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Items and professions

After making some more items for the game I found that the potions I'd made before didn't match at all well with the way items are displayed in the inventory.

I've revisited potions, and also made icons for potion ingredients, food, traps, tools and various other things.

Food is going to be quite important because it's replacing the rest function. To rest you'll find a quiet area and consume some food. The characters will do a resting animation and their health will be increased. You won't be able to eat if you're too thirsty so you'll need to drink some water or wine before resting.

Yummy food, and potion ingredients. You can eat the potion stuff but it has a chance of making you sick so it's not advisable.


Because of this you'll have to chose whether you really want to rest or not. Resting because of getting hungry won't happen all that often, if at all but if you get injured a lot you'll start eating up all your rations. There are healer kits available too which can revive characters who have been reduced to zero HPs. You'll need to revive them before they can rest.

You won't be able to rest and eat during combat so you'll need to save your potions for that. Healer kits can also be used to recover some health in combat, though only if you're not actually engaged in fighting.

Food can spoil and even rot away if you leave it too long. Some food is resistant to this, because it is preserved (like dried fish) but it doesn't give as much of a health boost as fresh food.

Tools traps and potions, don't leave home without them.

Different characters will have different starting professions. Don't expect to be a wizard from the outset. Professions are what you did before you became an adventurer. Things like leatherworker, burglar, surgeon, scholar, mercenary, guard. Some professions will give you a bonus to one of your stats (+1 strength for carpenter for example), while others allow access to special abilities if you've got the right kit. For example a fisherman can catch fish with a net. A blacksmith can repair armor or weapons with the right set of tools. A leatherworker can get skins from animals, as well as repair light armor if they have a set of leather working tools. A hunter can get meat from wild animals, if they have a trap, and they can also use the traps to rig doors behind them.

I haven't worked out a table of professions and bonuses yet, but I've got a good idea of the types of equipment needed, so I've added it already.

Some types of equipment give a passive bonus to a skill. For example a basic thieves tools helps with picking locks and disarming traps, and there is an improved and expert kit available too. Healing kits reduce the chance that a critically injured character will die during reviving. There's a smallish chance that a character "killed" during combat will really die after the encounter when you're trying to heal them. Of course if you don't have a healer at all, this chance is 100%.

I don't want characters to be locked in to classes right from the start, so professions give some direction to their progression, and then later they'll be able to take on a character class, somewhat like the prestige classes of D&D. They'll give them nice boosts to their abilities and feats, but add restrictions to further growth.

NPCs will reflect this, so at first you're likely to meet scholars, burglars and blacksmiths, while later you may meet assassins, paladins, and wizards.

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