Non-human undead players.

[Senban]

Hi folks, some ideas I've had about undead characters:

It's always slightly bothered me that you could only play human Vampires/Mummies in a world filled with such a (delightfully) whacky selection of sentient species (I mean mummy Felids - that's a thing here, surely they'd do that in Zotistan too?).

So I was thinking, improve the undead species by removing them...

For Mummies:
Ossuary becomes a guaranteed branch (perhaps with a bit of work on the level generator and the possibility of extra floors). On entering a message to the effect of: "It is said that the mummified remains of those who die here are doomed to wander the dungeon eternally..." is diplayed in a nice lurid purple/green colour.

Now if you die in the Ossuary you get the usual You die... message and inventory screen then, assuming you are an appropriate species (I'd only rule out Gargoyles, Djin and Lava Orcs from the current set although Demigods would take a bit of consideration) and also assuming you don't suffer stat death after the modifiers for mummification are applied you come back to (un)life to discover that.
1) about half of your inventory has been looted, about half of that can be found scattered about the Ossuary anyway. (excluding starting gear, branded items and artifacts and spell books, which can be arranged ceremoniously around you in the Tomb of [Player] vault you awaken in.)
2)100 Million turns have passed (or some other huge number). Aside from the addition of some of your favourite scrolls and nick-nacks being scattered around it the Ossuary is exactly as you left it, the Dungeon outside however still has the same basic floorplan but everything movable (treasure/monsters) has changed as the centuries ticked by.
3) Species specific abilities are (mostly) stripped, Felids extra lives do not apply in the Ossuary and certainly not post-mummification, Demonspawn stick with their present form but do not continue to transform, Naga do not spit venom and so on. Felids would stay fast though and flying Tengu might, just, arguably be allowed to retain that.
Sorting out post transformation aptitudes is probably a bit tricky, either averaging current Mummy aptitudes with the players species aptitudes or just switching the players aptitudes to the current Mummy ones seems best to me, although I'd keep the characters attribute levelling as per their original species.

For Vampires:
At least one Potion of Blood is guaranteed to be generated on a different level in the same range of levels as the Ossuarry.
Drinking a Potion of Blood as a non-vampire now gives you the Vamp status in a (rich shade of burgundy) which is a long-lasting effect (similar duration to current handling of Drain). If you die while under the influence of Vamp you come back after a few thousand turns. Monsters on the level who tend to pick up gear will all get the opportunity to loot your corpse and any surviving monsters will have moved around a bit but other wise things will be more or less the same. Bat Form and Bottle Blood will be acquired one at a time on level up once the level requirement is reached, so a character dying at level 5 with Vamp gets Bat Form at 6 then Bottle Blood at 7. As with Mummies characters would no longer gain their species based transformations on levelling but would retain physical changes.
Blood potions would now only drop in the Ossuary range levels and would have a slow timer even on unidentified potions sitting on the floor to prohibit characters levelling up too much before becoming Vampires. Vampirism capable species might be a slightly narrower set than mummification capable ones.
The Potion of Blood's description would include an explanation of how to use it to become a vampire.
While I was at it I'd give high level vampires a third ability: Raise Vampire - allowing them to choose a suitable, fresh corpse and raise it as a minion. This would take lots of Potions of Blood (? based on corpses HD) and be capped in some way (permanent MP reduction, HD total of minions = your level or something like that, and would be designed generally to be more fun than useful, with some chance of enchantment resistant progeny turning against you so brining back named characters would be doable but risky and carefully nerfed, more so you could say that you did it than so that you could auto-win Zigguruts (and not out of scale with Summoning or conversion anyway).

[dialectric]

You can get the other species as undead using Necromutation at high levels, but it might be interesting to have other low-level undead possibilities. The ossuary setup sounds a bit complicated to me. As an alternative, the 'death knight' class start out as undead (a lesser version of necromutation effect) regardless of the species you choose, and/or 'lich' could be added as an undead caster-oriented class, also weaker than necromutation's current effects.

[Senban]

Without discounting it as another way to get the same result, I'd already considered the idea of Mummification being offered on joining one of the two necromantic religions. The problem with that being the only way to become a mummy (Necromutation aside, which is something I've never had a Necromancer get close to) is that it run's the risk of falling in to the same player disenfrachising category of design decison as deleting Mountain Dwarfs, someone who had a strong fetish for Mummy Skald's of Vehumet would find that my taste in gameplay had pwnd theirs and might start playing Nethack instead. Going this route (or something essentially simillar) would open up player choice, and increase the number of different ways of going about things which the game offers.

The way I've presented the Ossuary idea is a little complicated but could be stripped back or elaborated upon to whatever extent necessary if it ever did get to the point of someone actually developing it.
For something even simpler you could also just add an Amulet of Mummification which turns you in to a Mummy if you level up while wearing it. For extra laughs this could have a high chance of spawning cursed and might even not auto-identify (at least until you bash that one last rat), alternatively it could be done via a Potion of Embalming (cancelable via a Potion of Curing).

