Dungeon Crawl Reference

jpeg, I would hope not.

Does the real monster type get revealed once the player can recognize it?
(Like is already the case for shapeshifters.)

@nobody (03:02): Of course the Emerald Eye should appear like a random eye.
That adds some fun to it. It should appear as an Emerald Eye upon corpsing
(and leaving a poisonous, tainted, mutagenic corpse!)

@bookofjude: Sorry for a lack of clarity. LOS is the player's LOS, not the
Eye's LOS.

The leading proposal seems to be: For each monster in LOS, set it's
identity to be that of a monster of the same genus.

There are some edge cases that need to be dealt with:
Is the effect permanent as long as the eye is in LOS, or as long as the
eye is alive? If we decide that the effect should terminate when the eye
leaves LOS, should we re-randomize the monster ID when the eye appears
again? Does the effect terminate promptly when the eye drops out of LOS, or
does it wear off after a few turns? Should we tip the player off by
changing the race line of the player info?

Do the buffs have a real stat effect, or is it purely cosmetic?


For added cruelty, should the eye be invisible and shadow the player from
a distance?

To answer a question raised in IRC: I'm not proposing this as a unique.

Does the emerald eye change its own appearance to that of a random eye?

I'd like to throw in my vote for the first option as well; it would be nice
to add another use for clarity, as it seems like it's largely ignored now
(I tend to ignore it, at any rate). :)

-mong

Looks like SourceForge signed me out again; below comment was by me!

I think the first option is the best, and most excellent proposal: the
monster "buffs" or makes monsters appear to be other monsters. This is
stopped by clarity, and the monster's death. It's also possible that you
could get an MR check, though I'm not sure if that's strictly necessary.

The effect should be on all monsters in *your* line of sight, while the
monster itself is in your line of sight. I'm not sure about specific "level
ups". It would be great if fire drakes would randomly appear to be newts,
and something similar like that; dragons appearing as golden dragons,
draconians as different colours... there are so many interesting
possibilities!

However, it would probably take quite a bit of effort and changes to
monster coding to allow this.

Interesting idea, seconding what krish says.

I think it would be better to have the effect be illusory, and have the eye
show creatures as a random creature of their genus.

If you use fixed upgrades, the player simply has to learn those upgrades.

If you show them as a random creature from their genus, you can't be sure
whether an orc is a common orc or a warlord, or whether or not you will
resist a dragons breath before taking a hit.