Re: (TFT) Oil lantern consumption

[Peter von Kleinsmid <pvk@oz.net>]

After several years of TFT, we decided that it'd be more balanced an 
interesting if practically all magic items had a life-span and/or chance of 
breakdown for each use. This helps both to limit economic effects, and also 
to help with balance problems from characters who are inseparable from 
their magical items (e.g. magic weapon, iron flesh ring, etc).

In the house rule we developed, most items would start out with a breakdown 
number of 18 (or the Wizard's IQ, whichever was less). Magic items would 
then have to be activated by the user, involving a roll against the 
breakdown number, a failure causing the item not to activate, and possibly 
to roll against the magic item breakdown table, with a number of dice equal 
to the amount by which the roll failed. The breakdown table was painless at 
the top, but could reduce the breakdown number of the item, so eventually 
items would wear out, and using an item with a low breakdown number would 
eventually become risky of serious malfunction. There were a few different 
classes of breakdown schedule for maintained use - I think magic weapons 
were per-swing, while something like a Light item would either be per day 
or just have a variable life-span.

Light items have several advantages over oil lamps, even if they are made 
not to last forever.

PvK
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