Subject: Give (Special) Item problems and workarounds

The BoE engine has a special action to give an item to the party. The item
goes to the currently active PC when in combat mode, or the first PC 
when not. The node is widely used for mission rewards and plot development.
A similar node gives a special instead of a normal item.

There are some game problems which arise with the Give Item node. The
node handles one: if the destination PC is already carrying a lot of stuff, the
new item might put the PC over his weight limit. This can be handled
by checking the 'forced give' box, which causes the engine to ignore
weight limits. After a forced give, the PC may show something like
"Foo is now carrying 405 of 380".

However, even a forced give doesn't handle the situation when the party
has no empty slots left at all, regardless of available weight capacity.
In that case the party simply does not get the given item. Completely
full is a rare condition for a conventional 6-PC party, but quite common
for the increasing numbers of us who run one-PC parties, where slots
are very scarce.

When the given item is just neat loot, losing the item due to full slots
may be disappointing but doesn't kill the game. However, if the given item is
a plot token, which the party must have to progress through the game, then
a blocked Give is a dead end. Worse, the player can easily not notice
that although the transcript reports that something was given, nothing 
actually appeared in inventory. The player may then play on only
to find that by the time the item is actually needed he has scratched
or overwriten all pre-Give saved games, and has to quit or start over
from the beginning.

While full slots are rare, the same situation can easily occur if the
plot item is sold to a merchant before its importance is realized, or
is accidently dropped and left behind while weeding out junk treasure.

The fix for all of these problems is straightforward: make all Given
plot-critical items be Special Items and use Give Special Item instead of
Give Item. You should also do the same for any item which, while not critical,
would bum the player out if he didn't get it. It's real sad when, after
a gruesome fight, the message says "The Lost Sword of Whozis slips
from the lich's hand and clatters to the floor. You pick it up." - but
there's no Lost Sword in inventory.

There's a catch to this fix though: special items can be Used if they have
charges, but cannot be equipped by individual party members like weapons and
armor can. But there's a fix for this too. Make the Lost Sword be _both_
a special and a normal item. Give the _special_ to the party, thereby
avoiding the above problems. But make the special item be Use'able.
Its Use action will do a Give Item (not Give Special Item) of the
_normal_ Lost Sword. The party simply triggers the Use when it has an
empty slot. Overlooking the give is unlikely because because of the
player action involved.

Of course, to prevent the party from getting so many Lost Swords that they
use them for cocktail canape toothpicks, the Use has to also remove its
own special item when it gives the normal one. This makes the Use/give
a one time action, and the party can still drop or sell the normal item
once it gets it. It is tempting to have the Use do a Take Item Of Class
instead of removing itself, so that multiple Uses would still leave
the party with only one Lost Sword. However, I haven't found any way to
prevent the party from using save rooms or temporary drops in town to
get around the Take Item. If anyone knows how please post the method.

Ivan Godard <ig@solaris.kala.com>
