Shoals Surfer
Posts: 298
Joined: Wednesday, 9th March 2016, 20:00
Race suggestion: Goblin
- To answer the questions of "why do we need this"/"what new things does this bring to the table": I wanted to create an idea for a race that is small, but not particularly suited to a stealthy playstyle. I also wanted to think about how a race that can't use scrolls could work. From the synthesis of these two concepts, I came up with the Goblin.
- The idea was partially inspired by Blood Bowl Goblins, who are neither strong nor particularly agile, but compensate for that by cheating shamelessly at every opportunity.
- I wanted Goblins to be a potentially challenging race, but not a "challenge race" necessarily, i.e. not something that's meant to be clearly inferior to the "normal" options. This is the first iteration of the idea and since it's not been put into practice, I'm not sure how exactly the balance of this would pan out.
Goblins are a small humanoid race, looked down upon and reviled by a great many of the intelligent races for their noisy, violent demeanor and perceived lack of intellect. Unlike other smaller races such as kobolds and spriggans, goblins have no particular innate affinity for stealth, due to their lack of patience and internal discipline. They have an animistic set of beliefs, consulting a number of different spirits for guidance and strength, using no magic aside from their tribal shamanistic rituals - thus they have very little talent for the arcane (aside from Summoning and Necromancy, which resemble some of their rituals and are thus easier for them to learn).
The saving grace of the goblins is their mastery of a dirty, dishonorable style of combat that somewhat makes up for their lack of physical strength. Goblins can master any type of combat and routinely employ crippling, underhanded moves that focus on disabling their enemies. This allows them to stand a chance in a fight against opponents greater than themselves, at least until they find an opportunity to flee, provided they have somehow developed enough fighting skill.
Though their shamanism leaves them inexperienced in traditional magic, their knowledge of shaman stones, sacred totems and similar items gives them a talent for evocable items and an excellent ability to communicate with supernatural forces - the traditional pantheon and their animistic spirits alike. Goblin tribes do not learn to read, and thus a goblin cannot use magical scrolls at all - though they can still call upon spirits of wisdom to help them absorb the magical knowledge hidden in a spellbook, if they so wish.
Goblin adventurers always wear sacred talismans bequeathed upon them by their shamans. With the help of these talismans, a goblin can commune with the spirit of any unknown item they encounter in the dungeons, automatically identifying them. These talismans also convey rudimentary warding from curses and maledictions. Thus, goblins have no need for scrolls of identify or remove curse, and can freely swap even permanently cursed items - but the talismans leave them no space to wear magical amulets.
Aptitudes:
Arm -1, Ddg 3, Sth -1, Shd -1, Inv +2, Evo +2
HP -10%, MP -1, Exp +1, MR +5
Fgt 0, all weapon apts 0, Thr -1, Slg 0, Bws -3, Crb -3, Spc -1, Sum -1, Nec -1, all other spell schools -3
Attributes: Str 4, Int 4, Dex 10 (before background modifiers)
Gain: 1 Str/Dex every 4 levels
Gimmicks:
Dirty fighting: Whenever you fight in melee, you have a chance to inflict negative status effects on enemies via special moves. The chance is dependent on weapon skill (proposed chance = S/27*C, where S is the current skill level of the weapon you are using, and C is an arbitrarily defined constant based on what would be balanced - around C=0.5 sounds good to me for a start). Each attack has a chance of triggering one of these special effects, regardless of whether the attack hits or misses (of course, effects are only applied if it hits), ignoring enemy MR. There is one weapon-specific move available for each weapon class, depending on what the goblin is wielding at the moment. For example:
Blinding attack: inflicts blindness for 3-4 turns. "You strike at the [enemy's] organ of sight, momentarily blinding [them]!"
Hobble: inflicts Slow for 8-10 turns. "You hobble the [enemy] with a well-placed disabling strike!"
Weak Point: inflicts double damage, dazes enemy for one turn. "You manage to strike at a particularly vulnerable spot of the [enemy]!!!!"
Painful strike: halves current enemy HP (like the Agony/Torment effect, except not rN/MR-based). Normal weapon damage will be dealt if that is higher. "You deal a particularly vicious strike to the [enemy], making it hurt as best you can!!!!!!
