Mines Malingerer
Posts: 40
Joined: Thursday, 8th August 2013, 19:35
Monster: Tank
Maybe Tentacled monstrosity fills this role. Once one has you constricted I would have thought the best approach would be to kill it first before anything else. They do have high HP and so in some respects do fulfill the tanking role. The issue with these is the speed they move at which means you can normally fight one on your own terms (i.e in a corridor).
What I had in mind was something slightly different.
The monster would need to be fast (faster than the average player character anyway) so that it could catch up to you.
It would need to have high HP to be hardy enough.
Crucially, it would stop you attacking other monsters so long as it was next to you.
Now, tentacled monstrosity may indirectly serve the third function (when they have you!) but what I have in mind is something more direct. A 'draw attack' ability or 'hold attention' magic effect so that the player could only attack the tank. This would have to work for magic and ranged combat also, but you can then start to play with the idea (bolts don't fire through, Poison arrow/Iron shot hit every time, penetration fails etc).
Obviously, it would need to cause some damage (or some other hindrance) to stop you simply running away with it in tow and killing it away from other monsters. We can achieve this by making it simply slow the player character, or:
Barbs like Manticore
Maybe Poison (but redundant in later game)
Corrosion could also be interesting
I hope you can see what I am getting at. It may be, as I've said, that tentacled monstrosity serves the same purpose and if you feel this is the case please say so. We can then discuss if they should be faster to be more of a threat It also occurs to me that there are fast monsters that cause slow, poison and paralysis (I'm looking at you Wasps) but these all have fairly low HP and can't be said to be 'tanks'.
Does anyone out there think this idea has potential? Is Crawl missing a tank style monster? Am I completely off base and ought to go away?
Comments are more than welcome!