[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by PvK:
Just increasing the gem cost might be sufficient, too. Adjust the math that was done - seems like there must be a balance point. 20 Water gems? 40? 20 Water + 10 or 20 Astral? I sort of think 20 Water would blunt the problem, but I'd want to see the resulting change in the numbers that were done before.

20 Water makes Clams Atlantis-only, really. That means it requires a Water-3 Mage to Forge (or 2 with FotA). Not only does Atlantis have the only National Water-3 Mages, it also has a 1/8 chance of having Earth-2 Mages, which enable the Earth Boots/Dwarven Hammer progression.

10W10S, OTOH, hands the Clams to Rlyeh. Not just Rlyeh, but Arco and Pythium (Arco more than Pythium, though). Atlantis doesn't lose that much, thanks to the Deep Seers. Caelum loses out, unless they play with a Pretender made to make Clams. Tien Chi would use their Jade Emperor.

Another possible solution is to have the Clam automatically graft to the forger. This sort of makes use of Gandalf's idea, but takes it further. Clearly, if Clams are unremovable (and auto-attach to Forger), then the number of Clams a given player can have, max, is twice the number of Mages able to Forge the Clam (barring bizarre Misc. slots).

A weird effect of this is to make the Robe of the Sea more useful, as a Water-1 mage with it could Forge 2 Clams, as opposed to only the one if they had a Water Bracelet.

Of course, the most radical idea I have is to simply make the Pearls unremovable (you'd probably want to do this to all items/Pretenders that auto-produce Gems/Pearls). Those items would then change from an investment opportunity to more of a battlefield-enhancer. If this was done, I'd hope to see at least one gem-producing item per path (except probably blood slaves... though that would fix the Blood Sacrifice problem).

I note that this thread has completely derailed from its original intent. Ah well; I guess it happens. Does anyone think the item-destruction ideas are good?

Scott