I would prefer to see an actual Build phase that precedes the Description Phase.

During this phase, we actually submit ‘designs’, based upon building points.

There are 4 ‘Energy’ Statistics: Processing Power, Sexiness, Tears & Douchebaggery

There is 1 ‘Health’ Statistic: Ego

There are 5 Attributes: Offense, Defense, Luck, Frugality, Charisma

All items in the game affect one or more of the Attributes or Statistics.

Each new item gets between 1 and 1000 Building Points.

To increase an ‘Energy’ Statistic by +25 costs 1 Building point. For each additional +25 , it costs 1 more Building point than the last level. In other words, the second level costs 2 Building Points, the third level costs 3, and so on. So, to add +200 Tears to an item costs 10 Building Points.

The same applies to Attributes. One Building Point for the first +1, two Building Points for the second +2, and so on.

Ego would increase at a rate of +10, but would be otherwise identical to the Energy Statistic build.

Each type of item would have an upper limit on each Statistic or Attribute, to keep them in line with the existing items. To design an item, the first step is to select an item type (Special Items are excluded from this step, and would have to be manually activate when ET decides it’s time to let one into the system).

For example, if you choose to design a Troll Fetish, then you would have the following Maximum Values for each Attribute/Statistic:

Douchebaggery Max +700, Ego Max +100, Offense Max +15, Defense Max +40, Luck Max +7, Frugality Max +7, Charisma Max +7.

Even with 1000 points, you couldn’t max out all of these values. So, you have to actually design the item.

If we have 500 points to build our new item, we can design a few different possible Fetishes.

Design A: Douchebaggery +400, Ego +40, Offense +15, Defense +21, Luck +2

Design B: Douchebaggery +200, Ego +100, Offense +10, Defense +23, Luck +7, Frugality +7, Charisma +7

To control the overall power level of an item entering the game, all ET has to do in this situation is determine the number of building points to allow for each item. To keep the right balance, it’s simply a matter of weighting each Attribute or Statistic properly. Maybe Frugality needs to have a base cost of 2 Building Points instead of 1. Or maybe Charisma costs more for Fetishes than it does for Lingerie.

The point here really is that being able to actually design an item instead of relying upon a random program is sure to produce more innovative ideas & items. And to me, that’s the whole point of ItemBuildr.