I moved on from this idea, but i'm certainly not adverse to people trying it out.
I've been modding XC_Encounters and it's a neat base for gameplay changes (and i fixed a crash on reload inside of the game caused by BurningItem.itemScript - the mod says it's fixed, but it isn't really. It seems easy to trigger by collecting more than one lit candle as a low cost 2 AP DIY flame for oil or poison explosions).
Even if i can't use the story editor (crashes in wine) and thus can't access some events like OnEquipped and OnUnequip.
Forced me to think of other ways to add a permanent effect in combat, which was kind of interesting. Now i have a random unique that adds haste for the whole combat with it just in inventory and another that makes critical hits into backstabs for any character (so if you want a sneaky rogue kill eglander, cause it's in his treasure drop), as long as it's done in combat (unfortunately not from ambush)-the alternative was to use a CONSUME potion on every hit and that would not work for every first hit, which is even worse.
I also got the idea (from frustration of trying to make a Ego Draconis style 'equip set' without access to OnEquip) of instead using the craft system to 'pair up' items to boost them, so now finding a new unique wand and shield allows you to upgrade them with item skills (overcharge and melee defensive stance). I could use those skills further by making them 'unique' (wand overcharge already needs to be unique) and use the 'cancastskill' to add a bonus equipped at the start of combat, but decided not to, both because the 2 items already have that, and because that hack is unreliable (and XC_Encounters used it previously and had a lot of trouble disabling the buffs if the user switches equipment mid combat).
Similarly and after adding Samaritan buffs that were missing, i realized both the belt and Sarongs/Garments had no uniques, so i decided to turn Trethon's robes into a sarong with sheers (or maybe the magic needle I forget). That sarong can be boosted with magic books to get a item skill and you can change them around.
The craft system is more mechanically powerful than most expect. I had fun making new icons by messing around with XnView.
If you want a link to this version here it is:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BhHLb3BdgHKecIV867wo2z7fvBooDb_h/view?usp=sharingCurrent attempts to messing around is seeing if it's possible to make the shield animation not 'slide' the round shields unnaturally at the end of the holster movement and how does the engine decide to activate rot (naturally the engine will activate rot curse if you spawn one of the blackstone item shield templates, eg: by 'AddToInventory' call, but for one of mod new items i have no clue - the RootTemplates don't appear to have anything special marking that.
