inscriptions, infusions, wands and rods

[nalathna]

Can't find this suggestion anywhere using search. What with the sometimes extreme rarity or complete lack of quality runes/infusions the RNG god doles out, and the complete uselessness of damage runes, I find myself often unwilling to try out different combinations of healing/mobility/invisibility/wild etc. because I know it may be a very long time before I can find a replacement for my current kit.

This is especially frustrating when I find myself in a situation where some other kit would be desirable. If I could ditch some form of healing, to deal with confusion in Daikara for example, but return to that same healing while traversing the void, it would make for a much more enjoyable and strategic playing experience.

This char. isn't a perfect example because he has invested in all five slots, one of which is a common teleport, easily replaced http://te4.org/characters/1928/tome/410 ... 25900d6212, but he died in the far east because he was unable to survive mobs of necromancers and undead with a ludicrous sixth sense for where his teleports sent him. ( I think I've read about this as a bug complaint for player necros' minions not losing a target after teleport, but I digress). In hind sight, an invisibility rune may have saved his butt from undead super sniffers by teleporting and then going invisible. If this were possible without potentially nerfing an inscription kit, we might even consider undead super sniffers an added danger instead of a dangerous bug. If he was still alive and did not have that fifth slot with a much more common teleport rune in it, I would have probably been unwilling to experiment with my other rare inscriptions.

This could be simply remedied by returning an infusion or rune to inventory if it is replaced by something currently more useful, without risk of being thoroughly trod upon by aforesaid RNG god (ala Planescape: Torment's swappable tattoos). This change would be right in line with the trend towards making TOME more player experimentation without punishment such as the new ability to alter recent talent choices. The current system of putting newly inscribed runes/infusions on cool-down seems to be a reasonable enough price to pay to avoid swapping abuse.

This will make inscriptions and infusions too similar to wands and rods, apparently being revamped. How about for thematics, make wands and rods for external effects (damage, summons, traps and other great new features etc.) while inscriptions and infusions, on the body naturally, would handle player effects such as healing, status, damage control or mobility. I'd lean towards putting teleport/phase door in as a wand/rod effect so as not to differentiate between player teleports and monster teleports, but tie them with some sort of spacial destabilization timer that would interfere with stacked uses.

[bricks]

I think the plan for wands is to nix them entirely, and the plan for rods is to probably just keep them as artifacts (though I wouldn't mind seeing non-artifact rods).

Some inscriptions are of incredibly dubious viability, for sure. Teleport and Phase Door (especially the latter) are great early on when there's few dangerous mobs on a level, but in the Prides, for example, there's probably a 95% chance that you will be plopped in the range of some deadly spellcaster. I can think of a few things to spruce up those two, but that's for another thread.

Swappable inscriptions appeals to me because they harbor the "talents from equipment" idea. It seems outlandish and broken until you look at all the equipment with activated talents that you can collect. The whole system could be reworked with that mechanic in mind, though simply changing inscriptions to peel-off tattoos wouldn't quite work. It would also be nice (Grey has brought this up) if enemies could drop their inscriptions when killed, though the current system doesn't support that in the least.

[Grey]

I'd quite like it if inscriptions didn't disappear upon replaced. The system would have to be tweaked so that new inscriptions start off on cooldown to prevent abuse, but otherwise it would work well.

[Zonk]

The system would have to be tweaked so that new inscriptions start off on cooldown to prevent abuse, but otherwise it would work well.

Err...it already works like that, doesn't it? And yeah, would be sweet if it works like that(I might actually play with the Rune of the Rift), although it would be a pretty huge change and I doubt we'll see it