Making cursed items cursed again!

     As most readers of this blog already know, I am an avid old-school roguelike fan. I spend a decent chunk of my spare time playing the classics like NetHack, Rogue, ADOM, etc. Something that always stuck with me from playing these old games, is how punishing the curses are on weapons, armor, and equipment! Personally, I loved how punishing not identifying an item was in those old games, so today I am going to introduce a new skill for players to use, called "Appraisal".

    Before I dive into that, first, this applies to a certain type of campaign only. One where players would have access to spells like Identify Spell and Remove Curse, so players can effectively identify and remove cursed items. As well as that, make sure that cursed items would not be detrimental to a character. If a -2 Cursed Shortsword would give a significant penalty to a fighter (with an example SL of 13), then don't give it to them. These cursed items are for adventurers that can take the penalty without being completely useless.

    Now, my usual system of determining the status of a weapon is as follows. A roll of a one means an object is blessed, a roll of a six means it is cursed, and a roll of a two through five means it is normal. When determining the actual level of blessed and cursed, roll 1d-3 with a minimum of one. For generating treasure itself, either see yesterday's post or grab DF8! The new skill helps with non-magical PCs trying to figure out if an item is blessed, cursed, or simply normal. It has two specializations, "Arms" and "Potions". Click "read more" to see the skills!

Appraisal (Per/H)

Defaults to Per-6 and Thaumatology-4. Both specializations default to each other at -3.

    Appraisal is the skill of deducing the quality, magical properties, and effects of items and equipment that one can find. Generally, an appraisal takes ten minutes, but you can subtract your MoS from this. A GM can opt to raise the overall quality or bless-level of an appraised item by one on a critical success. This skill has two possible specializations that you can use:

    Armaments: This specialization is specifically for armaments, which is the main usage of this skill. 

    Potions: This specialization is for determining the effects and usages of elixirs and potions. For every full decade after the potion being identified was brewed, the skill level of the user is lowered by one. If the adventurer knows the exact ingredients used in the potion, half the negative modifiers and add five to their relative skill level.