OPTIONAL reworked lore system

caruga

Emphasis on optional because it isn't going to be forced down your throat (though feel free to disagree anyway .

I'll quote verbatim what I wrote on the beamdog thread about this (in the context of a discussion of making int a more meaningful stat to have):

Anyone think the identifying sub-game could be improved? Those goggles at the beginning of SOA took all the challenge out of it. Maybe make party members with lore more valued. Maybe cause them to take a penalty (1/2?) to lore when not well-rested. Maybe require an item to be identified by multiple party members (and the goggles would count as one, as would an identify spell), and each attempt stacks onto a value until the value exceeds what is required to unlock the items identity...

I don't know what the internal values look like, but let's create a fictitious situation where you have Sword of Foo with an id requirement of 80. You have three party members, each with a lore of 20, an identify spell that gives +10 and the goggles which give 10, just enough to id the item. If you were short on lore you might have to bring in another party member or take it to a shop to add the final bit of info needed to figure out the items' identity.

Thoughts?

and

As for lore, it's an interesting idea for making it more useful, but I think the main focus was on making identifying stuff *less* of a chore. Having that quite elaborate system would annoy people probably more than the inventory system does (that said inventory system doesn't bother me).

True, but the tradeoff is that it would increase immersion. The game should contain pain and pleasure, to help distinguish the two. Right now it's already just a token annoyance to get out of the way, where any item is just a trivial few clicks away from being identified.

Furthermore it could allow exerting a degree of balance control, so you can lock out certain items from the parties' use until they gain the right prerequisite to identify. It would make solo play harder (they'd probably resort to visiting multiple shops to figure out the items identity, which ramps up the cost, too), and not spoil players with being able to equip anything they find right away without leaving the dungeon. I think this would make the items and the party members/spells/tools/shopkeepers more valued, too, for their help in identifying. Bringing extra members along to a given dungeon to identify things while there would be an extra layer of tactical consideration. Maybe to offset the barrier certain items could be a little bit better in tradeoff. Others won't have high identifying requirements, but they won't be as good.

Keep in mind that sometimes this change would put you in an advantage, since two characters with 40 lore would be equivilent to 1 with 80 lore--not so as now. Although to counter-balance the id threshold for certain items might be raised.

Perhaps some of it could be automated--treat an item as 'looked at' by all party members against their lore skill without having to put it in their inventories, for example. If you add a new party member, he too will look at the item, and if it causes it to be id'd at that point you'll see a notification in the description window.