MadROM Builder's Compendium

Item balance limits

Use these caps when reviewing gear for parity with the modern combat math. They combine the preserved builder guidance with current Ancient tier behaviour.

Level caps & principles

• Player-usable items top out at level 91 and should stay within five levels of the resetting mob unless a story exception applies.
• Reserve maximum values for lore-heavy rares and ensure extended descriptions and materials match the theme so destruction logic stays believable.

Weapons

• Average damage should roughly follow 5 + floor(level / 10) * 5. Trim dice when stacking hit/dam or other affects and mark glow/hum at the +6 ceiling.
• Keep weights near 3–20 lbs. and prices below 1,000 gold under level 50 or 2,000 overall.

Armor

• No bonus: physical AC ≤ level / 3, magic AC ≤ level / 8.
• With bonuses: physical AC ≤ level / 4, magic AC ≤ level / 10. Enforce glow/hum on max hit/dam sets.

Containers, lights & food

• Perpetual lights begin at level 20; endless drink containers wait until level 65.
• Container capacity scales 100 lbs (levels 1–10) → 150 (11–15) → 200 (16–25) → 500 (26+).
• Food values stay between 10 and 50.

Scrolls, potions & pills

• Item level ≥ spell base class level. Spell level ≤ min(item level + 10, item level × 1.4).
• Shop costs for spells above level 50 run at least 1.25× homemade scroll/potion prices.

Wands & staves

• Share the same level constraints as consumables.
• Charge caps: 1 (levels 1–15), 2 (16–25), 3 (26–40), 4 (41–60), 6 (61–91). Limit marquee spells accordingly.

Bonus ceilings

• HP/Mana/Move: choose mana or hit points per item; bracket caps: 0 (1–10), +15 (11–25), +20 (26–40), +35 (41–60), +40 (61–84), +50 (85–91). Subtract five when stacking extra affects.
• Hitroll or damroll: maxes from +0 (levels 1–9) through +6 (90–91); reduce other bonuses by one per +2 stacked and enforce glow/hum on +6 armor.
• Attributes: total stat boosts peak at +2 (1–10), +4 (11–25), +5 (26–50), +6 (51+); lower ceilings when mixing with hp/mana or hit/dam bonuses.
• Saves: best-in-slot stays at -5 for level 71+ pieces and scales down one step per bracket.

Ancient tier rolls

• Eligible gear between levels 30–91 can auto-upgrade: Elite (30–59, 10%), Runic (60–89, 5%), Ancient (90–91, 1%).
• Use ancients <tier> <vnum> to force a tier; the game validates eligibility before cloning.
• Armor/lights gain +20–120 split bonuses by tier; weapons receive flat dice bumps (+5/+5 to +25/+25).

Enchanting reference

• Failure chance starts at 25% (clamped 5–95). Caster level removes up to 50 (armor) or 75 (weapon) points; glow adds 4, hum adds 3, extra affects add 20/25.
• Catastrophic failure steps bonuses down instead of vaporising items, but +5 or higher bonuses spike failure quickly because of quadratic penalties.

Sources: rebuilt object-stat guidance plus the current enchant and Ancient tier logic in docs/gameplay_systems.html.

Area file string hygiene

Keep an eye on tilde terminators whenever you hand-edit #OBJECTS or #ROOMS blocks. The loader stops reading each keyword, long description, or extra description the moment it hits a bare ~ on its own line, then expects the very next character to belong to the following field.

• Never leave a trailing ~ or extra punctuation on the same line as the sentinel. Doing so makes the parser treat the stray character as the start of the next record, which desynchronises the area stream and corrupts everything that follows.
• If you need a literal tilde in description text, replace it with another character. The raw delimiter is not safe inside area strings.
• When you clean up errant sentinels, follow the object layout used in area/voxmad.are: description lines flow normally, then a blank line, then a single ~ line before the next field begins.

Reference: the shared fread_string helper stops at the first ~ it encounters while loading area strings, so any stray delimiter halts the read early and shifts the file pointer into the wrong place.

