Race Proposal: Gold Dwarves

[File200]

Yet another race proposal! This proposal merges some older proposals for golem-type races with proposals for item-eating races, then wraps it up in a shell of dwarfy flavor. After all, what is Crawl without dwarves?

I'm still in love with the idea of tanky casters, though gargoyle now seems to fill the role of tanky conjuror. Therefore, this species will be primarily built around support casting while wearing heavy armor, doing more than just hasting yourself before fights.

Gold Dwarves

Gold Dwarves are cousins of Deep Dwarves, known for the metallic hue of their skin. Gold dwarves are naturally attuned to metal, and are partly metallic themselves (making them somewhat vulnerable to LRD). Like their cousins, gold dwarves do not regenerate naturally. Unlike their cousins, they lack damage resistance other than a natural AC bonus. Gold dwarves are unable to eat corpses or perma-food. Instead, they gain nutrition and small amounts of health by using an ability (with delay) that allows them to eat metallic items like weapons and armor. They can even eat their own supply of gold. Nutrition and health is based on the weight of the item eaten and possibly its level of enchantment, or on the amount of gold. Due to their odd metabolism, they only receive half the benefit of potions.

Because they are attuned to metal, gold dwarves receive a lower encumbrance penalty while wearing metal armor. This means they can cast spells better and have better stealth and dodging while armored. Being partly unliving, they are immune to rot and start with one level of negative energy protection. Gold dwarves are natural workers and tinkerers, and their spellcasting abilities are more inclined toward support rather than destruction. They are good with hexes, charms, and translocations, but bad with most elemental schools and conjurations.

Finally, gold dwarves have a natural defense mechanism: By sacrificing a significant portion of health and nutrition, they can produce an explosion of metal from their bodies that damages all adjacent enemies.

Aptitudes:

HP, 1
MP, 0
EXP, -1

FIGHTING, 0
SHORT_BLADES, 0
LONG_BLADES, 0
AXES, 1
MACES_FLAILS, 1
POLEARMS, -1
STAVES, -1
SLINGS, -2
BOWS, -2
CROSSBOWS, 1
THROWING, 0
ARMOUR, 4
DODGING, -1
STEALTH, -1
SHIELDS, 2
UNARMED_COMBAT, 0
SPELLCASTING, -3
CONJURATIONS, -3
HEXES, 1
CHARMS, 1
SUMMONINGS, -2
NECROMANCY, -2
TRANSLOCATIONS, 1
TRANSMUTATIONS, 0
FIRE_MAGIC, -1
ICE_MAGIC, -2
AIR_MAGIC, -4
EARTH_MAGIC, 1
POISON_MAGIC, -2
INVOCATIONS, 1
EVOCATIONS, 3

STR, 10
INT, 7
DEX, 7

The hardest part about balancing this race will be the hp recovery on the item eating. It should be high enough for the character to be viable, but not so high as to make combat easy. Also, there should be some other way to gain health, or "Stash" health so players aren't forced to backtrack several dungeon levels to eat that mace they left on the ground whenever they're injured. Perhaps they should gain a level of damage resistance at higher level, or maybe a high natural AC. Maybe they gain health just by picking up gold?

[zardo]

"Natural AC bonus," crazy Armour aptitude and anti-encumbrance? Man, pick one - the last one probably. Intrinsic AC bonuses/damage resistance especially are really not things DCSS needs any more of, and no way are you getting away with that +4. And you have to figure out how to distinguish reduced encumbrance from... higher strength.

Unnatural healing tends not to work so well either, because it pushes you so hard toward one of a few sources of renewable healing that work. Even ghouls like Makhleb altogether too much. And eating items for health sounds awful, since it means you really do want to carry every bit of junk you can, perhaps even swapping lesser junk for more enchanted junk all the time.

[File200]

"Natural AC bonus," crazy Armour aptitude and anti-encumbrance? Man, pick one - the last one probably. Intrinsic AC bonuses/damage resistance especially are really not things DCSS needs any more of, and no way are you getting away with that +4. And you have to figure out how to distinguish reduced encumbrance from... higher strength.

Unnatural healing tends not to work so well either, because it pushes you so hard toward one of a few sources of renewable healing that work. Even ghouls like Makhleb altogether too much. And eating items for health sounds awful, since it means you really do want to carry every bit of junk you can, perhaps even swapping lesser junk for more enchanted junk all the time.

I guess the AC bonus should go, and armour can go down to 2 or 3. The idea is they wear armor like their own skin, so I'm keeping the anti-encumbrance, which will be distinct from a high strength score.

It seems that the current healing mechanic is quite scummy, yes...maybe they just have natural regen as long as they're satiated.

