Sorcerer's Place PoE Item Poll!

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The memorial seems like a good place to include Bel and/or Kitrax if that's what people want...

 

Actually, good points Splunge. Tal - I am not sure that you want to include things like AoLS and High Hedge and whatnot because of the potential IP issues.

 

I thought of that too. Like I said, starting point. Methinks there might be a complex IP chain such that there won't be any concerns with Obsidian. Who knows?

 

Yea, definitely can't use those as the forum names are locations from several AD&D games, e.g. Baldur's Gate and Torment, though they can easily be left out. I like the idea overall (with some refinements), would probably need to shorten it though as I doubt there's that much description space available. I'll check on that.

 

Good lord, it's a complete surprise. I had to pick my lower jaw off the floor . . . .

 

How about this - the weapon has a set number of charges, after which it disappears to go back to the tower, or off to create mischief somewhere else, etc.

Then, you can differentiate between a relatively low level usage that does not consume charges, and higher effects that do. The number of charges can be unknown, as well, which adds an element of chaos to it.

Non-charge effects are the same for every class, but charge effects are different for wizards and other classes (not sure if that can be implemented).

So, the base item is something like a +1 staff with knockback, and everything else that Beren listed would consume a certain number of charges and might not be available, depending on the class of the user.

 

I'm likely going to have to go with some arbitrary decision on what to include because we've first had too many separate item ideas and now too many ideas on what a single item should do. But I've asked Obsidian for clarification on how far exactly does "epic" go in PoE. They'll naturally have the final say with any item and what they can technically implement or even how much time they're actually willing to dedicate to a single item - overly involved mechanics that would require extra programming time to script are probably unlikely, even if they do sound cool. In any event, I'm going to go over everything tomorrow and put together something possibly near-final and after that we need to get some feedback from Obsidian first because it's pointless to spend time on elaborate item abilities only to be told that they can't spend that much time on backer items or that it's not technically feasible for them to implement, or even just not in keeping with their concept of what this type of magic item should be able to do.

Unfortunately this kind of external item design without having any design docs pertaining to item types to look at means pretty much flying blind. I've fired off a mail to Darren a few days ago asking for some clarifications but he hasn't got back to me yet. I expect that they'll start looking at the item surveys in earnest only after the deadline has passed - or that they're too busy with the finalized surveys already.

But certainly only the guy(s) in charge of the items at Obsidian will be able to look at an item and say "that's OK for an epic item" or "that's overpowered" - we can't say for certain. Given that everything else that I've seen about PoE is very similar to the IE games, it's mostly a question of how high a level a character will be able to achieve in PoE without the expansion. If we take the IE games, even the best non-expansion items you could get in the first BG or IWD for instance weren't exactly "epic" when compared to the best BG2/ToB gear. So we may be way off base even with a mildly powerful item by BG2 standards.

 

Ouch, there's only 500 characters allowed for the item appearance and 1300 for the history. I'm going to have to seriously cut down on the text... I agree with BTA that the references to Kitrax, Sir Bel and Takara are probably best kept for the memorial.

 

Uhhhh, this was difficult and time consuming, but I've managed to bring everything within Obsidian's character limits, though much of the history has had to go as there was simply no way to get anywhere near as much story into 1300 characters (the original was closer to 6000). I think this still works, though. I've also toned the stats down somewhat, but we'll have to see what the PoE item overlords have to say about them. Here's the (probably) final concept:

Item Appearance:

Item History:

Item Concept:

Let me know what you all think.