New Species: Bodarch

[chequers]

One of my favourite species to play is Demonspawn. I'm not alone, they're the most popular species, being twice as popular as #2:
https://shalott.org/graphs/95de0b1e77db ... 09f9d.html


I think the key reasons for Ds's popularity are a) their unpredictable "evolution" and b) their unique mechanics/mutations.

While many species have unique mechanics, only Ds and Draconian (also popular) change unpredictably through the game. Given this, I think there's room for another species with a similar mechanic.

Key design goals:
* Unpredictable evolution
* Unpredictable evolution which doesn't feel like Ds or Dr
* Benefits for many play styles

Design plan:
* Allow limited player control over evolution
* Emphasize trade-offs with evolution
* Evolutions should encourage changes of play style through a game
* Evolution should encourage risky play during evolution events

Here's what I've come up with:

Bodach are a mystical human-like species, with an ever-changing affinity for what they call "aspects". Aligning themselves with an aspect grants them branded attacks and spellcasting boosts, at the expense of weakness in the aspect's opposite.

Bodarch start mundane, with noticably sub-par stats (6/6/6). sid/4. Aptitudes are flat 0.

Bodarch cannot wield branded weapons or magical staves.
Every 4 XL, Bodarch realign and gain a realignment charge. Max 1 charge. (This continues on like Felid lives after XL27.)
Realignment charge can be spent to realign on demand.

Realignment is the signature Bodarch ability. It randomly selects an aspect and applies the following effects to the player: aligned school wizardry, opposite school anti-wizardry, aligned brand on attacks, one level of opposite alignment vulnerability.

"Aligned spell wizardry" means the full effects of wizardry for a single school spell, half for a dual-school spell, one third for a three-school spell.

I have a few ideas for alignments. They could follow existing crawl convention and be quite obvious (Fire/Ice/Air/Earth) or they could be a little more exotic (Steel/Mystical/Light/Dark/...). I think the former is more boring, but easier to understand. The latter would be a somewhat species-unique mechanic, like the weirder draconian colours that would need greater explanation.

Examples:
Fire alignment: Fire magic wizardry, Ice magic anti-wizardry, Flaming brand, rC-
Steel alignment: Fighting+5, Spellcasting-5, Vorpal brand, MR-

FAQ:
Why realign *and* give a realignment charge? We want the player to unavoidably change, but to have the ability to "opt-out" of a particularly bad aspect for themselves. However it would be equally bad for the player to have easy access to their best brand, so the charges cannot be saved. I'd expect players to be in their optimal aspect for 1/3 - 1/2 of the game, in their least optimal aspect never, and in other aspects the remaining 1/2-2/3.

Why the brand stuff? Seems complicated. Without the branding, Bodarchs would have no benefit for non-spellcasting players. I considered resistances, but both Ds and Dr do that already, so it didn't seem like fertile ground. Brands are nice, because they would apply to unarmed attacks (new mechanic) and they restrict the player from using branded weapons (so no branded/artefact weapons, which is an interesting and unique conduct).

Hey! You're ripping off all the elemental species proposals made in the past. That is an
(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
elementary conclusion.

[ion_frigate]

Bodarch cannot wield branded weapons or magical staves.

Please just make branded weapons turn mundane when wielded. There's no obvious reason to cut off a LOT of good loot for this species. Good weapons are rare enough, and they are found branded with reasonable regularity.

As for artefact weapons, I suppose you could disallow them, though if it's not too much trouble code-wise, you could either suppress their brand or also turn them into mundane weapons.

Magical staves make sense to disallow, though in theory you could just turn them into mundane staves or quarterstaves.

[duvessa]

One of my favourite species to play is Demonspawn. I'm not alone, they're the most popular species, being twice as popular as #2:

I'm not sure this tells the whole story - Ds also has the highest quit rate. And Dr could be played a lot just because it's strong (Minotaur is the most won species recently and has by far the most real-time played, but almost nobody is really excited about minotaurs).

Bodarch cannot wield branded weapons or magical staves.

I know unarmed combat without transmutations or claws is generally pretty bad, but if you give it a brand and then make all good weapons literally unusable...I'm pretty sure unarmed combat is going to be what we call a no-brainer.

Every 4 XL, Bodarch realign and gain a realignment charge. Max 1 charge. (This continues on like Felid lives after XL27.)

