Item System

Throughout their adventures in Arpeggio, the player characters might encounter various types of useful (or not so useful) items. An item is distinct from a field object in that the latter is... well... an object in the field that generally has a Weight stat, and therefore requires an equivalent Strenth stat in order to pick up and carry around. Anything that would be classified as an item instead of an object would generally have a Weight of 0 and can not only be carried by anyone, but stored in anyone's Inventory. A normal character will have an inventory that can hold 10 items, and when items are stored in the inventory, the character does not have to worry about them getting damaged or encumbering their movement; they are effectively stored in your own private pocket dimension, even though it is conceptually merely your actual pockets. One inventory slot can hold one item, and one item is one item, regardless of size or shape. Furthermore, a normal item has a specific use, such as perhaps healing some HP or inflicting a Status Problem on an enemy in battle, and once used, the item disappears with no trace left behind (this makes sense for food items where use takes the form of eating them, but is just as true for more conceptually abstract items), making most items single-use in nature. Using an item like this in mid-battle uses up a character's turn. In contrast to item use, a field object typically cannot be destroyed, or would leave behind rubble or whatnot if it were. That being said, when an item is discarded (i.e. thrown away) instead of used, it remains sitting where it was tossed, and can potentially be found and used by other characters, including opponents of the person who discarded it; this is true even in mid-battle.

Some items function differently than the normal single-use kind. A held item typically grants a certain effect to whoever holds it so long as it occupies their inventory, and is never "used up." Other items may only be "used" under certain circumstances—for example, a key to a door might be used up in order to open that door, but until that door is found, the key continues to occupy a slot in the inventory of whoever had it. Such an item may appropriately be labeled a key item, but Arpeggio does not give characters a separate "key item inventory," requiring them to lug around such items in the regular inventory. For the most part, this is also true of other special item types: things like suits of armor (other than the one currently being worn) or ammunition packs for projectile weapons are all stored in the regular item inventory, so must compete for space with normal items, whether single-use or held. The primary exception to this is weapons: in addition to the normal 10-slot inventory, every character has a separate Weapon Inventory, which normally has 4 slots, and can only hold weapons, never any other kinds of items. Of these four weapons, only one can be equipped at once, so the other three are spares or alternate choices.

When the player characters defeat a team of enemy characters, they may loot the dead/unconscious bodies in order to acquire any items that the enemies had in their possession, including weapons. Because of this, the Maestro has to be careful about giving powerful items, weapons, armor, and so on to enemies, since the players can always acquire these if they manage to defeat the foe(s). There are some ways around this: an enemy may explode upon death, leaving no body and destroying all of the items that had been in that body's possession. A boss, miniboss, or otherwise recurring enemy may not actually die upon defeat, merely fleeing to reappear in the story later, and as such gets to keep their items. I've created a particular item called a Death Shroom which has the explosive effect, exploding automatically upon the death of the person holding it and destroying all of their other items. Whether by Death Shroom or natural bodily function, however, these kinds of explosions would be unable to destroy key items that are vital to the game's plot (unless the Maestro prefers to make that destruction part of the plot). It would also be possible to use a random item drop system where, instead of the players being able to take the specific items that the enemies were holding, they are denied these but awarded with some particular items based on some particular calculation run by the Maestro, simulating item drops in many RPG video games. I personally avoid this to maintain a better sense of realism—which is to say, to preemptively address the potential player's question of why they can't just take the item that they saw the guy holding.

But speaking of taking items, stealing is a possibility. There exists no default means for just any old character to steal an opponent's item in mid-battle, but a character may have a special attack based around doing so. This can more or less take whatever form the designer of the attack pleases, but a few hard rules apply. Firstly, attempting to steal from a target who is currently Defending will result in the chances of a successful theft being cut in half (just as Defending halves the chance of inflicting Status Problems), regardless of what the normal chances are. Secondly, under any circumstances, the chances of successfuly stealing a target's currently equipped weapon are also halved, and this stacks with Defending, meaning that stealing the equipped weapon of a Defending target is only 25% as likely as usual to work. Finally, a target's currently worn suit of armor simply, under any circumstances, cannot be stolen. It would be possible to create a special attack specifically designed to steal the currently worn suit of armor, but this would cost much more VP or MP than a normal stealing ability. Outside of battle, however, stealing would take a more role playing-based form, where things are more variable.

Along with weapons and armor, other particularly special categories of items include badges, cards, and (in a sense) vehicles. Of these, vehicles generally cannot be stored in any inventory, but the others are kept in the normal inventory as opposed to the weapon one; badges, as I've written them, don't take up inventory slots when worn, but do when not worn. Weapons, badges, and cards are not single-use in nature and cannot be destroyed, while armor and vehicles have their own HP stats and are destroyed when these run out. Check the links below for more information on these special item types.