Improving weapons

[Preston.F.Crow@Dartmouth.EDU (Preston F. Crow)]

So how about this system for improving weapons (and maybe armor):

For each weapon, calculate the "current improvements:"
	Sum all the pluses, subtract for the minuses, add 1 for each
	protection, 2 for each immunity (maybe juggle the formula a bit).

Allow a player to improve the weapon by one plus or protection:
	prepare weapon (with sacrifice)
	improve xxx (with sacrifice)
additional improvements require a separate preparation.

The formula for the sacrifice should be something like:
	min(1,(new_improvement_level)^2-(old_level)^2)
[The min is to deal with weapons that have minuses to start with.]

To avoid the calculator effect, have the sacrifice only take the
quantity of potions or whatnot that's required.  (You could then do
things like make the quantity partially class or stat dependent.)

Note that this means that it becomes VERY expensive to improve the
strength bonus on a +10 sword.  A player may wish to use a "worsen
stat" scroll to give the weapon a negative on one stat to make another
easier to raise.  You would want to limit this to -5, to stop the
creation of -20 wisdom items that can be set aside when trying to
learn spells.

You should limit the maximum improvement level of a weapon to the
character's level (or some formula based on it).  You might want to
tinker with the formula for the weapon's improvement level to reflect
an understanding that some pluses or protections are more useful than
others.

Or maybe allow unlimited improvements, only when the weapon is
improved beyond a certain point (level-based, stat-based, constant, or
random), it
is randomly given a minus somewhere.

Or have over-improved weapons cause insanity (with a probability based
on how over-improved they are).  Insanity would cause fits of
confusion (as in the spell), hallucinations(sp?), blindness (no
display, minus to hit), and rage (computer takes over and attacks
anything in site).  (Since this would take a lot of work to implement,
you could just disallow the readying of an over-improved weapon for
the time being.)

My favorite is to have the maximum improvement level based on level
and charisma (strength of character--also make it useful outside of
shops).  Because charisma can change with the switch of a ring, (and
because I think it's a cool idea) I prefer the insanity idea for
over-improved weapons.

Well, enough for now.

--PC