summoned creature died or was dispelled (and automatically dispelling if you removed the charm or the belt). Of course, you'd have to fix that "taking off my belt makes my potions disappear" bug, but it seems like it might fit into the world you're building a fair bit better than wands (and it would let you unhork the antimagic types just a bit without removing any of their hate for the arcane powersource).

[Grey]

I quite like the charm idea. Has a certain uniqueness and elegance to it. However we'd still need to be careful about it not being the same as inscriptions. Limiting to a single "activate charm" command with a cooldown across all charms goes some way towards this.

[Sirrocco]

The differences between charms and inscriptions:
- Charms share a single cooldown (...however that gets implemented. It might actually be easier to make it a status of "cannot use charms").
- You can carry around as many charms as you like, and swap them in or out however you like, as long as you're willing to spend the actions to do it. (Perhaps it should be one action to explicitly remove, and another to wear - to give people a reason to walk around with one slot empty.) When not in combat, swapping charms is basically effortless. When in combat, that turn or two can be pretty costly.
- Your worn inscriptions are dependent on category point expenditure. Your worn charms are dependent on belt worn.
- In general, charms are not intended to be as tactically vital as inscriptions. Part of the idea is that we might look at an inscription and say "This is a cool idea, but I can't see myself burning an inscription slot on it. Let's make it a charm." We might look at a charm and say "This is a bit strong for a charm. Let's make it an inscription." Charms are also a lot more situational than inscriptions. You can afford to carry around a charm that will be useless most of the time, if it's handy every once in a while, and just swap it in whenever it comes up. You can't really do that with inscriptions.

Charms could also easily fold in things like the Rod of Recall and Orb of Scrying effects.

[Canderel]

Loving the idea of charms!

Though I don't think one needs to put it on a belt. Thinking back on adventurers of the past, and pictures of them, they often carry with them small trinkets (decorative arm bands, a badge on their armour, a leather string with stones and bones stitched to it, an earring, a necklace type thing (though not an amulet!), a hair band, a trinket carried in a pouch attached to the belt, etc.) and these things could have the magical properties... But it should be more passive abilities like detection, maybe trap destruction... What wands do we have now?

[Sirrocco]

Mostly the reason to put it on the belt was as a shout-out to the slotted belts of yore and as a way to make non-magical belts actually meaningful.

Current wands/equivalents (that I know of):

Unique
- Gwai's Burninator
- Spydric poison
- Unguliant's egg sac
- Rod of recall
- Orb of Scrying

non-unique:
- various direct attack spells
- teleport
- illuminate
- detect monsters

[Grey]

Trap destruction as well, which is perhaps the most useless item in the game. Oh, apart from a regular belt or a base amulet :/