A strange idea: NGAngband

[Therem Harth]

for "No Growth Angband."

- Your character does not level up or gain experience.
- Your stats and equipment affect your HP, how fast you lose them, and to what.
- Your stats are allocated at birth. Only equipment can change them after that.

So it basically all boils down to items... And by the end of the game, you hopefully have enough items of enough power to take on Morgoth. Angband meets Descent, or something like that.

Maybe also throw in some Oangband-esque specialties that can be purchased at birth. e.g. a character with the Shield Mastery specialty would get extra benefits from using a powerful shield.

Does this sound interesting, or do you guys think it would be boring? Note that I'm not offering to implement it (yet), just floating the idea...

[smileyy]

I feel like it'd be a very niche product. "Levelling up" is part of the appeal of an RPG or dungeon crawl.

IIRC, one of the early Final Fantasies had a subgame like this -- where you'd go into a deep dungeon, picking up equipment, etc., until you died. When you died, you returned to the start, and there was a subset of equipment you picked up that would be retained after death.

That might be an interesting twist to consider.

[Derakon]

IIRC, one of the early Final Fantasies had a subgame like this -- where you'd go into a deep dungeon, picking up equipment, etc., until you died. When you died, you returned to the start, and there was a subset of equipment you picked up that would be retained after death.

I believe you're thinking of Lufia 2, though there's several games that have what amounts to ironman dungeons embedded within them.

As for the original concept, awhile back I'd thought of making the level cap be, oh, somewhere around 30 or 35, so you'd hit it around 2500' or so. All your advancement after that point would have to come from gear. I admit the reason I thought of this was because I was playing a mage at the time and didn't feel like grinding from character level 46 to 50 just to minimize my failure rate on Manastorm before fighting Morgoth. That's really the only noticeable incentive to grind right now, I feel.

[UglySquirrell]

Hengband/entroband has a android race that plays kind of like this, every piece of worn equipment has a power rating that makes you stronger. Kind of an interesting twist.

[artes]

Yes, androids are really cool. I tried to play one once. The level does not depend on experience but on the equipment, so wearing a heavier armour makes one level up!