New background: Noble

[Lasty]

Background in a sentence: Starts with no skills and poor stats, but a better-than-usual selection of randomly- or semi-randomly-generated items. Goal is to have a challenge class that forces adaptation in the vein of Wanderer.

The name of this could change, and is meant to reflect someone with wealth rather than skills -- other possibilities might include any political title (e.g. Duke, Mayor, Chancellor), anything to do with wealth (e.g. Merchant) or just be silly (e.g. Rich Kid)

Why include this? It gives a different flavor of random and adaptation-heavy gameplay than Wanderer or Chaos Knight. Seems to me like it would be a fun option, and I'd enjoy rolling one up more than I would enjoy Wanderers (which I also enjoy).

[mumra]

I'm not sure how this is sufficiently different to wanderer. Wanderers could just be tweaked to sometimes generate more items and less skills ...

[Lasty]

I'm not sure how this is sufficiently different to wanderer. Wanderers could just be tweaked to sometimes generate more items and less skills ...

I'd enjoy that too, but I do think there's a significant difference between starting w/ random stats and skills and a slightly random but basic inventory and starting w/ no skills, bad stats, and a random but strong inventory. The "better" inventory might include armor pieces with egos, weapons with brands, low to mid-level rings and wands, a few extra scrolls or potions, or maybe even one of the new elemental evokers. Ideally the starting "better" inventory wouldn't include powerful and frequently-repeatable tools such as rods (unless new ones are added that are much worse) or evokable invis.

Again, the goal of the extra inventory, while significantly better than the default starting inventory, is to provoke interesting adaptation rather than stifling it by providing a toolkit that will carry the character through the entire game.

EDIT: clarified the piece of the sentence about armor and weapons.

[Tiber]

If you really wanted adaptation, some of those items might have to be unidentified or something.

How would your idea interact with books? Books are considered a strong starting item, and already available to wanderers. An idea I once had was for a "scholar" background, which starts with a randart book whose spells were only visible once you've reached the appropriate level (to slightly limit scumming). Perhaps a noble could sometimes generate with this?

[Lasty]

I think books would be among the possible starting items, especially with the poor stats and no starting skills to limit the power of starting w/ a book. The randart book sounds like a fun way to implement that, though I don't know that you should need to hide the contents: Wanderers are already very scummable, so I'm assuming that the devs are okay with a certain level of scumability on random backgrounds.

[Bim]

Random items at start has been discussed before (under a different name) and was completely cut down by devs due to players being able to just quit and restart until they get the 'best' items (even if they were balanced, you'd probably roll a few times to get the selection you wanted). There is practically no trade off as it takes only seconds to restart a new game.

Unfortunately I don't think it's possible.

[DracheReborn]

How about if the Noble starts with a weak permanent ally instead of better items? Call it a bodyguard or armsman or something. Maybe give the player a choice of several low level monsters (like a weak version of the Mercenary card). Since the ally is weak, it will probably die off soon, so it's strictly an early game boost to get you on your feet.

[Lasty]

Random items at start has been discussed before (under a different name) and was completely cut down by devs due to players being able to just quit and restart until they get the 'best' items (even if they were balanced, you'd probably roll a few times to get the selection you wanted). There is practically no trade off as it takes only seconds to restart a new game.

Unfortunately I don't think it's possible.

If it's already been discussed and flatly rejected, I get that and I'll drop it. Seems like the same criticism applies to Wanderer just as much, but maybe the devs hate Wanderer too.

How about if the Noble starts with a weak permanent ally instead of better items? Call it a bodyguard or armsman or something. Maybe give the player a choice of several low level monsters (like a weak version of the Mercenary card). Since the ally is weak, it will probably die off soon, so it's strictly an early game boost to get you on your feet.

Seems like that would be a bad trade-off for no skills and bad stats. If the skills and stats were boosted, they'd probably be too similar to some other background.

I think starting w/ a permanent ally was rejected when discussing the "Beastmaster" background, which suits me fine since I don't much care for permanent allies.

[dpeg]

There was a time when Crawl would roll some die before giving you your character, e.g. HP or number of arrows. Is it flavourful? Probably to many, yes. Is it meaningful? Probably yes, too -- meaningful enough that some players would reroll characters until they got good enough results.

