ToME WikiRavenRed: Brief Idea. Instead of the tilde ('~') being used for corpses and skeleton items, the 'c' and 's' characters can be used alternately. Of course, this will also be the characters used by corpse and skeleton MONSTERS as well. (rebranding zombies as corpses). Is this a boneyard, or a massed horde of undead?
(Centipedes could be shifted to Insects, to bolster that character's ranks)
2cworth and counting...
DarkGod: No point in trying to hide the information when just 'l'ooking will tell the player. And in GFX mode it wouldnt work anyway 
RavenRed: It will if they're just lying about rather than awake and shuffling towards the player.... If it's the player looking at the screen rather than the character looking at the item/monster, I think there's enough room for hi-jinx. It's the same principle as death swords or door mimics in 2.3.
NeilStevens: I'm against this mimic stuff for what it's worth. I think it's a joke taken too far, and in too many cases can lead to a dissatisfying death.
RavenRed: "dissatisfying death"! Yes! That's a beautiful term that encapsulates one of the major checks which should be made on any gameplay change. "Will this lead to players experiencing dissatisfying deaths?" THIS was the term I was reaching for in the "Dispel Magic / Timed Effects" thread. Addressing your point... skellys and zombies aren't instakill monsters, so I would have thought that an occasional nasty shock (rather than instakill) for the player wouldn't have been too terrible.
NeilStevens: Death swords I would put in that category, though. As well as some of the more advanced creeping coins. From the ToME 2 monster set anyway.
However if these skeletons and mimics aren't going to be strong enough to kill... then it strikes me as something that's more like a joke than something that should be left in the game, you know?
RavenRed: I'm not a fan of Mimics either, and when I said that they shouldn't be instakill, I didn't mean that they shouldn't be deadly monsters, just that players shouldn't only notice what they were killed by on their tombstone.
ReenenLaurie: From a "role-playing" point of view, the main problem for me is, that zombies/skeletons doesn't have the intellect to "pretend I'm dead" and then suddenly move. But from the same angle though, one should always be wary when you see skeletons lying around, even if they are old, and littered with cobwebs. Once upon a time there was something here that killed, and got killed.
RavenRed: Think of it as the dead taking a while to notice the living violating their territory. It's not an ambush per se, more the player/character not being observant enough to examine their surroundings carefully.
NeilStevens: Proposal that would satisfy me: Mimic-like monsters cannot make ranged attacks before the player comes adjacent to the monster. Further, the monster's first 'attack' must be an attack that does no damage, but instead just announces the monster's activation.