New monster ideas

[fyonn]

I imagined the unicorn as being more focused. Spells 1 in 3, options are summon angels, heal-self, and teleport-to.

hmm.. perhaps more thematic and correct would be: Spells 1 in 3, options are summon angels, heal-self, and teleport-away. maybe not even the heal-self... that way, you only get glimpses of it before it disappears, leaving just an angry angel in it's wake. would probably be a bugger to kill as it never hands around.

I like the idea of a unique jelly, moves slowly or very slowly but resists everything, shoots acid and posion a lot, eats through walls, summons other jellies (effectively spawning off bits of itself) and has an absolute mass of hitpoints, potentially even more than morgoth. probably one to try and avoid as killing it would be a long slog...

I also wonder about an unique zombie (do we dare do frankenstein or is that too hokey?) or a unique hound, perhaps the alpha hound of zephyr hounds, a sooped-up aether hound who can summon any of the Z's and appears with escorts. can make up for pulling the frequency of hounds in general.

should every letter have a unique to represent it? categories currently without uniques are:

Bats
- dunno
Centipedes
- some giant armoured centipede seems reasonable
Golems
- there must be some named golems in elgend
Icky Things
- dunno
Insects
- Queen Bee? summons bee's. obviously we'd need bees too. perhaps the queen is slow and not very powerful, but she keep's summoning fast and angry bee's. drops potions (is this do-able?)
Jellies
- as above
Killer Beetles
- any legendary beetles? (no points for ringo starr...)
Mimic's
- disguised as a greater vault!
Molds
- not sure a unique mold would be interesting...
Mushrooms
- or a unique mushroom...
Rodents
- must be some famous rat..
Snakes
- *must* be some big snakes in legend. poison/paralysis bite
Worms
- dunno
Xorns/Xarens
- dunno
Yetis
- bigfoot?
Zephyr Hounds
- as above
Zombies
- as above


dave

[Pete Mack]

A unique J Midgard Serpent? Like this?

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Here's a unique J, or possibly M...and it's definitely Tolkien.

The Watcher in the Water. The one that lurked in the big pool before the gates of Moria, that grabbed Frodo's ankle.

It was, IIRC, pretty much a giant squid-y thing, tons of arms and all that. So one could sorta think of it as a hydra, at least in style: high AC, large number of melee attacks, fairly good hit points. We can't do grapple per se, so some/all of the attacks would be touch to paralyze. Put it somewhere where FA is plausible, but not semi-automatic...so maybe DL 20 as a starting depth? I suppose one could buff it up, make its attack damage high enough even without the threat of the paralysis, and move it down, but it seems like there's not that many interesting shallow-ish uniques with unusual attacks.

A more thematically appropriate 'h'...rather than the D&D drow, these would be Firstborn or Secondborn, elves or men (altho admittedly 'p' is rather heavily used as was noted), who fell under the sway of Morgoth, Sauron, or one of the other major figures. These generations are the equivalent of Golden Age heroes, so they're...really buff. Obviously, we've got Eol and Madglin as uniques in this category, but we don't necessarily have good DL60 non-uniques. Some Bolt attacks, along with good melee. Probably no summoning, OR it can summon more of its type only. Oh, and Smart...I definitely want these to have Smart.

[RogerN]

There are no monsters which use the symbol 'x'. Is that by design? Granted, it's difficult to come up with monsters that start with x... Also, only three monsters use the symbol 'X': Umber hulk, Xorn, Xaren.

[fyonn]

We can't do grapple per se, so some/all of the attacks would be touch to paralyze.

no, but teleport-to would make sense. ie a tentacle pulling you in.

[Derakon]

Teleport-to and paralyzing melee attacks are a bad combination, since they broadly mean "You must have free action before you enter depths where this monster can appear." Remember that detection is not reliable for all classes at the depths at which free action becomes important; thus, simply avoiding the creature is not necessarily feasible.

Another approach that could be taken with the Watcher is to give it melee attacks with a high chance to stun, like mystics. Though, since those require hitting with lots of dice (e.g. grand master mystics have 20d2 and 20d1 attacks), that would probably mean pushing the monster deeper into the dungeon where the character is more likely to have enough hitpoints to survive a few rounds of melee.

'x' is underutilized presumably because there's a shortage of creature types that begin with that character.

[ekolis]

There are no monsters which use the symbol 'x'. Is that by design? Granted, it's difficult to come up with monsters that start with x... Also, only three monsters use the symbol 'X': Umber hulk, Xorn, Xaren.

OK, maybe I will offer some suggestions...

Xerophile - An amorphous blob of protoplasm that lives in the desert. Its attacks drain stats and/or XP, but it is vulnerable to water and ice attacks.

Explosive rune - Doesn't really begin with X, but then, snakes don't begin with J either! A magical ward placed by a sorcerer. Attacking it sometimes causes it to explode, damaging you (if you're foolish enough to use melee) and anything else nearby. It doesn't move or attack, but does cast fire spells.

