ToME WikiNeilStevens: Perhaps when a spell is copied to an item, certain spells should give the item certain powers. Slow digestion for Ent Draught, multiple resistances from Elemental Shield, and so on.
RavenRed: So, more or less a free ego-upgrade to an item once you copy a spellto it? Or an enhanced spell depending on which item you've copied the spell to? Either way,it sounds good. Will save spell-bearing items from merely being space-eaters. 
NeilStevens: In a way, yes it's an upgrade. But it's not free: You have to find the spell item, you have to wear it,a nd you have to be able to cast the spell you want to put into it.
RavenRed: How would you make the check on whether the bonus applied (i.e. player being able to cast the spell)? Will these bonuses be activatable (a la Ring of Fire / Ice) or permanent?
This idea occurred to me yesterday as I considered just how overpriced spell-containing items are right now.
ZasVid: This is a neat idea, because up to this point vanilla spell items were a kind of expensive trinket to sell or wear until you found a real ring or amulet. What to do with mage staves, egos and artifacts giving spell store though? Should they use the enhancement too?
NeilStevens: Everything would get the bonus, I say. This has nothing to do with item X or Y being 'underpowered,' but rather just creating a reason to use these items at all past the point where you have fire immunity.
ZasVid: Well, they do have some uses even with fire immunity, though mainly for characters which have access to e.g. 1 spell from a tome (or the player doesn't like other spells) and spellstore frees up one inventory slot. Ok, that was only a side rant. I'm all for giving items some more versatility in use (btw, 'underpowered' sounds dreadfully similar to 'unbalanced'. let's call it 'expensive junk'
) NeilStevens: That's why I put underpowered in quotes: it IS generally used as the opposite of 'unbalanced,' where the people who are into that sort of thing call strong things 'unbalanced' and the weak things 'underpowered,' all in the name of getting absolute uniformity between everything.
Orvin: How about giving the item the powers with probability equal to the spell's success rate? So, if your failure rate for Elemental Shield is 60%, the item has a 40% chance of getting the multiple resistances.
NeilStevens: That would fly against the idea of making items of spell rarer.
Orvin What idea to make them rare? I thought the idea was to give them powers when spells were copied to them? I was suggesting that the granting of such powers should not be automatic, but depend on the spell's failure rate.
NeilStevens: Oh sorry, I thought I mentioned that if we did this, I'd want to make rings and amulets of spell rarer.
RavenRed: You could also have correspondingly rarer ego-types for Spell rings and amulets, increasing spell-power, school skills or even reducing fail rates. The latter could be a useful offset for wearing armour in 3.0.0. Or perhaps I'm just being gimmicky...
NeilStevens: I think that's redundant with skill-increasing items.
DarkGod: What? Ego rings/amulets of spell ?
NeilStevens: Ego rings/amulets of spell who give special bonuses to the spell. What we could do is this:
- Rename them to Sorcerous Amulet/Sorcerous Ring so that the name sounds better for ego types.
- Make them something like the same depth they are now, but just less common.
- Do that because putting a spell into it will give it an extra power, such as Regeneration if you put Regeneration in to it.
- Then add ego types such as...
- of Power that boosts spell-power
- of Skill that boosts a randomly-chosen magic school skill (presumably from a predetermined list)... or just boosts the skills corresponding to the schools of the embedded spell.
Of course those ego types would be quite rare, if the base items are made rarer.
Orvin: What about giving Sorcerous Amulets/Rings flavors corresponding to different magic schools, and then granting spell-power bonuses to inscribed spells of the corresponding schools? This would be instead of the Power and Skill egos, somewhat combining both concepts.
NeilStevens: That'd be severely limiting in their utility, I think. At least a mismatched amulet or ring can be used for its main purpose.
ElIott: This whole idea dove-tails really nicely with KhymChanur's proposal for Alchemy. Toss in a few ego armors and weapons of Sorcery and the question of what to do with the equipment-crafting side of alchemy is resolved.
NeilStevens: I certainly was not looking to make ToME 2 alchemists even more weird. ToME 3 alchemy is centered on wands, orbs, rods, scrolls, and potions. It's no longer a free for all like in 2.
ElIott: And that's exactly what is accomplished. I personally hated how ToME 2 alchemy worked from a game dynamics standpoint (though it was intellectually interesting). Tedious AND potentially extremely powerful. What an awful combination. The new version of alchemy makes more sense, but does kinda leave equipment-crafting unresolved as a concept. Rather than saying "we're just not going to allow that anymore", which seems unsatisfying and incomplete, you have this instead.
NeilStevens: I think the issue of equipment crafting is perfectly resolved: you don't get to do it anymore in 3. Since we're also working to make the randomly generated items be more interesting and fun to deal with overall, I think that's fair.
TobiasParker: I really disagree with making the chance of the spell copying to be based on a percentage. Make it always happen or someone will just scum for these items to copy a spell to until it makes it right. That seems like one of those 'is it fun for the player and relevent to the game' choices.
NeilStevens: Good point.