Not Used: Some thoughts on PnP item behavior

Ok, a little rambling question, please bear with me ... how hard would this be to implement, do you think?

Waaay back in the good-old-days of PnP D&D, if my fighter character found a magic item, she didn't know what its powers were or what sort of enchantments were at play with it. She DID, however, know that a mysterious magical sword was still, at heart, a sword. If needs be, she could pick it up and use it as a sword. That's always been one of my biggest beefs with NwN, is that the magic identification process is kinda ... well, crappy. Now, my same fighter with the unknown sword picks up that sword and swings it at a baddie - she notices that she's getting in her hits much quicker than with her normal sword. After the battle, she hires a sage who spares no resources in his quest for item enlightenment. Ultimately, they figure out that the sword was once the property of some crazy fighter guy from some other place, and that it hasted its owner whenever the sword was held. In addition, they learned that through the mumbling of a simple command word, the sword would do something really cool to its target.

Ok, the whole reason I suggested this is because of my big beef with the identification process. What do you mean, if I don't know the history of a sword, that I can't use it to slay baddies. Now, now, a pointy object is a pointy object, no matter what Grandmaster Slaughterhat owned it 10,000 years ago. I should still be able to use it even if I don't know what said Grandmaster Slaughterhat liked on his pudding pie. Grr...

I bring this up because of 's Hat of Disguise, and the mechanism that it uses to function, the vc chat commands. This is my suggestion: when you find a sword, or a ring, or any other type of device, you can still use it, as in equip it. If it is a weapon, you can kill with it, if it is armor, you can be defended by it, if it is a ring, you can put it on, etc ... you get the point. Perhaps the item will have a power available to you immediately - Hey, it glows like crazy, hey, I go faster with this on, hey, this sword makes me stronger ... what have you. But it is never stated that the ring is a +5 Great Ring of the Barrier Knight, instead it has the normal description "a plain band"... a possible two-step process of identification, with the sages in full control of the actual ID process.

Now here comes the fun part: research! How do you find out what a particular ring does? Why, you hire a sage to find out what it does! A great chance for RPing, certainly! And, said sage finally discovers that your new Giggly Sword of Discombebobulation is activated by the word "pudding." So you type that word into the chat bar (or even something a bit longer, like "item activate pudding." And guess what? Your sword is ready to wreck the wrongdoers! Yeehaw!

This kind of a magic activation system, I think, could be implemented. I don't know how difficult it would be, but I am going to try something like it for a remake of my Ring of Ethereal Storage. [At least, that's what I plan on doing - but the reality of the execution ... well, let's just not go there! ]

So what do you think, adventurers of Aenea? Usable unidentified items, with a command word mechanism for operation? Doable? Hmm ...

Now, I understand that most of us have RL issues that will keep us from the server on a 24-hour basis, and that's not what I'm suggesting. I am curious to see if anyone else sees this potential in the vc chat command function that has opened up with his Hat of Disguise.

Inquiring minds, and all that!

I would be happy to have Variable Chat commands to activate items because it would get around the god-forsaken item use lag that almost every activatable item currently has...

Its one thing for drinking a potion to take some time, sure.

its another thing to tell me that speaking a single syllable command word somehow locks out my ability to move, cast spells, and fight for a full 6 seconds.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of limitation on using unidentified items.

The first is the NWN game engine itself. It's programmed to not allow you to equip unidentified items. I get around this with the cursed items by having two different items for each cursed item (one "normal looking" and one "cursed", with the items swapped once you equip the "normal looking" version).

I could use a similar approach for other items, but that leads to the other big limitation: module resources. Each item would need an additional copy of the item (without any properties), and even items that don't currently need custom scripts would need one to swap out the versions of the item. This would very quickly push the module back toward the 16,000 resource limit.

I agree that a character should be able to equip an unidentified item.

I've been working on a bard module for quite some time now, and had some thoughts on this as well. Started sketching out a system to address it before my net and computer both blew out. I didn't have a VC system of any type, but rather I was toying with the idea of scripting to add item properties based on lore checks. One base item, no additional values. An lore check would be made, and additional values would be added to the item based on the lore check. Low lore would be able to ID the most notable features of the item, but it would take high lore skill to also determine some of the more unknown properties of the artifact in question.

MannyJabrielle wrote:I've been working on a bard module for quite some time now, and had some thoughts on this as well. Started sketching out a system to address it before my net and computer both blew out. I didn't have a VC system of any type, but rather I was toying with the idea of scripting to add item properties based on lore checks. One base item, no additional values. An lore check would be made, and additional values would be added to the item based on the lore check. Low lore would be able to ID the most notable features of the item, but it would take high lore skill to also determine some of the more unknown properties of the artifact in question.

An intriguing idea, and something that could work in a new module. I'm just not going to remake every item in the game at this point (and redo all the item adding/creating/enchanting scripts that rely on the blueprint resrefs of said items ).