Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 6454
Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06
Make creatures sleeping/waking status be less static
It occurred to me that if the whole sleeping/waking up dynamic was a little less static, it might make some things less deterministic.
What I have in mind is:
*generally* creatures might be generated asleep or awake, waking creatures may or may not wander for a while, but then will go to sleep on their own (given no interaction with a player), and *additionally* sleeping creatures will also wake up and wander on their own.
This means (Among other effects):
1. Finding a sleeping nasty and putting an exclusion on it and walking away no longer gives you reasonably certain protection from encountering it.
2. You may find (more) sleeping or awake things in already-cleared areas.
3. If you wake something up, but manage to escape it, it might go back to sleep.
4. If you encounter something asleep, you can no longer be certain it hasn't picked anything up off the floor
I think cleared areas being less safe is a good thing, and it opens up some flexibility around stealth stabbing, decreases the power of EH very slightly (It's no longer a safe thing to succeed once with EH and wander off and leave it to sleep forever if you can't kill it with one stab) it also slightly decreases the initial power of stealth generally (because you're no longer as likely to find things asleep when you first encounter them) while increasing it's reusability (by allowing you to avoid fights now, because the waking things you find might be sleeping later)
With things *generally* waking up and sleeping at intervals, sneaking becomes more tactical and less strategic (you can't simply wait until the whole floor falls asleep like you used to do when you were mummystabbing, as things are going to wake up whether you generate noise on the floor or not, there would be a mixture of waking and sleeping things at any given time)
Anyway, thoughts?