ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Problem: Currently, an extremely effective strategy is to lug around dozens of items with activated abilities, use them all at once by swapping between them, then go into a fight. Sometimes it's even effective to use them in the middle of battle (mostly for a caster whose good spells are all on cooldown and has no effective melee attack to use in the meantime). In this way, you can stack several powerful effects like Greater Weapon Focus, Earthen Barrier, Displacement Shield, Time Shield, Metaflow, etc for free, without giving up anything, not even an equipment slot. Metaflow is especially problematic, as there are many spells that are designed around their cooldowns, and being able to use them every three turns breaks the game in unexpected ways.

Solution: Make all equippable items with activated abilities have 0 power when not equipped, and only recharge their power while equipped. This way, if you want to make use of an activated ability on a piece of equipment, you actually have to, you know, equip it for a meaningful amount of time. It also prevents mages from spamming high cooldown spells with impunity, limited only by their supply of channeling/spellbinding items and encumbrance. Rods would remain unaffected, but that's okay because those are limited in number.

Interesting idea. I agree that this is an area of abuse, but having power drained to 0 when switching items sounds unnecessarily punishing. Are you saying activated abilities in general need to be looked at, or is it just the buff stacking that's problematic? Swapping in items for an extra teleport, disengage, rush, etc. has saved a couple of my characters and resetting power on equip would prevent that.

Maybe arcane/nature powered items could cause rune/infusion saturation respectively, or a new saturation effect could even be added specific to items? This makes use of existing game mechanics and on use items would still be desirable - they just couldn't be stacked to the point of ridiculousness.

I wouldn't mind a good reason to stop storing every item with a skill just in case I need 3 earthwalls somewhere in the future.

These items shouldnt be like wands you can just pull out and zap.

Buff stacking is a symptom, but the real disease is that activated abilities on equipment are really more like passive boosts to your character, rather than an important aspect of the equipment itself. You can't stack +damage equipment by swapping them out, for example. There are currently not a lot of things that make your character better just by having them in your inventory; these are carefully limited to a select few artifacts, but the way activated abilities on equipment work breaks this limitation wide open.

Essentially, a staff of conveyance passively gives your character the ability to teleport in two turns. It doesn't matter how little spellpower it gives, or what other penalties it may have. It just needs to be in your inventory. None of the other types of egos are so immensely helpful for 1 turn, and useless for the next 79. The 79 turns of uselessness is what allows, and in fact encourages you, to swap out the item once you've gotten your 1 turn of use out of it. The proposed change would force the player to actually endure the 79 turns of uselessness, balancing out the benefit of that 1 turn. The restriction makes equipment choices more meaningful, even if you're not abusing activated abilities. You can still have your extra teleport, disengage, rush, etc. but now you have to actually choose which ones are worth having, and whether it's worth giving up another, potentially more useful item in its place. Just like every other ego out there.

Instead of losing all power when not equipped, simply make it so that equippable items simply do not regenerate any power when not equipped. Should server mostly the same purpose, although you can still swap out things to recharge them if you are willing to put up with losing whatever benefits other equipment would have.

Right now: If you can carry 20 staffs of channeling, you can use Metaflow 20 times in rapid succession. After the battle is over, all of your staffs will eventually recharge, and you can do it again.

Under your proposal: If you can carry 20 staffs of channeling, you can use Metaflow 20 times in rapid succession. After the battle is over, you recharge all of your staffs one by one, and you can do it again.

The issue is not in how long it takes to recharge an item. It could take 10,000 turns, and the result would be the same.

I support the suggested change, from a design standpoint. But I'd also like to see a greater supply of activated items for non-staff users.

I'm sorry, but I must be missing something. Doesn't swapping out kit cost a turn, then a turn to activate the ability, then another turn to swap back to your 'proper' kit item? Isn't that 3 turns in the middle of a fight of you essentially don't nothing?

If you use several activated items in succession, you don't swap back to your "proper" kit item each time. And the one turn you're using the activated item, well, you're using a talent. If using a talent constitutes doing nothing then I guess I've been winning fights by doing nothing this whole time . So really it's just one extra turn, and that is not nearly enough to balance out the benefit of using a myriad of powerful talents with no cooldown, regardless of your class. And for pre-combat buffing scenarios, even that one turn doesn't matter when the buff lasts 10 turns.

It's been changed in SVN. Looks like items now are set to zero charges when equipped, making any sort of mid-battle swap a very bad idea now. Which makes sense, of course.

There is a discussion thread here about this change: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=30939

I suggest others contribute to that thread to flesh out the pros/cons of this change. Cheers!