Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 5382
Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36
Race Proposal: Elementals
I think there's a lot of good design space for races which do not wear armor, with octopodes being my current favorite, so here's another in that sort of style: Elementals.
Elementals are non-humanoid vortexes/clouds of their element, and as such cannot use armor. They are still capable of wielding weapons and wearing jewelry, because gameplay reasons. I mean, I'd be fine with forcing them to use unarmed, but I figure people would rather have choices.
All aptitudes are 0. It kind of bugs me that humans are no longer 0 to everything since the spellcasting/invo/evo adjustments, let's go pure 0's for this one! (before elemental type messes it up)
Hp and Mp are +1. Current armor free races are at -40% and -10%, so I wanted to give elementals the higher hp/mana space.
MR +4 per level.
Experience aptitude is 0.
+1 any stat every 4 levels, starting attributes are flat.
One of the main questions I have about the design is if it's alright to allow the player to specify their element type. It seems that crawl is against that - draconians are random, demonspawn mutations are random. No race picks a major aspect of their development from a list. I would like elementals to be able to pick theirs, but if a random system is considered superior, that's alright too.
So, either at creation, or picked/randomly assigned at level 7, elementals get a primary type:
Fire: +5 EV, rF++, ranged flame attack(s)
Ice: +5 AC, rC++, ranged ice attack(s)
Air: +5 EV, rElec, ranged lightning attack(s)
Earth +8 AC, no resistance, ranged earth (physical) attack(s)
Poison: +3 EV and +3 AC, ranged poison attack(s)
All elements further get +2 to their magic school. Each element adds a brand to unarmed combat: flaming, freezing, electrocution, stone fists (claws 1 or 2, but with FLAVOR), venom.
For ranged attacks, I'd like to see elementals get two - one which is a range 5-7 or so projectile (similar to a stone arrow, but of the appropriate elemental), and one that is an 'overload' which blasts all targets around you in radius 2 (lower damage). If having two actives is too much, one could be dropped. They would cost mana, and have a decently long (~20-30 turns) breath timer.
While AC is likely to be considered better than EV, I've kept things even for now. I'm considering giving them a base AC value, something like just starting with 5 ac. Might make the early game too easy, not sure. Earth gets slightly more ac for not having a resistance, based on what the protection brand. I believe qaz uses +3 ac when hit by physical, so I'm going with the same value here. For air, I'd like to give immunity to electricity, but I'm not sure if others will agree. Resistance is fine also. Might make the disc of storms overpowered, but that would be a fun build!
At level 15, a second type is chosen/randomly assigned, without allowing for opposites - you can't be earth/air or fire/ice. Secondary type has the same effect as primary except it gives +1 to the school, and has no effect on unarmed combat. You still get the ranged attack(s).
Elementals are barred from using most transmutations, as they have no body to reshape. No form spells, stoneskin. Believe me it's hard for me to ban statue form, but there's already some options to get ac, and they have branded unarmed, so branding + transmutations is too much. I'm somewhat on the fence regarding Ozo's armor, cigotuvi's embrace. They could go either way.
Elementals have to eat. We don't want Djinns again. Flavor's a bit weird here, but something about "consuming material" should make just enough sense to overlook this.
Officially ruining greatplayer statistics since Jan 18th, 2015.
I wrote the Melee Naga Guide.
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