Designing an epic weapon/armor/artifact!

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To follow up on joacqin's post, how about a weapon with features something like the "Rod of Lordly Might"? A weapon with different features for different class-types? Staves are defineitly usabale by non-casters. How about something like...

Q-staff+2, which can add different ends, like a bladed and a piercing end to it. Give it an enhancement bonus vs. some type of creature that is tough to injure in the game and voila, a must use item is created. Or possibly resistance to a certain attack from a boss-like creature/villian to make it useful.

 

A caster doesn't really use the weapon to actually hit people with. I am more interested in something like to put it very simple to illustrate "Staff of Fire: Makes fire spells stronger and wreathes the wielder in flames dealing x dmg to attackers". It should boost the spells of the caster not be used to wack people on the head with.

 

Good point. Why not a caster weapon that does both?

 

BTA, in most CRPGs, the Wizard types have a weapon slot and still suck in melee. If you give a Wizard a weapon that enhances his other aspects like spell casting, it's like giving him an extra Ring or Cloak or Amulet.

 

A mage weapon that allows wizard's to stand back and hit with a force effect from afar would be neat (think Gandalf and Saruman's battle in Orthanc). This is meant to be an epic weapon, after all, so why not an epic effect? In the hands of a non-mage perhaps the weapon requires close quarters fighting, but has a knockback effect. Could have promise, and seems in keeping with a "sorcerer's weapon."

 

If the mage weaponry is handled like it was in Dragon Age, then caster weapon definitely does matter, and there will be tons of powerful staffs competing for use in the team. If that's the case, even a funny, wacky staff with loads of cool abilities might be forgotten over a simple one with higher base damage.

Are there rules and limitation to what can be submitted? if not, just make it the most uber weapon in the upcoming game, and people will remember it easily. Though i highly doubt it will be allowed.

 

How about an item that takes on different properties depending on the type of area it is in? That would allow us to make it useful (at times) for various types of characters.

 

I really like the spellcaster item ideas - this IS Sorcerer's Place, after all. That by itself pretty much rules out weapons that will ONLY make you go ouch, in an in-your-face way at least.

I second the notion that primary caster weapons in most RPGs are few and far between - but that's often a limitation of the game engine/ruleset. World of Warcraft handled this nicely by having a "spell power" stat you could boost, and have certain weapons give you literal tons of it while being quite horrible choices for physical combat.

Taluntain, you're being modest. You're the single biggest culprit for so many of us wasting such huge amounts of time here at the boards, so if there's going to be a reference to a person, you ought to be the first in line. And yes, that "kills trolls" line comes with the title.

However, why not make the item Cursed? "Can only be unequipped with Remove Curse, or failing that, severing the contact with Etherweb".

 

How about something like the Vampiric Sword in Ulcaster? Just kidding. Hmm, how about an armor that has a low chance to make you invisible every time you get hit? I really just want to confuse and run circles around my enemy.

 

I like several ideas I've seen and I'm trying to combine them into one piece. Stealing from Splunge (random effects), BTA (Growing in awesomeness), dmc (immunity/resistance to charm/mindeffects) and reepnorp (The Board of Magick)

The item is basically a magical chess board. After all, the BoM is a well organized forum with smart people. A chess board resembles that, imo.

Continuous effect would be some mindful stuff (boost to a stat, immunity to some mind-affecting effect. etc)
Each day this item gives a (positive) random effect. The effects grow in power (and awesomeness) when you level up. (Higher level spells, longer duration, whatever)
A chess board has 64 squares, so 64 random effects would be suitable (not all at once! ), but a bit hard to think of, perhaps.

I often leave the BoM with some unsuspected knowledge or a good laugh. Maybe something like a Wild Surge is in order here, as a fun factor.

 

Is it time to begin talking about this again? I saw some mention of getting items together on the last PoE update.

 

I've consolidated the ideas that have been posted into one post for easier viewing. Note that I've shortened stuff as I could to make it a little simpler to read. If people like the idea, they can find the original post to see the full thoughts (but there should be enough in this post to give a good idea). Maybe we can pare down from this list (as well as add more ideas)?

I've seen several people mentioning that it should be useful to multiple classes. Several agree that it might be good to put a humorous aspect to the item, but it wouldn't be a good idea to make that the sole purpose. There are also several who think Taluntain should be mentioned in the item (or description) and/or Sorcerer's Place. It seems that many are leaning toward a caster item. There have also been a few mentions of NOT making the item epic, but something lower (not necessarily weak though). I'm also fairly certain a few ideas were jokes, but I included them, too. Apologies if I missed any!

Taluntain:

Damedog:

Marceror:

BlackthorneTA:

Rotku:

The Curt Jester:

Blades of Vanatar:

DMC:

reepnorp:

Splunge:

Hannibal555:

Montresor:

HarbourBoy:

coineineagh:

joacqin:

SirRechet:

Sujamma:

Master of Nuhn:

 

I like reepnorps/MoNs artifact idea the most. Preferably the item grows in strenght the longer you have it equipped (each minute a few times, then each hour a few times, then once a day for a few days or something with a diminutive increase up to a maximum of a month increment), to reflect the longlivity of this community. It should also utter quotes in the game-chat, each time it "grows", taken from the halls of fame in BoM.

If possible, the player should be able to chose what way the item should improve from a handful of options/stats, which would naturally reset if you unequip the item. So if you need resistances for a boss and you have boosted attack speed, you have to unequip and equip.

 

This was posted on the latest update at Kickstarter:

The bold is mine. Better hurry up!