[tasonir]

I really like the concept and the high armor aptitude, but there's definitely problems with being able to eat any metallic item for health and nutrition. I'd say scrap that entirely, and go purely to gold. Your gold is your food/healing source, and you have some natural AC to offset being able to regenerate. It's weaker than damage shaving to be sure, but you can always tweak how much hp you get back per gold. Furthermore, it would lead to an interesting use of scrolls of acquirement to gain large amounts of gold. This wouldn't be much different than scrolls of recharging being worth ~150 or so hp to deep dwarves. You'd likely get a lot more healing from the gold on a scroll of acquirement, but you take more damage (bonus AC vs damage shaving) and scrolls of acquirement are much rarer than recharging. Also, you then can't acquire armor/wands/etc.

So in short, keep them true to their name, they're gold dwarves. I like the no healing, I could go either way on no eating, it may cause issues. For example, if you are at full health, but you're hungry, do you have to eat gold just to not starve? I'm saving that to restore health, but now I'm forced to "waste" it on nutrition? etc.

General aptitudes and weapon skills look good, but I think you're far too negative on magic. Air magic should probably be bad at -2 or so, but most magic should be either -1 or 0, I'd say. Let mages play around with the gold for health mechanic. And you're lowering the armor penalities to spellcasting, so why punish people who want to cast with -2 and -3 apts?

I'd probably lower evocations to +1 or +2, so they aren't copying deep dwarves, who start with the wand of healing and evocations are kind of a major component of the race.

[File200]

I've listened to feedback from here and from a friend and decided to modify some aptitudes:

ARMOUR, 3 (+4 is reserved for extreme cases)
SPELLCASTING, -2
SUMMONINGS, -1
NECROMANCY, -1
FIRE_MAGIC, 0
ICE_MAGIC, 0
AIR_MAGIC, -2
POISON_MAGIC, 0
INVOCATIONS, 0
EVOCATIONS, 2

This should make them a little more balanced as casters, and give them access to a wider range of defensive abilities.

I really like the concept and the high armor aptitude, but there's definitely problems with being able to eat any metallic item for health and nutrition. I'd say scrap that entirely, and go purely to gold. Your gold is your food/healing source, and you have some natural AC to offset being able to regenerate. It's weaker than damage shaving to be sure, but you can always tweak how much hp you get back per gold. Furthermore, it would lead to an interesting use of scrolls of acquirement to gain large amounts of gold. This wouldn't be much different than scrolls of recharging being worth ~150 or so hp to deep dwarves. You'd likely get a lot more healing from the gold on a scroll of acquirement, but you take more damage (bonus AC vs damage shaving) and scrolls of acquirement are much rarer than recharging. Also, you then can't acquire armor/wands/etc.

So in short, keep them true to their name, they're gold dwarves. I like the no healing, I could go either way on no eating, it may cause issues. For example, if you are at full health, but you're hungry, do you have to eat gold just to not starve? I'm saving that to restore health, but now I'm forced to "waste" it on nutrition? etc.

Good points here. Eating items leads to scummy behavior no matter how you slice it. Limiting your healing to your gold supply and any wands/pots you found is an interesting and flavorful mechanic, but it might make runs too luck-based. If you find enough gold or play cautiously, then the gold isn't a limiting factor and they play like a normal race. If you don't go with a healing god and don't get good gold drops, then the game might become unwinnable. And the situation where you have full health but are hungry is also a dilemma.

Therefore I propose changing the item-eating to one of the following two systems:

1. Gold dwarves can eat food, but only receive half the nutrition. Gold is used to recover health and nutrition, with the following limitations: eating gold takes a turn, and uses up enough gold to restore 20% of your max health, or just enough to restore you to max health (whichever is less). You then start to regenerate for a number of turns until you have gained an amount of health proportional to the gold eaten. This keeps the flavor and the unique healing method, while discouraging scumming by limiting your total healing.

2. Gold dwarves cannot eat food, but regenerate health as long as they are satiated. Gold is your only food source. Eating gold is an ability that does not recover health. This proposal discourages any kind of scumming, and encourages fast play, because, like a spriggan, your food is limited. On the other hand, this is not too different from simply being a vegetarian.

There might be room for an ability that functions like deep dwarf recharging, sacrificing permanent resources for healing or nutrition.

[red_kangaroo]

2. Gold dwarves cannot eat food, but regenerate health as long as they are satiated. Gold is your only food source. Eating gold is an ability that does not recover health. This proposal discourages any kind of scumming, and encourages fast play, because, like a spriggan, your food is limited.

Sounds nice!

[TeshiAlair]

Here's a thought- if gold is too limiting, what if they can also eat jewelry in an emergency, for an immediate health bump. Yes, it would result in carrying around a few pieces of extraneous jewelry, but 1. You'd stash it as you would extra scrolls or resistance armours and 2. It might lead to some tough choices.