Achievement configuration

Each achievement lives on a single pipe-delimited line inside config/achievements.txt:

<id>|<name>|<description>|<criteria>|<threshold>|<points>

id

Lowercase identifier used internally; keep stable.

name

Player-facing title shown in help and UI.

description

Short summary surfaced in achievement listings.

criteria

One of kill_count, death_count, level, exploration_completions, all_stats_maxed, language_skill:<language>, prestige_kill:<mob>, or prestige:<identifier>.

threshold

Numeric requirement for the tracked stat (often 1 for prestige kills and boolean checks).

points

Score granted when unlocked.

Exploration milestones

Use exploration_completions to reward fully explored areas. Set the threshold to the number of distinct 100% completions required.

Physical perfection

all_stats_maxed ignores the threshold beyond confirming it is at least one. Leave the value at 1 for boolean checks.

Language mastery

Configure language_skill:<language> with the keyword accepted by the language command (for example jedi or msl). Characters unlock the achievement once the tracked proficiency reaches the threshold.

Prestige encounters

prestige_kill:<mob> normalises the supplied mob name (lowercase, punctuation removed, prefixed with prestige_) so it matches the stored counter. For non-kill counters, fall back to prestige:<identifier> and supply the exact key.

Reload the definitions with a reboot or copyover after editing. Characters keep retired achievements flagged as legacy.

Quest master loops

The modern quest system is live and starts at the player command quest. A quest giver is any NPC with the questmaster act flag; the command looks for that NPC in the player's current room.

Player flow

• quest request starts a task from the quest master in the room.
• quest info repeats the current target and rough location.
• quest talk completes briefing/check-in objectives when the player reaches the target NPC.
• quest complete pays out after a kill, recovery, rescue, or talk objective is finished.
• quest buy list shows the quest-point shop.

Current task types

• Kill: selects a live non-service NPC near the player's level and marks completion when that vnum dies.
• Recover: selects a takeable non-money object not already carried by the player and marks completion when the player gets it.
• Talk: used by the LotR story quest masters; sends the player to a specific local contact and completes with quest talk.
• Rescue: uses the staff-managed template from qtemplate when enabled and due.

Builder notes

• Use the questmaster act flag on a stable NPC if you want a room to offer quests.
• Do not put quest masters in safe/private/solitary setups that make selected targets unreachable or confusing.
• The LotR quest masters are special-cased by vnum for story talk targets; ordinary quest masters use the general kill/recover/rescue flow.
• qtemplate show is the staff starting point for the rotating rescue template. Use qtemplate area current, level, reward, schedule, victimmsg, and captormsg to tune it.

Good next use: pair a themed quest master with mudscript flavor. Let quest handle objective state/rewards, and let the NPC's .ms script make the room feel alive when players ask about local trouble.

Critter invasion sizing

Two numbers control an invasion’s cadence: the route array length and the wave_count. Each route entry spawns one mob per wave, and the wave count dictates how many full cycles fire before shutdown.

Want ten waves of thirty NPCs? Create thirty route entries (duplicates allowed when sharing paths), point the group at that array, and set wave_count to 10. The scheduler respawns the next wave after the configured delay until the count reaches zero.

static const CRITTER_ROUTE thirty_raider_routes[] = {
  {"b0", "Follow path B", 9615, 9616, 9620},
  {"b1", "Follow path B", 9615, 9616, 9620},
  /* add twenty-eight more entries */
};

static const CRITTER_GROUP critter_groups[] = {
  {"thirty_raiders", "Thirty Raiders", "Recommended levels 30-40", 35,
   thirty_raider_routes,
   sizeof thirty_raider_routes / sizeof thirty_raider_routes[0],
   10},
  /* existing groups follow */
};

Result: each wave spawns thirty mobs, waits for the respawn delay, and repeats ten times before the system shuts down.

Skill & spell availability

Use the interactive matrix to cross-check class access, earliest levels, and race-only perks without diving into tables.c. Filter by class or ability type, and expand the race primer for innate bonuses.

Data generated from the live skill table; the embedded view shows the refresh timestamp.