Race Proposal: Járnviðr Jötunn

[bcadren]

If you prefer English: Ironwood Giant, Eotin or Ettin; but we use DnD Ettin, which are less like them than our Giants. This is a weird one and would likely need a lot of ironing to be something usable, but I thought it was cool.

Originating an area so heavily contaminated by magic that the very trees are gigantic, gnarly, gnotted, gnasty and rigid as metal. The jötunn live inside these giant trees and are so contaminated with magical influence themselves that they are also both strong and...unique; randomly receiving useful strengths and deformities as they grow. From a practical standpoint; they are a HUGE race, [Size on par with Giants, Pan Lord and Dragons; larger than Trolls and Dragons]; very magic-affine, but also chaotic and permanently contaminated. This is a merge of Norse myth (traditional); Norse myth (current reconstruction practices) and a mechanic combination that would be unique to crawl.

Huge Size: -8 Size factor; can use any weapon with a shield (as long as they have at least two arms, which can seriously change with this race); too big to effectively use short blades and several other 1H weapons. You can walk through water...and Lava with enough rF.
Chaotic: 1.75x (max) damage from silver. Good gods hate them. Chaotic gods like them.

Mutations:
Start (Permanents)

• Blood Magic: MP costs are paid in HP instead. They do not have an MP pool. Magic does not cost hunger.
• Chaotic Mutation: Gains and receives mutations randomly on XP gain. Tends towards EXTREMELY mutated. You more likely to get all 3 levels of a multilevel mutation if you have a single level. All mutations received via Chaotic mutation are considered racial; they cannot be affected by any form of mutation resistance. Expect to have 15 good and 12 bad mutations by Lair and have those still remain to change.
• Slow Healing 2.
• Glow: Always backlit due to magical contamination.

Chaotic Mutations include all normal good and bad mutations and the following that only this race can have:

• Withered Arm (bad): You cannot use shields and lose Auxiliary punch attacks.
• Vestigial/Extra Arm (good): (I) Extra Ring Slot; (II) Extra Aux. Punch; (III) Can Wear two shields.
• Deformed feet (bad): Slow II, cannot use shoes.
• No neck (bad): Your head merges into your chest. [No Amulet slot.]
• Cyclopes (bad): Acc-8.
• rF-; rC-; rAcid-, etc. are added to their bad mutation pool; but I have no name for these.

Tribal mutations:
[Receives one randomly; permanent, between XL 8 and XL 14. These are based on the tribes of the Ironwood's central familial themes; I left out Hyena and Dire Bear, because I honestly had no ideas.]

• Half-Dead: The left half of your body withers away into a skeleton. rN+++, Dispel Undead affects you for half damage. Metabolism is halved; the living half of your body can still have fast metabolism. Auxiliary punch is switched to draining brand.
• Flame Hair: Your hair is replaced with a ball of fire. rF+++, rC-, Fire Magic enhancer. Enemies that melee you get Sticky Flame.
• River of Blades: You are infused with the energy of river of Cocytus. Ice Magic Enhancer. rC+++, rF-. When you stand in water, everything else takes Cold and Physical damage.
• Cult of Wolves: You can turn into giant wolf on command. Invokable transmutation into a wolf. HP+ 50%; STR+15; Berserk.
• Blood Alder: Your skin hardens like that of a tree. Slow II, AC+15. Your regen improves if you plant your roots; but this disallows you to move until your HP hits max. This can also be used for nutrition.
• Serpent: You gain the properties of the great snake. Earth Magic Enhancer. Snake tail, in addition to legs. +Constriction. rPois+.
• Spectral Deer: You are stuck between worlds. EV + 10; Stealth +50. You may throw your body parts forward [reaching brand on all melee].

Stats:
Start:
7 STR/9 INT/6 DEX
Gain:
1 STR or INT every 4 Levels.

Gains levels slowly (-1)
40% more HP than humans. (+4)
No MP. Not putting the other Apts. right now because...lots of work and not that important.

[jejorda2]

Do the Tribal mutations take away from draconians?
If you know the mutations are going to change, you don't really change your long-term planning to account for them.
Of the Tribal mutations, Half-Dead, Serpent, River of Blades, and Cult of Wolves are only meaningful in rare circumstances, while Blood Alder is bad and Flame Hair and Spectral Deer are very powerful.
What armour slots would they have?
Does spellcasting skill have any effect on hp? Sounds like no, which is probably the right way to go.

[bcadren]

1. Do the Tribal mutations take away from draconians?
2. If you know the mutations are going to change, you don't really change your long-term planning to account for them.
3. Of the Tribal mutations, Half-Dead, Serpent, River of Blades, and Cult of Wolves are only meaningful in rare circumstances, while Blood Alder is bad and Flame Hair and Spectral Deer are very powerful.
4. What armour slots would they have?
5. Does spellcasting skill have any effect on hp? Sounds like no, which is probably the right way to go.

