from the "What If" pages: Enchantment Basins

[The Kriv]

Remember back in the day when the only way to do even the simplest of enchants required an enchantment basin?

But now, the basins have become somewhat redundant, since you can use just about any old crafting station.... -well, unless I'm wrong, seeing how I don't have any characters who are enchanters, but it seems to me they are redunant.))


I would like to propose that the Enchantment Basin get a little bonus/risk added into their mix.

When using an Enchantment Basin:

upon the natural success/failure roll for an item... if a natural 1 is the result... a 2nd roll is made and if the result of that SECOND roll is ALSO a natural 1 (because Double 1's DO happen) something bad happens.

And, naturally if a natural 20 is rolled during the use of the basin for an enchant... a second roll is made and if it is a SECOND natural 20, something AWESOME happens.


Examples of things that go wrong could be:

1) the enchantment basin explodes... with an area effect inflicting damage to anyone/everyone/everything in a certain radius, spawning a large "CHAR" mark on the ground where the basin once stood... where "examine" produced a description essentially letting the examiner know the charred mark is the remains of an enchanting basin that exploded.
2) the Enchanter loses double the cost of XP and is level-drained... maybe multi-levels drained
3) The Enchanter and everyone within a certain proximity are immediately teleported to some random BAD spot, wormhole-style.


Examples of AWESOME things that could happen:

1) the item that was the target of the enchant is duplicated... so if you're enchanting that keen damask blade... now *poof* you've got TWO keen damask blades!
2) If it is a weapon, in addition to the intended enchant, a bonus enchant is ADDED, such as KEEN, or "Wounding" property, or "Vampiric Regeneration" property added IN ADDITION to whatever property was being enchanted (at no additional cost)
3) if it armor, or wearable anything, in addition to the intended enchant, 10% weight reduction is added, or +20 Spell Resistance, or +10 Discipline (or some skill that is super beneficial to any/every character build)

Remember, the idea here is two 5% rolls IN A ROW to cause this to trigger...

Maybe possessing ESF:Enchanting adds a chance of avoidance of the negative stuff, and maybe increases the 2nd 5% success chance to 10% success.

There could even be a third 5% roll made to see if the success/failure was tripled? 5%, then 5%, then 5%... that's triple 1's !! ((Or Triple 20's!!!)) -it COULD happen!

Imagine the tale of something bad like the entire top floor of the Arcane Tower being set on fire due to a double-epic enchanting failure! or the opening of a rift for 24 hrs channeling Demons at the spot unleashing balors or devils or some such.

-just throwing this out there to see what other ideas/scenarios that could arise, where we could get some awesome legendary uses of our Enchanting Basins... earning them the reputation of truly being things of tremendous power, or equally tremendous danger!!

[msterswrdsmn]

I like the idea and have been tossing around a similar idea for years ever since crafting stations could be used for enchanting.

Random add on:

Permanent basins in areas of racial significance help with "runes of XXXX language" enchanting. Example: The permanent basin in myon slightly raises the chance of success when dealing with elven runes. Basins in Brog help with dwarven, etc.