Ability Acquirement Mutation or Species

[XuaXua]

I was reading the frogman proposal and saw a comment about consuming a target. That got me thinking, which is never a good thing for anyone involved, including the ridicule I endure afterwards, but whatever. We have Ghouls who consume rotten flesh and meat-eating species who consume chunks, and deities who frown on cannibalism, and Vampires with their blood thing,, and simulacrum which can be used on chunks to create similar monsters, and probably some other fun things with food I haven't thought about.

So to the point: Would it be out of the question to develop a species or mutation (regular, demonspawn, or Jiyva) that, when you consume food, you gain a temporary ability related to the food consumed?

Naga and snakes allow you to spit poison.
Some dragon-like beings might give you breath weapons.
Consuming fire/ice giants gives you heat/ice resistance.
Bananas give you appeal... (lol)
etc. ad nauseum?

The acquired ability would either last until something else is eaten to take its place, or just a certain amount of time (possibly based on hunger?). At higher values of the mutation (or levels of the species), a larger capacity of ability retention (increased number of abilities to have at one time, increased retention rate) would be obtained.

[Jabberwocky]

I believe this has previously been discussed and rejected.

[BlackSheep]

Surprisingly, it's not on the Won't Do list. I think as a feature of a species, it would be possible to consider, especially for a species with limited equipment slots to compensate. It would require covering a lot of cases to make it interesting enough to add.

[XuaXua]

Surprisingly, it's not on the Won't Do list. I think as a feature of a species, it would be possible to consider, especially for a species with limited equipment slots to compensate. It would require covering a lot of cases to make it interesting enough to add.

One thing is that monsters appear to be broadly categorized (all snakes!) and then some individual species can be special-cased. Snakes give poison spit, but anacondas give some form of crushing/entanglement ability.

I would see this more as a species thing. It would be a cool patch to put in.

[sardonica]

Great now just make rings of hunger evocable so that you can keep your resistances up.

Somehow the idea of hunting down firebats in the volcano to get another pip of rF just does not appeal.

[Tiber]

Somehow I see the devs rejecting this, even if what Jabberwocky said wasn't true. Vampires used to gain magic from drinking elf blood, but was removed as spoilery.

Here I was thinking that the thread was about using scrolls of acquirement to gain beneficial mutations.

[onton]

Consuming corpses to get Intrinsics is ADOM and Nethack feature I guess, Crawl is all about items, mutations and consumables.

About SoA giving mutation we could use the legendary Helix effect, so there is still some risk to lose a good mutation but most of the time the effect is beneficial. However, I like minmay's proposal (potions of beneficial mutation) better.

[galehar]

Surprisingly, it's not on the Won't Do list.

Yes, it's surprising. Fixed.

[Roderic]

Perhaps it is naïve, but why not a god which grants that kind of intrinsics or adequate resistances? There have been some proposals around this concept, like the glutton god or the god which decided for you the branches to go through. It wouldn't affect the game unless you dedice to follow that particular god, and therefore, any other handicaps in conduct would be introduced to compensate.

[njvack]

Jiyva and Xom will give you beneficial mutations, which will probably include resistances. There was a proposal a while back for a "Potion of Beneficial Mutation" or the like; I don't remember why outcome of that discussion; the forum's search feature hates me.

[Blakmane]

The reason AFAIK that this was rejected is because there is no way to effectively implement it. If the benefits last a long time it encourages behaviour like leaving certain enemies alone on some floors and travelling back to eat them later when you need the resistances (increases tedium). If the benefit is very short so as to avoid scumming/tedium, it would become rarely applicable and entirely down to pot luck: so why bother implementing it? Finally, it also becomes very 'spoilery' if it isn't immediately obvious what benefit will be gained from eating what creatures (see vampire and elves).