Race: Silent Spectre

[bcadren]

Oddities:

• You have an aura of Silence. Radius grows with Level. Starts at 1, +1 every 3 levels.
• You cannot learn magic. Your aura of silence prevents casting.
• You may use Invocations soundlessly; but getting god attention this way is difficult (very poor apt.) [Doing this only to not extremely restrict god choice.].
• You cannot worship magic gods (Sif Muna, Vehumet, Kikubaaqudha). All claim that their secrets are beyond your kind.
• You are intangible. EV + 4 (+ additional point every 4 levels). rSticky. rAcid.
• You are a ghost. You have all the benefits (and negatives) of being undead. You may not berserk. rPois+, rN+++, rTorm.
• You cannot be bound to one place. (Stasis doesn't work; cursed items don't bind to your skin). [Ashenzari doesn't let you worship him, as you cannot be bound.]
• You levitate. [Permaflight, no bonuses. Ignores the Airstrike malus.]
• Malmutate attempts may cause stat drain, skill drain, or polymorph you. (As you are unable to mutate or rot.)
• You can't use Unarmed (your hands aren't solid enough).
• No shoe slot. (No feet).
• You can't read scrolls.

Stats:
Str - 9 Int - 2 Dex - 13; Gain one Str or Dex every 5 Levels.
Aptitudes:

  Code:

Fighting: -2, Short: -1, Long: -2, Axes: -2, Maces: -2, Polearms: -2, Staves: -1, Slings: -1, Bows: -2, Xbows: -2, Throw: -1, Armour: -1, Dodge: 2, Stealth: 4, Shields: -1, Inv: -3*, Evo: 1, Exp: -2, HP: -1, MP: 1

[Rough Draft of a passing thought. Unsure if would be balanced. Made apts semi-low for expectation that even with NO MAGIC; the bonuses of ghosthood and permanent silence would make most the maingame easy; unsure it actually would. Hu apts to test difficulty might be appropriate.]

[tasonir]

I'd say the main problem would be that it combos too well with Trog, even if you can't berserk. Giving up spells twice doesn't hurt any more than once. Trog more or less covers this niche already. Other than that, the starting stats seem fairly high, but I guess you can do that when you dump all your int.

[bcadren]

I'd say the main problem would be that it combos too well with Trog, even if you can't berserk. Giving up spells twice doesn't hurt any more than once. Trog more or less covers this niche already. Other than that, the starting stats seem fairly high, but I guess you can do that when you dump all your int.

Honestly if any god combo is too powerful; it's going to be with Qazlal. Noisy passives and invocations inside an aura of silence. Without Berserk; Makhleb or Okawaru are probably better than Trog.

[Berder]

What I don't like about this is that it's melee-only. Crawl is already too melee-focused, considering that melee plays and feels almost exactly the same for different characters, which makes it very monotonous. Not really that much difference in 99% of the gameplay between a GrAs and a GhAK, for example.

Suggest allowing magic and giving moderate int, and maybe mostly bad magic aptitudes but a few decent ones. You're allowing scrolls and god abilities anyway, no reason not to include magic in that.

[Sar]

melee plays and feels almost exactly the same for different characters

that's an interesting claim coming from a squid fan

[Berder]

melee plays and feels almost exactly the same for different characters

that's an interesting claim coming from a squid fan

Octopode melee does feel significantly different from other races, and that's part of why I like them. They break the monotony.

[Greyr]

Fe, Fo, Sp & Na all drastically change how you should approach melee combat

[bcadren]

I understand the point though; as much as the bonuses are unique; having no magic availability would turn this gameplay-wise into something very similar to MiFi or TrMo. Since killdudes would be all melee/ranged. IDK how to rectify. I proposed that way as an 'opposite felid' but felids aren't very good either. I like the idea of a ghost race and permasilence (with or without silence immunity) seems like it could be a really cool god or racial gimmick. IDK.

EDIT: No Scrolls race (though possible) would have to also be immune to curses or have some other safeguard against them; since they couldn't remove curses without the scroll. Immunity is probably best because going all 'sacrifice one permanent MP' for Remove curse...would make curses too terrifying.

[Pollen_Golem]

Sure, that would work and make sense with this race: aura of silence, can't read books, can't read scrolls, can't be cursed. Wands and potions still work. We already have a no-potion race, why not a no-scroll race?

