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Adaptability of Special Items

By Simmic

I’ve thought about special items and I’ve come up with the following conclusion: they’re underrated and they’re under-used. People should have taken the hint from the Spheres trilogy — look at that item, the ‘Power of Music’. That’s not an item, though, really, is it? Quite right. It’s an ability. So called special ‘items’ can be special ‘abilities’ or even ‘recipes’! They CAN be used. They CAN recharge over time. For example, a ‘Stealth’ ability — Slow and Stealth the party to produce interesting effects, although that isn’t the best possible example.
But abilities aren’t the half of it. You can design custom ingredients for custom recipes. Just give the ingredients a special class and make the ‘item’ usable. Simple? Very, but very powerful and flexible as well. You can make custom potions if you want.
For a one-ingredient recipe, use the following sequence of specials:
  1. Have Item W. Class? (+ take) If yes, GOTO 2. Otherwise, GOTO 3.
  2. 2. Forced Give w. msg.
  3. 3. Display msg “Lack ingredients.”
You can even throw a Mage Lore check in there!

For a recipe with two or more ingredients, use the following chain as a basic framework:
  1. Have Item W. Class? (Ingredient 1) If yes GOTO 2, otherwise GOTO 5.
  2. Have Item W. Class? (+ take) (Ingredient 2) If yes GOTO 3, otherwise GOTO
  3. Have Item W. Class? (+ take) (Ingredient 1) If yes, GOTO 4. Otherwise, GOTO 5.
  4. Forced Give.
  5. Display msg. “Lack Ingredients.”
And there you go! Your very own recipe!
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