[jejorda2]

Perhaps:
1)Healing as deep dwarves, from potions/wands/necro/deity
2)Damage reduced by 90% when you have gold on hand
3)Gold is destroyed every time you would have taken damage
4)An ability sacrifices permanent hp to convert items into gold (Like revivification with no skill investment.)

[reaver]

Rather trying to untangle the various modifications and decide exactly what is being proposed at this point, I'll just give my one major problem:

Plenty of people in this thread have said "Ability X should not be added to the game because it makes the player do Y which isn't fun"

I have not seen a single person say "Ability X should be added to the game because it makes the player do Y which is fun."

(Also, I would have posted this to GDD. It's much more baked then most other proposals there.)

[File200]

Here's a thought- if gold is too limiting, what if they can also eat jewelry in an emergency, for an immediate health bump. Yes, it would result in carrying around a few pieces of extraneous jewelry, but 1. You'd stash it as you would extra scrolls or resistance armours and 2. It might lead to some tough choices.

This is interesting. A different kind of healing pot? It might be scummy, but it's flavorful and I like it. Maybe they can convert jewelry to gold. Healing or gold should be based on the money value of the jewelry, so you don't just eat cursed rings of hunger.

Perhaps:
1)Healing as deep dwarves, from potions/wands/necro/deity
2)Damage reduced by 90% when you have gold on hand
3)Gold is destroyed every time you would have taken damage
4)An ability sacrifices permanent hp to convert items into gold (Like revivification with no skill investment.)

This I don't like so much. What if you have a healing god, and would rather heal with them than use up your gold? But the revivification idea is workable.

...

I've been brainstorming with a friend, and decided that two questions need to be answered before this is a complete race:

1. How does the play style of this race differ from that of existing races in Crawl?

2. Do the innate traits of this race create meaningful decisions that impact your play?

I'm not sure either question has been answered satisfactorily. For the first one, the desired play style niche is "Tanky supporting caster that primarily uses melee to fight." But this niche can be filled by other races like human, demigod and high elf. Therefore, what differentiates this race from others must come from the answer to question 2.

Currently, the innate abilities of the gold dwarf aren't enough to differentiate them from humans. If you have enough gold to heal, then you heal almost all of the time, and the race then becomes like a standard-healing race. You are rewarded for taking less damage in a fight by conserving a permanent resource, but this creates another problem: it's optimal to use this permanent resource for healing, rather than its intended purpose (shopping). The "Metal Burst" ability is unique, but not enough to sustain a different play style.

To help differentiate this race from others, I'm now proposing a number of possible abilities, both passive and active, to differentiate them:

1. "Alchemy:" the ability to convert metal items on the floor in line of site into gold. This gives them more gold than other races, and rewards careful play by making it possible to shop for items if you conserve your health well. This is the most flavorful ability IMO.

2. "Costly Alchemy:" sacrifice max HP or MP to convert metal items into gold based on their value. This creates an interesting, but not necessarily fun choice. Usually, when permanent resources are at stake, the question is "If I don't do this, will I die?" If yes, do it. Otherwise, wait.

3. "Enemy Alchemy:" gold dwarves can pay a hefty health cost to partly convert enemies in LoS into gold, damaging them and causing them to drop gold when they die. Especially effective against golems and the like. You would only get a positive return when there are enough enemies in range, sort of like Vladimir's (from LoL) Tides of Blood.

4. "Jewelry Eating:" instantly convert jewelry into health, based on its store cost.

5. "Instant Recovery:" eat a HUGE amount of gold to get instant healing instead of regeneration. This ability would be much less efficient than regular gold-eating. Also serves the role of a mini-borgnjor's, because gold is a permanent resource.

6. Innate discount at shops. Gold dwarves are natural merchants. This could also be re-flavored as gaining more gold when they pick it up.

7. Innate rPois. GD are partly metallic, so this ability is flavorful and helps them survive the early game.

8. Innate Midas Touch: attacking an enemy in melee partially turns them or their equipment to gold, causing damage or degrading weapons and armour. This gold is dropped when they die.

Sorry for the super long post, just had to get all these ideas off my chest. Note that I'm not suggesting all of these ideas at once, or even implying they're good ideas. Just possible ideas.

[Thundamoo]

Here's a question to think about: how will gold dwarfs interact with Zin's tithing? Should they just naturally have crazy super piety gain with Zin at the cost of the fact that they're getting less health resource when they worship him, or is the piety gain too strong and they need to act as though every floor of the dungeon is the Orcish Mines (where you get less piety for tithing)?

Other than that, I really love the idea of mass-converting enemies into gold. It could function like a weaker slouch, dealing significant HP damage to the user now (making them less likely to survive the fight they just started with a ton of enemies at once) in the hope that you'll still be able to survive the fight and net more HP and gold later.

