Race idea: clay golem

[Berder]

Clay Golem race
The basic idea is a race that can melt itself down and change its stats and skill distribution at will. This allows it to constantly take advantage of the best weapons, artifacts, or books it has found. For example, it could use polearms up until it finds a book of annihilations, and then completely respec to cast poison arrow or firestorm. Or it could be a stabber up until it finds some artifact GDA, then become a high-AC tank to tackle Zot. That could lead to some interesting games

In compensation for this powerful ability, it needs to have some big downsides. Mummy-like aptitudes are a start. Since it's made of soft clay, it has vulnerability to water - primal wave and waterstrike do extra damage, and standing in water will slowly damage it. (edit: no water vuln)

CG: Fighting: -2, Short: -2, Long: -2, Axes: -2, Maces: -2, Polearms: -2, Staves: -2, Slings: -2, Bows: -2, Xbows: -2, Throw: -2, Armour: -2, Dodge: -2, Stealth: -2, Shields: -2, UC: 0, Splcast: -1, Conj: -2, Hexes: -2, Charms: -2, Summ: -2, Nec: -2, Tloc: -2, Tmut: 0, Fire: -2, Ice: -4, Air: -2, Earth: 0, Poison: -2, Inv: -1, Evo: -1, Exp: -1, HP: 0, MP: 0
Stat gain: sid/5.
MR: +3 per level

Since they're made of clay, they get poison immunity, rot resistance, and unbreathing (like gargoyles). Unlike gargoyles they get no rN+, no rElec, no petrification resistance, no torment resistance, and no shatter/LRD vulnerability. Like gargoyles, they can't worship Yredelemnul.

Clay golems have a base Strength of 10, Intelligence of 8 and Dexterity of 7.

Special ability: Reshaping. You must be standing in water to use Reshaping (to soften the clay). (edit: you don't have to stand in water to use Reshaping) This ability takes 10 turns during which you are paralyzed. There are two phases.
In the first phase, you may choose a stat (strength, int, or dex) or skip this phase. This stat will gain up to 2d8 points, which will be randomly deducted from the other two stats (flip a coin for each point to choose which to deduct from), plus one additional stat point that will be permanently lost. During this process, stats will not be reduced below 5, and if there are not enough stat points then the process ends.
In the second phase, you may choose an ability to train and an ability to de-train, or skip this phase. This functions like the Ashenzari reskill ability, involving a 1% (edit: not 10%) loss of transferred skill experience, except it happens immediately. The amount of experience transferred is a random amount ranging from 0 to the total amount of experience in the de-trained ability.

[and into]

Not sure if I like the overlap with Ash, but there are some potentially interesting ideas here. Innate sustain abilities might be a good addition, just as it would let you use the stat shuffling to better effect without worrying about something dipping too low due to stat drain. I would be worried about this encouraging lame min-maxing sorts of behaviors, but then if the cost is sufficient (so you'd only want to use it a few times a game, at most) that might not be such a problem.

I would remove every reference to water in the proposal, though, as the only thing accomplished by those interactions with water is the addition of a bit of cuteness and a lot of annoyance.

[KoboldLord]

It is virtually never actually useful to use Ashenzari's retraining ability even if it didn't cause you to become paralyzed for 10 turns while standing on a damage tile. Re-speccing is unlikely to ever be something that you can plan for, since loot drops exist outside player control. Worse, if you don't plan out an instant re-spec with spreadsheets beforehand, you learn too late that you didn't have enough to become competent in your new role, and you can either switch back for a resulting loss of 19% of your invested xp or try to bull your way through without the abilities you thought you were getting. Spreadsheet magic is not a desirable skill to be exercising. Most decent builds aren't going to be a measurable improvement over whatever you've been using to survive so far, anyway. If your character is not dead yet, your current build is already strong and versatile.

I can't think of any circumstances where I would be happy to be playing this species. As it currently looks, it would be strictly for challenge games for masochists, but even with that in mind it probably isn't as bad as mummies currently are because water vulnerability is mostly irrelevant while confusion and fire vulnerability really, really aren't.

[Berder]

Alright, drop the "damaged by water" stuff.

It is virtually never actually useful to use Ashenzari's retraining ability even if it didn't cause you to become paralyzed for 10 turns while standing on a damage tile.

But, there are advantages: it happens immediately so you don't have trouble killing dudes while the skills are being transferred, and you get the stats to go with the new skill. I think it would be used often.

Re-speccing is unlikely to ever be something that you can plan for, since loot drops exist outside player control. Worse, if you don't plan out an instant re-spec with spreadsheets beforehand, you learn too late that you didn't have enough to become competent in your new role, and you can either switch back for a resulting loss of 19% of your invested xp or try to bull your way through without the abilities you thought you were getting.

What if there was no loss of skill XP, or a token 1% loss? That would enable you not to worry about it and just shuffle until you get what you want.

Spreadsheet magic is not a desirable skill to be exercising. Most decent builds aren't going to be a measurable improvement over whatever you've been using to survive so far, anyway. If your character is not dead yet, your current build is already strong and versatile.

But imagine you find a great artifact that you have the wrong skills for. In the early game, especially, that could be a big help. I mentioned stabbers because a stabber will often pick up conjurations or summonings to deal with unstabbable enemies - a clay golem stabber could instead just become a tank once hexes/stabbing start running into difficult enemies.

