Negative light radius

[Berendol]

I just saw this on today's TOME mailing list daily digest, and I thought it would be a cool idea for here too. I'm pasting it in its entirety here:

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Message: 3
  Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 23:31:51 -0000
  From: Fang <fzpost@fangs.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: IDEA: Negative Light Radius

How about giving certain overpowered items a negative light radius flag. Typically -5. If the total light radius is 0 or below, the player is permanently blind. This can make for some interesting game play in the later levels. This can be justified by the fact many heavier helmets etc may affect your view and certain magical effects can also exist. Eg berserkesque artifacts (eg Calris, Gurthang) might cloud the bearers vision with bloodlust. Other items eg. Mormegil, Hatchet of the Night might suck light from surroundings. Stuff like Beruthil can make you sacrifice normal sight for magical sight (esp). This can lead to interesting endgame dilemmas. Does a player go for max damage or AC at the risk of being ambushed by nasty uniques? It would be kinda fun to have lev 50 chars feel their way around angband....

Good idea? Bad idea? Any comments? Should be easy to implement.

[Maegdae]

  I like this... not as much cause of the light idea itself :-/
but cause of the idea that there should be more weapons that are very powerful in some respects, yet have grave drawbacks.  (I don't mean stick aggravation on everything good).  Calris, deathwreaker, zarcuthra, razorback, doomcaller, Gorlim, Camlost, Mormegil, all have Aggravation.  Gorlim, Camlost and Mormegil all are totally cursed all over - no practical use for them.  Doomcaller is interesting, because it has an ac -50; I see it as being in such a bloodlusty blade of Chaos that doesn't really have any loyalty to its owner, and only wishes to kill violently.  (I think aggravation is way too widely used as a drawback for artifacts..)  In conclusion, let the light radius diminish!  (but maybe lose aggravation if present to balance the item)