Indy commanders with magic items

[BigJMoney]

Taqwus said:
Those Cyclops... that hammer was the Hammer of the Cyclops, and it's unique -- but there IS a unique forgeable 2-hd hammer with the same forge bonus. No, you don't get free forging if you give both hammers to a Nataraja mage.

You should. The chance of that happening is so rare and epic, indeed, it would make sense. I think someone who manages to get a Nataraja, and Hammer of the Cyclops and a
Hammer of the Forge Lords altogether deserves a unit that can create free items every turn. It's not like it would guarantee a win; it's just the same as a supplemental gem income. In fact, it's not economically different than having both items and giving them to two separate commanders except that it would allow you to craft things when you have no gems.

=$=

[Shovah32]

No it wouldnt because no matter what forge bonus you have, you must pay atleast 1 gem per magic level required to forge the item iirc. And since you can wish for the hammer of the cyclops it isnt impossible to get both without indies so if it did allow you to forge items freely it would be imba and widely complained about.

[Frostmourne27]

IIRC, in Dom2 a nataraja with the hammer of the cyclops and the hammer of the forge lord you forge any item for which your nataraja meets the requirements for 1 gem in each path the item needs. The only problem is that unless you have a nataraja pretender, you have to empower your nataraja an awful lot to be able to forge anything where the savings are truely meaningfull. I fail to see how it really all that imbalanced. A master smith with the hammer of the forge lord, earth boots, fire helmet, skull of flame and maybe another path booster or two, even without the forge of the ancients, still isn't that great. The only REALLY expensive items that can be forge again and agian are rings of wizardry (getting a fourty gem item for 10 gems isn't THAT much worse than getting it for 1 gem). Ok, maybe it would be nice to take an astral 9, four armed pretender, wish for BOTH of the hammers, and give all of your mages a ring of wizardry, but for thae many gems you wish for power, and cast arcane nexus, then go on a rampage accross the world. OK, you'd probably get petrified, but I don't really see how getting nearly free items is all that imbalanced.

[Graeme Dice]

Frostmourne27 said:
OK, you'd probably get petrified, but I don't really see how getting nearly free items is all that imbalanced.

Take a look at how cheaply you could make soul contracts.

[Shovah32]

And then with that nexus up you could easily wish for both hammers and for magic power, forgeing practically any magic item in the game for free (soul contracts, rings of wizardry, artifacts ect). Alot of effort to put in (in a mid+ sized game youd only need the nexus up a few turns to do this) but getting practically free items is worth it (1 free soul contract per turn adds up)

[FrankTrollman]

Forge Bonuses round in your favor. So having one guy with the Hammer of the Cyclops making a 25 gem item saves 13 gems. Having another character with the Hammer of the Forge Lord making another 25 gem item saves... 13 gems. So if you have one guy with both hammers make an item for free, that saves you 25 gems - 1 less gem than you would save if two forging mages were making items with a hammer each that turn.

So really, what's the deal?

Sure, you can make free Rings of Wizardry or something crazy, but so what? You're already using the Hammer of the Forge Lord and a Dwarven Hammer together - you're making those rings for 16 gems a piece (8 if you have the Forge of the Ancients, 6 if you have the Steel Ovens). Is it really that big a deal?

You're saving 16 gems, but you're tying up the Hammer of the Cyclops on your main guy, which means some other forger is going to have to settle for a Dwarven Hammer this turn. Your production of Skull Faces (or the like) is going to cost 18 gems instead of 12. Your production of Rings of Sorcery is going to cost 20 instead of 30. In short, while you are saving 16 gems a turn by making free Rings of Wizardry, you are also costing yourself 6-10 gems each turn.

So your grand master plan, which generally requires Construction 8, Alteration 9, and a heavily Astral four armed pretender (no four armed pretenders start with any Astral magic) is generating a total of 6 to 10 Astral Pearls a turn. And it cost over a 100 to set up. Is the fact that it can't be dispelled (only Wish stolen) enough to make it that much worse than Stellar Brilliance in terms of gem output?

---

Seriously, the only thing that justifies this is the "surprise" factor of being able to mass produce magic items that correspond to no magic type that you do. But honestly, by the time you have Contruction 8 and Alteration 9, I refuse to be surprised by anything an Astral character can bring to the field.

-Frank

[Shovah32]

But that one guy making items for free, if forging the same amount of items would save you 50 gems rather than 26.

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:
Having another character with the Hammer of the Forge Lord making another 25 gem item saves... 13 gems.

You should probably use 40 gem items, since that's what you'll want to be forging.

Sure, you can make free Rings of Wizardry or something crazy, but so what?

You'll never reallyneed more than one ring of wizardry, so that's not a big deal. The thing that is a big deal is the ability to permanently boost your blood slave income by 7 per turn for every turn that you are forging items.

So your grand master plan, which generally requires Construction 8, Alteration 9, and a heavily Astral four armed pretender (no four armed pretenders start with any Astral magic) is generating a total of 6 to 10 Astral Pearls a turn.

No, it's generating 7*n blood slaves per turn, where n is the number of turns that you've spent forging soul contracts. And since astral pearls are still evailable by the hundreds to the water nations, the cost in pearls becomes much less of an issue.