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« on: February 02, 2012, 01:14:04 PM »
Generally I don't use too many consumables in Roguelikes, because I figure that if you have to rely on healing potions and buffs, then you're doing it wrong. :p
Naturally, a wizard who keeps casting things to buff himself makes sense, as they're physically weak.
But when I have a fighter type, I try to play in a way that will get me quick kills, without getting into battles of attrition, where I end up chugging potion after potion.
That way I do have a decent supply, just in case. But I can go through mostly on my own merits.
In ADoM, I never found consumables to be overly common. I mean, there is a decent supply of most things... usually. You could also have runs where you wouldn't find anything for ages. But I never found it get to the point where I just had so many potions and wands around that they were all in excess.
And depending on my character, I would make good use of wands in ADoM. Non-casters use them a lot, as they lack that magical punch that's sometimes needed, especially with monster rooms. Having that wand of fire or cold to zap across a half dozen monsters definitely helps.
Of course, mages could use wands and such as well to save their own PP and spell charges for more dire situations. With many casters, wands became almost my main attack form. Anything bigger than fodder met the end of a wand, as it was dangerous to try and go toe to toe with them.
Rather than an expiry date on items, I think an algorithm that affects drop rates would work well. Basically, you'd have your normal drop rate for items, and as the character collects more and more of them, the drop rate starts to lower, based on how many are currently kept.
So if say a potion has a 5% drop rate (just random example), say for every potion (of that type) that the character has, the drop rate falls by perhaps 0.1%. So once you're holding on to 10 healing potions, you've now only got a 4% chance of finding another.
Maybe make it a larger drop, but I think you get the idea.
Naturally it would have to be well balanced, so that the player can get a decent amount of them to keep themselves going if things are rough. But also a large enough reduction so that once they're at a certain point, they're just not going to find more (outside of things like shops and guaranteed events).
This means that they can use potions as needed, and still have a decent chance of getting more, but if they're doing well enough, then they don't really need more.
I don't mind the idea of wands using the player's mana to cast and such. The problem is, that means fighter types will generally get very little use of them. Though I suppose a fighter with wand focus type character could be designed for that purpose.
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