Fortress Dwarves

[pubby]

I posted an idea for a new dwarf race yesterday:

Just throwing an idea out:

Give new dwarves a permanent stasis and rPois effect because dwarves are sturdy and used to heavy drinking.

For an escape option, allow them to shaft - they get dropped down a few levels instantly.

And finally, allow them to cast dig, passwall, and leda's liquefaction without armour/shield penalties.

I was curious to see how they played and so I coded up a prototype species: Fortress Dwarves.

Wiki page: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... ress_dwarf
Git: git@gitorious.org:crawlfortdorf/crawlfortdorf.git (changes _should_ be on the branch fortress_dwarf)

I haven't play-tested them very much and so it would be great if people could try them out.

[Blade]

First of all, this should probably be in Game Design Discussion, not contributions. Second, permanent stasis makes the race unplayable.

[pubby]

First of all, this should probably be in Game Design Discussion, not contributions. Second, permanent stasis makes the race unplayable.

I wasn't sure where to put it but I saw that "Forge Dwarves" were posted in contributions and so I did the same.

[CommanderC]

For an escape option, allow them to shaft - they get dropped down a few levels instantly.

Not instantly (otherwise it should cost permanent HP/MP). Add a delay and it will be fine.

And finally, allow them to cast dig, passwall, and leda's liquefaction without armour/shield penalties.

This one should be more simple: e.g. a bonus to all earth spells. IMO the bonus they really need is to be able to use Leda without fumbling or slowing. That would be a great bonus, although Zot:5 would still be horrible for them.

EDIT: Adding passwall as a racial ability after they reach a XL can also be good.

[pubby]

I increased the fighting/weapon aptitudes and tried a new game. Got pretty far, although it's perhaps due to luck:

  Code:

418918 Pubby the Impregnable (level 24, -11/196 (198) HPs)
             Began as a Fortress Dwarf Fighter on July 12, 2012.
             Was an Elder of Makhleb.
             Mangled by a stone giant (13 damage)
             ... on Level 8 of the Vaults.
             The game lasted 03:19:25 (78295 turns).

Morgue: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=XwPr6tJW

I died after getting the 3rd rune because of cockiness . I must say, that armour and weapon I had were fantastic - I didn't have to worry about their *Berserk or -TELE!

Shafting didn't seem too overpowered, although I'm still not sure. I tried a few games where I attempted to abuse it, but I always seemed to die. It was definitely a fun ability - there's a lot of tension when you're 5+ floors out of depth, low health, and you're frantically trying to find upward stairways.

The difficulty felt fine, although the bottom floors obviously had more tension. Definitely not the hardest species out there.

This one should be more simple: e.g. a bonus to all earth spells. IMO the bonus they really need is to be able to use Leda without fumbling or slowing. That would be a great bonus, although Zot:5 would still be horrible for them.

EDIT: Adding passwall as a racial ability after they reach a XL can also be good.

Both of those are good ideas and I will try coding them.

[twelwe]

I like everything about this idea except the name. This is what the Nome race should be. https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... opose:nome


Being able to swim through rock and restriced movement in other materials while stuck with stasis sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

[galehar]

And finally, allow them to cast dig, passwall, and leda's liquefaction without armour/shield penalties.

This one should be more simple: e.g. a bonus to all earth spells.

Agreed.

I think shafting needs to take more time. Probably a bit more than taking stairs.
And the name reminds too much of dwarf fortress.

[Bloax]

And the name reminds too much of dwarf fortress.

Perhaps because it's a reference to it?

[eeviac]

free shafting makes for some interesting, or perhaps broken, speed running.

[pubby]

This one should be more simple: e.g. a bonus to all earth spells.

A general bonus to earth spells sounds good. The Forge Dwarf proposal did something like reducing armour penalties for earth spells, although apparently this lead to insanely powerful EEs because of LRD/Shatter. This was the reason why I only chose a few spells.

I'm thinking a good change would be to remove the Transmutations school for (most?) Earth spells when playing Fortress Dwarves. These would also be the spells which receive the armour penalty reduction. In the current build Bolt of Magma also receives some bonuses and so it might remain the single exception.

I like everything about this idea except the name.

And the name reminds too much of dwarf fortress.

The name is easily changed but I'd like to keep it a dwarven race. I'm particular to the idea of dwarves that live in fortresses, but I'm not aware of any synonyms.

I think shafting needs to take more time. Probably a bit more than taking stairs.

free shafting makes for some interesting, or perhaps broken, speed running.

These are two very big concerns of mine, but after playtesting them I did not find this to be outright true. I'm still looking for a playtester or two - if you think it can be abused then go for it!

[Deimos]

Stronghold Dwarves could work if you really want to keep it a DF reference.

[eeviac]

I'd recommend just giving FD's good tmut and earth apts (+2, +3). Removing a school from a handful of spells or having a hidden wizardry bonus isn't intuitive or easily communicated to the player.

I'll admit I find this race proposal interesting. I hate paralysis with a passion and permanent, slotless stasis might make for a better gimmick than extreme slot limitations.

[CommanderC]

I'm still looking for a playtester or two

I'm working on it (I have just reached Lair:8 on my first try. Shafting is incredibly fun).


When I attempted to build the game I got an error: The file "util/release_ver" does not exist. My solution was to run "git tag X.Y.Z". This is the sequence of commands I used:

  Code:

git clone 'git://gitorious.org/crawlfortdorf/crawlfortdorf.git'
cd crawlfortdorf/crawl-ref/source/
git checkout fortress_dwarf
git tag 0.11.1   #<--- X.Y.Z
make


[galehar]

And the name reminds too much of dwarf fortress.

