"Champion" monsters idea

[Jeremiah]

Wouldn't it be great if you could get revenge on the monster that killed your previous character? (or someone else's character...)

My suggestion is that when a character is killed, the monster that killed them can then be generated as a pseudo-unique on the same level in future games. For example, if I get killed by a centaur on D:4, then a monster called "Johnny the Centaur, Slayer of Jeremiah" (or whatever) could appear on D:4 until it is killed. The monsters generated could have slight buffs relative to the normal monster of that type to represent having levelled up by killing the player.

I'm no coder, but I'm guessing the files for these monsters could be stored in a similar way to player ghosts, and would have a chance to be generated instead of (or in addition to) a player ghost file when a player is killed by a monster.

[Stormfox]

Interesting idea. Apart from the fact that a decent number of these would be OOD spawns and uniques, and your proposal would have them buffed further. Sigmund, Grinder, and Prince Ribbit certainly don't need any more help killing early players.

Of course, you would deal with them the same way you deal with really problematic ghosts: just don't die on their level.

[XuaXua]

Don't buff existing uniques; constrain the suggestion to "mundane" monsters.

[Dustbin]

While I like the idea itself, I think the early-game is already fraught with enough danger.

[KoboldLord]

It would probably make for better pseudo-uniques than player ghosts do, but I wouldn't think it would be a good idea to use both of them at the same time. There'd be too many of them cluttering the dungeon if two pseudo-uniques spawned from every death. The champion monster could pick a random artifact or branded item from the dead character's armor and/or jewelry and get bonuses based on it, although of course no actual item would drop. Plus, the champion monster would loot the weapon of a melee-oriented character, the launcher and ammunition of a ranged-oriented character, and a few spells from the spell list of a magic-oriented character. The fact that casters rarely carry around their spellbooks can be handwaved as irrelevant, of course.

This would still end up with the occasional nasty combo, but champion monsters wouldn't completely shut down (or in the case of necromancers, be shut down by) whole early-game builds like player ghosts sometimes do.

[JeffQyzt]

Hrm...interesting concept. I thought you were going to suggest something like "randart monsters" (i.e. along the lines of the opposition for demigods suggested over on the brainstorming wiki.)

If you did potentially generate 2 (ghost + slayer) - could they appear together? Biff the Kobold, slayer of Newt the Halfling Assassin, and the ghost of Newt, the Halfling Assassin?

As far as "minor buff" - something along the lines of +1HD (vs. whatever they spawned with?)

What if the slayer kills more adventurers? Do you get Biff the Kobold, slayer of Newt the Halfing Assassin and Waldo the Human Wanderer? There are ghosts that accrue quite a string of skulls out there...

What about Pan Lords - are they eligible?

[jejorda2]

What if these are created when an undead player dies? When a living player dies, there could be a chance to make one of these and a chance to create a player ghost, weighted perhaps based on how much experience would be granted for killing them?

[Danei]

They could simply be generated instead of player ghosts, sometimes.

It would be kind of spoilery, in that if you see the monster that killed a particular character, you'd know you don't have to worry about running into that character's ghost, but ghosts are already pretty spoilery (or at least meta-gamey) anyway.

[greepish]

I think it'd be difficult, maybe impossible, to code for situations where things would get out of hand. E.g., assuming one quality of a champion is it gets buffs to HP, is it buffed to MaxHP, or %buff to maxHP?

1: Flat Buff = out of control monsters with normally low hp. Consider Imp (60 hp), Kobold (40 hp)
2: Percent HP = Orbs of fire with 200 hp

I suspect hp buffs would be the least of balance concerns I'm afraid.

[Blade]

I would hate to see any champion monsters instead of player ghosts; when I die, I always have the (slight) consolation that I might take someone down with me. Champion monsters are meaningless except for "Oh, hey, another guy was killed by an ogre. That's a surprise."

[o_O]

Why not just assume they killed another adventurer, or a unique that didn't spawn this game. Randart monsters is a great idea, no need to water it down by just making them another player ghost.

Glorb the Ogre
-slayer of Grinder the Imp
-slayer of ujrevi the BowElf
"this particular ogre looks particularly experienced and well equipped from his earlier victories in the dungeon. It even has a name, watch out!"

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

What about simply generating player ghosts with packs of monsters whose quantity, strength and overall flavour depends on the ghost's race and background? Say, orcish ghosts are surrounded by the ones of their kin, powerful kobolds might be generated with their fellows demonologists...

...and I will be hated for this suggestion if it gets implemented.

[varsovie]

And what about wands or the +6+6 short sword of electricity?
They are part of the nearly unavoidable death at D 1-3.

And I don't see a lot of interest in the idea. It's cool to get revenge of the bat who got luck in a precedent game, but online will it be that cool?

[molari]

And I don't see a lot of interest in the idea. It's cool to get revenge of the bat who got luck in a precedent game, but online will it be that cool?

This seems like a suggestion which makes more sense for the offline game. Having a random slightly tougher orc warrior appear online means little, however having an orc warrior that was responsible for killing your previous character would be a nice change of pace from ghosts who are all rather samey (run away immediately, come back later when you've learned dispel undead). The OP mentions these monsters could, I would argue should, be replacements for ghosts if they appear, rather than cluttering the dungeon with even more uniques.

[theclam]

I like the idea of randart monsters, but I don't think it needs to be tied with the death of a player.

[cerebovssquire]

This seems like a suggestion which makes more sense for the offline game. Having a random slightly tougher orc warrior appear online means little, however having an orc warrior that was responsible for killing your previous character would be a nice change of pace from ghosts who are all rather samey (run away immediately, come back later when you've learned dispel undead). The OP mentions these monsters could, I would argue should, be replacements for ghosts if they appear, rather than cluttering the dungeon with even more uniques.

Only a minority of characters learn Dispel Undead and an even smaller minority of them needs Dispel Undead to beat ghosts. If anything is boring and samey it's "orc warrior with better stats", "kobold with better stats", etc. Ghosts at least have better variation in brands, flavour text and spells and actually unique, as opposed to "champion monsters" being too similar to the common original.
Of course if you only play very few character types and offline it may be another matter but then I suggest changing that instead of Crawl (or deleting your bones files).

[XuaXua]

It's also much harder (in Trunk) to find Dispel Undead because it got replaced with Control Undead in the Necromancer starter book.