Sil : Suggestions

[andrey]

Some ideas for SIL:

+ Unique challenge rooms that are pre-defined and added randomly to floors.
- For example : A room full of spiders and artifact
- A huge room with a lot of archers.

+ Give even more XP for some non-slaying actions:
- Making a monster flee down the stairs (To avoid unnecessary kills)
- Slay a monster with a weapon of its slaying type (only once)
- Survive through near death experience (less than 3 HP)
- Find some special unique rooms

+ Add more races, especially ones that have initial high STR

[Patashu]

Some ideas for SIL:

+ Unique challenge rooms that are pre-defined and added randomly to floors.
- For example : A room full of spiders and artifact
- A huge room with a lot of archers.

There are already rooms like this called 'Vaults', but we could always use more! Maybe construct what they'd look like?

+ Give even more XP for some non-slaying actions:
- Making a monster flee down the stairs (To avoid unnecessary kills)

Not sure how this one would work. Would it use the same exp pool as the one for killing monsters? It would be an interesting way for more "pacifist" builds to get exp...

- Slay a monster with a weapon of its slaying type (only once)

I feel that the 100 exp for identifying a slaying ego is more or less representative of this.

- Survive through near death experience (less than 3 HP)

If this gave experience, I would let the first grey mold hit me, heal a bit if I ended up at the wrong HP, etc until I hit 1 health. If it gave experience more than once, I would keep doing this over and over.

- Find some special unique rooms

The experience gained for seeing monsters is already a good reward for exploration and facing potential danger, I'm not sure what this would add.

+ Add more races, especially ones that have initial high STR

This is not likely, due to how closely Sil follows its First Age theme - maybe as a secret unlockable?

[Derakon]

This is not likely, due to how closely Sil follows its First Age theme - maybe as a secret unlockable?

You could always play as an orc! Hideous grace, crap stealth, but they sure are strong and they could be decent-ish smiths I guess.

[Philip]

Wouldn't really make sense, though. I'm not sure anyone should be much stronger than the Noldor.

[Patashu]

Wouldn't really make sense, though. I'm not sure anyone should be much stronger than the Noldor.

Giants? Balrogs? Did ents exist yet?

[scud]

Did ents exist yet?

Yep. Aulë's missus ran them up with offcuts left over from the creation of the Two Trees.

A cursory googling suggests that giants are, um, a complete mystery.

[Nick]

The most likely candidates for new Sil races IMHO would be:

• Druedain (like the wild men that helped the Rohirrim before the battle of the Pelennor);
• Nandor/Laiquendi - the green elves of Ossiriand. Like Sindar, but stealthier and less tough
• Avari (sometimes called dark elves) - refused the original summons to Valinor, had no allegiance to the Noldor and Sindar kings
• Easterlings - the men who came to Beleriand much later than the Edain

Ents maybe, but they were more creatures of the Valar (like the eagles) than regular beings.

[debo]

Yep. Aulë's missus ran them up with offcuts left over from the creation of the Two Trees.

A cursory googling suggests that giants are, um, a complete mystery.

Yeah I think she was jealous / scared of the Naugrim when Aulë decided to play race-creator, so she made the ents.

As fun as this is to joke about, I wouldn't ever want to have a Sil with more than the races it has now. Extra houses -- maybe. There are like 7 houses of dwarves, aren't there? We could probably find an excuse to make one with base 2 str instead of base 1.

Finally -- I think races / houses are inited by config files (rather than compiled into the game program), so you could probably just add your own race and house if you want lol. (Although given my experience with C programs in the past, there may be some array sizes that need to be extended + then recompiled...)

[Psi]

Personally I don't think the game is really balanced to allow anything with a base 2 Str. You'd have to a base dex of at most -2 which would make the start horrendous.

[debo]

Personally I don't think the game is really balanced to allow anything with a base 2 Str. You'd have to a base dex of at most -2 which would make the start horrendous.

Why? Give them -1 dex and maybe -2 gra and then laugh as every trap is triggered and every monster stuns / entrances / scares you. But if they make it to momentum + a one-handed battle axe -- WHEEE

[half]

Personally I don't think the game is really balanced to allow anything with a base 2 Str. You'd have to a base dex of at most -2 which would make the start horrendous.

A bigger issue is that while Dex, Con, Gra scale up nicely with higher values, Strength doesn't. Gameplay-wise this manifests in the weapon-weights limiting the strength bonus and pushing very strong characters to a small set of weapons (though this is a bit less of an issue since the change to two handed strength limits, and the addition of Momentum). Design-wise we balanced the weapons against each other on the assumption of most strength scores being from 0 to 4. Flavourwise, it is because weapons are made for people of realistic strength. Smiths could have made them much heavier or unwieldy, but had no need to.

Note that we have even removed some strength bonuses from the game in the latest version (Rings? Some artefact bonuses?) in order to have more play at the levels of strength it was balanced around. I think it was seeing someone put a bastard sword in their off-hand because they had Str 7 that catalysed this.

[andrey]

Not sure how this one would work. Would it use the same exp pool as the one for killing monsters? It would be an interesting way for more "pacifist" builds to get exp...

Same pool sounds fine to me. Because right now I am finding myself chasing monsters hoping they will not descend down the stairs in order to avoid XP loss.

[Starhawk]

The most likely candidates for new Sil races IMHO would be:

• Druedain (like the wild men that helped the Rohirrim before the battle of the Pelennor);
• Nandor/Laiquendi - the green elves of Ossiriand. Like Sindar, but stealthier and less tough
• Avari (sometimes called dark elves) - refused the original summons to Valinor, had no allegiance to the Noldor and Sindar kings
• Easterlings - the men who came to Beleriand much later than the Edain

Ents maybe, but they were more creatures of the Valar (like the eagles) than regular beings.

But I *do* kind of like the idea mentioned upthread of playing as an orc.

You're a traitor dreaming of greatness... something like that.

[fph]

Same pool sounds fine to me. Because right now I am finding myself chasing monsters hoping they will not descend down the stairs in order to avoid HP loss.

+1. Only point is, sometimes when monsters are not aware of you they go up/down the stairs as a part of their normal "walking around" path. Would that give you experience or not? "No" sounds like the more sensible choice here, but it requires checking some additional condition (monster is afraid AND descends the stairs?).

And what happens if I encounter an unique and it flees down the stairs? Does it count as killed or not? If yes, I am being robbed of their drops. If no, woo, an exploitable way to get lots of extra XP from uniques!

[Derakon]

+1. Only point is, sometimes when monsters are not aware of you they go up/down the stairs as a part of their normal "walking around" path. Would that give you experience or not? "No" sounds like the more sensible choice here, but it requires checking some additional condition (monster is afraid AND descends the stairs?).

Only get experience for frightened non-unique monsters, I'd guess.