1. Kind of; mechanically. Flavor-wise, they are based on becoming a member of the tribe...VERY roughly. For example in legend, the wolf tribe gained the ability to turn into a giant wolf by proving themselves as great hunters eating wolves they killed and the flesh of their ancestors; then becoming drunk on mead and performing a blood ritual while wearing the skin of a wolf. [Cannibalistic funeralism; blood and sex magic are all real topics to the tradition; the real versions of both are way too complicated for crawl. (No one wants to perform a bunch of mundane tasks to enchant a weapon, etc.)]
2. True. Would you suggest having a long fixed list of good and bad mutations by the end then?
3. How would you change them? Also any ideas for the Hyena or Dire Bear tribes? [More weres is lore correct, but dull.] (Half-Dead is based on the bloodline of the goddess of death (Hela), who, herself is locked permanently as half a young woman and half a skeleton). Flame Hair is actually Loki and the Lightning tribe; in some versions they literally can do that at will. [Also, EVERYWHERE outside of Marvel comics, Loki and his close family have RED HAIR.] I can ramble about where the ideas come from all day; I guess the question boils down to...boost Alder and nerf the two good ones? ...Nerf all of them except Alder? ...Boost all of them except the Lightning and Deer?
4. Unless they are affected by mutation...These:
   
   • Hat (too large for Helmet)
   • Boots
   • Amulet
   • Body Armor (Robes and Magical Armor (Dragon, Troll Leather, etc.) only).
   • Rings (2)
5. Nope.

[Klown]

Blood Magic <3 Really needs to become a mutation.

[Leafsnail]

The old demonspawn mutation system (which was basically random good(ish) mutations) was removed, and this seems more annoying than that due to the fact that you'll get teleportisis 3 pretty often. You'd almost certainly have to quit some characters, and I don't see what that part of the race is adding that Ds/Dr don't already do. I'd try and be a bit more focused, this species has way too much going on (like the "blood magic" that people decided didn't really work with Djinn).

[sgrunt]

Blood Magic: MP costs are paid in HP instead. They do not have an MP pool. Magic does not cost hunger.

As we've been over every time someone brings up this idea again, it results in too many weird special cases to be particularly viable.

Chaotic Mutation: Gains and receives mutations randomly on XP gain. Tends towards EXTREMELY mutated. You more likely to get all 3 levels of a multilevel mutation if you have a single level. All mutations received via Chaotic mutation are considered racial; they cannot be affected by any form of mutation resistance. Expect to have 15 good and 12 bad mutations by Lair and have those still remain to change.

Have you ever tried playing the game with twelve bad mutations? Do you expect this to be fun in any sense?

Slow Healing 2

The races that we have with slow healing have some means of offsetting this (chunk eating for ghouls, device recharging for deep dwarves). How

Glow: Always backlit due to magical contamination.

What exactly does this add?

bad mutations

Again, what exactly is the point of these?

Vestigial/Extra Arm

Even our four-armed insectoid race doesn't get the benefit of two shields. What makes this special enough to warrant having an exception on par with having a second head or dual wielding or...?

Tribal mutations

We already have demonspawn and draconians for all our "adapt to your mutation" needs. If there's anything to these mutations, take those ideas there first (especially demonspawn).

Not putting the other Apts. right now because...lots of work and not that important.

Aptitudes are a significant part of defining any race; saying "it's not that important" goes to show how much thought has gone into the rest of the proposal.

Please, take the time to consider how your suggestions play out and what they add to the game before making them. Developing a good sense of how the game currently plays and what would be effective to have in the game is a crucial basis for any design proposal around these parts.

EDIT: One last note: "I thought it was cool" is generally not a firm basis for design proposals.

[Sar]

I'll just say that this has approximately 0% chance to be ever added to Crawl, as the policy on races is that they should be distinct, but the thing(s) that makes them distinct should be easily explained (look at how Formicids evolved after they were added). This race has tens of little and not so little things added on the basis "the myth says so", not because they would make for interesting/fun gameplay. This is backwards game design.

[bcadren]

If you want the simple; I mean I do work them out before putting stuff out on a lot of levels; but...things it has that haven't been done before.

A HUGE race: close to zero ability to ever have good EV.
Neither large race that currently exists is magic affine; troll is the worse race for that, Ogre is a little worse than average. This is a large race that is better with magic than melee, mostly; though not necessarily.
HP as MP...but, slow healing to prevent abusing it.
Race that gets a lot of mutations; good and bad; as opposed to just good ones. [Yes I've done that, on purpose and on accident. A bunch of random mutations from eating mutagenic chunk and quaffing potions of mutation is actually not bad. Having a bunch of negatives (malmutate) and close to no positives...not so much. I've been in both those situations. This is more like Perma-Mutate can be balanced to 75% good, 25% bad or closer to 50% as originally proposed the idea is...you'd end up with like Clarity and rPois; but...Shoutitus and rElec-.] Demonspawn was made into all positive changes, which this shouldn't be; you are never FORCED to change your playstyle to good mutations, but you are to bad ones.]

And yes, Dith...player source of Umbra. I suggested that in a race long while back.

[Arrhythmia]

One of those ideas by itself could (could, as I don't think any are particularly compelling) be a starting point for a race, all four together is just a weird jumbled mess.

[spudwalt]

Uhhh, these guys are bigger than ogres and trolls, and they can still wear boots?

Also, they look like they start out taking 1.75x damage from silver. What happens when you run into that merfolk javelineer and you've got like 15 different mutations?

Yeah, not sure these guys would work. If we took one or two of these things and made them a basis for the race (I kinda like the idea of some sort of voluntary tree form, though we also have potions of lignification), then that might fly.

[duvessa]

Also, they look like they start out taking 1.75x damage from silver. What happens when you run into that merfolk javelineer and you've got like 15 different mutations?

You take 1.75x damage, because the silver damage bonus is capped.

[mikee]

Also, they look like they start out taking 1.75x damage from silver. What happens when you run into that merfolk javelineer and you've got like 15 different mutations?

You take 1.75x damage, because the silver damage bonus is capped.

Not that 1.75 would be reasonable either, though. Some people might recall that player undead used to be vulnerable to silver. It basically meant nothing for the entire game - except occasionally, a random yaktaur captain could hit you for half of your health, and you'd have no way of knowing beforehand.