Ye Olde Inn

I'm working on designing a set of artifacts that are meant to work together and separately. Here's what I got so far.

• There's a Circlet that can be found through a search for treasure in a room with furniture. It is made of metal and has 5 empty slots for gems.
• the Enduring Ruby - contains 10BP that can be split to heal anyone until you run out of all 10, then...something happens?
• the Undying Diamond - able to revive one dead Hero with 2BP and 1MP. One use only?
• the Persistent Emerald - increases the Mind Point regeneration rate to 1MP every 2 rounds (up from 1/3). This is a passive effect for whoever is holding it.
• the Endless Sapphire - ?
• the Relentless Pearl - ?

When all five are inserted into the Circlet, whoever wears it gains some sort of superadvantage (not sure what that is yet, maybe all 5 powers at once?). And don't worry, I've already written down notes for a way to make this advantage remain temporary - will update with the quest pack and more details at a later point in time.

There will be 6 Artifact cards (one for each gem and one for the Circlet. I need help with a couple things. What should the Sapphire and the Pearl's powers should be?

And really, the biggest trouble I'm having at the moment is, what happens to the ruby and diamond (and potentially the other two) once they use up what it does. Do those gems stop working, hence rendering the final completed Circlet useless? Perhaps another way to go about it is that additional text is required to explain how less powerful the Circlet is or what it can/can't do, depending on how many gems it has slotted?

The story surrounding this mega-artifact is that it's a quest item required to beat the final boss in the quest pack I'm working on (kind of like a Spirit Blade on steroids). But in order for it to work, it requires having all 5 gems installed. But of course there's a very real possibility that the Heroes might use up the power of one or more gems. This would (and at this point in my thought process, should) render the item useless. But that seems like a huge gamebreaker to me, however.

Help me find balance here. To me, this item set sounds too awesome to discard, but trouble seems to be around every corner.

You get to work on better alliteration or I'll haunt your dreams. Undying Emerald is better than Undying Diamond (though the consonance was clever). Persistent Pearl, etc.

Funny you bring that up. I originally did have them alliterated like that. Then changed it up because I didn't want to raise the level of cheeseball through the roof. Hah!

Nothing cheesy about making things memorable.

chaoticprime wrote:Nothing cheesy about making things memorable.

You make a compelling point, sir.

When I began making an indie-rpg, I went all Howard Hughes about researching the possible psychological benefits of particular types of designs. One of them was the use of alliteration. Stan Lee (the comic-book guy in case you're a cave hermit) swears by it. I came up with a lot of cool names for spells and places and *lemony goodness*.

Here's an example: http://s619.photobucket.com/user/chaoti ... 7.jpg.html (Click the magnifier on the bottom right corner two-times, until you get the pixel-level zoom).

That's true.

Okay, back to my original list:

- Relentless Ruby
- Undying Diamond
- Endless Emerald
- Ceaseless Sapphire
- Persistent Pearl

Teldurn wrote:

chaoticprime wrote:Nothing cheesy about making things memorable.

You make a compelling point, sir.

Crushing Boulder! I like the Artifacts, I worry about heros not getting the particular gem or whatever Or not finding it in a quest my players don't always do the typical "Traps, Treasure, Secret Door " sweep. If something is missed then your Circlet is not going to work to beat the quest pack. Do you Teldurn, think 10 bp is a little much ? I guess I have know idea what type of monsters you are planing for this quest pack. It will be cool to see how far this goes! keep us posted. If i think of anything I will try to contribute thanks for sharing.




I had to edit because i just thought of something, What if the Circlet was given to you by a god or some thing like that and you have the option of returning it or convicing the rest of the party to fight for it once it is complete and the god was no god at all, in the end but some sort of evil chaos deciver that realy tricked the party into getting all of the parts together to make it this awesome artifact. Which is the true quest pack to fight or to give it back or give it back and then fight the Trickster with the everlasting circlet...

Teldurn wrote:That's true.

Okay, back to my original list:

- Relentless Ruby
- Undying Diamond
- Endless Emerald
- Ceaseless Sapphire
- Persistent Pearl

If you're still thinking of effects for the Sapphire and the Pearl, ask yourself which effects don't you have available yet and pull from that list. Your three in the first post are all related to healing in some form or another; the Heroes are just as likely to appreciate improvements to their offense, such as "may attack twice per round when X conditions are met", "may cast two copies of the same spell in one turn for the price of one", or even "make move twice in one turn instead of just once". Refer to whatever list of Potions you use in your games for more ideas - generally, Potions are one-time, temporary buffs, which frequently make good permanent buffs to put on Artifacts.

Also, "One use only" Artifacts are frequently the victims of the "Awesome but Impractical" mentality; if you think there will be a problem in that regard, try altering some of them to "use once per Quest", or even "use once per Quest Pack", instead. Not to mention, it doesn't make thematic sense for an Enduring Emerald/Ruby to be unable to endure once a set amount of Body Points have been healed...

Great suggestions so far.

In an effort to achieve better balance, reduce the potential for game breaking, and to increase appeal to players, here's an updated list of effects for the gems. All of them are passive, "always-on" effects that apply to the hero carrying the gem.

- Relentless Ruby: Increase maximum BP by 2.
- Undying Diamond: Disregard all 1-point damage rolls during combat.*
- Endless Emerald: MP regeneration increases to 1 every 2 rounds.
- Ceaseless Sapphire: Double the result of all movement dice.
- Persistent Pearl: Attack twice or cast the same spell twice if you do not move.

*This would make it so that traps and bad treasure cards can still remain viable.

In addition, the way I'm working the quest pack is that there are 15 quests total, but you will only be able to get through 8 of them during any playthrough. Here's my flowchart. You can see how it's a choose-your-own-adventure.


The empty circlet will be found in Quest 1, 1 gem in Q2, 1 in Q3 &4, 1 in Q5,6,7, and 1 in Q8,9,10, and 1 in Q11,12,13. And forging them all together will be done in Q14, and then used in Q15.

This way, no matter which quest path you take, you will still end up finding all the necessary components without any overlap, and without accidentally missing one by making a "wrong" choice.