Two questions.

1. Since I've never done it, I'm making an RPG game just for practice. I'm designing different system for the moment, no content. I managed to make a quite big, text-based inventory system. The problem is I cannot think of any items to put in it. It's gonna be a standard dungeon crawl (as I said for practice, not for playing). My question is what do items do in starcraft-RPG games?

My ideas so far:
- Scrolls (wands, rings, etc.) - when used a spell is cast.
- Potions - restore energy and hp.
- Valuables - give money when sold.


And that is pretty much it. It's not that I'm lacking imagination; I just don't know how to apply it to starcraft.

2. In a dungeoncrawl, players should be able to find weapons and armors. How to make a weapon system? Surely, with starcraft's upgrade system it's not doable. Any ideas?

One of mine is to make every hero a non-attacking unit - a civilian, for example. Weapons would be additional units (Zealot=sword) which would be constantly centered at hero - MoveUnitTo(Hero). So the player would not be able to move them. I did a test and it is really awkward with computer's AI. Instead of attacking the civilian, he runs away since the weapons are invincible. Any ideas on this?

You could go with spellsword's system, give new upgrades for every sword/armor you buy, make armor protoss shields instead of armor ups so you can adjust it.

I think an invisible sprite being moved to the hero's location is exactly what you want for this, which is available here.

The peculiar thing about equipment is that they have to modify attributes which can be retrograded once they are removed. Thus, weapons that add resources in order to gain upgrades is often a poor choice. That's why you have to be imaginative. Here are a few examples of such attributes...

• Make the player's unit protoss then set its shield points to a fixed value.
  
• Use a high templar(or defiler if it's in single player) as your main unit and have it cast hallucinations on enemy units in order to attack. The damage of that attack would then be determined by a variable amount of scarabs (using the DDS system; ask if you want an explanation).
  
• If it's in single player, then make every enemy unit protoss and set their shield points to a fixed amount to determine the amount of damage they'll take.
  
• Very basic attributes also include: Your maximum hp%, the maximum amount of energy you can have and the speed at which it regenerates.
  

There are countless examples of such attributes. Just determine which ones you're willing to use then add spells/items which can modify them. Remember that the more you use, the better.

chia-tyrant: Thanks for your answer. This sprite battle system is what I was thinking of. I will try to somehow add a targeting system for it. First thing that came to my mind is to make the hero a Dark Archon and use mind control for showing sprites who to attack. This could work.