Something that might be interesting is, in addition to eating gold from your inventory, simply walking over gold while damaged will consume it and heal you automatically without spending aut, sort of like jelly item absorption. And the mass offensive alchemy could cause gold to drop from enemies upon being damaged rather than upon being killed, allowing you to line a potential escape route with tiny little potions of heal wounds... by damaging yourself a lot initially. I think that would be a very fun tightrope to teeter on! How much are you willing to risk?

[DracheReborn]

Not sure if you're aware OP, but Gozag the gold god is being tested in an experimental branch right now. Not saying this would automatically disqualify gold dwarves, but it does seem there would be some overlap in design space. In particular, Gozag turns enemy corpses into gold, which is somewhat similar to one of the proposals above.

[File200]

Not sure if you're aware OP, but Gozag the gold god is being tested in an experimental branch right now. Not saying this would automatically disqualify gold dwarves, but it does seem there would be some overlap in design space. In particular, Gozag turns enemy corpses into gold, which is somewhat similar to one of the proposals above.

I was going to start coding up the gold eating ability, but I guess I'll wait to see if Gozag makes it into trunk.

The main overlap here seems to be the flavor "Use gold for vital functions." As it stands, the functionality of the two is completely different. If Gozag is implemented, Gold Dwarves could be reflavored to (precious metal) Dwarves, and given a corresponding change in activated abilities. They could use all kinds of metal but especially gold. This could still lead to some problems, like a gold dwarf of Gozag having limitless health.

If Gozag isn't implemented, some of Gozag's attributes could be rolled into Gold Dwarves. Maybe bribing single monsters?

[Hopeless]

Not sure if you're aware OP, but Gozag the gold god is being tested in an experimental branch right now. Not saying this would automatically disqualify gold dwarves, but it does seem there would be some overlap in design space. In particular, Gozag turns enemy corpses into gold, which is somewhat similar to one of the proposals above.

That's pretty funny because I was thinking about the Zin question before I read this and thought maybe Gold Dwarves wouldn't be eligible to worship the good gods since they epitomize greed. Instead they would worship a god of Wealth/Greed. I am wondering how this could interface mechanically speaking.

[File200]

That's pretty funny because I was thinking about the Zin question before I read this and thought maybe Gold Dwarves wouldn't be eligible to worship the good gods since they epitomize greed. Instead they would worship a god of Wealth/Greed. I am wondering how this could interface mechanically speaking.

I don't think restricting god choices is a good idea without major thematic or mechanical conflict. Instead, gold dwarves could be greedy and impious, gaining piety at half the usual rate and with negative invocations. Making god abilities come online later would make the midgame a little more interesting.

[Hopeless]

That's pretty funny because I was thinking about the Zin question before I read this and thought maybe Gold Dwarves wouldn't be eligible to worship the good gods since they epitomize greed. Instead they would worship a god of Wealth/Greed. I am wondering how this could interface mechanically speaking.

I don't think restricting god choices is a good idea without major thematic or mechanical conflict. Instead, gold dwarves could be greedy and impious, gaining piety at half the usual rate and with negative invocations. Making god abilities come online later would make the midgame a little more interesting.

imho, Restrictions breed creativity.
also my suggestion side-steps the Zin question entirely. AND coincides with something already in the works. (Assuming it flies.) The coincidence seems too good to pass up. But please don't me derail your process. Forget I said anything.

[and into]

Moved to GDD, as a dev has said it is fleshed out well enough to merit discussion in GDD.

[TeshiAlair]

Adding a bunch of abilities I think overcomplicates things. As it is, I think the current setup is cool because it requires you to keep in mind access to a limited resource in a way that no other species does.

[File200]

Adding a bunch of abilities I think overcomplicates things. As it is, I think the current setup is cool because it requires you to keep in mind access to a limited resource in a way that no other species does.

True enough. Gold dwarves are strategically different from most races already, but they're not too different tactically. I'm only suggesting that one tactical ability be added to differentiate GD from, say, a standard melee fighter that supplements their abilities with charms. I think to myself "How would I build my gold dwarf differently from a human fighter?" The answer to this is that I would build a GD tankier even at the cost of spell success, because health is more limited. But in a fight, the question is "Would I approach this with my gold dwarf in a way that's different from a human?" The answer to that is more murky. To be a complete race, there should be some tactical differentiation. For example, if GD's only extra ability was "Instant Gold Eating Recovery," that would be enough to differentiate them. Sacrificing a strategic resource for tactical advantage without huge investment? That's interesting. The "Metal Burst" ability in the OP can even be dropped if someone comes up with a more flavorful tactical ability.

[File200]

Bumping because I added a page for this and the yeek proposal to the dev wiki:

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... gold_dwarf

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... opose:yeek

Thinking about it more, gold dwarves shouldn't synergize well with Zin, since they're both greedy and would probably fight over tithing percentages and such.