Bleeding wound: inflicts a 'bleeding' status effect on the enemy - for the sake of simplicity, this works against everything, with the understanding that certain creatures leak things other than blood. (Works with M&F/staves too just for the sake of simplicity. Maybe it's the spikes on your eveningstar, or maybe you just scrape your staff really roughly at a sensitive spot. Enemy bleeds for random amount between, let's say, 25-50% of their maximum HP over the course of several turns.) "You slash open the [enemy]!!"
Disarming strike: conveys 'weak' modifier upon the enemy for 8-10 turns, decreasing the physical damage they deal to you. "You mangle the fighting limb of the [enemy]!!!"
Weapon-specific:
SBl: Shank - inflicts 'stab damage', as if the enemy was paralyzed, regardless of awareness status (the amount of damage you deal is calculated as with regular stabs, taking weapon skill and Stealth into account and all that). Only works if the current enemy is the only hostile, aware creature next to you. "You slice open the [enemy] in an opportune moment with your blade!!!!!"
LBl: Sever Limb - permanently inflicts Slow or Weak and a bleeding wound. "You cripple the [enemy] with a well-placed swing!!"
Axe: Whirlwind Strike - hits all neighbors for full damage, shoves them back up to 2-3 squares away from you (not necessarily in a straight line). This can send them careening into water or lava. Only triggers if you are fighting multiple enemies at once. "You spin around like a maniac and send your enemies reeling!"
Mace: Stunning Blow - makes enemy dazed for a few turns, aka short term confuse (90% chance) or paralyzed (10% chance). "You scramble the [enemy]'s mind with a stunning blow from your weapon!!!"
Polearm: Impale - only occurs on reach attacks. Inflicts bleeding, halves enemy HP and prevents the enemy from doing anything until the next action you take. "You skewer the [enemy] real good with your polearm!!!!!"
Staff: Pole Vault Strike - attacks the enemy for normal damage, leaving them dazed for 2-3 turns and allowing you to then controlled-blink away to any empty square in a range of 3 squares. You can stay put if you wish to, of course. "You pole-vault at the [enemy] and smack [them], then bounce away! Choose where to bounce..."
Unarmed: Strangle - Instantly executes the opponent. Only triggers if the enemy is is slower than you, as this is basically you lunging for their throat before they can react. Does not work against anything with the rConstr resistance. "You lunge at the [enemy] and choke the very essence out of it!!!!!"
None of these effects trigger on ripostes. They only trigger in goblin form (nothing that transmutes you into something different, with the possible exception of statue form). Each effect has an equal chance of triggering, except the weapon-specific effect, which has a halved chance. For reference, goblins can have the current list of moves available to them (and the current chance to trigger a move upon hitting) listed in a way accessible from the mutation screen, just like vampires have their satiation levels with their respective effects listed.
With C=0.5, there is a ~12.5% chance of something happening every hit with weapon skill 6.2, a 25% chance of something happening with weapon skill 13.5 and a 50% chance of something happening with weapon skill 27. At the highest weapon skill level, you have a ~3.85% chance of you triggering your weapon-specific move on a hit, and a ~7.7% chance of any individual non-weapon-specific move, if I calculated correctly. It scales down linearly from there. Does that sound about right? Sounds right to me, although we can increase the chances to up to double of that if the race is otherwise deemed too weak.
No scroll reading: Goblins cannot read scrolls. (They can "read" spellbooks just fine though, for reasons explained in the lore.)
Instead, they have a number of mechanics to replace scroll functions. Goblins can call upon their spirits to escape for 2 MP with an ability. ("You call upon the spirits to aid you in your predicament!") The spirits are fickle. Possible consequences are (probabilities subject to rebalancing):
50%: nothing ("The moods of the spirits are fickle, however, and none of them respond to your plea this time.") - Alternatively, just give the ability a flat 50% chance to fail (though I like the extra flavor, which also makes it clear why the success chance doesn't scale off Invo, Evo or anything else).
10%: controlled blink ("A benevolent spirit momentarily infuses you with translocational energy! Choose where to blink..." Again affected by -Tele.)
