Cursed objects

[Domino]

One thing Varguar and I have found seriously lacking in Mangband is cursed stuff.  I'm not talking about the generic crap that everyone finds, but truly nasty things.  What we had in mind was curses as underlying properties.  What I mean by underlying property is like say resist disenchantment is an underlying property.  It's just not quite right that you can simply identify something and right away you know to chuck it.  Some stuff you only ever have to identify once.  We had in mind more subtle curses.  Stuff you need to get an *ID* to check.  Here's just a partial list of possibilities:

• Otherwise nice rings with teleportation.. Oh look here's a nifty ring of damage (+20) Oops it feels deathly cold!  Blink Blink Blink...
• Weapons with reduced damage.. it'll id as a normal weapon, perhaps even a nice one but while it id's normaly it only does half damage...
• Weapons that work normaly against all but ONE monster type.. that monster type they do zero damage to.
• Armour with curses such as REDUCED regeneration, Higher food consumption, nasty penalties such as extending bad spell effects such as slowness, blindness etc by a random amount when you get hit with them.
• More backfire effects for rods/wands/staves... It should hurt.  Maybe everyone in an area, maybe just you.  Same with exploding wands/staves on recharge.
• Ultra cursed objects such as Morgul weapons and Cloaks of Enveloping should force you to wear them.
• Ultra cursed armour types that also force wearing.
• Equipment in general with bizzare effects.  Blindness, Confusion, Stunning, Stat draining: temporary AND permanent (make stat pots useful for high levels again) etc.
• Equipment with subtle aggravation:  affects only one type of monster, affects shopkeepers (lower than normal prices or refusal of service).
• DSMs should always aggravate dragonkind, you're wearing some relatives' skin.
• All weapons with slays should aggravate thier chosen foes.  To offset this an ultra rare say 0.5% of slaying weapons should instead cause thier chosen foes to ignore you (these weapons are _realy_ good at killing thier foes).
• Leaky lamps (double oil consumption).. Dwarven/Feanorian lamps that are actually timed (give them something huge like say 99999 rounds so people will get caught in the dungeon with it when it finaly fails).

One reason we feel that these would be good is that they could offset new types of ego items.  Would truly suck to find a Power Dragon Scale Mail of the Valar that gave +2 Con and Dex but made it so you couldn't regenerate and sucked off a couple random stats every few hundred rounds..

[Ashi]

How about some fake artifacts - you greedily wear the first power dragon scale mail [50] you find, then oops! It feels deathly cold! Bloodturner claims another victim.... he.he

[Berendol]

Yes, multiple kinds of curses.. it could be done! Intriguing!

[Maegdae]

Oooooh! I love it!! It'll make my Paladin much more powerful in relation to mages...
priests/paladins have the *remove curse* (i think it's called dispel curse)
That would make it really useful.
Also, the restoration spell would be great against the stat draining....
hehehehe
I like these ideas, actually.  We need more cool curses... right now they don't hurt anybody except newbies.

[Domino]

Remove?  Who says you could remove it?  These are underlying abilities.. like aggravation...

[Berendol]

Eeeeeeeeeexactly. We're not going to make any one class more powerful than it already is.

[Maegdae]

Ok. If you have an item w/heavy curse that is automaticlaly wielded/worn when picked up...

"Ultra cursed objects such as Morgul weapons and Cloaks of Enveloping should force you to wear them.

Ultra cursed armour types that also force wearing. "

That would make the *remove curse* scrolls imperative, to remove the item.
Or, how could you ever get rid of it?
Currently, priests/paladins don't really use dispel curse that much.  This would merely make an underused spell more useful!  Shouldn't priests/paladins be better against such things as curses?  I don't see any balance issues here!  If dispel curse could be cast on another player, it would merely reward partying..  found a weapon morgul which automatically wore itself? just ask nar-ghaul over there to dispel the curse so you can get rid of the item!

