New Unique: Sinatra the Rat King

[TeshiAlair]

A rodent of unusual size that has become leader of a pack of rats that cling to his body, tied by the tails. His bite can poison, rot, and slow, he is poison immune and has massive MR, can belch clouds of poisonous gas, and allied rats detach themselves from the cluster as you fight (similar to the Royal Jelly). On death, spawns 10 rats of various types. Found in the Lair.

Concept: Summoning uniques are pretty interesting, and one that can affect you as you fight I think is pretty cool.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king

[Ic0n]

I do like the idea a lot. Especially a Lair only Unique sounds nice too.

[stoneychips]

I kinda like it. Not sure if "massive" MR is entirely necessary (I think even moderate MR is somewhat good early in the game, or no?) but generally.

Perhaps he could have say like a 15-25% chance of wearing the Ratskin Cloak? It wouldn't add much to him in melee besides some AC (maybe would give him something to evoke even more frequent summons, if you make him linger at range too long), but it would fit the theme and it would be a nice occasional lagniappe for players, assuming he's fairly tough.

[Majang]

Why did you give him that name? It seems that Crawl wants to get away from real-people uniques nowadays.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Why did you give him that name? It seems that Crawl wants to get away from real-people uniques nowadays.

Rat Pack

[Majang]

Why did you give him that name? It seems that Crawl wants to get away from real-people uniques nowadays.

Rat Pack

Cool. Learned something today.

[Leszczynek]

Unless we're talking about hell rats, rats in Lair are cannon fodder that does absolutely nothing. Miasma bite and poison clouds make the Rat King look like something that would fit more in Swamp, but then it doesn't really feel unique enough since there are swamp dragons and the miasma rune vault already.

On the other hand maybe introducing the Royal Jelly spawning mechanic earlier to the player can be beneficial to the game. Consider making it something stronger than rats though, unless they're supposed to serve as obstacles rather than threats. While we're at it, I wonder if a combo of spammy Summon Butterflies + smite-like attack(s) (Smite/Upheaval/Airstrike/PProj etc.) would work for a monster.

[Plantissue]

I quite like the idea of a unique or monster than replicates/introduces the The Royal Jelly spawning mechanic.

[TeshiAlair]

@Leszczynek It was more intended as obstacles, and hell rats can be pretty nasty in bulk even in Lair.

[stoneychips]

You can get some pretty mean Drain off a few rats if you're not careful/well-equipped. Less defensively prepared characters like ogres can also get hit rather hard by them just from the many small, fast attacks factor.

Plus there is the matter of often having other things around to deal with. Unless it were a guaranteed vault encounter like Yiuf, I wouldn't assume that one always gets to finish the fight with a given unique alone.