I think that if you can\'t do anything in a prison, you won\'t be able to play a bad guy, because if you do so, you\'ll be bored for some hours and when you get out, you can kill people innocently for like 30 minutes and bang you\'re caught again and you\'re out for one week. It\'s a game, remember, you should have fun, not wait for hours.

Of course you could reduce the time delay and let the player build weapon for very cheap prices for the village where he is imprisonned, but then he can just wait for the sentence to pass, reading a book or a website, i don\'t know.

Imo, a prison is a bad idea.

But a fine can be a great sentence: if you kill someone and you\'re caught in less than, say 1 week after the crime has been commited, you have to pay the fine. One part will go for the victim (ok yeah the victim\'s dead. Well. doesn\'t matter), the other might go for the one who caught you.

I like the enchant idea, but not the way everone here talked about it =)

- i don\'t know what a healing sword could do. The only effect i can see is that the sword would heal whenever used, which mean everytime the player attacks. And it would heal the enemy. That wouldn\'t make much sense. Healing items should be armor parts, rings and so on, not weapons, imo.
- using a sword in a shield to make it sword resistant would seem weird...
- the sockets should be made and used by blacksmiths, not warriors nor wizard, as blacksmiths know how to make those socket, or how to put something in it (and make it don\'t jump out of the sword when you attack ^^)
- as hook said, that would lower the utility of blacksmiths

I think that enchanting an item would mean to cast a spell (a wizard job) or to use a potion on the item (like spreading alcohool to make a sword burn, or spreading benite water to add damages against undeads - if used on weapons of course, because if it is used on armors, that would, instead, add a res bonus against undeads), which is a job for alchemists.
And, the effect wouldn\'t last forever, because, well, when you put water on a sword, water doesn\'t stay on the sword forever. And alcohool doesn\'t burn forever either.
Lastly, you couldn\'t mix the effects. Because mixing benite water and alcohool would make something that wouldn\'t burn and that wouldn\'t be benite anymore ^^ But maybe we could still use an enchanting spell on the item... dunno.
Enchanting spells and potions would have different effects wether they are used on armor pieces, boots, hats, bows, swords, and so one. And some effects wouldn\'t help you: i mean, if you put tons of alcohool on your armor and then let it burn, you would be... a drunk toast :p (but maybe you could burn enemy that are too close from you, that could be useful if you\'ve got enough fire resist)

I don\'t think devs will be able to create tunels in real time; it would require a tech like Red Faction engine, unless everytime someone need a tunnel, world modelers modify the world.

So another solution might be to have portals (teleport things). They could appear when you say the password, opening a way to the guild. Only great magicians could build portals, and maybe they would have to regularly give them enough energy, I dunno, many things can be done here
Spies could still be useful, as everyone could use the portal with the right password, or maybe even without password, they could pass just after a guild member go through the portal.
So portals could lead everywhere, and powerful guilds could maintain great portals webs so as to be powerful everywhere in the world ^^ (thought great magic would be needed).
Technically, it would just need a portal model, which could be treated as a character for example. Anyway it\'s easier - technically - to add matteer (the portal) than to dig tunnels :p

Now maybe the teleport thing isn\'t a good idea, I don\'t know. It need to be... brainstormed more

Hi!

Good ideas have been discussed here, I\'ll try to help a bit.

A way to \"build\" a spell language would be to have words, that you put in a sentence, and that makes a spell. I think most people agree with that.

Now the details: my idea is that each \"word\" has an index, like \"5\" or \"6\". Like diablo II\'s runes. Now, the most important the indexes of the words in the sentence are, the most powerful the spell with be.

And, some words would have special effects:
- if placed in the sentence
- if placed at the beginning at the sentence
- if placed at the end...
- if placed before another specific word
Etc.

Here is an implementation example:

Let\'s say every spell has a number, telling how powerful it is. Let\'s call this number P.
Let\'s say every rune index is I.
Now here is the formula:

P = ((Sum of all I) + A) * B + C

Initially, A and C values are 0, B value is 1.

Runes effects can increase (or decrease, maybe) either A, B, or C.
- if C is increased, it is an absolute addition. It is added after every calculation have been applied.
- if B is increased, basic rune power (I) is multiplied.
- if A is increased, it\'s the same that C, but it can be multiplied by B, so increasing A is *potentially* more powerful than increasing C.

For exemple, if i have all words from 1 to 5, and that i have these rules:
- ending the word with 5: B+1
- having the sequence 1,2,3 in the sentence: A+10
- having the runes 2 and 4 in the word: C+10

Let\'s say i\'m a wizard that can do 5-words sentences.

What can i do? My first thought would be to use the most powerful rune (5), five times:

5 5 5 5 5 -> P is (5+5+5+5+5 + 0)*(1+1) + 0 = 50

But if i think about it, i can replace some 5 be 2 or 4 so as to get a bonus:

2 4 5 5 5 -> P is (2+4+5+5+5 + 0)*(1+1) + 10 = 52

What if i try to use the 1,2,3 sequence?

1 2 3 5 5 -> P is (1+2+3+5+5 + 10)*(1+1) + 0 = 52

Another solution:

1 2 3 4 5 -> P is (1+2+3+4+5 + 10)*(1+1) + 10 = 60

You can add other rules, like \"if there are 3 numbers with the same difference (like 4, 5, 6 or 2, 8, 14...)\"...

With this \"game\" of special effect rules, you can quickly build normally powerful spells, but if you think 10 minutes you\'ll get a more powerful one.

Now, words could tell whether the spell is a \"blue\" or \"red\" spell, if it is aimed at the enemy or at an ally, and so on. This could be told by the last word, or the first word, as it has been said earlier.

I made several tries, and I found that with easy rules, you can build spells between a \"powerfullness\" of 20 and... 350. But I had to try several sentences so as to get the 350. And i found it amusing.

The sorcerer could have to learn words, by visiting special temples for example. And the number of word he can use in a sentence could increase with the level (like 1 at lvl1, 2 at lvl2, 3 at lvl4, 4 at lvl8, and so on... at lvl50 you could have 6 words with this simple rule)

Sorry for the spelling, I\'m French