[bcadren]

Sure, that would work and make sense with this race: aura of silence, can't read books, can't read scrolls, can't be cursed. Wands and potions still work. We already have a no-potion race, why not a no-scroll race?

Edited into that for now.

[Berder]

Fe, Fo, Sp & Na all drastically change how you should approach melee combat

Fe and Sp, yes, they're fast ev-based fighters which is different. Naga and Fo are fairly ordinary melee races most of the time despite their oddities. After the early game, nagas play much like any other character. Fleeing long distances on foot is no longer usually a good approach for any character by that point, due to the increased number of ranged and fast enemies. Formicids can dig, but so can other characters. With any melee character you ideally want to play like a formicid 99% of the time, since having to teleport/blink means you screwed up somewhere.

[nago]

With Na I agree and with Fo mostly too except melee fighter should arguably use haste as much as possible

[Pollen_Golem]

Edit: If necessary you can make the SSBe choice even less attractive by nerfing Trog's Hand just for silent spectres, because even without berserk Trog looks better than Okawaru what with the poor aptitude in invocations. Also gozag/nemelex/ru seem to be better for silent spectres, by comparison to other races.

I quite like this idea. I wonder how long it would take a dev to make a preliminary implementation. I wonder if it's something like this:

• You have an aura of Silence. Radius grows with Level. Starts at 1, +1 every 3 levels.
  1 hour
• You cannot learn magic. Your aura of silence prevents casting.
  0.5 hour
• You may use Invocations soundlessly; but getting god attention this way is difficult (very poor apt.) [Doing this only to not extremely restrict god choice.].
  no time needed
• You cannot worship magic gods (Sif Muna, Vehumet, Kikubaaqudha). All claim that their secrets are beyond your kind.
  0.5 hour
• You are intangible. EV + 4 (+ additional point every 4 levels). rSticky. rAcid.
  0.5 hour
• You are a ghost. You have all the benefits (and negatives) of being undead. You may not berserk. rPois+, rN+++, rTorm.
  1 hour
• You cannot be bound to one place. (Stasis doesn't work; cursed items don't bind to your skin). [Ashenzari doesn't let you worship him, as you cannot be bound.]
  5 hours
• You levitate. [Permaflight, no bonuses. Ignores the Airstrike malus.]
  1.5 hours
• Malmutate attempts may cause stat drain, skill drain, or polymorph you. (As you are unable to mutate or rot.)
  2 hours
• You can't use Unarmed (your hands aren't solid enough).
  0.5 hour
• No shoe slot. (No feet).
  0.5 hour
• You can't read scrolls.
  0.5 hour

First stage playtesting and debugging: 50 hours. Total about 65 hours.

[bcadren]

Edit: If necessary you can make the SSBe choice even less attractive by nerfing Trog's Hand just for silent spectres, because even without berserk Trog looks better than Okawaru what with the poor aptitude in invocations. Also gozag/nemelex/ru seem to be better for silent spectres, by comparison to other races.

I quite like this idea. I wonder how long it would take a dev to make a preliminary implementation.

How long it takes would depend on who is doing it lowest time for someone that's written a race before; highest for someone that doesn't even know how to code; but here are the actual steps:

