#3022 Monster: The Emerald Eye
Summary: An eye that increases the power of nearby monsters by turning them into progressively more hazardous type.
ex.
Orc -> Orc Warrior -> Orc knight -> Orc warlord
Kobold -> Big Kobold
Sheep -> Yak -> Death Yak -> Yaktaur
The two viable behaviors I envision are:
(1) The effect is illusory. The Eye buffs all monsters in LOS. When the eye is killed, the effect fizzles. Neutralized by clarity.
(2) The effect is honest to goodness transmutation. The eye buffs nearby monsters one at a time. The effect is permanent.
Possible Issues:
There isn't a clear monster upgrade path for many creatures. The code for the eye would need to be kept up to date as we add new monsters.
(1) Unbuffing monsters upon eye death might prove difficult to implement. (2) could very easily get out of hand.
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.
Interesting idea, seconding what krish says.
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.
Looks like SourceForge signed me out again; below comment was by me!
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
Does the emerald eye change its own appearance to that of a random eye?
@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 real monster type get revealed once the player can recognize it? (Like is already the case for shapeshifters.)
jpeg, I would hope not.