This seems like it might result in players intentionally avoiding experience gain. There are some disadvantages to leveling up already, sure (lowered piety gain, Ds losing a nutty helmet randart, etc) but nothing like "lose your wizardry and weapon brand".
Can you realign to your current alignment? If not, then when you get your preferred alignment from the forced realignment, you'd use your realignment charge at XL11/99% to switch to an alignment other than your preferred one, so that the next forced realignment would have a chance to give you back your preferred alignment again. Obviously, that's not something that we can have.
But if you can realign to your current alignment, then the player won't never be in their worst aspect, since getting a forced realignment to your worst alignment, then using a realignment charge and getting the same alignment, is a situation that WILL happen occasionally. So I'd suggest letting realignment not change your current alignment, and acknowledging that players will be in their worst alignment sometimes.

* Evolutions should encourage changes of play style through a game

This seems overly ambitious. You're not going to change "play style" over 4 XLs. If you get stuck with ice alignment on your FE, you're not going to amnesia your fire spells and start casting ice spells with your 0 ice skill, nor are you going to start training ice skill since your alignment is just going to change again in 4 XLs anyway and make that ice skill useless again. If anything, I'm going to train even more fire skill because I have to compensate for the anti-wizardry or whatever other penalty you gave me. I don't think this would change even if you made it 9 XLs or 13 XLs, because training skills and gathering and enchanting equipment takes a long time.

Bodarch start mundane, with noticably sub-par stats (6/6/6). sid/4. Aptitudes are flat 0.

Ds is also a strictly worse human at XL1. Dr has some unique features even before maturing. I would rather have another XL1 Dr than another XL1 Ds.

"Aligned spell wizardry" means the full effects of wizardry for a single school spell, half for a dual-school spell, one third for a three-school spell.

This is unnecessary. Ice enhancers don't give Freeze twice as much spell power as Throw Icicle. It would also have a strange interaction with Spellcasting skill. Then there's the fact that some schools, particularly elemental ones, have very few single-school spells. Fire had zero until recently!
You also have to figure out how this interacts with the game's 3 other wizardry-like effects. Some other, more unique bonus, like MP cost reduction, might be more interesting.

Anti-wizardry for opposite elemental schools seems pointless to me - reasonably played characters aren't training more than one elemental skill in the first place. Anti-training was pointless, after all. The elemental spells that are useful for everyone are all either:
1. low level (ozo's armour, swiftness) so anti-wizardry is unlikely to matter much
2. deflect missiles, for which success rate barely matters, so anti-wizardry is unlikely to matter much

[chequers]

Please just make branded weapons turn mundane when wielded. There's no obvious reason to cut off a LOT of good loot for this species. Good weapons are rare enough, and they are found branded with reasonable regularity.

I considered something esoteric, like making ?brand weapon unbrand weapons for this species, but it was getting overly complex. Suppressing the brand is a possible approach, but I'm not convinced the lack of access to great weapons is necessarily a problem. I would like to try a version of this species with the conduct in at first, and then relax it later if it was too strict.

I know unarmed combat without transmutations or claws is generally pretty bad, but if you give it a brand and then make all good weapons literally unusable...I'm pretty sure unarmed combat is going to be what we call a no-brainer.

Yeah. Unarmed probably needs an aptitude nerf. RIP flat apts. I think that would be enough of a cost.

This seems like it might result in players intentionally avoiding experience gain. There are some disadvantages to leveling up already, sure (lowered piety gain, Ds losing a nutty helmet randart, etc) but nothing like "lose your wizardry and weapon brand".
Can you realign to your current alignment? If not, then when you get your preferred alignment from the forced realignment, you'd use your realignment charge at XL11/99% to switch to an alignment other than your preferred one, so that the next forced realignment would have a chance to give you back your preferred alignment again. Obviously, that's not something that we can have.
But if you can realign to your current alignment, then the player won't never be in their worst aspect, since getting a forced realignment to your worst alignment, then using a realignment charge and getting the same alignment, is a situation that WILL happen occasionally. So I'd suggest letting realignment not change your current alignment, and acknowledging that players will be in their worst alignment sometimes.

Good feedback. I think I can solve this by resetting the mandatory realignment timer if you voluntarily realign yourself. So if you get the worst alignment, you should swap out of it ASAP. There's no incentive to try "re-rolling" an average alignment though, since the risk is so high. Maybe max charges could be 2?

