Abstract: A Skillmaster variant (or Personality, maybe?) with a single, chosen at creation, "cheat" ability.
Gameplay Fantasy: A confused young man/woman ending up in the Angband universe with an absurd power, setting out on the quest to destroy the Serpent of Chaos as part of a quest given by the mysterious "god" (Variant Maintainer) that brought him to the world.
Something not dissimilar to the Demigod race, only, as a class. "isekai" (other world) is a genre of Japanese fiction where a typical everyman is sent to another, usually fantasy, often video game based, world, often as a result of accidental heroic death or intervention by gods or summoners. Otherworlders (Isekai protagonists) often get a "cheat" ability as part of being sent to another world. This is often some form of abusrd skill like "level up 10 times faster" or "master any and all skills," but it can also be more mundane things like "appraise/identify anything they look at" or "grow crops instantly," or even "be granted a legendary sword and the ability to use it."
The actual "cheat ability" should be selectable upon character creation, similar to magic school or what have you. Angband examples could be things like:
- Unlimited Magic" (SP is set to 9999 and does not drop)
- "Holy Blade" (start with a special, overpowered Artifact Sword, make it sentient and leveling just for fun)
- "Harem" (Start with a powerful pet human, more are spawned as the character levels, unlike normal pets they cannot despawn or permanently die)
- "Uncanny Luck" (beyond lucky, generates beneficial OOD stuff)
- "Unending growth" (Upon reaching level 50, level is set to 1 with no change to the character's stats, allowing for continued growth; stat caps are all set to 40)
Rival (Personality)
Abstract: The player has managed to provoke a rivalry in another, similar, adventurer. This "friend" follows them throughout their adventure to challenge them to fights, a constant source of conflict -- but also experience and loot.
Gameplay Fantasy: Our hero steps down into the 8th floor of the dungeon. As he does, a voice rings out. "I was wondering when you'd get here." Corpses and loot from the dungeon's monsters are scattered throughout the room the hero steps into; in the middle of it, their rival, laughing and preparing to fight.
A rival is a special Unique that only appears if this personality is chosen. This unique is, er, unique, as it spawns at whatever CL the player is, generally matching them in power and gameplay -- a melee player will have a melee rival, for example. This should be tuned so the rival is generally defeatable, but can be annoying to deal with when other things are going on. Of course, upon being defeated, the Rival simply recalls away, leaving a pile of loot -- the benefit of this choice is that while you will always have an annoying unique randomly appearing, defeating him will drop quality loot for the CL and DL you are on.
Random thoughts: The rival should first spawn in Outpost, setting up the rivalry, so to speak. "Rival floors" could spawn randomly, with monster generation disabled except for the rival; these floors would have corpses and loot laying around, the presumption being the Rival slew them all to remove distractions. The Rival could replace one or more arena bosses. The Rival could replace one or more dungeon bosses. The Rival could go friendly, or otherwise attack other monsters, especially Uniques, if they interfere with their fight with the player. Blue mage rivals should use blue magic, giving the player an option to learn it. Igor rivals could drop random frozen body parts. Ninja rivals should leave wooden statues behind when they flee.
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