The Tavern

Just an idea about four new unique monsters. I'm sory about the long text.

Zassran and Ssindra
Dragons are among the most powerful beings of the world, but still some of them seek for more power. In the ages long past, dragons used to worship dark deitis and they gained unprecedented amout of power via their faith. Those who were servants of Kiku became feared dracoliches, necromancers capable of rising dead armies and destroying whole kingdoms with merely a thought.
But then two dracoliches, siblings Zassran and Ssindra, asked themselves why should they be only a docile thralls of their master, witj all the power they have. And they attacked Kiku, trying to steal his divine essence and became gods themselves. But they failed.
Edit: Enraged by their impudence and horrified by their power, which nearly surpassed his own, Kiku destroyed all dracoliches and never more allow any dragon to became his servitor. But Zassran and Ssindra were not killed. To tell the true, they partly succeeded and devoured a small amout of Kiku's essence. Thus, Kiku was unable to destroy them and only imprisoned them in the infinite Pandemonium.
But still, they can be destroyed by someone else than Kiku. Well, this is easier to say than done.

Zassran and Ssindra are the only dracoliches in game, having the same resistances, vulnerabilities etc. as ordinary lich, but much more HD, HP, AC, EV and maybe greater speed. They also have draining bite, miasma cloud as thier breath weapon and the ability to trample.
They have following spell sets:

Zassran’s spell set
Orb of destruction
Bolt of draining
Symbol of torment
Major healing
Invisibility
Lehudib's Crystal Spear

Ssindra’s spell set
Summon dragon (mostly shadow or bone dragon)
Summon horrible things
Summon greater demon
Haunt
Blink range
Death’s door

Edit: They are both found in the Pandemonium, on their own floor with grey floor and bone-themed walls. On this floor, mostly undead creatures should be spawned (including reapers etc. as they are nearly undead).

Aethernitë
Deep elf blademaster unique, capable of spellcasting and even more lethal than her sisters. She wields either two quick blades or draining or sabre of distortion and the Oklob Blade. She has the following spell set:
Haste
Blink close
Invisibility
Minor healing
Slow
Haste

+?, +? Oklob Blade
Edit: Unrandart sabre dealing acid damage and disenchanting armor. I’m not sure about the level of its enchantement, but it should also enable you to evoke Oklob Spit, which is simply the Oklob Plant attack.

Karl-Albert
Ettin unigue berserker-wizard, whose two heads were never able to agree on their goal. Karl became a berserker and thus this unique will go berserk and try to beat you to death with a great mace of giant spiked club. But Albert was more into a magic and he is a skilled wizard, being capable of spellcating even when his other head is berserked. Albert sometimes wield some magic staff and he will try to ruin you with his spells on the same time as Karl will beat you.
Albert’s spell set (or maybe different?):
Haste
Paralyse
Banishment
Confuse
Slow
Blink

Sorry about splitting in into pieces, I forgot about that one.

Hercules
Son of a foreign god and a mortal woman, he delves the Dungeon to accomplish his last, thirteenth quest and became a real god. Beware of his arrows dipped in hydra blood and his powerful blows.

Demigod unique using longbow and arrows of venom in range and club of velocity (or with random brand) in meele. His damage output is fearsome, but what makes him a real threat in a Nemean Lion Hide he wears as an armor.

+7 Nemean Lion Hide
Unrandart armor without astonishing AC, but with one special property: It fully blocks every other blow, no matter of its strength (50% chance for every blow to be blocked).

I don't like kikucide. Jiyva is already vulnerable, and I think it makes Jiyva less interesting to add the same thing to Kiku. And the story doesn't make sense. If Kiku is mad at them, why would she get mad at worshipers for killing them? High priests who will the deity into being with their worship might be a workable theme, but I'm not sure the mechanic belongs. And are there any uniques in Pan with their own floors that don't have runes? I just don't know because I've never gone to Pan. I'm not sure I see what makes these different from random Pan Lords.

Right now there isn't an acid brand for weapons, though that's probably something that could be explored in an unrand. How should that work? Does it affect damage, or just disenchant armour? I think the blademaster is too much like Psyche, who is already a weak idea for a unique.

I like Karl-Albert. Spellcasting while Berzerk is something that isn't in the game. Two-Headed Ogre Mage is kind nice. But Trog would squish it pretty quick learning spells if it was a crawl berzerker. It could be an old-time crusader with the berzerk spell (probably bad to add in-jokes) or could carry an amulet of rage. I guess just give it inherent berzerkitis and skip the Trog theme. The spell set sounds like it would work better with a band of followers, but who could get along with something like that?

So much in crawl is from Greek myths that I love the idea of adding Hercules. I've always thought of the player as an analogue to Hercules, but making him an enemy kind of rubs it in that the RNG isn't trying to make you the hero. He should probably only have that unrand hide some of the time, like Gastronok and his Hat of Pondering. The guys who always have artefacts, like Geryon, Cerebov, and Dispater, are kind of a big deal. So Hercules needs something to make him dangerous when he's not wearing the hide. I'm thinking decent speed and maybe enhanced trampling (IE he can trample things the same size as him, not just smaller things), even though he wouldn't be large? Phrasing it as "blocking" makes it the hide sound like a shield, which is confusing, so maybe the description should be reworded. And there probably needs to me some kind of drawback in addition to the uncertainty of the 50% chance. Maybe you are slowed for a turn when it blocks damage? And many Greek myth inspired uniques are misspelled (or maybe it's an Australian spelling, and I'm ignorant) presumably so there is no pressure to put in undesirable mechanics to fit a theme. Calling him Herk or Rehacles or or Selkareh or something could be a good idea. I love "some foriegn god" for the description of his father.