Therefore, this approach was shelved and character generation is now deterministic, with the sole exception of Wanderers. I don't think randomised backgrounds apart from Wanderers have a chance to make it into the game.

DracheReborn: I like the ally idea and think it could work quite well. Flavour-wise, it is novel and cool, and also a little nod to Nethack (the starting pet is one of the best working concepts in that game, in my opinion). Gameplay-wise, the ally will be strong at the start (as strong as we like) but diminish in power -- that's exactly the behaviour we want. Furthermore, there tools and tricks to help your ally, so this could lead to different play. I don't think there is overlap with summoners or necromancers or death knights, as those all play around cheap and exchangeable allies. Finally, I'm sure that "noble" is not the correct mental approach but that doesn't really matter. (In particular, when I support a starting ally, I don't imply that such a background should have no skills or stats.)

[Marbit]

The starting mercenary sounds good.
Too bad the mercenary will grow weak, I tend to grow attached to my named minions as they complete feats with me in the dungeon.
I'll be happy if this gets implemented.

[mumra]

Yes this is a bit similar to something that came up in the Beastmaster thread. That idea wasn't outright rejected - in fact it was dpeg who first suggested it there. The main objection was that backgrounds shouldn't start with things that other classes can't actually get in a normal game. It also has some implementation issues because our ally play and AI perhaps isn't deep enough to support a Nethack-like 'pet' start.

If I was going to design this kind of perma-pet background it'd probably involve baby dragons, luckily I don't want to touch this idea with a ten-feet pole right now

[dpeg]

mumra: But think of how much we could expand the female fraction of the player base by having tiles of cute little baby dragons!
(This is a joke, no need to write long letters about dpeg's stereotypes.)

[nicolae]

Background in a sentence: Starts with no skills and poor stats, but a better-than-usual selection of randomly- or semi-randomly-generated items. Goal is to have a challenge class that forces adaptation in the vein of Wanderer.

The name of this could change, and is meant to reflect someone with wealth rather than skills -- other possibilities might include any political title (e.g. Duke, Mayor, Chancellor), anything to do with wealth (e.g. Merchant) or just be silly (e.g. Rich Kid)

Why include this? It gives a different flavor of random and adaptation-heavy gameplay than Wanderer or Chaos Knight. Seems to me like it would be a fun option, and I'd enjoy rolling one up more than I would enjoy Wanderers (which I also enjoy).

A while ago, the topic of a background defined by a selection of starting consumables came up in a thread, and I thought about a "wealth instead of skills" idea. I called it the Connoisseur, a collector of magical items, who would start with a few item-related consumables (like identify, remove curse, etc.), a good chunk of gold, some magical items pre-identified (to be determined, but I was thinking some basic scrolls and potions and maybe one or two kinds of wand or ring), and some decent weapon to hit things with, but they had very little in the way of skills or starting stats. I'm not sure it's a great idea, but, *gestures vaguely in the direction of the rest of the forum*

[Bim]

WOMEN!? ON CRAWL!?!?! I REFUSE TO BELIEVE IT. GET OUT DPEG, BE GONE WITH YOU!

I do really like the idea of a class that starts with some utilities instead of stats/abilities (although this could be said to be too similar to an artificer really). The only problem with this approach is that I feel (unless it was somehow balanced incredibly well) that you would just use those utilities getting up to the standard level that everyone starts at, so it'd be almost pointless to choose.

[Grimm]

new background: woman

[pratamawirya]

new species: chick

[Marbit]

I'll put a couple arguments in favor of the background if only because I was not there for the beastmaster discussion.

1) Backgrounds already give something that you cannot obtain in game, that is the distribution of attributes. A character with a background that gives low int will never catch up with a character that starts with high int if both raise their attibutes in the same way.

2) Giving a small permanent ally is not giving anything that a character cannot obtain in game. Some backgrounds start a god, wands or enchanted equpment, this one starts with a some gold and (a bad outcome of) a mercenary card.

3) I know that backgrounds are supoused to be starting packages with reduced effect in the late game... but why? To the very least we should question wheter or not it would be interesting, fun and beneficial to the game to make backgrounds have a more permanent effect and break that non written rule.

[Bim]

New ability: 'get the hell off your call of crawl or whatever'
Deals irresistible torment damage. Roll for 'just one more game' counter attack, fails instantly if you've used that line before and had to sleep on the sofa.