10%: fear ("Infused by the spirit of war, you let out a savage battlecry!" Fear effect akin to the fear scroll, with similar power.)
10%: summon spectral goblins (summoning scroll-style) ("The spirit of the dead hears your plea. A horde of your ancestors arrives to aid you!" Summons a big horde of spectral goblins/hobgoblins that fill up every available space in a radius of a few squares. Pretty strong early on, but mostly like Summon Butterflies later.)
5%: teleportation ("A benevolent spirit attempts to teleport you away to safety!" Affected by -Tele items and all that.)
5%: fog ("The spirits of the night hear your plea and shroud you in darkness!" Creates a powerful fog effect on top of you.)
4%: smite attack on user, leaves them on 1 HP if it would kill them ("The spirits are annoyed by your pleas for assistance. They smite you for your impertinence!")
4%: confuse user ("The spirits respond with a cacophony of malignant shrieks that overwhelm your mind! You are confused.")
2%: mark user ("You grab the attention of a particularly capricious spirit! This does not bode well... A sentinel's mark forms upon you.")
Basically, you have theoretically infinite teleport/blinking/fear/fog/quasi-summoning scrolls, except it's unreliable and you can suffer from negative consequences when you try - so you have to make sure not to wait too long when you get into trouble. 50% of no effect, 40% of something good happening, 10% of something bad happening every time you try.
Items are auto-ID'd and item curses don't affect you, as explained in the description. (No particular protection against mummy death curses.)
Other scrolls are simply not available. Sorry, no acquirements. Also no enchant weapon/armor, so good luck scavenging whatever you can get.
God restrictions:
No WJC worship (Gameplay reason: so that the player isn't overloaded by all kinds of martial arts mumbo-jumbo. Lore reason: WJC looks down on your crude and artless form of fighting.)
No Uskayaw worship (Gameplay reason: so that the player isn't overloaded by all kinds of martial arts mumbo-jumbo. Lore reason: Uskayaw looks down on your crude and artless form of dancing.)
No Ashenzari (Gameplay reason: no access to scrolls of remove curse. Lore reason: you simply can't partake in Ashenzari's curse without removing your sacred talismans, and no goblin would do that.)
Otherwise you can worship anything - the gods aren't really jealous of your spirits as they don't consider them to be any more powerful than, say, a phial of floods.
No amulets:
That's the final gimmick. Goblins can't wear amulets. As stated in the description, they already wear a bunch of tribal talismans around their neck. Rings are a-OK. This is partly for lore reasons, partly to introduce a new kind of equipment restriction on a new race.
Summary:
Basically, the gist of it is: Small race, not particularly great at stealth, bad at spellcasting, initially bad at melee combat too, though gets better as the chance to deal negative status effects improves. As you can see, there is a pretty long list of moves listed above - but the idea is that this doesn't actually introduce a great deal of complication for the player, unlike WJC/Uskayaw. The player doesn't have to move about in a fancy way or drastically change their fighting style to deal with goblin moves, they can just fight - and occasionally, they'll notice interesting things happen, like an enemy being blinded that allows them to run away more easily if they feel like they're in trouble, or one that starts bleeding that they don't have to keep hitting anymore, which can then abruptly change how the fight goes, usually for the better. They can also make strategic considerations eventually, partly based on their choice of weapon. A goblin that fights unarmed may wish to exploit Strangle by casting Metabolic Englaciation (if they can train their magic up that far!) or taking the Hepliaqlkana Hexer ancestor to do the same. Axe users can choose to draw several enemies and position them wisely around water and lava. Shankers, conversely, would try to make sure they fight a series of 1v1s. Again, this just requires a bit of strategic forethought about how to fight, and then it can become routine - no need to think carefully about every move like with Uskayaw or WJC, so hopefully no cognitive overload.
***
Well, there we go, my first race idea. Open to all kinds of suggestions for tweaks, including any more/better move ideas you have. The names and messages for the moves might use some tweaking, these are just a rough first draft to help you get an idea of how it'd all look in the game.
- For this message the author Malevolent has received thanks: 3
- Beargit, monkeytor, Vajrapani