Another Golem Race idea
Posted: Thursday, 3rd May 2012, 13:56On the Something Awful forums thread for DCSS 0.10, I joked about combining Chei and Ash into a Golem God who wants you to fuse equipment into your body permanently, slowing you down in the process. Obviously, these two gods are interesting enough on their own, so I wasn't really serious, but when someone mentioned to me that a Golem Race is already under consideration, I checked out the various suggestions on the Wiki page.
Given that the recent design philosophy of races seems to be to remove ones that differ only in stats and apts, while adding ones like Octopodes and especially Felids, which change the way you play the game radically, I feel like there's a lot of potential for Golems as an "out-there" race, as opposed to just making them slow, high AC, good at fighting, bad at magic, immune to poison and negative, etc.
I had two (mutually exclusive) ideas for the race that I thought worth mentioning. I won't bother listing things like skill aptitudes because for that, the suggestions on the Wiki are fine... I just wanted to suggest a couple of possible twists to make the race really different to play from anything else.
Although the two ideas are separate and incompatible, they both come from the same basic concept, which is that I feel that a Golem race should be "building itself" as it progresses through the game; not just randomly turning into something else, or powering up like a normal character.
First Idea
You start off with only a weapon and a shield slot. (Or just a weapon, or weapon and body armor, or whatever). As you level up, you gain new slots. By the end of the game, you've got maybe two of every slot, maybe even a barding slot. Double weapon slots would mean either a double melee attack, or wielding a melee and a ranged weapon simultaneously, so late-game Golems could be real beasts, but...
The catch is that wearing or wielding equipment means actually fusing it permanently to your body. Unlike Ash worshippers, you can't even uncurse it. So you have to decide very carefully what you're going to add, and when. If you've got an okay, but not ideal piece of equipment for a slot, do you add it for the immediate gain, and then have to wait until later in the game until the second of that slot becomes available? Or do you suffer the short-term power loss of walking around with an empty slot, just in case that perfect randart is sitting on the next level?
To be fair, you should probably still be able to enchant stuff once it's build into your body. Also, to avoid a horrible shortage of identification scrolls, since you can't wear-id anything, it should be a racial power that carrying a piece of equipment around for long enough (a few dungeon levels) eventually IDs it, the same way fighting with a weapon for long enough does.
EDIT: It might be too complicated, but it could even be possible to track how much wood/leather vs. metal equipment's been fused, and adjust your aptitudes and/or intrinsic mutations depending on whether you're making yourself an organic golem or a metallic one, sort of the way Vampires change depending on how well fed they are. E.g. a golem with fused animal furs and a quarterstaff is organic and gets bonuses to e.g. stealth and transmutations, while one that's gone heavy armor and metallic weapons gets Fighting aptitude and Deep Dwarf-like damage shaving, at the cost of being slow-moving or something.
Second Idea
You have no equipment slots at all. Maybe a cloak and/or an amulet if it seems too boring to have another Felid-like zero-equipment race... except that, unlike Felids, finding weapons and armor would still be useful, because...
Instead of eating food, you eat metal weapons and armor. Maybe amulets and rings too. The twist is that eating branded stuff, randarts or jewelry gives you the powers as a temporary (potion-length duration) buff. So you eat a long sword of flaming, and your fists start blazing. You eat a chain mail of cold resistance, you get cold resistance for a few dozen turns.
Meanwhile, you enchant yourself. Scrolls of enchant weapon boost your unarmed damage and to-hit permanently. Scrolls of vorpalize weapon give you auxiliary unarmed attacks. Scrolls of enchant armor give you a permanent AC boost and a chance of a random beneficial mutation (from a special racial list, like Demonspawn).
Given that the recent design philosophy of races seems to be to remove ones that differ only in stats and apts, while adding ones like Octopodes and especially Felids, which change the way you play the game radically, I feel like there's a lot of potential for Golems as an "out-there" race, as opposed to just making them slow, high AC, good at fighting, bad at magic, immune to poison and negative, etc.
I had two (mutually exclusive) ideas for the race that I thought worth mentioning. I won't bother listing things like skill aptitudes because for that, the suggestions on the Wiki are fine... I just wanted to suggest a couple of possible twists to make the race really different to play from anything else.
Although the two ideas are separate and incompatible, they both come from the same basic concept, which is that I feel that a Golem race should be "building itself" as it progresses through the game; not just randomly turning into something else, or powering up like a normal character.
First Idea
You start off with only a weapon and a shield slot. (Or just a weapon, or weapon and body armor, or whatever). As you level up, you gain new slots. By the end of the game, you've got maybe two of every slot, maybe even a barding slot. Double weapon slots would mean either a double melee attack, or wielding a melee and a ranged weapon simultaneously, so late-game Golems could be real beasts, but...
The catch is that wearing or wielding equipment means actually fusing it permanently to your body. Unlike Ash worshippers, you can't even uncurse it. So you have to decide very carefully what you're going to add, and when. If you've got an okay, but not ideal piece of equipment for a slot, do you add it for the immediate gain, and then have to wait until later in the game until the second of that slot becomes available? Or do you suffer the short-term power loss of walking around with an empty slot, just in case that perfect randart is sitting on the next level?
To be fair, you should probably still be able to enchant stuff once it's build into your body. Also, to avoid a horrible shortage of identification scrolls, since you can't wear-id anything, it should be a racial power that carrying a piece of equipment around for long enough (a few dungeon levels) eventually IDs it, the same way fighting with a weapon for long enough does.
EDIT: It might be too complicated, but it could even be possible to track how much wood/leather vs. metal equipment's been fused, and adjust your aptitudes and/or intrinsic mutations depending on whether you're making yourself an organic golem or a metallic one, sort of the way Vampires change depending on how well fed they are. E.g. a golem with fused animal furs and a quarterstaff is organic and gets bonuses to e.g. stealth and transmutations, while one that's gone heavy armor and metallic weapons gets Fighting aptitude and Deep Dwarf-like damage shaving, at the cost of being slow-moving or something.
Second Idea
You have no equipment slots at all. Maybe a cloak and/or an amulet if it seems too boring to have another Felid-like zero-equipment race... except that, unlike Felids, finding weapons and armor would still be useful, because...
Instead of eating food, you eat metal weapons and armor. Maybe amulets and rings too. The twist is that eating branded stuff, randarts or jewelry gives you the powers as a temporary (potion-length duration) buff. So you eat a long sword of flaming, and your fists start blazing. You eat a chain mail of cold resistance, you get cold resistance for a few dozen turns.
Meanwhile, you enchant yourself. Scrolls of enchant weapon boost your unarmed damage and to-hit permanently. Scrolls of vorpalize weapon give you auxiliary unarmed attacks. Scrolls of enchant armor give you a permanent AC boost and a chance of a random beneficial mutation (from a special racial list, like Demonspawn).