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I was looking for a pattern to model something I'm thinking of doing in a personal project and I was wondering if a modified version of the decorator patter would work.

Basicly I'm thinking of creating a game where the characters attributes are modified by what items they have equiped. The way that the decorator stacks it's modifications is perfect for this, however I've never seen a decorator that allows you to drop intermediate decorators, which is what would happen when items are unequiped.

Does anyone have experience using the decorator pattern in this way? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?


To explain "Intermediate decorators" if for example my base class is coffe which is decorated with milk which is decorated with sugar (using the example in Head first design patterns) milk would be an intermediate decorator as it decorates the base coffee, and is decorated by the sugar.

Yet More Clarification :)

The idea is that items change stats, I'd agree that I am shoehorning the decorator into this. I'll look into the state bag. essentially I want a single point of call for the statistics and for them to go up/down when items are equiped/unequiped.

I could just apply the modifiers to the characters stats on equiping and roll them back when unequiping. Or whenever a stat is asked for iterate through all the items and calculate the stat.

I'm just looking for feedback here, I'm aware that I might be using a chainsaw where scissors would be more appropriate...

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what do you mean by intermediate decorators? –  cruizer Oct 9 '08 at 9:28

8 Answers 8

up vote 2 down vote accepted

To be honest, it sounds like you're really trying to fit a pattern where you don't really need one, just for the sake of using a pattern. Don't be that guy.

Now, if the weapons gave the character some extra strength/stam/hp or whatever, then it might be worth considering. But it doesn't sound like you're going to be modifying (or decorating) the properties of the character at all with these.

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The Idea was for Items to be able to affect any stats. which is why I went for the decorator. –  Omar Kooheji Oct 9 '08 at 15:18

I see what you're trying to do, but one of the things to remember about patterns is that you shouldn't try to shoe-horn your design to fit a pattern. Patterns occur naturally - the behavior you're describing isn't really part of the Decorator Pattern.

With that said, I'd imagine that you're going to want to unequip a weapon via some unique ID, say:


If you'd try to fit this into the Decorator Pattern, you'd have to keep track of the currently equipped items and then, after removing a weapon, you'd have to update the reference of the object decorating the LIGHTSABER to the one LIGHTSABER is decorating. That's a lot of work.

Instead, perhaps it's worth considering @Mitch's idea and let the character's weapons be help in a property bag. Remember that a character HAS-A set of weapons. To me, it seems like composition may be the way to go.

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There are three answers to implementing propegated stats in a video game:

(1) this will satisfy any hobbist-game you will ever make (and pretty much every professional game as well):

character.GetStrength() {
  foreach(item in character.items)
    strFromItems += item.GetStrengthBonusForItems();
       foreach(buff in character.buffs)
    strFromBuffs += buff.GetStrengthBonusForBuffs();

  return character.baseStrength + strFromItems + ...;

(note the different GetStrength*() functions have nothing to do with each other)

(2) this will satisfy all games that don't have the word 'diablo' in the title:

 character.GetStr() { ... // same as above, strength is rarely queried }
 character.GetMaxHP() { 
   if (character._maxHPDirty) RecalcMaxHP();
   return character.cachedMaxHP;
 // repeat for damage, and your probably done, but profile to figure out
 // exactly which stats are important to your game

(3) else

 // changes in diablo happen very infrequently compared to queries, 
 // so up propegate to optimize queries.  Moreover, 10 people edit 
 // the stat calculation formulas so having the up propegation match 
 // the caculation w/o writing code is pretty important for robustness.

 character.OnEquip(item) {

 character.GetStrength() {

 statlist.getStat(id) {
     if (IS_FAST_STAT(id)) return cachedFastStats[id];
     return cachedStats.lookup(id);

 statlist.merge(statlist) {
      // left for an exercise for the reader

And honestly (3) was probably overkill.

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Hmmm.. I'm thinking that maybe a command pattern would be a good solution to this problem. Here's what I mean:

This is your character class:

Public class Character {

 //various character related variables and methods here...

 Command[] equipCommands;
 Command[] unequipCommands;

 public Character(Command[] p_equipCommands, Command[] p_unequipCommands) {

  equipCommands = p_equipCommands;
  unequipCommands = p_unEquipCommands;

 public void itemEquiped(int itemID) {


 public void itemUnequiped(int itemID) {


Here are some examples of commands:

public class SwordOfDragonSlayingEquipCommand implements ItemCommand{

 public void execute(Character p_character) {

  //There's probably a better way of doing this, but of the top of my head...

  //other methods that raise stats, give bonuses etc. here...

public class SwordOfDragonSlayingUnequipCommand implements ItemCommand{

 public void execute(Character p_character) {


  //other methods that lower stats, remove bonuses etc. here...

Of course, this is just a suggestion and definitely open for debate, I'm not saying that this is the best or the only way to do this...

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Just keep 2 sets of stats, your base stats and your effective stats. When you equip or unequip an item add or subtract from the effective stats where appropriate. Then you don't have to traverse your equipment list every time you want to know what your stats are.

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I know this question is old, but this might help somone else if not the OP. Read this article, to understand how this sort of thing really should be done in games (by one of the devs who worked on the Tony Hawk games):


Compose your entities/game objects. For constructing entity behaviours in games, never, NEVER rely on inheritance, or on anything that itself relies on inheritance in any way -- this includes the decorator pattern as the OP suggested. You will be tying your own hands. Composition is THE way to go.

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Are you looking for the Strategy pattern?

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Why not code the weapons as follows:

1 = chainsaw 2 = shotgun 4 = rail gun

So now the sum of 6 can only mean that the character possesses the shotgun and the rail gun. This is a fast summary so you do not have to iterate through your list of dictionary of weapons. You still need some structure to contain the weapons, but at least you'll get speed with this approach. This presupposes that you can have only one weapon of each category, but many categories simultaneously.

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