Defective items

[Balakirev]

You go into a merchant's place of business. You notice that they have several items priced much lower than others of comparable quality. They are being sold "as is." Do they work as promised? Yes. But they all possess unnamed defects, waiting for you to find out.

 

I'd like to see something like this. In fact, I worked up quite a few descriptions as part of a mod I texted, of a traveling merchant who was very, very shady. This is the kind of thing that would be nice to see:

 

* Staves that did random magical damage within a limited range of one kind, whenever they hit--and did it both to the attacked, and the attacker.

 

* A teleport ring, one charge a day. No way to direct it, and it moves you to one of 20 potential locations.

 

* A suit of armor that raises your strength and endurance considerably, while lowering your speed to 5.

 

* A helmet that randomly shifts race and gender upon wearing for 24 in-game hours.

 

There are others, but you get the idea. Should not be in leveled lists. Always should appear at a merchant with enough description and a low enough price so the potential buyer is aware of the risk involved.

[Vagrant0]

You go into a merchant's place of business. You notice that they have several items priced much lower than others of comparable quality. They are being sold "as is." Do they work as promised? Yes. But they all possess unnamed defects, waiting for you to find out.

 

There are others, but you get the idea. Should not be in leveled lists. Always should appear at a merchant with enough description and a low enough price so the potential buyer is aware of the risk involved.

The main problem is that the game does not allow any variation between items of the same type without making a seperate definition. So, each defect would need to be its own seperate item, which alone can make for some problems.

 

"* Staves that did random magical damage within a limited range of one kind, whenever they hit--and did it both to the attacked, and the attacker."

Not possible, even with OBSE. Although OBSE would allow you to adjust the enchantment damage randomly after every hit, there is no way to determine who is using the weapon if more than one instance exists, and/or if the weapon can be worn by anyone other than the player.

 

"* A teleport ring, one charge a day. No way to direct it, and it moves you to one of 20 potential locations."

There are no "charged" items in Oblivion, It could still be done if it worked off the ring being equiped, then removed after the effect, but as this item would have scripting on it, and as the player may not be the only one to get this item, there may be some problems.

 

"* A suit of armor that raises your strength and endurance considerably, while lowering your speed to 5."

Can be done with an enchantment, or script on the armor... Again, caution if anyone other than the player can use it.

 

"* A helmet that randomly shifts race and gender upon wearing for 24 in-game hours."

Cannot be done in this game.

 

Unfortunately, what you can do, is rather limited, and what the player sees when they go to buy the item will usually be exactly what it is, kinda ruining the point of it being "defective". If you wanted any variation of what a vendor had, you would have to use a leveled list as there is no other practical way of randomizing an inventory. This does not mean that the results have to have any difference based on level, only that items are selected randomly from that list.

[Balakirev]

Thanks for the reply, Vagrant0!

 

"* Staves that did random magical damage within a limited range of one kind, whenever they hit--and did it both to the attacked, and the attacker."

Not possible, even with OBSE. Although OBSE would allow you to adjust the enchantment damage randomly after every hit, there is no way to determine who is using the weapon if more than one instance exists, and/or if the weapon can be worn by anyone other than the player.

 

But it could presumably be amended to a stave with two enchantments, one that did a range of damage of X type to an opponent, and one that did a range of damage of X type to self. That would work.

 

"* A teleport ring, one charge a day. No way to direct it, and it moves you to one of 20 potential locations."

There are no "charged" items in Oblivion, It could still be done if it worked off the ring being equiped, then removed after the effect, but as this item would have scripting on it, and as the player may not be the only one to get this item, there may be some problems.

 

But how would anybody else get the item? Presumably, the only one buying it would be the player.

 

"* A helmet that randomly shifts race and gender upon wearing for 24 in-game hours."

Cannot be done in this game.

 

I have seen a ring mod, here, that allows the user to shift attributes and gender. No idea how well it works, or if it could run a script that randomly selects one of X number of preset variants.

 

Unfortunately, what you can do, is rather limited, and what the player sees when they go to buy the item will usually be exactly what it is, kinda ruining the point of it being "defective". If you wanted any variation of what a vendor had, you would have to use a leveled list as there is no other practical way of randomizing an inventory.

 

Not interested in randomizing the inventory, though. As for seeing the enchantments on an item: can they be script-based? If they run from a script, the player would not have to see them.

 

Or the whole thing could simply be adopted to allow the player to see every flaw, and to make each item just attractive enough to shade it over into something useful--if the player is willing to employ a strategy minimizing the defect. For example, a player who has a constant effect weakening fire damage on self wouldn't mind as much if a stave did fire damage to themselves, too.