RPG Design: Cursed Items
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In Wizardry 8, several useful (and in some cases, freakin' powerful) magical items were cursed. The powerful sword Bloodlust comes to mind - available early in the game, it is very powerful and useful through most of the game. But - Just like D&D, you needed a spell to remove the item, and a character equipped with the weapon could not switch weapons - and the sword was useless against opponents at range. But for many players, that was worth it. I didn't use it for long - but it is one of the items in the game that I remember the best.
In EverQuest, several of the more powerful melee weapons for their level range were saddled with a small damage effect that would wound every other creature within a small radius. This sounds like a great bonus, until you recall that one of the principle combat strategies in EverQuest was to perform crowd control by temporarily stunning or mesmerizing ("mez") opponents. Any damage effect, no matter how weak, would wake them up and allow them to rejoin the combat, usually killing the enchanters that mezzed them in the first place. Another risk was that the damage effect might hit a creature outside the current room (the radius ignored walls and floors), and it would come and join the combat, usually bringing along a few friends.
This is a far more interesting to cursed items. It also has the virtue of being very appropriate for a computer RPG. It becomes no longer a simple mechanical issue of getting a curse removed, but a conscious decision of weighing the curse against the benefits. This is the kind of decision-making that is at the heart of good gameplay.
