Separate physical properties from mystical properties in gear

(1)

Currently, gear comes with "fixed" stats -- a specific design has various components and comes with a basic amount of stats according to its supposed tech tier.

Tying gear type and appearance to stats was common in early MMOs and generally a hindrance especially when it came to fashion. Games like SWTOR eventually moved away from it, and gear is now more or less just for fashion while stats are provided by "modifiers" to the gear.

(2)

In order to justify extending stats according to tech level, various gear embellishments like filigree or buckles and what not are allowed to add stats. However this really strains credulity when belt or thread or cloth can add an enormous amount of stats.

However we can retain this feature by using embellishments to bring out mystical properties in gear, similar to how folklore attributes special properties to various materials, e.g., https://www.learnreligions.com/magical-metals-2561486

In this way, even primitive items can be powerful. For example, a witchdoctor mask embellished with paints and animal parts may look primitive but have powerful properties activated from its various components.

In order to have this, we introduce a skill of Imbuing where the player can imbue an item with properties of the components. Each level developed in this skill allows the player to choose one material used in the construction of the item to have its Mystical Properties active. If an item does not have enough components, they can add embellishments like embroideries, belt buckles, or other touches to add minor components and thereby choose from their Mystical Properties.

In comparison to other games, Mystical Properties can roughly be equated to the various suffixes/affixes in Diablo that add additional stats to an item.

(3)

Example:

Suppose that a Shirt is Tech level 2 design and requires just Cloth.

This can be worth basically nothing as armor -- the basic protective value is +0% HP for the design.

The player could use different material like Layered Cloth or Leather or Chan Mail. This increases Weight, resulting in slightly more protection, maybe +10% HP per 1 pound.

High-Tier materials like superior cloth could also increase stats by an additional +10% HP per Tier.

The material used may have special attributes, e.g., Harpy Leather might have +% Stealth, but this is not automatically activated.

Once the required components are added, the player may add additional embellishments, e.g., Gold Buttons because Gold has +% Magic that the player wants.

Finally the player selects a number of Mystical Properties from the list of all materials used. If their Imbuing skill is 2, they can select two Mystical Properties, in this case the Stealth bonus from using Harpy Leather and the Magic Bonus from the Gold Buttons.