While brainstorming in the discord server with PF, I came up with an idea for a new species, name pending. The core idea behind this species is to entice you to equip stuff you normally wouldn’t want to, like the -2 gloves of Alacrity {Str+7, Slay+2}. As such, this species is only allowed to equip artefact items.
Chaos Spawn attributes:
Only artefact items are equipable (starter items are converted into artefacts with no properties)
Zin hates you (but TSO and Ely are ok with it), silver vulnerability
Corrupt item ability - modifies a non-artefact item unpredictably, transforming it into an artefact, for a mild drain cost (ideally low enough that you can corrupt many items, but high enough that you don’t feel the need to backtrack for old items or carry around lots of stuff just to corrupt it). This could have several effects largely grouped into several buckets, with probabilities TBD:
Item stays the same as it currently is, except it becomes an artefact.
Item is destroyed
Item gains a beneficial property (and an ego if it is a weapon)
Item is completely rerolled, as if it were a newly generated random artefact
A weapon becomes an omniweapon and uses your highest skill training for a weapon.
Item gains a fixed mix of beneficial and detrimental properties (e.g. every time this outcome happens, it gets 3 beneficial properties and one detrimental property)
The play pattern I would hope to create is that you want to corrupt most good items you find to try and pull the slot machine lever and you would want to consider bad outcomes much more than you would normally, as the alternative is going naked, not a +2 glove.
The lore for the species would be that they cannot wear normal items because they would destroy them, only artefact level items are capable of withstanding continued contact with their skin.
I think this wants to corrupt every single item automatically, rather than as an active.
You lose the potentially interesting ‘what do I corrupt, in what order?’ minigame, but you don’t have to deal with using an active repeatedly or the fiddly drain management this would entail.
(I also somewhat doubt you’d have very exciting decisions about what to corrupt, but that’s more vibes than reason)
If you corrupt everything you see, you can’t enchant/brand stuff before corrupting it, which I think is probably an important part of the species? It gives you some way to control the items you’re creating even if its unreliable.
So, I was assuming enchantment would be useless for the species one way or another- mostly since I hadn’t thought hard about it.
Having now thought about it, I think the possibility of an item being destroyed plays very poorly with ench scrolls. Normal characters can pretty reliably get an endgame weapon by finding a good base weapon and enchanting it up, but this usually takes most or all your ench scrolls. Getting your +9 broad axe destroyed by corruption is a pretty massive swing from it becoming +9 broad axe with a beneficial property.
As for the fiddliness- I also thought more about that and I think most of my concerns are removed if you corrupt items on equip in addition to as an ability. That said, there’s still the unfun play pattern of ‘clear my drain time to corrupt something new’
Having now thought about it, I think the possibility of an item being destroyed plays very poorly with ench scrolls. Normal characters can pretty reliably get an endgame weapon by finding a good base weapon and enchanting it up, but this usually takes most or all your ench scrolls. Getting your +9 broad axe destroyed by corruption is a pretty massive swing from it becoming +9 broad axe with a beneficial property.
I was also thinking that perhaps there should be some randomization of the enchantment applied to the item, so the enchant can go plus or minus 3 or so, making it so that you’re more likely to create some usable weapons over the course of the run. Of course, while poofing a +9 broad axe would be really bad, turning a +6 broad axe Donald dropped into the +6 broad axe of lurid dreams {Freezing, omni} or the + 5 broad axe of the pompous ass {Distort, Str+6, rF+++, rC-} would also be very good for you and that’s a perfectly servicable endgame weapon, even if you weren’t previously training axes in the case of the omni weapon. One of the goals of the race is to make you use items you wouldn’t normally consider because you can’t just fill your slots with a +9 branded weapon, +2 auxes, and ego plate.
As for the fiddliness- I also thought more about that and I think most of my concerns are removed if you corrupt items on equip in addition to as an ability. That said, there’s still the unfun play pattern of ‘clear my drain time to corrupt something new’
Something I’ve hypothesized about before is creating charges for racial abilities like charges for miscellaneous evokers that recharge over time - stuff like giving Fo 7 charges and having them recover at roughly the same rate as the drain currently does, etc. That could solve some of the fiddliness problems - you can stock up a bunch of charges and then go on the world item tour and corrupt a bunch of stuff. That might be easier to adjust the XP gain rate on as well than it would be to do the drain cost. The downside of this? I think I could program a drain cost onto a species ability. I have absolutely no idea how to program charges into a species ability.
I just read this, and while I don’t think there is enough here for a new species, and I agree it does sound a bit clunky, I wonder if the core item could be applied to Xom in some way.
Xom is already essential a slot machine, and as far as I know he hasn’t been touched for a long time. I presume this is because he’s considered just a meme at this point. When I was asking for advice a while back on playing Xom so I could do Chaos Knight for the Great Player title I was told to either abandon him as soon as I find a decent god, since his wrath isn’t that different to just playing him, or ‘just get a strong enough character to ride out him being a dick’, advice which doesn’t say much for his current state.
Adding something like this to him just leans into the slot machine aspect while also adding a little bit of coolness - being able to kit yourself out in all artifacts.Xom would approve! Maybe have him change scrolls of enchant to scrolls of reroll.
Reading this, it felt more like a god than a species to me. I like Sam’s idea of this being a Xom rework.
This could be tweaked to fit the originally suggested mechanics in a number of ways. Maybe Xom gets bored if you use uncorrupted items. Or you could be forced to choose between 2-3 equipped items to reroll at Xom’s whim, which would help mitigate a few lucky rolls making you too powerful.
Just tossing ideas - Would be neat to build Contam with every creature kill and then randomly discharge upon attacks (e.g. like irradiate) or upon cast. Contam could also periodically artifactize worn, nonmagic equipment. Perhaps players could be forbidden from wearing enchanted non artifact equipment so they would be reliant on making standard stuff work or using what artifacts they find?
I think a way to make this interesting would be to adapt Monkooky’s idea of corrupting on equip, but to make there be some kind of harsh (going away with XP) penalty for unequipping an artefact - making you potentially stick with harsh rolls when you otherwise wouldn’t and making there be risk to trying to corrupt as many items as possible. Maybe a combo of stat drain and HP drain, or an XP-based corrosion-esque penalty?
Im thinking that rather than corrupting items on command, perhaps they have a corrupting presence that automatically corrupts items in their inventory on a timer like Ru or Ash. Maybe higher level enchanted items would take longer to corrupt. There could just be a category of Artifacts we could call “Corrupted Artifacts” that have different rules for generation than randarts that uses the original item as a seed somehow.
As for the race as a whole, Cool idea! Throwing would probably be rally powerful on this race since it would not be dependent on good luck with corruption.