Two Birds with One Stone Suggestion

[Scott Hebert]

Not to bring up Clams again, but..

One of the key points in the whole Clam debate is the relative lack of any Water-based Rituals of effectiveness, especially compared to Astral.

Well, here's an idea for a Water ritual that would make it much more useful:

5 Water Gems
Water-2 or -3
Enchantment-5 (or so; this can be tweaked)
Ritual

Target a province. One random non-artifact removable item in that province is stolen and placed on the casting mage. If the targeted province also has a lab, then items in the nation's lab inventory is also included in the pool to be stolen.

I believe the effect of this would be to start a magical 'tug-of-war' for control of Clams. Note that, late game, this isn't very effective because of the Dome spells. However, since it takes quite a while for Clamming to get out of hand, it's quite possible to stop it from ever getting off the ground, provided you know or can guess where the Clams are located.

The whole 'lab inventory' thing is included as a countermeasure, actually. Yes, you COULD steal a Clam of Pearls from that location, OR you might get the Bane Venom Charm that he has sitting in his labs for just this sort of occasion. If it isn't already, you might want to make sure that the Bane Venom Charm is non-removable. Though, IIRC its use in the Arena, it isn't removable.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

Scott