I could pass on the other ideas, but I like the idea of Karl-Albert; however, I don't like the spells. Blinking itself while berserked would most likely just help the player, as it would make it have to take up its turns approaching you. Maybe you intended it that way as a mercy feature, but it just seems silly. Haste is redundant with berserk, except to cancel out the slow afterwards. Paralyze or confuse both seem likely to cause very unfair seeming deaths, as a berserk ettin can potentially kill a lot of characters in only a few turns.

Well, there are probably no other Pandemonium uniques with their own floor, it only seemed as a good jail for me. And the story can definitely be changed or skipped, it's true it doesn't make much sense letting them live. I simply love the dracoliches and there are none in the game.

I would let the acid weapons disenchant your armor, as this would also give you a reason to have rCorr, which you don't really need outside of the Slime Pits.

Yes, Karl can wear an amulet of rage and perhaps, the spell set of Albert could contain some destructive spells instead of haste. And yes, the blink is silly, but that's because Albert and Karl are not on speaking terms.

I like the trampling of same-sized enemies.

I still miss a tengu unique

Birdman of Alcatraz?

Hawkman

Papageno

Big Bird

Larry Bird

Baretta. Since he always keeps an eye on the sparrow.

It might be interesting to have a unique mimic. Perhaps he can always mimic a desirable unrand.

It could be named "Oxymoron".

Actually, I really really like the idea of a unique mimic (as oxymorous as it is!), if it used somehow used the acquirement process, and maybe even more heavily weighted it could be very interesting. Although, it'd probably be best for it not to have constrict, as that could turn a bit nasty...

Unique mimic with distortion melee and paralyze. Also casts teleport self and mimics an item or feature in sight when it lands.

>Zassran
Bad kitten!
Its kinda close to "shitass" in Russian ("zasranec").
I highly reccomend to rename, for sake of potentional translation (i saw some people working on it in other subforum).

Just rename it into "shitass" in English too?

That's what mimics used to do iirc and it was pretty annoying.

Mimic mimic?

A floor and/or wall mimic sounds cruel and also annoying in a mimic-y way.

http://git.develz.org/?p=crawl.git;a=commitdiff;h=f23ab202821a

(What I was referring to was that mimics used to teleport away and change to something else; but yes there were actually floor and wall mimics at one point.)

IIRC you can still make them in wizmode. Fortunately for everybody I'm not going to bother making a vault with them, though.

Another one:

Adamantium Angel
Powerful angelic warrior with 5-tiles halo and a neverdeath aura of the same range.

The neverdeath aura means that any ally inside of that aura won’t die as long as he stays inside of the aura. When the ally is reduced to 0 HP, he stops regenerating any HP, but can still attack in meele, range or with magic. However, if he gets out of the aura, he simply drops dead. Magical means of healing still work, so a caster with minor healing can have 0 HP, than cast minor healing and go away from the aura without any problem.
The effect of the aura does not work on enemies (including player and his pets). You have to charm the angel first, to become undying monster-butcher.

Still waiting on the felid lich.

"felid lich" sounds like...something. Like a tiny insect or something like that.

Speaking of, I'd personally like to see Jessica completely re-done as a Felid (whether or not we keep the name Jessica isn't really important). Currently she's just a crappy Orc Wizard with little flavor. I don't think she necessarily needs to be buffed or anything, but it would be great to improve the flavor: some mangy-looking wizard cat with, say, d3+1 lives left, comes back on subsequent D levels like Boris -- perhaps mixing up the spell list each time.

I also like demonspawn and sadly there is no unique demonspawn.

I'd like to see at least one unique for each species.

On that note, one of my ideas is for a unique minotaur named Asterion, who has a labyrinth aura. This aura causes the terrain within 6 tiles of him to warp like you were in a labyrinth (though it may or may not warp back later). To limit exploitation, he cannot leave the level he's on.

Oxymoron
Unique shapeshifter who changes its form very often and can shift to any monster in the game, no matter how high (or low) its HD is.

Merlin
‚Legendary magician and sage, Merlin did only one greater mistake in his long life. He tried to seduce Kirke. But she didn’t appreciate his advances at all and showed it in her very special way. However, Merlin kept all his former power and skill even in his new form and he tries hard to find a counterspell.‘

Unique hog who leaves a human corpse after death. Merlin should fight mostly by his spells, keeping his distance. I’d like him to have a semi-random spell set, as Pan lords have, only with hellfire replaced by banishment. He could be neutral to you if you had killed Kirke before (also appearing in human form?) or he could attack Kirke on sight.

Frostbite (that’s the first name that came to my mind, so any renaming is fine)
‚The great mage Ozocubu was once seduced by a succubus and that’s probably where his frigid attitude to sex came from. However, a child was born from their passion and grew up into a young man throughout the years. He is now standing in front of you, surrounded by freeze and his eyes glowing red.‘

Unique demonspawn skilled both in meele and magic fighting. He has icy blue scales, passive freeze, powered by death, hooves and antennae mutations and mosty wields frost-branded weapon. He also has some spells:
Throw frost
Ozocubu’s armour
Summon ice beast
Freezing cloud