[Berendol]

I for one am opposed to equipment that automatically wields itself... I have some really evil ideas for the game but even I don't like that. You wouldn't want to be afraid to pick up potentially good items for ID'ing all through the game, would you? Don't forget newbies have to have a chance to get started before the monsters kill 'em. Scumming the bottom would change so much, too. Here's a short thought process you might go through: "My inventory's full! Time to recall. Oh look, here comes Cantoras, hey, maybe I'll drop this and pick up that sword while he makes his way over here. *blind grab and ID, forcing an unstack in the inventory* Crap, I dropped my uber-powerful MoD of extra attacks because it won't fit in my inventory, and my cursed weapon induced teleportation! Now I have to recall to remove the curse... bye-bye, good weapon!"

Actually... hmm... [evil laugh] Perhaps if we only enabled generating it below 5,000' ... then you'd enjoy the fruits of your labors of inventing new and foul curses. I guarantee it'd kill the most careful player more than once, since you can't ID stuff on the ground.

I agree that it would be really annoying, though.. and Remove Curse should be targetable on another player in the same fashion as various healing spells. Definitely got the right idea for teamwork there.

[Domino]

Well actually the auto equipping stuff would be removeable with Priest/Paladin prayers.  Also was thinking that remove curse and *Remove* curse would need to be upgraded to area effect similar to Life scrolls and perhaps the priest/paladin prayers would need to be able to target players as the healing prayers do.  This would be needed to offset cursed objects that induce blindness or confusion that you couldn't get off in any other maner but dying.  What I had thought Maegdae was refering to was *Remove* curse being able to remove the attributes of the cursed objects and it wouldn't do that at all.  Reasoning for heavily cursed objects to auto wield is this:  Currently no one except extremely broke, extremely adventerous LOW level players ever get hit with cursed objects at all.  I mean seriously what player over level 10 doesn't carry around gear till it's pseudoed and/or id it to see if it's worth selling?  Part of the point of these curses is so that more people get hit with bad effects.  Right now there's realy no risk to gear.  You pick it up, you walk around a bit, it pseudos as good or bad (or excellent or horrible) or you have spells avaliable to Identify everything.  Most low level players simply sell all unidentified rings because they KNOW 90% of the stuff they find below 1000' is junk... and then it's id'd forever for them.. they only need id ONE ring of weakness, stupidity, teleportation etc to forevermore know what they are.  This is rediculous.  Anyway I'm rambling but you guys get my point.  

[Paragon]

Just a small idea.

Rather than unbalancing the game too much, why not
introduce an infrequent chance of walking over or
picking up an item on the floor such as amulet of teleport
triggering a teleport trap

or maybe a random chance of wielding that blade of
morgul (autopick it up and wield 1 in 200)

Certain objects would lend themselves to this more
naturally. Perhaps a staff might auto zap, etc.

[Anyar]

while i was going through the forums i saw this and i thought maybe to make the physically weaker magic using characters(priests,mages.rouges) strong to give an ability or spell that lets them sense cursed items if there is a auto item pickup like maybe at first all it does is say the if the item is within 100 spaces then you learn the next spell (like the sleep spells) which tells like sector or something and a third spell that senses what the item is but only for like level 40 chars

[goober]

I once picked up an excelent that was a chain mail of fire deception (-5) [14,-10] I was like huh? then i focused on the words and it was a rusty chain mail excelent which wasn't an excelent even if it was kinda cause it had some protection from something... I think the game is fun it has lasted me almost a year now... I am glad very little of what you people have said has been implimented... I have yet to see al the sides of the game... I mean cursed items could be deceptive and have missleading words that sounds like a good plan cause usually I glance at something quick and say oh goody something to sell... when it could be a bad item that stores won't accept because of its underling attributes.

[Berendol]

Well, the 'phrases that sound good' idea would only be a tax on careless/stupid people. Much like the lottery in Real Life is a tax on people who can't do math. The rest of the populace would safely ignore the obvious problem and toss the trash out. It's all about experience with the game, though, so perhaps were that implemented, it should be limited to < 1500'. Seriously though, what mid-level player actually picks up a rusty chain mail excellent, hoping for some cash at the store? It's right in the name when you see it on the floor: Rusty Chain Mail. Excellents are still worthless at the shop if any of their bonuses are negative. I think that Rusty should have been an ego, not a base type.

I don't recall a "Fire Deception" ego-item, and I've done extensive work on and with the item code. What server was that?