Magus Reactor Golem: player species idea

[Psieye]

I've seen a number of species proposals now (e.g. moon trolls, ember dwarves) which basically come from "I want to go blasting stuff without worrying too much about my mp". At present, it's perfectly possible to play a "bottomless mana pool mage" style: CBoE with necessary insurance in case it botches, Lich form (or undead species) + Sif Muna channeling, or a "corpse reactor" (sublimation of blood, preferably with kiku's delivery service). But still these proposals show up, so here's my attempt to scratch that itch in a rather radical way. I can flesh out the details more (and think about balancing the numbers) if people are actually interested, but here's the core of it:

Concept: a golem with an organic magic reactor in it, giving it sentience and casting ability. The golem needs to 'eat food' to keep the reactor powered, which in turn is what powers the golem. It can self-repair (heal normally) but this requires work from the reactor. As does casting spells: it is 'fuel' intensive to cast magic.

Notable aptitudes:
HP: +2, MP: +4, Spc: N/A, Inv: N/A, Conj: +4, Hex: 4, Sum: -5, Nec: -3

- Fast metabolism 3
- Cannot shapeshift
- For every HP healed, lose 50 nutrition
- For every MP gained, lose 100 nutrition. MP regenerates very fast
- Spellhunger cannot be mitigated by Int or skill. You get a flat 50% off the hunger costs but they're constant (unless you find a staff of energy to further mitigate)
- Number of spellslots available = XL +3. That means you have very few spellslots to work with
- You can forget spells at will whenever you want
- You must destroy a spellbook to learn ONE spell from it
- Cannot worship gods (to prevent stacking up with the caster gods or Jiyva)
- Only partially resist torment

I can come up with flavour for those traits if people are interested, but crawl demands mechanics not flavour in idea content so I'll spare the flavour for now. The playstyle concept is a 'living, re-programmable wand': so long as you keep the reactor fed, you can blast away at your heart's content.

Optional features:
- Instead of evoking wands/rods, you 'eat' their charges (rods would have to act like meat rations instead of being a replenishing source of food)
- Scroll of recharging acts like a potion of porridge
- Potions have vastly reduced effects (less healing or less duration) but in exchange give a lot of nutrition



As a programmer, I look at this proposal and think "gosh that'd be a big workload to implement". But perhaps that is what's needed to scratch that itch of "want more MP to blast with", without stepping on the toes of all the existing ways of doing just that. Specifically, I've tried to avoid stepping on deep elf, tengu, troll, mummy and vampire feet when putting this together.

[bricks]

I like how I could choose to chug deleterious potions in return for nutrition. Replacing MP management with nutrition management sounds really aggravating, though. Same with spellbook destruction. I don't know what backgrounds this works with, either.

[Bloax]

Well to be honest it's an interesting idea, for once.

But I'd say myself that One-Book-One-Spell is a bit too harsh.

[jwb]

- You must destroy a spellbook to learn ONE spell from it

Wait what? You only get one spell out of your starting book? And no gods to gift you others? I second the "this seems a bit harsh" sentiment. Maybe just have learning a spell remove it from the book, similarly to how you can normally forget a spell at the price of removing it. This would be a rather minor drawback in comparison, but I can't quite imagine the original idea working.

(rods would have to act like meat rations instead of being a replenishing source of food)

Maybe each "meal" from a rod could reduce the enchantment by one, with the rod being destroyed when it would go negative.

- Cannot worship gods (to prevent stacking up with the caster gods or Jiyva)

Seems a bit of a shame to cut out gods entirely. Forbidding Jiyva makes sense (and does so thematically as well), and Kiku as well (Kiku will not accept something that is neither living nor dead). Same would go for Fedhas. Sif would probably work too well with the book gifts. Vehumet's book gifts would be more limited, but probably still a bit much. Maybe instead limit some of the benefits the gods provide to magic golems, i.e. fewer books, no channeling, and so on?

Chei, Zin and Nemelex would be very cool golem god choices.

[twelwe]

am i the only person who remembers the moon troll proposal was a joke

You might be the only person who cares enough to remember that. Many things in life begin intended to be nothing more than a joke (Herman Cain's presidential campaign, for example) only to be taken totally seriously, totally ignoring the small pool of people thought they were "in on the joke." I will never back down on Moon Trolls as a serious species for this game.

[Psieye]

But I'd say myself that One-Book-One-Spell is a bit too harsh.

Perhaps I did overcompensate, making the earlygame hell. The problem I was trying to avoid was the lategame where you could carry several books around and just 'hotswap' which spells you had memorised to get around your low spell level limit.

Maybe each "meal" from a rod could reduce the enchantment by one, with the rod being destroyed when it would go negative.

It is a question of balance: would the food game be too easy if rods were like this or not? Hmm, maybe if memorising spells cost food then rods acting as multi-stack meals would be a decent counter for the lategame issue I described above. Or maybe that issue could be taken care of by having the spell removed from the spellbook as you suggested earlier. More programming work, but perhaps necessary.

Seems a bit of a shame to cut out gods entirely. Forbidding Jiyva makes sense (and does so thematically as well), and Kiku as well (Kiku will not accept something that is neither living nor dead). Same would go for Fedhas. Sif would probably work too well with the book gifts. Vehumet's book gifts would be more limited, but probably still a bit much. Maybe instead limit some of the benefits the gods provide to magic golems, i.e. fewer books, no channeling, and so on?

Chei, Zin and Nemelex would be very cool golem god choices.

