Felid (Enemies)

[bcadren]

Rough brainstorm of a few ideas for some actual spawning Felid enemies. High EV, low HP, low AC, higher than average speed. Currently thinking placing in the Lair or middle dungeon for all except the 'mummified' variant; which would roam late dungeon randomly and be found in Crypt or Tomb normally.

Felid Hunter: (natural) Invisible until you come within 3 spaces of where it is hiding (usually a plant, fungus or statue); Jump Attacks you, then self-berserks. When the berserk ends they blink away, and re-camouflage when they leave LoS.

Felid Debilitator: (natural) Focuses on Hexes. Single spell unique to them. {Confuse, Jinx, Slow, (Random 'Bolt' or 'Throw' spell; depends on placement), esc: Blink Away}. Jinx: Makes you 'unlucky'. [25% chance of failing at anything, similar to trips in shallow, water, but checked on moves, and magic as well as attacks.] doesn't check MR; instead affect you 50% of the time regardless of everything else.

Felid Summoner: (natural) Specific summons would depend on placement. Has blink away as both a normal slot and an escape slot. Unlike other summoners, constantly runs away; summoning to keep you from following it. Theoretical examples:
Stronger: {S. Natural, S. Demon, Blink Away, Blink Away, Haste, esc. Blink Away} (S. Natural being a summon similar to an enemy version of Box of Beasts)
Weaker: {S.Mammals, Blink Away, Call Imp, Cantrip, Cantrip, esc. Blink Away}

Mummified Felid: (undead) {Jinx, B.Draining, S.Torment, Heal Undead, Summon Undead, esc. Banishment} Heal Undead: heals all undead in LoS, including self; strength varies with HD. Uses a Kiku wrath tick as a death curse.

Conjurer and Necromancer variants also recommended and possible, but all I can think of in those isn't as -unique- as the aforementioned; probably being similar to an existing Orc, Spriggan, or Deep Elf depending on the placement and level.

[and into]

I have noticed and appreciate that you often come up with experimental ideas that I often think are interesting even if they don't fit into the game, bcadren, but these enemies all sound incredibly frustrating and terrible to fight against. Hunters have invisibility linked to dungeon features (so a de facto nerf to autoexplore, i.e., pretty close to an interface screw) and they jump you, berserk at high speed with high EV, then run away. This could easily cause the death of lots of characters without any input or mistakes on your part.

That's probably the worst but all of them have mechanics (like Jinx) that simply punish the player in ways that cannot be responded to tactically, and therefore are not interesting.

Felid Summoner basically reverts the excellent summoning changes that were introduced in 0.14—you focus on killing the summoner and the summons go away. Making a summoner with fleeing AI (with or without blink) is bad, the fact it is probably faster than you and can haste is even worse.

And all of them have high EV low AC low HP which is a problem in itself. ("Can I cast fireball/freezing cloud/airstrike etc.? No. --> Do I have wand of fireball? No --> Flee.")

Sorry to be harsh but if these enemies were added I would learn to code just so I could hack an offline version without them in the game.

[spudwalt]

Yeah, pretty much all of those ideas would be nasty opponents. I guess fighting them would be enjoyable for some people, but I'd rather not have to fight things that suddenly and irresistibly make me fail 25% more at everything.

I wouldn't mind seeing more enemy felids in-game, though, and some of these ideas might work if they got nerfed. The hunter felid, for example: if you removed the berserk, they'd be much more tolerable.

Mummified felids would also be pretty cool (and thematic), though again, their spell list seems overly brutal. If most or all of what they had was a watered-down version of your current Jinx ability (say, causes only antiwizardry and can be blocked with magic resistance), that would probably be plenty, considering you'd be fighting them alongside the rest of the mummies in Tomb.

[dck]

I don't understand why spawning enemies that belong to a race that translates into an enemy as poorly as Fe is desirable. Crawl has rather questionable player feedback for fighting enemies of high EV altogether and pairing it with ridiculously low HPs doesn't help matters, so even if these abilities were desirable as enemy abilities (I believe they are horrible) the enemy in question using them would be vastly improved by not being a Fe.

I also don't see why it is desirable to create enemies of all player races when in basically all existing cases it would either not matter and be just flavor or make the enemy bad for no good reason other than it belonging to a certain race arbitrarily. Good enemies that actually do interesting things and have flavor races (say Te reavers) I would not mind particularly, although they should see some moderation in how they're added since the race bit tries to trick players into believing it matters and with a high enough number of different species enemies coexisting at the same time it all just becomes diluted.

[bcadren]

I'll just start with my thought process behind each.