This seems overly ambitious. You're not going to change "play style" over 4 XLs.

Yeah. To completely change play styles you would want the player to get free amnesia for anti-enhanced spells and the ability to shift their SP around when changing aspect. A few gods offer part of that (Sif, Ash). I don't think I could justify adding that to a species though.

Having said that I don't think failing this requirement is a major issue. Red Draconian Ice Elementalists don't give up on ice magic.

You also have to figure out how this interacts with the game's 3 other wizardry-like effects. Some other, more unique bonus, like MP cost reduction, might be more interesting.

Good point.

[duvessa]

I know unarmed combat without transmutations or claws is generally pretty bad, but if you give it a brand and then make all good weapons literally unusable...I'm pretty sure unarmed combat is going to be what we call a no-brainer.

Yeah. Unarmed probably needs an aptitude nerf. RIP flat apts. I think that would be enough of a cost.

Now you need to nerf their magic too, since conjurations or summonings or necromancy or whatever is a lot better than using crappy weapons or crappy unarmed...
The OP says "Without the branding, Bodarchs would have no benefit for non-spellcasting players" but being unable to wield decent weapons is not a benefit for non-spellcasting players. It is the exact opposite of a benefit.

Maybe max charges could be 2?

Maybe I'm dense but I don't see how that would solve the problem. Wouldn't you still want to use one of your 2 realignments at 11/99% in the exact same situation for the exact same reason?

[Aean]

At least when it comes to realignments, I think it might be better if you avoided the realignment charges - unpredictable change means far less when you can opt out of a realignment you dislike at the cost of a "charge."

Instead, allow the player to realign (or prevent realignment) for some more tangible cost. MaxHP/MP, permanent malmutations, that sort of thing. You can realign yourself to a direction that's good for your gear, branch, etc., or prevent your natural realignment, but each time you do costs you something noteworthy. That way you have a balance between the evolving mutations of a Ds/Dr and the adaptability challenges you were talking about. Supremely adaptable, mutation-like advantages for the situation...but, more like DD, you pay a price for that adaptability.

[chequers]

I'm a little concerned that unlimited + big cost realignment would be difficult to balance. Giving player more control over their aspect would probably imply making aspects weaker. Also, it's an anti-goal for players to spend lots of time in one aspect, so making it theoretically possible seems like only downside.

[NhorianScum]

Not certain why Ds got brought up in the OP when this has nothing to do with DS.

The core issue here is there's no reason to ever not Spec for Air. On EE.

[Siegurt]

I would simply make them auto-realign every level, and leave the voluntary realignment at every 4/max 1 charge, and make it so realigning can never force you back into the same alignment, this gives you veto power, but not much control over exactly which aspect you remain in, you might get stuck in a bad alignment, but even if you're stuck it's only for one level.

I agree that -Wizardry is useless, even -Cast on opposite alignment spells isn't a big sacrifice (as long as you can veto), plus if you're going with primary melee, -Resist isn't much of a sacrifice to add a specific brand to all melee too.

One problem I have is that you might be encouraging people to scum for more realignments in order to get the "proper" one for a given section of the game (This is true whether you align every level or every 4, and as long as you accumulate extra ones beyond level 27) I'm not sure if there's a solution for that at all.

[tasonir]

I'm not sure I'd really want to play something that's intended to have me in the 'wrong' alignment most of the time. I mean sure, challenge races are good and all, but I'd rather be able to direct where it's going. If you do want to make it unavoidable, I'd probably remove the cold vulnerability from fire aspect (and other aspects), seems like it's just going to kill off people unlucky enough to not find any resistance rings early on?

Also it seems like, for a melee character, the trade off boils down to getting a brand, and vulnerability to the opposite one. That doesn't really make for much of a shift. I know you've already disclaimed that you're ripping off every elemental proposal ever, but when I took a stab at elementals I gave them power ups in basic stats, like the ability to gain ac, ev, str/dex/int, etc. It was more directed growth and less random things you had to adapt to, but it makes it more impactful on characters who aren't casting spells. There's actually surprisingly few "knobs" to tweak on a pure melee character. All they really care about are their weapon, ac/ev/sh, about 4 skills, and to some degree (although not too much), their stats. Tweaking mages is a bit easier, although they only add a few more variables: A few more skills, spell power, spell success, spell range, and perhaps a slightly higher emphasis on the relevant stat of int.