Dungeon Master Forum

If you create a magic item which uses an Attack Method that depletes the character's mana, the action still succeeds even if the character has no mana left. Is this a bug or intentional?

Good question - you could argue an answer either way.

My gut instinct says that it's a bug, and the action should not be attempted and instead there should be a brief "insufficient mana" message popped up (just like the "no ammo" one).

Any thoughts?

I think it should fail as you suggest. This allows the desinger to have long lasting items which are restricted in usage by mana instead of charges. Of course you can always knobble their stamina too - this being quite appropriate in a fantasy setting, where invoking certain magics exhausts the wizard / priest.

I don't remember exactly how FTL did this, but I think it was something like it uses up stamina when Mana is ddepleted, and even if that shouldn't be correct (don't remember anymore exactly), I suggest to handle it that way.

In DM a character with no mana could still generate the efect, but with tthe lowest value. Firestaff still invoked spells, just lower level spells. I think healing healed a value of '0' though. Cant' think of other examples of mana draing attricbutes

The 'stamina when mana is used up' i have no idea where you got that, I have never seen that.

Hmm, i thought that was in MS-DOS-PC-DM, but I said in the first place that I'm not sure anymore; the handling you describe also sounds quite reasonable.

Since DM uses so little of these objects, I think it would be reasonable to propose behaviours that would be flexible and to all designers

Item still gets used - no penalty - as DM
Item gets used, stamina drain - good for no allowing unskilled mages or no magic areas to still have means of magical healing/attacks/protection
Items cannot be used without mana - good for fully restricting magic in 'no magic' areas that drain mana (Maybe too restrictive otherwise?)

Any other suggestions?

I would have suggested that the magical item will not work at all without sufficient mana to cast it, just like you can't cast a spell if you don't have enough mana to do so.

After all, low-mana characters can't substitute stamina for mana with casting a spell of any sort, so I don't see why it should be any different just because it's a physical object and not the magic-user's own will.

Becuase the physical object could be said to contain the power

Or you may wish to create a no magic world where physical items are the onyl source of power

Etc etc... no need to remove flexibility from the engine,only add to it

But isn't that what charges are for?

Although I suppose you can use your own health/stamina/mana to "recharge" an item.

Or if you wanted to be really mean, for super-powerful items, you need to use up your actual Levels to convert them into charges. How evil would that be?

>:-) Having to spend a whole Wizard Level to restore #n charges to your Powerstaff or something...

It's what charges could possibly be for

Or levels

Or mana

Or health/stamina/strength/etc

I'd ratehr a designer decided what is best rather than have certain options cut off!