Artisan Ability: Retool

[Dorn]

The Artisan takes an existing item to a Coalition only forge. There, they can attempt to reforge an item. This can only be done once per item, ever. The process itself, costs a lot of riln. There is the fee for the forge for a small while, and a cost to make the actual attempt. The Artisan then goes through a forging check, based on their skills for the specific item (Armor/Blade/Blunt) with an additional modifier. Does the Artisan know the weapon template? If not, they take a penalty. At the end of it, the usual results. The new item, will be exactly the same in terms of template/description/metal as last time but will now have a new quality based on the final result of the Artisans work.

A little more detail...

I figure this forge/workroom would be the sort of place where the Coalition often has some of its most skilled minds/hands working along with some of its best forging gear. The riln cost for the forge, is paying the price not just for the forge itself, but access to the knowledge of the other people working there. You're basically paying to access that uber hub of other Artisans who might know all these other little things about forging, different weapons from across the lands, and so forth, that the player might not necessarily know. Is this the most elegant way of doing it? I don't know. Ideally, it would be kind of cool if an Artisan could just do this ability at their own forge but I figure this would be a great way to make it prohibitive procedure. No Dwaedn immediately running off to a friendly Artisan to get a claidhmore turned into an exquisite one and so forth without costing a fair bit.

The riln cost per item, is once again a simplified way of covering the cost of excess metals used for the reforging. If you want to get detailed, and go further, you could have the Artisan supply the materials themselves, once again, if you want them to do it at their own forges. What I'm unsure with there though, is that there are separate fields for blade/head and hilt/haft? Reworking a longsword with a cobalt blade and a pure-gold hilt should cost more than one with a tin hilt. Some items would have of course have to get ruled out due to metal. I imagine at least, cobalt though. Expensive, once again, but the Artisans are supposed to have access to these. They might not have enough to make new items, but for a fair bit of riln I'm sure they could float up enough to do some reworking. Cost should probably increase if the Artisan doesn't know the template. Could you do this to Riversteel/Bloodglass? Not the later, but maybe the first? Dunno.

Alright. Why at all have this? Simply, people find lots of neat items in boxes. Or they have items from Guilds, or they even buy items from Festivals. People do use them, but not nearly as much as they do player-crafted stuff.

Is this a bad thing? No. It is awesome that player-crafted items tend to be favored because of their quality, but why not combine the two. Have your guys neat stuff keep being used, but if a player wants to get some of the average stuff on par have them double dip.

[Tamsin]

I like the idea of upgrading equipment, especially the guild stuff. And this idea keeps Artisans relevant while making it so guild equipment doesn't fall behind!

[Noctere]

This idea has been considered in the past. It has never been fully dismissed but rather placed on the "maybe in the future" idea list.

A few thoughts to consider:
- Reforging/retooling would probably have a chance to make the item WORSE that how it was before or even completely destroy it.
- Once per item.
- It would probably take further materials to complete the process. Such as more bronze for a bronze hammer, more iron for an iron cuirass or more celestium for your super powerful longsword of celestiousness.
- Not everything can be worked on. Unique items would probably be beyond your knowledge as you would not know the secrets of their creation. Which is why they are unique. Also some things such as nethrium cannot be remade or many wood items would be a waste to remake as you might as well make a new one from scratch. And riversteel is a one shot deal which loses its properties once reforged.
- You would probably gain very little to no skill for this action due to the obvious temptation for misuse.
- Crafting recipes/templates were another thing on the "maybe in the future" list but due to the complexity of our crafting system, it would probably take a rework of the entire code. Currently the crafting code has been handled by many MANY different coders. As such, it can be confusing to work with.