[Igxfl]

For something even simpler you could also just add an Amulet of Mummification which turns you in to a Mummy if you level up while wearing it. For extra laughs this could have a high chance of spawning cursed and might even not auto-identify (at least until you bash that one last rat)

Ragequit.

Having a more beneficial religion-based mummyform (maybe with potion use?) could work. Arguably Kiku does it by potentially gifting Necromutation, but most characters won't cast that anyway. It sounds like a Yred thing; if Yred ever get's overhauled, bring it up again.

Dithmengos's Shadow Form is actually shaping up to be a little like this, although more powerful, costly, and temporary.

[Senban]

Ragequit.

Yes, but then after that you'd know not to mess about with jewllery without the appropriate scrolls. Hell a few games ago I ID'd an Amulet of Innacuracy I'd had round my chump neck since D1, I can't remember what level I was on when I found out. I was really hoping that would reveal as an Amulet of Clarity the next time an Orc Wiz showed up. Using the nastiest version of the amulet wouldn't be my first choice, but part of the fun of Crawl is that it can be remorseless at times.

[XuaXua]

As a non-human, undead player, I prefer tab-heavy builds to reduce the chance of my rotting fingers fallng off from overuse.

[duvessa]

The game already has three non-human undead races: mummy, ghoul, and vampire.

[dialectric]

I like the idea of an amulet to get other undead options. Instead of triggering on level up, I would call it 'amulet of undying', have it give rN- when worn, but upon the player's death, if worn on a non-undead species, they would come back to life like a felid extra life, but as a lich variant of their species. The rN- would go away, but removing the amulet after that could cause instant death.

There are already multiple negative effect rings, but only the amulet of inaccuracy - having a few more somewhat bad (but not terrible) amulet effects could be interesting.

[Senban]

The game already has three non-human undead races: mummy, ghoul, and vampire.

What I was trying to come up with was a way to allow Felid Mummies, Halfling Vampires and so on: to me being a mummy or vampire makes more sense as a condition than it does as a species - but players should definately be able to decide: I want to play a Mummy Necromancer and reliably get to that well before the Lair, even if it stopped being a starting option.
I'd totally discounted ghouls - I swear last time I actually read their description they were explicitly not undead, but living creatures who scavenged from graveyards. I guess I could have mixed that up with some other setting though, if the idea did catch on they would possibly need the same kind of treatment.

I like the idea of an amulet to get other undead options. Instead of triggering on level up, I would call it 'amulet of undying', have it give rN- when worn, but upon the player's death, if worn on a non-undead species, they would come back to life like a felid extra life, but as a lich variant of their species. The rN- would go away, but removing the amulet after that could cause instant death.

There are already multiple negative effect rings, but only the amulet of inaccuracy - having a few more somewhat bad (but not terrible) amulet effects could be interesting.

The exact specifics of the approach don't matter too much as long as aquiring mummification, vampirism (or ghoulishness) were reliable early game objectives for those who wanted them.

[nicolae]

What I was trying to come up with was a way to allow Felid Mummies, Halfling Vampires and so on: to me being a mummy or vampire makes more sense as a condition than it does as a species

Crawl's player design doesn't really handle mix-and-match conditions like that. Presumably, the curse of undeath drastically alters your innate physical conditions, overwhelming the nature of your former life. (And also that nobody bothered to mummify or vampirize felids and octopodes.)

And really, would most species+undead combinations bring anything new and interesting to the table?

[Grimm]

nobody bothered to mummify...felids

I beg to differ.

[Senban]

And really, would most species+undead combinations bring anything new and interesting to the table?

The way I'd propose handling aptitudes would be that physical skills, weapons and spell casting would be modified from the base species by same difference as that between a human and mummy/vampire (which is easy to figure out cos humans have straight 0's) while specific magic types would be grafted directly from the undead proficiency.
Basically an mummified elf would be as much (or as little) different to a mummified human as the two species are when alive. Cooler and more outlandish possibilities come up with vampiric octopodes and such.
And to me one of crawls great strengths is the layers of mixing and matching. I dunno what the total possible number of species, background and god combinations is, but it must be pretty high, even if some of them don't get played as often as others.

[nicolae]

nobody bothered to mummify...felids

I beg to differ.

Oh, I know about real life mummified cats, but perhaps none of them ever got stuck in the right sarcophagus to want to get back out again.

[Leafsnail]

Wouldn't a mummified version of race X just be "Race X, only worse"?

[duvessa]

Wouldn't a mummified version of race X just be "Race X, only worse"?

In fact, this already exists in the game, except for some reason it's a level 8 spell instead of a god wrath effect or something.