Xorvos - A unique X, a demon resembling a giant crow. Moves quickly and has powerful melee attacks, but is vulnerable to magic, especially fire.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

fyonn: I thought about teleport-to, but if a tentacle is reeling you in, you've been hit, and should therefore take damage. Cause/effect is backwards. If we have:

a) can do a tentacle melee attack against anything within 4 (?) spaces. Note that this is better to be distinct from doing any melee attack out to range 4, because now you can support a normal 'bite' attack that does LOTS of damage.

b) as a side effect of hitting, can draw @ one space closer, with Trample (so it drags @ even past weaker monsters)

we'd be golden, but I don't think that's supported.

I think it would be interesting to incorporate these, tho. The Balrogs should have this, for example (the whip that tripped Gandalf), and it would be a nice basis for a swath of non-uniques. It might well be that they're mostly relatively shallow, but...one monster I recall from old D&D is the Thessalhydra. IIRC, it had a reach attack with 3 pincers. If they hit, it had the chance to toss you into its capacious maw...where you took bite damage AND acid damage, and a LOT of it. So, I think we can get something that would belong down at DL 50+.

Also, a nice thing about this attack style is, it threatens to wreak havoc with the tactical player. So they'd be rather worrisome, and to me that's a Good Thing.

[Derakon]

Also, a nice thing about this attack style is, it threatens to wreak havoc with the tactical player. So they'd be rather worrisome, and to me that's a Good Thing.

Hang on, why is tactics a bad thing?

Having monsters that require you to use different tactics is okay, so long as they don't show up with monsters on whom those different tactics would be worse than useless (e.g. trying to fight a melee beast with shoot 'n scoot when there's a draconic quylthulg in the room). But we shouldn't be trying to obviate smart play. For example, a monster spell that summons the player and can be cast even when the player is not in LOS would be a bad idea.

On the other hand, I don't have an inherent problem with spells that can push the player around to a limited extent. After all, we already have teleport-to. That said, I think it'd be better to avoid trying to get too exotic here, if only because every new effect you dream up requires code to implement.

[fyonn]

fyonn: I thought about teleport-to, but if a tentacle is reeling you in, you've been hit, and should therefore take damage. Cause/effect is backwards.

I'm not sure I agree with this. doesn't one of the beasts tentacles wrap around the leg of frodo and he only realises when it reels him in. ie no damage caused, just pull in towards the beast where it can start being bitey!

dave

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Derakon: what I mean by the tactical player, is the one who oh-so-carefully does something to get into *just* the right spot, and he's being very reliant on that. There's nothing wrong with tactics; tactics is a Good Thing too. This effect class just makes you Pay Attention...because all of a sudden you're not in your wonderful position any more.

And yeah, I figured it wasn't in place and would need code. If it was for just 1 unique monster, I'd say...not worth it. If we like the monster, we use Teleport To, and at that point remove the paralysis attack...I agree that teleport-to and paralysis would be a bad combination. Stun could work, but I'd rather have something that's fairly different from mystics in mechanical terms. But if we can develop 8-10 monsters at various depths which can share this approach, then perhaps it's worth doing.

Question: one side change that would be required for this, is that melee attacks would need something like a Reach flag, or Max Range, or somesuch. This means monster.txt's format would change. Would this break save files? If so, then it's not something we'd do in a simple monster tweak.

fyonn: Frodo didn't take damage per se, no. IIRC, he felt something cold and slimy, but wasn't sure what it was until it started yanking. So, no, no damage in this case. But I'm taking some (hopefully mild) liberties, to get something a bit more distinctive. We've got teleport-to types all over the place. I want a grabber. A grabber inhibits movement until you can break free. The trick is the translation of that part. We could:

a) paralyze
b) slow
c) 'grapple'...invoke the stunning effects (penalties to combat and casting) but skin it differently

Teleport-to and Slow would obviously require no changes, and (along with pretty decent melee damage) would make an interesting, fairly nasty mix....

[Atarlost]

What I'd do after a successful grapple would be just taking away the ability to move, removing dex based AC, and making the monster follow you if you teleport and take you with it if it teleports. Every time you damage the monster in melee there's a chance of breaking the grapple.

[Pete Mack]

@atarlost:
The standard defense against Scary Monsters that Don't Need to be Killed isn't careful tactics in fighting, it's Teleport Other.

Be careful that you don't overdesign for the 10% case.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Pete, then we need some, fairly narrowly and carefully selected, Scary Monsters that can't be teleported away. NOT many. But perhaps a fundamental issue that has to be addressed, is that TO is the Universal Defense. We can make interesting, nicely challenging monsters, but when anyone can just tell them SHOO!...do we really get anywhere?

[fizzix]

Pete, then we need some, fairly narrowly and carefully selected, Scary Monsters that can't be teleported away. NOT many. But perhaps a fundamental issue that has to be addressed, is that TO is the Universal Defense. We can make interesting, nicely challenging monsters, but when anyone can just tell them SHOO!...do we really get anywhere?

TO goes hand in hand with summoning. If you can't TO monsters away, it's ridiculous to have the option for a single dragon to summon 8 others just like it. Summoning is monsters' overpowered attacks and TO is @'s.

Some monsters also have TO btw. They are dangerous!