#183 New race - Grue

[Justin White]

Adds a new race, notable for great close-combat ability, halved vision range, and a bad case of shoutitis. An attempt to help with the effort to further differentiate character races: the vision range change drastically changes how the player feels about ranged monsters (not as scary), exploration (much more food-consuming), and fast monsters (absolutely terrifying).

Still needs balance work and a manual entry. Additionally, I couldn't create a patch that could successfully update the tiled version for this, so that's not included in this patch. However, if you want to try it yourself, the archive has suggested character sprites.

[Justin White]

Contains patch file and suggested character sprites.

[Justin White]

Updated version of the patch makes horn mutation gradual

[Justin White]

Added a new version of the patch file. Jericho89 from IRC suggested that mutations grow in gradually so the player doesn't waltz through the early game so easily. So this patch makes the horns mutation do just that.

[Nobody/Anonymous]

this is...interesting. you might be onto something with this.

[Nobody/Anonymous]

Very very interesting.. hope to try this out some time soon.

--Eino

[Nobody/Anonymous]

The .diff didn't seem to work with the latest revision, it complained about "patch: **** malformed patch at line 198". I did some stab-at-the-dark tinkering attempts, and changing the line 177 from

@@ -3218,6 +3218,20 @@ void level_change(bool skip_attribute_in

to

@@ -3218,6 +3218,28 @@ void level_change(bool skip_attribute_in

I was able to patch it in. Compiling now..

--Eino

[Nobody/Anonymous]

Played a bit, just a couple of games in the early game. The vision range didn't affect that much yet, snakes were kind of scary, but I didn't die to any. The unarmed power seems fairly high, even while my assassin primarily used a dagger. I'm pretty low on food, that's for sure. I'm playing just my normal autoexploring, clear all style and it plays surprisingly normally so far.

High score list abbreviates the race name as "El" (elf).

--Eino

[Nobody/Anonymous]

I love the idea of playing as a Grue. However, the current implementation doesn't feel very Gruesome (I changed the adjective in my local copy :)) to me. Sorry!

The way I see it, Grues should be insanely good at Stabbing, or have you ever heard of a Grue victim that was able to fight back? In fact, both Stealth and Stabbing seem like a Grue's natural strengths. Unfortunately, the shout mutation goes completely counter to this idea, and IMHO doesn't even make a lot of sense. I'm also not a fan of the many physical mutations from the beginning (maybe cut the talons?), though I like that horns grow with the level. (Maybe that could be extended to fangs and/or claws as well.)

Btw, this is all brainstorming and not a finished concept, either.

In my opinion, Grues should be incapable of eating greenery, and they could even feed on stabbing victims alone (they'd have to have a slow metabolism for that, though). If you are killed by the ghost of a Grue, the death message could be "You have been eaten by the Grue" rather than the usual "You die..." :)

A Grue's fighting tactics are unfair and cowardly, and I'd love it if the player were naturally led to such a playing style. Other than having good aptitudes for Stealth and Stabbing, there could be a disadvantage to fighting foes aware of you, maybe in the form of a to-hit, to-dam or evasion penalty. Alternatively, Grues could be simply extremely fragile (sorta like slow, carnivorous and vision-impaired Spriggans). At the same time I'd really like shouting (which is usually a bad idea because of said disadvantages in combat) to be occasionally useful, maybe with a low-power fear effect.

Skillwise, Grues would be really good (as I already said) at Stealth and Stabbing, good in Unarmed Combat, above average in Fighting, Necromancy, Transmigrations, Translocations and Poison Magic, below average in Invocations, Spellcasting, Air Magic and Summoning, and bad in all forms of ranged combat (including Conjurations) as well as Dodging and Polearms.

I imagine them to be yet another small species, and I'd set the vision range to 5 rather than 4.

Yeah, I know this has little to do with your implementation but you got me on a roll. :)

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