Mines Malingerer
Posts: 50
Joined: Saturday, 26th April 2014, 18:09
Mummy Death Curse Rework
Currently, Death Curses retaliate against the player (Or whoever landed the killing blow) instantly, and includes a host of effects ranging from 'nothing actually happens' to 'stack enough rot and your character is crippled'. This isn't very interesting in the first place, and can lead to things like clearing a room with a spell and instantly dying from full health. It's also not very thematically appropriate: a curse is something that sticks with you and tries to make life hard on you until the curse is broken somehow. It's not a dead man's switch.
So my proposal is basically to rework Death Curses so they inflict an effect more like Divine Wrath, such as from going into Penance or leaving the god outright. It goes something like....
When you kill something with a Death Curse, you are 'marked'/'cursed'/'haunted'/whatever you want to call it. The point is whatever you killed is somehow attempting to get you from the afterlife. This generates a counter of a semi-random size (enemies with nastier grades of curses get longer counters, on average) which diminishes by one (Or possibly more on nastier effects?) every time the Death Curse attempts to do something to you. Furthermore, there is a delay of a semi-random length before the Death Curse can make another attempt on your life.
The Death Curse should pay attention to tension: it prefers to do things to you when you are in a bad situation and it might get you killed, not when a Goblin is the only thing in your line of sight. Furthermore, unlike the current list of Death Curse effects, the effects in question should all be things that can never directly kill you or directly damage anything: it doesn't roll 'destroy potion' or 'rot HP' or 'XDX Negative Energy damage'. It Slows you, or Confuses you when you're standing near lava or deep water, or the like.
Once the counter has fully decremented the player gets some kind of message informing them the Death Curse is over. ("Your tormentor has moved on" or "You like a dark weight life from your shoulders" or whatever. If you have a good one, suggest it!)
Things I don't have concrete ideas about: what happens with multiple Death Curses? Do they all sit in one que? Do up to three Death Curse ques get to be active at once? Do they all get one global counter, that any Death Curse adds to? Ques based on strength of Death Curse? (eg 'weak Death Curse que', 'strong Death Curse que', 'very strong Death Curse que') There's multiple solutions, and I'm not experienced enough with the game (Let alone the code) to say what would be most sensical.
Similarly, I don't know what would be a good list of effects. The ideas I've had myself are...
-Slowing. Death Curses should refuse to inflict this on players who currently know Haste and can cast it reliably/safely. (Or any other renewable effects that can clear Slowing. Berserk?)
-Siphon the player's mana. I wanna say 'all of it', all but forcing a retreat, but for all I know that's way overboard. In any event Death Curses should refuse to inflict this one characters who have no way to spend mana. I don't know what the exact bar should be. Several Invocations spend mana, but siphoning a Beoghite's mana just because of Smite is probably a relief for the player.
-Confusion. With a preference for doing so when a mistake could directly kill you. (You are currently next to lava or something) If you are benefiting from Clarity, this option should be skipped.
-Torment effect on the player. Death Curses should refuse to do this if it won't work. (eg you're a Mummy)
-Berserk one or more enemies in line of sight. (Obviously, this shouldn't be selected if everything in line of sight can't Berserk) Given the Berserk Moth was removed, this might be overboard. I'm just tossing out ideas that fit the definitions I myself provided. Doesn't mean they're good ideas.
-Spawn dangerous clouds to block the player's escape route. I don't know how practical it would be to code it so the game can tell how best to cage you, but if it is possible it would be really neat.
... and that's all I've come up with myself.
I'm just trying to imagine Death Curses as something more interesting, and incidentally flavorful.
- For this message the author Ghoul King has received thanks: 2
- dolphin, XuaXua