Perhaps because it's a reference to it?

But why? There isn't anything in this species design which refers to dwarf fortress. And even then, it's too obvious.

I'd recommend just giving FD's good tmut and earth apts (+2, +3).

I agree with that. If you want them to be good at casting earth spells in heavy armour, just give them good earth and armour aptitudes. No spellcasting penalty from armour for a handful of spells isn't exactly an elegant design. Which means hard to explain and balance.

[eeviac]

I also think they should have decent ranged weapon apts (-1 or better) because they have no way to close gaps.

[tasonir]

Earth spells have long been favorites of mine so this sounds like a great race to me...the stasis will take some getting used to though - better hug those walls and hope to not get shoals!

Hope this gets accepted, after tweaks, sometime soon

[nagdon]

I agree with the good Tmut/Earth apts suggestions and also suggest positive (+1 ... +3) tloc aptitude (flavor: their ancestors studied/were good at translocations to be able to ward themselves against it by stasis and this knowledge haven't vanished completely) to make training translocations a not completely suboptimal decision for them.

I also support making Leda's Liquefaction somewhat more useful for them, I suggest that stasis (both from amulet and FD mutation) shall decrease (but not eliminate) the fumbling/slow movement effect of liquified ground.

I think that rPois is granted by too many species, but clarity would be a nice mutation for them.

Note that if we special case Fulsome to be a pure Tmut spell, then it is no longer forbidden by the good gods & Fedhas. (Maybe Fulsome could be completely moved to pure Tmut as it is easy to flavor it as a natural distillation effect. This would also allow Stalkers to follow Elyvilon/Fedhas, as their other spells are not hated by these gods.)

[Jabberwocky]

The problem is that there isn't much of a point in training translocations with stasis

[nagdon]

I know that training transloc without blink/cblink usually isn't too useful, but maybe with high transloc aptitude learning Teleport Other/Warp Weapon/Phase Shift/Dispersal can be sometimes useful. Or alternatively, a terrible (-2 ... -4) transloc aptitude (or even N/A transloc aptitude and inability to cast transloc spells) would clearly stat that Fortress Dwarves don't do translocations, but I think that a good aptitude is more interesting (but both high and low aptitude would be better than 0).

[Roderic]

I like everything about this idea except the name. This is what the Nome race should be. https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... opose:nome


Being able to swim through rock and restriced movement in other materials while stuck with stasis sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Make them a small race and you have something much more interesting than current halflings. Replace the latter.

[pubby]

I think that rPois is granted by too many species, but clarity would be a nice mutation for them.

Yes, clarity is a better choice, although the problem with it is that now 3 amulets are useless for FD which is perhaps too much.

I also support making Leda's Liquefaction somewhat more useful for them, I suggest that stasis (both from amulet and FD mutation) shall decrease (but not eliminate) the fumbling/slow movement effect of liquified ground.

I have made this change and will push it to Gitourious after I've tested it a bit.

Note that if we special case Fulsome to be a pure Tmut spell, then it is no longer forbidden by the good gods & Fedhas. (Maybe Fulsome could be completely moved to pure Tmut as it is easy to flavor it as a natural distillation effect. This would also allow Stalkers to follow Elyvilon/Fedhas, as their other spells are not hated by these gods.)

This change is actually in the current repo but I removed it because it seemed overly complex. An innate ability might be a better choice, perhaps with slightly different behavior (such as somehow being able to distill "a potion of alcohol" - maybe it poisons _and_ confuses?).

The problem is that there isn't much of a point in training translocations with stasis

There are only 3 out of 13 Tloc spells that are affected - I don't see that as being pointless. I will improve their aptitudes to +1 though.

[galehar]

I also support making Leda's Liquefaction somewhat more useful for them, I suggest that stasis (both from amulet and FD mutation) shall decrease (but not eliminate) the fumbling/slow movement effect of liquified ground.

I have no problem with a species not being affected by Leda's, but why would stasis do that? You fumble because of unstable footing, exactly like in shallow water, not because of magic.

Note that if we special case Fulsome to be a pure Tmut spell, then it is no longer forbidden by the good gods & Fedhas.

Fedhas doesn't care about necromancy, it's messing with corpses that he doesn't like. So he would still hate fulsome whatever school it is. Although, I don't see how fulsome fits in this species design. And it's a problematic spell which might be changed or removed at some point, so better leave it alone for now.

[roctavian]

how about calling them Sludge Dwarves? Seems like that's a flavor that works with a lot of the mechanics proposed here.

[pubby]

Pushed the changes to Gitorious. Mostly buffs, which may be too strong.

I went with allowing transmutation/earth spells to have no penalty instead of a high transmutation aptitude. If this doesn't work then I'll try the other.

I added the augmentation mutation just for experimentation, but removed the mapping upgrades. I'm not entirely sure how much of an effect it has, but it should give them a chance of survival when down in red on the bottom floors.

Although, I don't see how fulsome fits in this species design.

Dwarves are known for distilling booze I guess.

how about calling them Sludge Dwarves? Seems like that's a flavor that works with a lot of the mechanics proposed here.

Right now the aptitudes aren't too close to Sludge Elves and so it doesn't really fit. Personally, I like the suggestion "Stronghold Dwarves" more.