• Define a new race.
  • Set apts. including "unable to train". [Examine Felid code for how to make unable to train.]
  • Set recommended; normal and cannot be backgrounds.
    • Recommended: Gladiator, Assassin, Abyssal Knight
    • Normal: Berserker, Chaos Knight, Fighter, Hunter, Artificer, Wanderer
    • Cannot Be: everything else (all book starts)
  • Set which backgrounds recommend being a Silent Spectre (probably Gl and Ar).
  • Give a list of racial mutations (including items which do not currently exist).
    • For items that don't currently exist immediately comment out until you return to the main class after coding the actual mutation.
  • Set default weaknesses and resistances to match a ghoul's (including Undead holiness for the Dispel Undead Check).
• Create mutation that spawns a silence aura with radius varying with level. Examine TSO's halo code for how to create this kind of halo. It should be close to the same except varying with XL instead of Piety and being of type Silence, instead of type Halo.
• Silence already prevents casting; but since the race shouldn't be able to -learn spells- since it could never cast them create exception that makes race never gain any spell levels. Unsure if this would be an exception in the main race class or could be done from the new Silent Spectre object.
• Create mutation that allows using Invocations while silenced.
  • Correlate with the tiles button panel to not grey out the invocations buttons as unusable while silenced.
• Amend each god's code that doesn't accept Silent Spectre to not accept their worship.
• Create 'intangible' mutation with rSticky, rAcid and 4 + Mathf.Floor(level/4) EV bonus.
• Create mutation 'unbound' which makes Stasis amulets not work.
  • Add exception to curse code that checks for unbound mutation and causes cursed items to not bind if mutation exists.
• Add mutation that binds foot slot (look at talons if hard); and trades off for permaflight.
  • Add exception to either flight or Airstrike code that flight caused by this mutation doesn't have the Airstrike weakness (not sure which the change would be in).
• Create exception to Malmutate code to have different effects if race is Silent Spectre. (Or we could have a separate 'ghost' holiness check that would apply to any future ghost transmutations, etc.)
• Create mutation that forbids UC. [Set UC damage to 0 and delay to maximum UC delay always.]
  • Find the code that causes the 'really attack while wielding your stones?' messages, etc. and add that it should have a 'really attack without a weapon?' to Silent Spectres.
• Amend autopickup code to set scrolls, Amulets of Stasis and magic books to auto-off for this race.
• Amend object coloring code to grey out items the race cannot use.
• Create exceptions in Wanderer code to not give book starts or scrolls if race is Silent Spectre.
  • Consider putting any of the new mutations into normal "Bad" or "Good" pool to allow other races to get them from potions of mutation.
  • Consider putting in as a Ds possibility as well. [Levitate and intangible are both tempting.]

None of the individual code pieces is that hard...but it's a lot total to write and finding all the right places to put everything (Crawl's source is HUGE) would take awhile.

[Pollen_Golem]

Silent specters would need to have very serious stealth penalties, more than just a bad aptitude. Because right now there would be nothing to stop you from spitting fireballs at one monster while another sleeps obliviously two tiles away. Perhaps giving them a very bad stealth factor, such as 6 (same as dragon form) might suffice.

It's also interesting that Ash would be a forbidden God, since silent spectres would have a lot more to gain from Ash than other characters. Silenced, you would not be able to hear monsters shouting/roaring/hissing from out of your LOS. This is especially important when your silent aura is less than full LOS, because monsters can yell near the edge of LOS and attract monsters. You would normally have no idea how many are coming. Ash would be one way to know, but since he's forbidden, and you can't even get antennae from Xom/Jiyva/potions since you can't mutate. Perhaps this could be a living silent specter?

[KittenInMyCerealz]

They shouldn't be allowed to use blowguns either.
Silence would make needlestabbing op as hell(i think).

[byrel]

Silence already gives a -50 malus to stealth.

[Pollen_Golem]

50 stealth can be recovered quickly, by training 3.3 levels in stealth, if you're a normal species at least. The malus is really not big.

[byrel]

I think you massively underestimate the impact of 3.3 levels, given the exponential xp requirements. To put it in different terms, a 50 malus (3.3 levels) is equivalent to a scaling aptitude malus. Here's the equivalent malus at various levels of training:

Skill level, Aptitude Malus
6, -8
10, -4
15, -3
20, -2.5
25, -2

That's right; a -50 malus is equivalent to -2 aptitude at max levels, and -8 early game. That's quite relevant.

[bcadren]

-50 AND a lower base stealth size (12 instead of 15) would make it the same as Minotaurs for stealth purposes. [Hooves give Stealth- too (or at least they used to).]

[Pollen_Golem]

OK, although Minotaurs don't have hooves, and the penalty for hooves is even smaller. Thanks for doing the math!

To be honest, if Trolls had a permanent aura of silence, I'd probably train stealth with them too.

[bcadren]

OK, although Minotaurs don't have hooves, and the penalty for hooves is even smaller. Thanks for doing the math!

To be honest, if Trolls had a permanent aura of silence, I'd probably train stealth with them too.

Centaurs are the worst actually Hooves, bad apt; bad SPF. But if this was a real thing, 12 or 15 (standard) would probably suit them better than 9 (Ce, Tr, Og).