If you think the reshaping ability is not that strong then how about changing the aptitudes to more humanlike levels? Maybe just add one to all of them, like this:
CG: Fighting: -1, Short: -1, Long: -1, Axes: -1, Maces: -1, Polearms: -1, Staves: -1, Slings: -1, Bows: -1, Xbows: -1, Throw: -1, Armour: -1, Dodge: -1, Stealth: -1, Shields: -1, UC: 1, Splcast: 0, Conj: -1, Hexes: -1, Charms: -1, Summ: -1, Nec: -1, Tloc: -1, Tmut: 1, Fire: -1, Ice: -3, Air: -1, Earth: 1, Poison: -1, Inv: 1, Evo: 0, Exp: -1, HP: 1, MP: 0

[KoboldLord]

But imagine you find a great artifact that you have the wrong skills for. In the early game, especially, that could be a big help. I mentioned stabbers because a stabber will often pick up conjurations or summonings to deal with unstabbable enemies - a clay golem stabber could instead just become a tank once hexes/stabbing start running into difficult enemies.

I'm saying this doesn't happen as often as you'd think. When Ashenzari first went in, her skill transfer ability sounded really good to me, and I expected that I would use it in exactly the way you describe. After playing many games with her, I can count the number of times it has actually been useful on the fingers of one hand. This ability that has already been implemented failed to live up to my expectations, which were the same as your current expectations.

[Berder]

Well, the clay golem reshaping would be usable from XL 1, so you could actually use it in the early to mid game, unlike Ashenzari reskilling which is a 5* ability on a god where piety accumulates fairly slowly. In addition to the other advantages the CG version would have (immediate results, getting stats as well).

I have another thematic idea, just to throw it out there: Flame-Hardening. To use this ability you must be standing in a cloud of flame, and it paralyzes you for 10 turns, although you gain temporary fire immunity during this time. Afterwards you permanently gain +3 AC and rF+, and permanently lose the reshaping ability. I'm not saying the CG needs this but it would fit the clay theme.

Not sure if I like the overlap with Ash, but there are some potentially interesting ideas here. Innate sustain abilities might be a good addition, just as it would let you use the stat shuffling to better effect without worrying about something dipping too low due to stat drain. I would be worried about this encouraging lame min-maxing sorts of behaviors, but then if the cost is sufficient (so you'd only want to use it a few times a game, at most) that might not be such a problem.

I'm open to sustAb.

I would remove every reference to water in the proposal, though, as the only thing accomplished by those interactions with water is the addition of a bit of cuteness and a lot of annoyance.

I removed the water vulnerability, but I think reshaping should still involve standing in water, because it is thematically appropriate and makes no real difference to gameplay.

[and into]

I'd say that traveling back to a water square and having to remove boots of flying, etc., just in order to use an ability that requires water only because it is "thematic" (and not for balance or other reasons) would, in fact, affect game play.

[Berder]

I'd say that traveling back to a water square and having to remove boots of flying, etc., just in order to use an ability that requires water only because it is "thematic" (and not for balance or other reasons) would, in fact, affect game play.

That seems really easy to do and you'd probably only do it a couple times a game at most. Still, if anyone else thinks the same, I'll remove it.

[cerebovssquire]

Some people don't have instant travel so they need to spend a little time travelling to swamp/shoals (or manually look for a water square, which also takes some time). Interrupting the game for 30ish seconds (more if you have to fight some trivial spawns on the way to the lair branch) and a few extra keypresses can be annoying, think of travel to stashes on Lair:2. Plus, some care about turncount and it doesn't seem fair to punish them just to add a little flavour.

[Berder]

Some people don't have instant travel so they need to spend a little time travelling to swamp/shoals (or manually look for a water square, which also takes some time). Interrupting the game for 30ish seconds (more if you have to fight some trivial spawns on the way to the lair branch) and a few extra keypresses can be annoying, think of travel to stashes on Lair:2. Plus, some care about turncount and it doesn't seem fair to punish them just to add a little flavour.

Alright.

[TeshiAlair]

Here's a way easier way to do things: Have all weapon skills crosstrain for clay golems, but have an innate -2.

[Berder]

Here's a way easier way to do things: Have all weapon skills crosstrain for clay golems, but have an innate -2.

That would only work for swapping between weapons. Imagine the possibilities of Reshaping as described: you could swap between weapons and magic, or get temporary shields skill until you find a 2h weapon, or grab some throwing temporarily for shoals but put that xp back into armour skill afterwards since you want to go heavy melee, or switch from ice magic to fire magic because you found some nice books, or dump your evocations back into other skills because it's not as useful in zot against orbs of fire, or drop all your other skills in favor of fire magic/spellcasting/conjurations in order to get firestorm online much earlier, or momentarily get 20 evocations to help polymorph TRJ, etc. There are a lot of possibilities.

[Berder]

Here's an example of a game where I could have used the clay golem ability, if I was a clay golem:

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Berder/morg ... 023526.txt

I started out with melee but pumping int, planning magic later, and got Kiku. But Kiku gave me no good starter spells (no animate dead, animate skeleton, or bolt of draining) so I couldn't do necromancy at first, so I got bolt of fire and fireball as my ranged attack in mid lair. But later I did find the necromancy spells I needed, plus statue form, and they were just so much more effective that I stopped using conjurations and fire magic almost entirely. I ended the game with 16 conjurations and 13.3 fire magic, and no shield because I never had the spare XP for it. (Well, I could have gotten a shield by the end but by then I was too powerful to care). If I had the Reshaping ability, I could have gotten back all that xp and had a substantially stronger character.