Restringing equipment

[Phostan]

Now, I realize that there's inherent problems with restringing, such as someone restringing a major globe to look like a camoflauge tarp or something equally sneaky, but I have a few ideas on the matter. So here's my proposal.

Why restring eq? Well, for RP more then anything I'd think, there's nothing wrong with a Knight wearing living wood, but to picture it, he could like snazzier. So what if he could restring it to 'Knight issue battlearmor' or 'Platemail emblazoned with a cross' This not only looks snazzier, but it gives a better appearance.

So how to do this? Create a row of shops, not just one or two. One shop for restringing something as cloth, one for restringing something as metal, one for miscellaneous that doesn't come to mind right now, but I'm sure theres a section for, one for shields, one for weapons.

Then while in a shop, a command would be used to bring up a set of options. You could then select the item, and based on what bodypiece it is, a list of relevant words to describe something for that part of your body would be available, as well as words used to describe material and color and shape of said object. Now there'd have to be a few options so you could modify the order of which is stated first, so you could either have, for example, a black silk riding dress, or you could go, a riding dress made of black silk. So if there's six or seven options for different columns(a restriction of 3 or 4 so the item name isn't too long) you could either go [size] [material] [article type] or you could go [article type] [material] [color]

And then this way, people who are obsessed about appearing trendy, yet still want to retain decent wares for bootstomping people, can do so.

The big thing obviously is people hiding rares as stuff that's not rare, so a solution would to be either restrict it to commons, or to let people toggle, so they can so the original string or the restring. Or if when looking in a corpse, the item appears as the original string. Even then people could restring rares to delay people from knowing what it is exactly they want from the guys corpse, or make it look like they aren't worth killing, so I think one of the first two options would be best. Also, one wouldn't be able to make a sword look like a flail, because they'd only have a list of alternative names for swords to pick from, so people couldn't try to trick people into using the wrong weapon type.

Obviously there'd be a pricetag on this, but I would encourage it not to be ridiculous, because if it's not giving you a pk advantage, then it should be more readily available and affordable to everyone. Maybe make more basic selections cost less, and more crazily described restrings cost more? Think about it!

[Trillian]

as a human shaman, i'd like t know if my opponent's wearing full set of mals eq or mental eq without having to waste the initiative going 'con <gimp>'

[Davairus]

Not sure whether AR is ever going to have item restrings, its obviously too important to the mud's gameplay to be able to see what the opponent is wearing. Would be fun for illusionists to temporariliy 'restring' items with spells though. Seems up their ally.

[Jamus]

I think It'd have to be pretty dang expensive to restring it - maybe the higher the level of the item, the more to restring?

And what about all the abuse that'll come from it?