Trying to make a "Robe of Attrition" item, help?

[Pig Catapult]

Okay, so, I'm a total newbie at this, but I have Mystic's Item Editor and it does some of what I want to do with this item, but not all of it.

 

The item I want to make is a robe which does three things:

 

1. Protects the wearer from 50% of all damage

2. When the wearer takes damage from any type of attack, an equal amount of damage is always dealt to the attacker.

3. Gives -20 to all "Weaponry Skills" stats and Mage Spells

 

The overall effect being that the wearer kills stuff by tanking hits and "splitting" the damage between themselves and their attacker. The deductions to weaponry skills and Mage Spells are to make it fair by forcing the character to be, more-or-less, a Technical Pacifist; their only viable modes of attack are being attacked (making every battle one of attrition/outlasting one's opponent(s)) and using priest spells.

 

I don't really have much/any faith in my own ability to make a good scenario, but this is a concept that I really want to try out in a singleton run of at least the default scenarios, just to see if I could make it work, so this is mainly an item I want to make for my personal use, although I would hardly throw a fit if someone else wanted to use it for something.

 

 

Now, I think I can do #1, I have no idea how to do 2, but I do know I can do #3. I found a functionality for dealing a set amount of damage to a melee attacker, and I admit that items with that ability that I've encountered while playing were part of the inspiration for this, but I'm pretty sure that what I'm looking for will require some sort of custom script, and that's where I'm stuck.

 

 

So. . . I guess my questions are thus:

 

1. Is this possible?

2. If it is, where do I start if I want to go about making a code for it?

[Nioca]

1. None.

2. A petition to make BoA open-source, followed by reprogramming the BoA Game itself to include such functionality.

 

First off, an item can only have four abilities; from my observations, just creating an item in the ballpark of what you want would require at least 7 different abilities working in tandem.

 

Second off, there's nothing that allows #2 to work at all. The closest is an ability that causes melee attacks to rebound on the attackers, but it only does partial damage and only reflects melee attacks.

 

Third, there's no way to put a script ability on an item that would activate on a hit; the only way for a script to activate on an item is as a usable ability. Furthermore, you wouldn't be able to take the item out of the scenario you got it in, since items with scripts attached are automatically deleted when the scenario is exited.

 

Fourth, even if all of the above were non-issues, several creatures (such as bosses) in various scenarios have special scripts and attacks that'd likely bypass the robe's scripted abilities. So you'd effectively wind up with a robe that did next-to-nothing against the monster mercilessly eviscerating the poor possessor of the robe.

 

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's how it is. The best you can do is have a character with high ranks in riposte and a robe that has a very strong Melee Deflect ability. Sorry.

[Pig Catapult]

Ouch.

 

Well, it was worth a shot. Thank you for answering. ^.^

[Enraged Slith]

You could probably make an item that bestows Martyr's Shield whenever you want it. I think that also only works on melee attacks, but it's better than nothing.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Pig Catapult

Mystic's Item Editor

You know, don't think I've received any feedback on that editor.

[Pig Catapult]

Well, I've never actually made an item with it yet, but I think it looks very good. The interface is very intuitive.

[The Mystic]

Thanks.

 

The idea was to generate perfect, usable item creation code every time, especially since I wasn't too familiar with Avernumscript when I originally wrote it. I also tried to make the interface as user-friendly and idiot-proof as possible without insulting the user's intelligence.

 

Originally Posted By: Pig Catapult

Well, I've never actually made an item with it yet

Feel free to play around; the possibilities are almost endless. Just remember that the editor doesn't save anything, just copies the generated code to the clipboard.

[Pig Catapult]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Thanks.

The idea was to generate perfect, usable item creation code every time, especially since I wasn't too familiar with Avernumscript when I originally wrote it. I also tried to make the interface as user-friendly and idiot-proof as possible without insulting the user's intelligence.

I think you succeeded. ^.^

[Jerakeen]

Where can I find this editor, please?

[The Mystic]

w-dueck was hosting it for a while, but apparently, his site is now gone. However, I found it on TrueSite for Blades (thanks, Jewels!).

 

The editor was written for Windows XP, but also runs in Vista; I never tried it in Win7. It's open source, so if anyone wants to port it to another operating system (*cough*Mac*cough*), rewrite it in another programming language (I wrote it in VB6), translate it, whatever, feel free.

[Jerakeen]

Too bad, I guess I'll have to muddle through on my own until or unless someone makes a Mac version.

 

I can't complain; it's amazing how many good utilities are out there already.

[keira]

Does mac have WINE or something like it?

[Celtic Minstrel]

Yes it does; I wouldn't be surprised if the editor works under WINE. I haven't actually tried it though.

[Niemand]

It does not work with the old versions of darwine or CrossOver I have installed, and I'm too lazy at the moment to build a recent version of wine from source to find out (since they don't seem to supply binaries, at least officially, and building from source has a laundry list of dependencies).

[The Mystic]

I know it runs in VirtualBox; then again, it was on a Vista (and now Win7) machine emulating WinXP, so that may have been a factor.

[Ishad Nha]

1. Protects the wearer from 50% of all damage

2. When the wearer takes damage from any type of attack, an equal amount of damage is always dealt to the attacker.

3. Gives -20 to all "Weaponry Skills" stats and Mage Spells

 

As for 1., you could almost create a script that would handle this. Assign it to all the monsters concerned.

You would need to know what damage had been done to the PC, this could be calculated as the difference between the PC's health before an attack and after the attack. Then adjust the PC's hp by the appropriate amount, if he is still alive.

2. could be calculated the same way.

[Kelandon]

To get it to run between every attack, you might have to take advantage of the "if a terrain script is set to run at maximum frequency, it runs between every step in combat" feature. This would be unbelievably awkward but would probably work. At least to the extent that any of my technical trickery (see: Exodus) works.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Originally Posted By: Niemand

It does not work with the old versions of darwine or CrossOver I have installed, and I'm too lazy at the moment to build a recent version of wine from source to find out (since they don't seem to supply binaries, at least officially, and building from source has a laundry list of dependencies).

...there is a later version than you mention without having to build from source; the WINE page actually links to it. Though, it calls it an alpha, but whatever.