Hunter: Trapdoor Spider + Spriggan Berserker.
Debilitator: Very few enemies focus on Hexes, most the ones that have them have one hex and a selection of conjurations spells, this was just the idea of the opposite.
Summoner: Deep Elf Summoners are KIND OF like this, they just blink around like a blink frog instead of intelligently choosing to run or attack though.
Mummified: Would be great in the Tomb and does things the other Mummies don't. [Greater Mummies and Mummy Priests have the same spell list {Smiting (7-17), Symbol of Torment, Summon Demon, Summon Undead} with the only practical difference being that greaters have higher melee attack and HP. Something that actively heals the mummies and uses Bolt of Draining was about the best thing I could think of (Bolt of Draining would be 3d22 on a greater mummy and 3d18 on a Mummy Priest).
Blink Away as escape spell: Most player felids get some Translocations eventually (it's their best apt.)
When I said low AC, High EV: Something like one of the stronger bees 5 AC/ 14 EV. Or bump it even farther to like 0/18, but not impossibly high. If they were spawned in the Lair it'd probably have to be about 0/(6-8) to be reasonable.
On Jinx not checking MR *Shrug* I was thinking about how a lot of Hex-users never get through because of MR and someone was saying the part of new Naga ritualist's spell that checks MR almost never triggers because of their HD. I just want it to be harder to resist than the more powerful Hexes.

That said: It's a rough brainstorm, nerf it; make it more powerful, whatever. It'd depend on the placement as to what would be relevant. With the exception of the Mummified version I was thinking the only "Hexes, Actual Spells" users of the Lair, since they (as beasts) wouldn't be out of place there.

[dck]

I don't have the time to comment on the others, but I think the differences between greater mummies and priests (speed (this matters and you just ignored it), HPs and melee) are very good and make them very distinct enemies regardless of their spellset being actually the same. You don't need to make every enemy an unique snowflake with ten different unique spells, each with its own status effect; that sort of approach makes enemies feel disconnected and makes learning them tedious for the people who are not used to them. Using differences like melee capabilities, speed and overall resilience can also be interesting and is a much more organic way of making new enemies, should new enemies be an actual thing that is desirable.

[and into]

Without retreading too much of the same ground from that other thread duvessa made, I'll just add that blinking in general is overused in enemy spellsets. Sometimes it works well (Nessos is fine as a unique, blink frogs are great enemies), sometimes it works okay, sometimes it doesn't add much. But there's just way too much of it overall. I really wouldn't want to see another set of elf-like spellcasters with heavy emphasis on blinking, even if they have a few special tricks up their sleeves. (Or hidden in their fur, as it were.)

[MIC132]

Wait, I think I saw a felid unique spellcaster just yesterday.. Unfortunately I don't remember it's name, but I remember that after I killed I met it again on the same floor. Maybe it has 9 lives? Anyway it was quite unexpected and interesting to say the least.

[stickyfingers]

Natasha, 3 lives, Grinder depth.

[TeshiAlair]

Felid enemies should be immensely distracted by bats, rats, and butterflies.

EDIT: I am actually serious, I like the idea of an enemy with situational interactions.

[sgrunt]

actual spawning Felid enemies

Extremely basic question: Why do we need these?

[MIC132]

I think leaving just Natasha in might be ok. Felid enemies won't add much, but a felid unique is quite refreshing.

[khalil]

actual spawning Felid enemies

Extremely basic question: Why do we need these?

Because this game needs more high EV low health characters. After all, look how fun forest was! [/sarcasm]

[bcadren]

Because this game needs more high EV low health characters. After all, look how fun forest was! [/sarcasm]

Forest was actually my favorite branch. Was a lot of fun to burn it down.

[khalil]

Because this game needs more high EV low health characters. After all, look how fun forest was! [/sarcasm]

Forest was actually my favorite branch. Was a lot of fun to burn it down.

I had tornado up and running and I still had trouble with forest.
Think about that for a second.

[duvessa]

Forest was actually my favorite branch.

Well this line pretty much perfectly sums up bcadren.

[bcadren]

I had tornado up and running and I still had trouble with forest.
Think about that for a second.

Means it's actually a challenge for a high level mage!? Awesome. I had very little problem as a Transmuter/low-level caster.

[damiac]

I had fun in forest with fire elementalists. Burn that punk forest down.
I survived forest with melee characters. Just gotta keep swinging, they won't dodge every time.
I had no problem with forest except the extreme lack of reward for clearing it. And those stupid guys with the sleep needles... falling asleep every other turn was annoying.

I hope forest can be revisited and made more fun for everyone. It seemed like a good idea, just had some flaws. But some crawl VIPs hated it, so it got the axe.

Branch Proposal: The sundered forest. It's the enchanted forest, but mostly burned to the ground. Lots of random smoke, with angry forest spirits and fire/smoke themed enemies. Phoenixes would fit in nicely.

[and into]

But some crawl VIPs hated it, so it got the axe.

I'm sure duvessa and others will be flattered at the power you attribute to their complaining on Tavern, but I don't think that was what caused the devs to remove the Forest. Rather, the devs removal of the Forest and people ("VIPs" or not) complaining about it were caused by the same thing, which is that Forest had lots of problems.

Branch Proposal: The sundered forest. It's the enchanted forest, but mostly burned to the ground. Lots of random smoke, with angry forest spirits and fire/smoke themed enemies. Phoenixes would fit in nicely.

I like this idea, actually. It would allow for greater variety in terms of enemies, and could avoid the problems with using fire to cheese the branch, as it has alredy burned down. Thematically, I also like the idea of a branch that, rather than being some static unchanging thing, is undergoing some sort of major issue/change. (Like corrupted temple.)

[Kate]

Closing since this is way off-topic already and it's pretty unclear what these would add.