Spicing food

[Mr. Cromwell]

hey. This will be the part one in a series of suggestions I intend to make on the following days, time permitting.

The intention of this proposal:
1.) Introduce a way for cooks to refine their products up a single level
2.) Create a benefit for craftsmen, by introducing a dex-bonus that is dependent on the diet.
3.) Create a minor leak of money away from the system, through requiring the basic material (“salt”/”cinnamon”) to be purchased from NPCs (albeit at a very low price).

The basic idea is this:
Through the introduction of new items to the game, cooks are allowed to “boost” the status of individual food items in a manner that grants an additional, temporary dex-bonus on top of the regular constitution bonuses. This should encourage craftsmen to buy higher quality food. The amount of bonus depends on the skill required to make the item, and the diet of the user. The main point is that someone who has good diet gets more benefit out of high end foods in particular, rather than someone who has a sucky diet (who still gets some bonus, though).

The spicing of food requires the ability to make it. So whereas everyone can salt fish or ham and create “salted fish” / “salted ham” with a dexterity bonus of 1, you must be able to make a rabbit dish to correspondingly spice it. This means that a cook can spice it, the average customer cannot. Furthermore, simple food that does not require any skill to salt, would only bestow a bonus of 1 (or 0,5?) regardless of the diet and only for a limited amount of time. If that’s however considered to be contrary to the point of the spicing-idea, the non-skill spicing can be dropped altogether.

Salt and cinnamon are the two new items (other can use Ash graphic, the other clay) and are only sold by NPC’s. The cost of salt and cinnamon should be 2-5cps (I personally would prefer 2-3cps), to ensure that the price is not too much per each item. These act as the “basic” or base spice, salt for normal foods and cinnamon for “sweet” pies, cookies and cakes.

Then, either the system is left as such or another level is added, where there’s a possibility to combine these base flavours with some herbs to provide spices for more developed dishes. I’d personally have it so that basic items/dishes would only require the base spice, while more complex foods would require more (so that strawberry cake would require cinnamon + honey, for instance.. to make a “sweet strawberry cake”). The spiced foods should be fully stackable with other comparable products, to minimize irritation to players.

The maximum bonus would be 2 dex, but I presume that the skill required making the item + the level of diet could also be used to determine the duration of the bonus. The herbs(items, like honey) which are used to spice the food should however be relatively common, so that they do not end up costing too much.

[Mr. Cromwell]

@Devs/GMs

Please include a poll with the following choices:

1.) Yes! I would definitely buy/make this stuff IG!
2.) I like the idea, but it would be better if.. (specify)
3.) No, I don't like this because.. (specify)
4.) We got food IG, lolwut?
5.) Cromwell is awesome!

[Juliana D'cheyne]

5.) Cromwell is awesome!

I like the idea of food/diet affecting more then fighters, it wouldn't hurt to have some kind of special spice just for mages either.

[Mr. Cromwell]

Mh, well.. I think that would be achievable through creating two or more combinations of spices (or well, four: two sweet, and two salty ones). One would increase dex, other would increase essence or wp.. with the effects being non-cumulative. Eg, you can't have +2 Willpower and +2 dex at the same time.

(And I left out intelligence with intention, as that would be good for anyone I guess. )

[Llama]

Heh, I made a similar suggestion to this before, a few years ago

The answer I got was "There's something else you can do with herbs, its called the druid system"
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I really like this suggestion though, sounds great