[CF-Devel] Item Damage idea

[Kevin R. Bulgrien]

At 01:40 AM 8/28/02, you wrote:

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      There would be repair anvils in some of the shops (at least one such place in each city).  There is no requirement that you fully repair your item to perfect quality.  I'd envision that you drop your damaged piece of equipment on the anvil, it would say 'to fully repair this item would cost 100 pp'.  You then drop the money to repair it.  If you drop 50 pp, only half the damage on the item is repaired.
     
     
One way to do repairs in the field (on a weapon) is to have a "file" that you can sharpen things with.
Naturally the repair would take time (like lighting icecubes with flint & steel, or praying) so it would
not be an effective way to do things in combat...

It seems inappropriate to allow in-the-field repairs to armor.

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     The hardest thing to perhaps tune is how items get damaged.  My idea is that the amount of damage th player takes is the percent chance that one of his items will get damaged.  Thus would typically work to the higher level players disadvantage (as attacks do more damage).  It also makes some sense - a goblin hitting you isn't likely to damage many items, but that titan bashing you with a bonecrusher is likely to do some damage.  Basing this on the damage caused also means that if the player is immune to the attacktype, his equipment won't be damaged either.
     
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      If an item is damaged, we randomly select one of the characters equipped items to damage.  Any number of clever mechanisms could be done here (try make it so that big items are damaged more, or whatever else).  I'm thinking purely random is good - if done by size, then small items (like rings, bracers, and amulets) effectively have more value because they wouldn't be damaged.
     
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      The amount of damage done to the item would be some small amount - perhaps constant.  Note that this value and how often the equipment is damage are the main tunables in this.
     
     
The discussion here just blurred between weapon and armor repairs.  It makes little sense to me to damage a
weapon based upon the player taking damage.  This really only applies to armor damage.

Weapon wear-and-tear seems more likely to happen when the opponent successfully blocks a physical attack.
Hacking away at the boss in the power plant, for instance, should wear down your weapon since he is
invulnerable to physical attack.  On the other hand, a weapon that delivers a magical attack (fire, etc.)
is really only going to wear out in a physical manner.  Perhaps this does not make as much sense if you
are looking for a money drain for high level characters, but, it seems to be a lot more believable.

If you ask me, the armor damage will be the area that ends up being more "expensive"... And, I think this
really makes more sense anyway.

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      Note that the effect of damage would be a bit different - currently, acid just puts a negative, which basicall hits AC.  Thus, -4 plate armor right now still gets you 40 armor or whatever, you just don't get any AC.  With the above case, if your plate armor is fully damage, it now offers no protection, but still has the disadvantage of max speed penalties as well as weight (it could be argued that damaged armor should in fact impose an even greater max speed penalty - if the item is falling apart, chances are it won't fit as well or whatever else)..
     
     
Retaining the original penalties seems sufficient.

I am curious to see how one will avoid reducing one's armor and weapons to a pile of junk in a large dungeon
crawl...  Especially in those dungeons that can be one-way streets where you can only go forward, and not
go back out the way you came in.

I guess I'm thinking of a recent range into the lower levels of the Titan's tower with my level 10 player
that I painstakingly outfitted with quality equipment obtained only through game mechanisms (not gifts 
from other players).  The crawl took hours, but I was able to pace my way through it.  So now, with this
new change, perhaps I wouldn't even have been able to do that because I would never have been able to 
clear the level since I didn't have the money ahead of time to deal with repairs...  before I got the 
loot from the level...  Okay, so this is perhaps more technically realistic, but is it really what people
want?  I suppose that town portal and word of recall help out here, but, frankly, I think this is going
to be hard to pull off without crippling lower level characters.  So, what do you do, karate chop kobolds
etc., in the newbie levels for hours so you can effectively re-purchase all your weapons and armor again?

People already have a hard time pacing themselves to the lower level dungeons when their characters are low level... This is going to force low-level people into inferior equipment and low-level dungeons, but won't
really hurt the high-level character who has far more ability to find cash than the newbie character.

Perhaps the amount of damage should consider the level of the monster vs the level of the player.  

Also, it's hard to see how a (giant) mouse could do damage to anything made of steel... and similar issues.
Just because you take damage while wearing chain mail doesn't mean the armor is damaged.  That mace just
busted your ribs, but the chain is fine.  And, does chain really take proportionately the same damage
as a robe or leather?  I doubt it.  So, once again, the lower level guy is hurt more than the high
level one because, realistically, the really expensive armor (Eg. mithril) is more immune to failure.
Remember, this is a fantasy game.  I suspect people are not always looking for something totally
realistic.  Maybe the realism desired is a function of the character's level?