ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This, I guess, is mostly a fluff/cosmetics request. I find it a bit silly to run around with a short stick and smack people in the head with them, yet short staffs are a very powerful weapon for certain builds.

Thus my suggestion would be to simply create a set of rods or sceptres, which would belong to the staff class of weapons and have the same properties (command staff, spawning with magic-related egos, etc), except being inherently one-handed instead of two-handed (and being balanced around that, to whatever degree is necessary).

This would also mean that instead of a being a quite rare drop that serves a critical function in many builds, it would be a common or semicommon find that can be bought in stores due to it's base type, rather than as an ego.

This would actually change something major, as short staffs usually come about as an ego and therefore the new items would automatically tend to be more common. Scepters/Rods would generally be more powerful than Shortstaffs as they are too, but that could be balanced out.

Though, this does lead to some interesting ideas for artifact Rods/Scepters that aren't Telos' half.

Chronosplit wrote:This would actually change something major, as short staffs usually come about as an ego and therefore the new items would automatically tend to be more common.

Yes, this can be true, but not all weapons are equally common; whips and tridents are much rarer than waraxes and maces, both in stores and as drops. Having an adjusted drop rate would prevent them from becoming more common. Of course, I don't necessarily think it would be bad if they where more common; builds are already made around them, so better they be reliably available. Risks are a good thing to create tension, but the risk of not finding a weapon that works for your character feels like it creates more frustration than tension.

Scepters/Rods would generally be more powerful than Shortstaffs as they are too, but that could be balanced out.

I guess this is true as Short wouldn't "eat" one of the egos. Reducing the number of egos with one would fix this, wouldn't it?