I was trying to keep it simple. Just declare "the golem doesn't understand the concept of faith or belief", thus nullifying all god worship. I feel this golem concept would be too powerful if paired up with caster gods (even if their benefits were limited) and rather than come up with a convoluted list of "why this god won't accept you" I figured removing all god worship and balancing around that would be better. This golem already has so many abnormal details to get used to, why add another layer of detail in inhomogeneous god restrictions?

[varsovie]

Because god management and choice is fun.

I like the idea even if it's rough (and the book thing...).
But I would like to see nil metabolism instead of metabolism 3 and instead consuming food ONLY on actions other than walking (regen MP/HP, spells n' attacks). This way nutrition level will always change when the player do something meaningful (not autoexplore), thus triggering hunger at interesting moments.

On the idea of eating wands, why not give a one-shot breathing in relation with the wand eaten?

[palin]

I think that for full flavour compliance it should completely resist torment and pain-based spells like an undead, but it should no be vulnerable to holy stuff (weapons, scrolls, and so on).

The destroying book stuff is harsh for beginning characters, I'll do away completely with books for a mechanic like "proposed" spells like the new Vehumet model.

But what about this species in melee? Unless it sucks very much with melee attitudes, it seems overpowered to me.

[jwb]

I think that for full flavour compliance it should completely resist torment and pain-based spells like an undead, but it should no be vulnerable to holy stuff (weapons, scrolls, and so on).

That seems rather nice to have. Perhaps there could be elemental vulnerabilities to compensate, maybe rC- and an inability to get rE. Especially since poison immunity would also be logical.

The destroying book stuff is harsh for beginning characters, I'll do away completely with books for a mechanic like "proposed" spells like the new Vehumet model.

And suddenly the caster gods seem much less overpowered, right?

But what about this species in melee? Unless it sucks very much with melee attitudes, it seems overpowered to me.

[/quote]

Uh, no idea. Aptitudes should be easy enough to tweak though, no pressure to get it right immediately.

Re: the gods, if necessary it could just be a whitelist. Something like "Most gods refuse the worship of an artificial creation, with the exception of..." But it seems to me mostly you would have to watch out for gods related to hunger/sustenance and golem-edible gifts, from a balance viewpoint. I'm sure people here would be happy to help to come up with reasons. Then maybe forbid some gods where the flavour would be weird.

Sif Muna: hates magic golems because they eat books. Obviously.
Vehumet: hates them because their inventor (unique! unique!) spurned her
Kiku: hates them because they are not alive and cannot die

I think those are the important ones, unless they can eat decks of cards. For flavour reasons I'd have difficulties seeing Trog (magic!) and Fedhas (machines!).

[JeffQyzt]

Note that Yred hates statue form, so he's likely to hate statues too. I think you may be confusing Yred w/Kiku, here, actually.

There are a few different "golem eats non-food items for fun and profit" ideas floating around. I believe someone actually implemented some flavor of one or two of them in a branch, back in .9 timeframe or so. Might want to look into that to see how that went...

[Bloax]

Oh come on now, a magic-driven machine worshiping Trog would be the most hilarious of things. :p

Flavor-dependance really shouldn't be a thing, I mean you can worship Chei with a felid or do a DEBe.
"Lore"-ish reasons are another thing though, though personally I'm a bit disappointed that demigods can't worship Chei. Even if just for the sheer stupidity of the resulting stat numbers.

[ebarrett]

I'm a bit disappointed that demigods can't worship Chei. Even if just for the sheer stupidity of the resulting stat numbers.

Demigods are already the better Chei, you get a good part of the benefits with none of the drawbacks.

[Bloax]

Definitely, but as said it's just because of how stupidly high the resulting stats would be. :p

[Psieye]

But what about this species in melee? Unless it sucks very much with melee attitudes, it seems overpowered to me.

There's a reason why I didn't want to flesh out the rest of the aptitudes until I was certain people were interested in the core concept. This golem idea was born from a single playstyle: "blow stuff up without having much downtime". A good species proposal should not be so extremely narrowly tailor made to only one playstyle. It's the dilemma I have: I can't make them 'pretty good' with melee and such without making them too overpowered; and I can't nerf their gimmick into meaninglessness as otherwise there'd be no point implementing this (just pick one of the other caster races already). A lot of polish and thought will have to go into balancing if we want to make this golem a proper proposal.

I'm currently leaning towards making them terrible at melee, missiles (e.g. throwing) and stabbing, but give excellent Hex aptitude. Right now most hex users just want to stab things. I made them bad at summoning and necromancy to avoid them just hiding behind an army and thus, eliminate the HP regen nutrition cost, but perhaps that's not necessary given getting that army would have big nutrition costs.

Re: the gods, if necessary it could just be a whitelist. Something like "Most gods refuse the worship of an artificial creation, with the exception of..."

See, that's exactly what I wanted to avoid. I don't think it fits with crawl's theme to have a race where they can only pick out of e.g. 5 gods. Given the HP/MP regen cost in food, that puts TSO, Maklehb, Sif, Vehumet and Kiku under "submit to these to help out with the food upkeep costs".

Having said that, the food costs could be balanced around the constraint that gods are allowed for this golem. Afterall, DD are allowed to take Maklehb to solve healing problems and Tr are allowed to take Kiku to get food. But I don't want to create a "you must worship one of these small handful of gods if you want to win the food race at all" setup.

I'd still ban Sif though: this golem has innate, passive Sif channeling and can forget spells at will. That is: both of Sif's active abilities are inherent in this golem. The endless book gifts contradict the design philosophy of "this golem needs to think hard about how to spend its few spelllevels".