[crossfire] About a feature request

[Raphaël Quinet]

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 00:11:13 +0200, "Nicolas Weeger (Laposte)" <nicolas.weeger at laposte.net> wrote:
> * cursed scroll: ill effect, depending on spell - identify would make player 
> forget about an identified item, and such. Would require some work to define 
> ill effects for all spells, though. Option "fast" is to cast some mana 
> explosion, of course. Or leech player's mana? Could be fun :)
> * blessed scroll: add 2 levels to casting. Other option: more exp when used?
> 
> * cursed spellbook: forget a spell
> * blessed spellbook: bonus to learn a spell

To be frank, I do not like this idea very much, especially for spellbooks.
I do not think that cursed or blessed spellbooks would have any impact on
medium and high-level characters (or experienced players, even if they play
a low-level character) because they will probably not use an item without
identifying it first.

The only players that would be significantly affected by such a change are
the low-level characters or the players who are just starting to learn how
the game works.  And they would probably be affected negatively more than
positively.  For those players, finding a spellbook is like finding a major
treasure because they probably do not know many spells yet.  If their stats
(Int/Wiz) are not very high, they already have a disadvantage because there
is a high risk that they fail to learn the spell.  A cursed spellbook would
not only be a piece of treasure that becomes worthless, but it would be
even worse: they would lose one of their hard-earned spells.  Having
blessed spellbooks would probably not compensate the negative effect that
cursed ones could have.

I think that crossfire is already too hard and too complex for many new
players.  Adding cursed spellbooks would not really improve that aspect of
the game.  Adding cursed scrolls may be a bit more reasonable if the ill
effects are not too severe, but I would prefer to avoid them as well.

-Raphaël