[Senban]

Wouldn't a mummified version of race X just be "Race X, only worse"?

To the extact same extent that a mummy is a human, only worse: yes.
If this seemed to be an issue it could be solved.

For a more in depth answer:
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Mummies#Difficulty_of_Play

[duvessa]

...Wow, that wiki page.

[njvack]

After a while, monsters stop showing up altogether, and after an extremely long time, the world will cease to exist.

What? How is that not a viable strategy?

[Siegurt]

Well, the orb of zot and the exit cease to exist with the rest of the game, so it's not really a *winning* strategy

[damiac]

Wouldn't a mummified version of race X just be "Race X, only worse"?

In fact, this already exists in the game, except for some reason it's a level 8 spell instead of a god wrath effect or something.

Why the hell do you insist on trying to pretend necromutation is so bad. If it turned you into an actual mummy, and its only benefit was torment immunity, it would still be a good spell. But in fact it does even more than that.

Not that it's broken or OP or a no brainer, but it's also not a bad thing. I've probably overlooked a lot of good advice from you because I thought other things you said were outrageous exaggerations like this.

[and into]

Wouldn't a mummified version of race X just be "Race X, only worse"?

In fact, this already exists in the game, except for some reason it's a level 8 spell instead of a god wrath effect or something.

Why the hell do you insist on trying to pretend necromutation is so bad. If it turned you into an actual mummy, and its only benefit was torment immunity, it would still be a good spell. But in fact it does even more than that.

Not that it's broken or OP or a no brainer, but it's also not a bad thing. I've probably overlooked a lot of good advice from you because I thought other things you said were outrageous exaggerations like this.

Not sure if this is exactly what duvessa has in mind, but...

Realistically, only late game characters are going to have lichform. Also, dudes who have lichform will have invested a lot to get it castable. So really the aptitude difference between a human in lichform and a mummy that survived until late game is probably not gonna translate into that huge skill level difference in very late game, assuming reasonable skill training strategy on the mummy's part.

There are the small bonuses to lichform but they aren't much of a consideration. Lichform boosts MR and stealth, and gives +5 AC, rC+, rPois, rRot, etc. That's not nothing, but it is very little for a level 8 dual-school spell, really, and doesn't compensate for inability to quaff. Just being able to pop !agility or !might when you need it, for instance, is really good even at the latest stages of the game, and I'd generally rather have that ability than +5 AC, rC+, rPois, etc., especially when in more than 90% of games, by the time you could reasonably want to cast lichform, you've probably got all the resistances you need from items. (Certainly, you should only plan to do "extended" content, which includes the only content for which Necromutation is even possibly worth it, if you have items that give sufficiently good protection. +5 AC is pretty good though I guess.)

So really it all comes down to hungerless abuse (i.e., channeling) and torment immunity. The former can be fun in a kind of ridiculous way but is hardly necessary when (outside of lichform, at least!) you can quaff potions of magic. Plus if you really want there's always CBoE, which at high evocations is safe if, again, you have a couple of !magic and !curing (i.e., not in lichform) on hand just in case. (I guess non-lich has ambrosia too if you figure out a way to make that worthwhile, I haven't yet so I don't bother but I'd be open to suggestions.)

As for torment: It only makes sense to even talk of this for "extended" areas of the game, really just Pan, the Hells, and Tomb. I guess ziggurats too. Now, you can get protection from torment in other ways through species choice, items and gods (and immunity, with Dith now, actually), and those usually involve better tradeoffs than Necromutation. But most important, you can be careful about your positioning and take it slow, and be careful to target torment-capable dudes first. If you learn to do that fairly well, and you've built a well-rounded character fairly well, then outside of certain ziggurat levels and maybe Tomb, torment immunity is not as useful as it seems. And certainly it is not necessary.

Torment immunity is good, don't get me wrong. But not "level 8 necromancy / transmutations, uses up your 'form' slot, forget about quaffing, can't cast death's door or revivification or regeneration" good. And since two of those other spells are in the same book as Necromutation (barring its appearance in a randart book, extremely rare outside Sif worship), and they all require similar (DD) or much less investment than Necromutation, that is a relevant drawback.

[Tiktacy]

The only time I've ever found necromutation useful is when I was playing a spam-dragon summoning merfolk who happened to find a book of transmutations of the necronomicon. At +7 aptitude in one school and decent aptitudes in a skill I was already planning to abuse, it worked out well.

Well, I guess using it on an ogre worked out well too. I was playing an ogre necromancer of ash and happened to found a necronomicon in elf. I was running really, REALLY low on food and decided going for necromutation wouldn't be a bad idea since I would be able to abuse shatter. Unfortunately, I ended up dying in zot, but i would have starved if not for it.

So basically: necromutation should be a supplement, not a goal.