Posted by Arte on 01/18
Now, I haven't been keeping track of much of the skill trees design so
I don't know how poison will be handled under the skilltrees.
I think there's room for more creativity with poison. We already have a
pretty large herb system with a pretty developed druid profession. I think
we can exploit this system to make poison more interesting than what it
is today.
Poison isn't really used much today except on weapons. That's fine, but
there's a lot more we can do with this. We have so many herbs and their
toxins are all different. Like wise, for every toxin there's an antidote.
I don't know a lot about herbs, but I do know some herbs will poison you,
but there will be another herb that will cure that poison. What I'm
proposing here is that each individual herb cast a unique poison. Each
unique poison will also have an antidote. Depending on which poison is
rubbed on the weapon, the target will be afflicted with the poison.
Of course, to identify what kind of poison it is, each poison must have
different symptoms. Once the correct poison is id'ed, an antidote can be
brewed by a druid.
We also have the mix skill for druids now, so mixing different poisons
together in a potion creates some more possibilities.
There are 2 main problems to overcome before this is effective. First,
people can no longer rent off poison. I know this will be addressed in
the skilltrees. Second, what happens to mages that cast poison and cure
poison. Mages that cast poison can simply be another kind of poison that
can be cured either by another spell or by another generic herb. This is
the generic poison, so to speak. Cure poison may cure mild poisons but
will not cure other poisons.
I have not seen the legend code so I can only speculate how effects in
general are implemented.
It seems that each effect would have a flag and that flag is set for the
player when the player is affected by it. It should merely be a collection
of bitwise ands of predefined flags. Now, if this is true, effects can be
1 byte large and that would be enough to hold all the effects possible. So
adding 10 poison flags shouldn't be a problem. The problem probably lies
with the herb system or the how the items store effects. An efficient
herb system probably has a lookup table of all the herbs and whenever that
info is needed, it'll look it up and see what effects are needed. If this
is the case, then adding a couple of more entries to the table can be
considered. Items probably store info on an item by item basis. Effects
should be bitwise ands also...Ok, I'm just ranting now. I have no idea how
the system works.
Anyway, I thought mixing different poisons together to create unique blend
of poison would be interesting to the druid class. The creator of the
poison would know exactly how to mix an antidote too. If someone just
decides to try every antidote until they get the right one, fine. But
some antidotes may poison the person if they weren't already poisoned in
the first place. Lastly, there's the balance issue that's on everyone's
mind. Essentially, this is only useful in pk since rp is pretty much dead
as I hear a lot of people say, not to mention rp-pk. I think this is
an interesting possibility to consider, but I know it would not be
high on the priority list unless it was do-able in a night's work or so.
May continue to brainstorm, and who knows, might one day come up with
something cool.
-Arte
From: LadyAce
Monday, January 17, 09:08AM
There are indeed a good number of poisons, antidotes, diseases, and
such planned for skilltrees.
-LA
From: Elisa
Tuesday, January 18, 04:43AM
: slips out of your grasp, like water through your fingers.
I agree that it may add an interesting dimension to pk, but doesn't it
stand to just make it even more difficult for newbies lost and poisoned
in the northern moors?
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