Nexus Clash

Conduit skill that allows the player to create "master works", armor/weapons of exceptional quality imbued with a unique buff. The Conduit may only make one masterwork item of each type at a time, so quantity will be limited, and along with greater AP and material cost, this will make these master works relatively rare and valuable. Master works do not degrade (always being the equivalent of Pristine quality) and cannot be enchanted, as they are already foci of the Conduit's supernatural crafting abilities (elemental oils, however, may still be applied). If the Conduit wishes to make a different master work, they can revoke the masterwork status of one of their creations, reverting it to a pristine version of the base weapon/armor, whether or not it is currently in the Conduit's inventory.

Preliminary list of enhancements:

• Gilded- Requires an additional Gold Ingot, combat XP using the weapon infuses for double/non-combat XP infuses for 50% more

• Silvered- Silver Ingot, +3 damage vs undead*/+10% dodge vs undead.

• Cold Iron- Chunk of Stygian Iron, +4 damage vs pets and monsters/+5% Defense against Pets and Monsters

• Heavy (Melee-Only, Heavy)- Lead Brick, 50% more damage to structures/20% chance to ignore damage from attacks that deal damage less than or equal to armor's soak value

• Bronze (Melee-Only, Non-Heavy)- Chunk of Celestial Bronze, weapons benefit from skills such as Strength as if they were heavy/+5% dodge

• Nacred (Ranged-Only)- Nacre Shell, 20% critical hit chance (+5 damage)

Its a cute idea, but I feel like "masterwork weapons" should be harder to come across. Harder than a limited quantity that always exists, even, so it wouldn't be a conduit skill.

+1

Would be the kind of thing that would make crafting actually satisfying as a game mechanic. Could even potentially be a rework of rule of design since it's got some problematic implications as is.

SignedName wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:12 pm If the Conduit wishes to make a different master work, they can revoke the masterwork status of one of their creations, reverting it to a pristine version of the base weapon/armor, whether or not it is currently in the Conduit's inventory.

Which could easily be used to troll people by giving away masterwork items only to later revoke their masterwork status.

Badziew wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 8:18 am

SignedName wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:12 pm If the Conduit wishes to make a different master work, they can revoke the masterwork status of one of their creations, reverting it to a pristine version of the base weapon/armor, whether or not it is currently in the Conduit's inventory.

Which could easily be used to troll people by giving away masterwork items only to later revoke their masterwork status.

Trolling people... by giving them pristine Weapons/Armor? The reverse situation would be much worse (Conduit unable to make different master works after giving them away and not being able to get them back). The enhancements, though they're supposed to be unique, aren't supposed to be powerful enough to be relied upon completely.

SignedName wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:38 am Trolling people... by giving them pristine Weapons/Armor? The reverse situation would be much worse (Conduit unable to make different master works after giving them away and not being able to get them back). The enhancements, though they're supposed to be unique, aren't supposed to be powerful enough to be relied upon completely.

Trolling by giving (or maybe even selling) masterwork items with the malicious intention to sneakily degrade them to normal items after that. Perhaps even in middle of a raid etc.

I really like the idea, but also agree that "special weapons" should be rarer and that they have trolling potential in it's current form. Maybe the "masterwork" weapon should "dissipate into the aether" after some time i.e. it has a lifespan and expires after idk say 3 days.

Actually I think it'd be great if this were common skill between the enchanter classes (with class specific masterwork variants), maybe moved to the Enchant Item tree (or not since this is crafting nor enchanting).

That's an extremely big reach to say this concept has "trolling potential", especially if you think it has more compared to official skills like Summon Wraith and Cloak of Earth's/Water's Immanence which have very limited to no actual gameplay use, just trolling potential.

It's pretty easy to define something with "trolling potential", although it gets more nuanced from there. It's simply -
1) People lose something they had before, like ap/mp, items or their life.
2) The character who caused this mechanically gains nothing or extremely little from this loss. They have just lost resources themselves in the process.

Straight away this skill concept couldn't work for that because under 1) the other person didn't lose something they had before the Conduit gave them the Masterwork weapon if/when it's revoked. They still get a pristine weapon they didn't have before. In fact, because it goes to pristine if anything you would see tactical revocation of masterworks on raid for an emergency condition restore, possibly?

Sorry, I just had to clarify on that because shooting down concepts on a blatantly incorrect "trolling" is quite rude.

Anyways, I think when revoked it should just keep its current condition. I think the concept is actually quite good and imo should be a Conduit exclusive because they currently kind of do lack a really defining raid support ability to their class, Arcane Trail is a weaker (still good) conditional Intimidating Aura and Open Wormhole is a little playstyle-specific. The enchanted food is a decent start but giving them more special power logistics to hand out would be good.

I think effects should be overall weaker but have the Conduit able to have more in existence at once, so that there's less competition between chars in a faction to get some rather than it having to go to the "top raid attacker" and tank only or something. I do agree that masterwork should have an eventual end time so that the Conduit still has to spend resources to maintain them, although 3 days is way too fast, probably a week to two depending on usage.

Finally some of the effect concepts need work but tbf they're just effect concepts. I will say that I don't think masterworks like silvered to counter specific classes through this should exist unless almost every class can be countered via masterworks, otherwise even if thematic it's more like an unfair disadvantage for them. Also, defence% is a pretty volatile stat to increase by a lot, although personally I think most tanks' def% is a little undertuned in B5 rn compared to all of the new issues that surround them. However, if it went the other way with Conduit Masterworks, that might make Conduit feel a bit "too" required for a raiding faction again, but they definitely need some pushing as well because having a Conduit should be a game changer and right now it feels very optional unless your faction SH is super remote. Either way I would look into giving more different defensive stats for some of the armor masterworks like soak, resistance, even hp or a survival mechanic like healing off every 15th pet hit.

Good concept with some honing, we need more meaningful high-end crafting and crafting management imo, a masterfully crafted weapon should pretty much always have been the ideal endgame imo (even if what you find in the gunstore bin should still be good enough to compete).

TLDR:

Troll: "I will sell you this wonderful masterwork sword for the low, low price of ten mundane pristine swords. Deal?"
Clueless newbie: "Wow! Deal!"

(five minutes later)

Troll, revoking masterwork status and downgrading newbie's latest purchase to mere pristine: "Enjoy your crappy sword, sucker!"
Troll crafts more masterworks for more scams.
Newbie ragequits.

Yeah, wow, that would certainly work for an extended period of time without anyone in this community size! It's just so difficult for word of something like that to spread around, so that people might know what they were doing!

Dumbest thought experiment I've ever read. Under the model OP had people wouldn't likely be giving masterwork items to new characters at all.