ToME WikiZonk: I was pleasantly surprised to read about the addition of Gemstones in the latest alpha. At first, I tought they would be handled like in Diablo - basically giving bonuses or ego types to items they were embedded in. Then I checked in game and discovered they were basically usered to power wands, orbs and orbs, and that the 3 types only varied in power. While I'm sure there area already plans to develop them, I'd like to suggest to implement or at least consider one of these ideas:
1)As above, embedded gems that give an ego-type to an item. Possibly the player would have to go into a shop and pay money depending on the gem value and power to have it embedded, or he could try himself if he had an high magic-device skill(and risk ruining the gem)
2)A variant of the actual system - Gems give mana for magic items, however they don't vary only in the mana they can store. Different gemstones might make some 'item-casted'spells cheaper or more effective - this would however linked to the the type of gemstone and the spell's school. Some examples.
- Agate: Like now, the basic gem, not especially good for any spell and doesn't give a lot of mana - even though it's not specialized it gives less mana(at least 25% less)than the specialized ones.
- Ruby: Linked to Fire spells,they are either cheaper or more effective.
- Amber: Linked to Air/Electricity spells.
- Acquamarine/Pearl: Linked to Water spells.
- Emerald: Linked to Nature or Healing spells, perhaps.
- Diamond: Not related to any specific school, except maybe defensive ones. However, gives lots of mana, being one of the more precious gems.
...and so on. Different gemstones would give bonuses to different spells from different schools, and possibly be less effective when casting spells from the opposite school - so, if you were short of other gemstones and used a Ruby gem on a wand to cast a Water spell, it would not be very effective.
NeilStevens: Well, the baseline plan for gems was to have a range of them to cover what wands and rods acted like in ToME. You'd have regular ones that just contain a fixed amount of energy, some that could contain extra energy, some that could cast things more cheaply, some that could make things easier to cast, and of course autocharging gems.
I lean against school-oriented ones, I think excess specialization just adds to clutter and tedium, but it's an option.
Orvin: How about a gem implementing the idea at IdeaArchive/New rod ego type: Draining?
NeilStevens: Definitely an option.