ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I noted someone somewhere else on the board talk about how we didn't need more resources in the game, and I was thinking about it. Mostly, the disadvantage to having too many resources and power sources is the confusion of gear. You regularly see gear that boosts stamina or equilibrium or magic, and occasionally a few pieces that boost other things in various ways... and most of the time, you couldn't care less. You see something that gives you a large quantity of equilibrium when hit (or whatever) and at most you think "wow... that would be really cool if I was completely different than I am".

My thought, then... don't show resource effects on gear (possibly not even on inscriptions) if you don't have that resource pool visible. If you don't have the pool visible, you don't care about the level the pool might be at, and you don't care what your gear might do to it. I don't know how much work it would be to make this happen, but I think it would be a nice tweak to the system

I like knowing what gear does even if I can't use it. This is like the brawler glove argument (which I've heard a lot of people both for and against) but taken to another extreme.

The issue with adding more resources to the game is processing. Adding a resource adds it to every actor (because even if you can't use the resource it's technically there from an engine stand point).

What I would like though is if talents learned from gear didn't permanently give you the pool. Getting mana clashed on my last bulwark because I equipped a wand with volcano way back when I was level 2 wasn't much fun.

possibly have it as an option, then? If people *like* seeing these things, I don't really want to deny them the pleasure, but....

Also/alternately, how many people actually use gear as a significant portion of their resource management plan these days? If a given effect is meaningless to most players who will find it and of only minimal benefit to those that it can assist, how valuable is it, really? (I honestly have no idea how useful such things are... pretty much all of the resource management gear I've seen comes in stamina/equilibrium/mana, and I haven't been playing those characters)