• Modules
• SoUL

You are an undead, you must collect souls from your slain foes. Souls serve to improve your equipment, characteristics, skills, ...

Idea by DarkGod.

Inspiration may include MUD RetroMUD ideas of "fallen" character class and "fellblades" -- http://www.retromud.org/ --Anon

DarkGod: Not really no, given I've never played any MUD, let alone this one, you can't call it inspiration ;>

I was suggesting it as a potential reference for cost balancing actually, not slandering your creativity. --Anon

Sirrocco: That whole "undead powered by the slaughter of the living" thing "is" a pretty old concept. Sporking of which, given that this has actually turned into Bone to be Wild, is there a reason to keep around a seperate page for it? (Mind, if you mean to go back at some point and run the inital concept of a racial-growth, unlimited-enemy Bone, then I'm all for it, but I figured that had fallen by the wayside.)

zombie (Starting race. Slow, inaccurate, lousy stealth, medium to poor armor, medium strength, cannot use equipment. No inventory. Lots of hitpoints, No mana, hp decays slowly. Recover HP and advance by eating corpses (no hacking). Small corpse capacity.)

• branch 1: spirit: "With a mighty effort, you cast off your body, arising from that old husk as a spirit" requires mage flesh.
• branch 2: skeleton: "You slough off your rotting flesh and stand, leaner and more lethal, as a newly freed skeleton" requires flesh of any kind
• branch 3: ghoul: "You focus your energies inward, quickening the unlife withing your dead tissues" requires warrior flesh
• branch 4: plague zombie: "You feel your flesh begin to fester and spread disease." requires diseased flesh - nontrivial as the monsters that drop it are well past the point where most characters have stopped being zombies and started being something more effective.

ghost: a bit of speed, few hit points, immune to most weapons but horribly endangered by magical attack. Has some magical power, but no ability to wield weapons or wear equipment. Loses mana slowly over time, then HP when mana exhausted. Does not regenerate HP. Has touch attack that drains mana from living foes and a simple self-heal spell. High stealth. Insubstantial. Advances by absorbing the souls of those enemies that die immediately adjacent. Short-distance darkvision. (ref: Hengband ninja) light attacks cause stun and/or fear, rather than blindness. Moderate soul capacity. Corpses no longer generate.

• branch 1: wraith - advances to wraithlord. Magical ability increases significantly. Mana drain ceases, begins to regenerate mana. Wraithlord can summon and compel other incorporeal undead - large numbers and varied, but not all that powerful individually. Somewhat susceptible to light and fire. Gains a line of attack spells that absorb souls at range if they successfully kill. Advancing to wraith and beyond requires magic-user souls.
• branch 2: banshee - no further racial advancement. Gains "scream" power - large area, high-damage, mortals only, no cost. Absorbs all souls killed by scream. Mana drain stops. Minimal magical advancement. Moderate speed increase. Moderate increase in combat stats. Sufficiently powerful banshees can create incoporeal undead companions by spending souls. They are powerful and persistent, but costly, and strictly limited in number. Companions will harvest souls through their various methods and follow basic advancement trees. Can also further enhance them with personal souls later. Advancing to banshee requires magic-user and rogue souls.
• branch 3: Shadow - advances to shadowlord. Stealth increase, especially in darkness. Notable speed increase. Significant combat stat increase, particularly in HP and magic resistance. Extremely susceptible to light. No additional magic at all, though powers do continue to increase in effectiveness. Touch attack to drain now drains HP as well. Mana drain continues, but no longer leads to HP drain except in bright light, which also causes mana to burn away faster. HP now regenerates when in darkness. Darkvision increases arbitrarily. Shadowlod can summon small numbers of powerful shadows. Minion shadows cost mana over time, and dissolve into nothingness when mana is exhausted. Minion shadows have no mana. Their melee attacks provide them with HP and you with mana. Advancing to Shadow and beyond requires Warrior and Rogue souls.

Skeleton: a bit of speed, some hit points, can search corpses for bones and equipment. Can wear equipment. Has inventory. Significant improvement in accuracy. No mana, HP decays more slowly, recover HP and advance by absorbing bones. Vulnerable to blunt attack. Bones kept in inventory.

• branch 1: Skeleton Warrior: as Skeleton, but bigger, stronger, tougher, faster, etc. No HP decay. Advances to Skeleton King who is the same with a bit of mana, a few minor tricks, and a summon skeleton power. Any old bones will do in sufficient quantity, though warrior bones are preferred.
• branch 2: Skeleton mage: loses a fair bit of melee ability. Gains a mana pool with mana regeneration. HP decay remains, but bone extraction augmented by drain life spell. Advances to liche, who has no HP decay, and can summon large numbers of reasonably powerful creatures temporarily by spell. The creatures do not themselves summon, and vanish at the end of the duration.
• branch 3: Bone Demon: lose ability to wear equipment other than jewelry and weapons, but significant increases in all combat stats, especially speed and attacks. Natural regeneration. Demons become friendly, but some otherwise friendly undead become hostile. Vulnerability to holy damage increases. Advancing to Bone Demon requires demon bones, but you absorb souls like a spirit afterwards. Soul capacity on par with second-tier spirit. Gains various melee-oriented demonic powers paid for from a small mana pool that is naturally static. Sacrifice captured souls to refill mana pool. Challenging to achieve, given the difficulty of killing bone-bearing demons with a basic skeleton, but doable. Can enlist other demons by bartering souls, or summon weaker demons temporarily with magic. The weaker demons do not recover HP, and gate out when seriously damaged. Enlisted demons remain with you indefinately, but also gate out when seriously damaged, or when encountering creatures too far above their own power level. Searching corpses no longer yields bones. No further race advancement.

Ghoul: Generally high-quality combat stats all around. Can wear armor. Can wear weapons, but not all that good at them. Has inventory. No mana, HP recovers slowly. Search corpses for equipment then eat for advancement and faster healing. Natural attack scales nicely, can acquire intrinsic disease and paralyze effects. Moderate corpse capacity increase at each bracket.

• branch 1: Ghast: more of the same, only better. Speed increases in particular. Attack can acquire stunning, bleeding, etc intrinsics. Advances to ghoulking, who is the same with a bit of mana, a few minor tricks, and the ability to summon ghouls. Summoned ghouls persist until killed, but tend to die pretty quick. Advance by eating just about anything, but warrior corpses do better.
• branch 2: Wight: Major increases to power and toughness, with some loss of speed. Weapon skill decays further with all but twohanded weapons. Can wield twohanded weapons in one hand. Natural attack intrinsic disease replaced by intrinsic drain life. HP regeneration becomes significantly faster. Attack gains heavy stunning capability, and chance to grapple. Grappled opponents are unable to take any action other than attempted escape, and player autohits on every attack. Grapple breaks if player does anything other than attack target or perform other grapple action. Player can seize and throw heavy objects, including relatively small grappled foes, causing significant damage to both target and missile. Moderate weakness to light and fire. Advance by eating warrior corpses.
• branch 3: Vampire: Moderate improvements to combat stats, but takes significant loss to intrinsic attack. Becomes competent weapons fighter. Corse-eating replaced by blood-draining. Gains mana pool that is static unless recharged by blood, along with various magical powers that require mana and/or blood to use. Blood gained by "Bite Attack" ability or by certain low-cost attack powers. Ability to buff self for combat and heal quickly is significant with adequate blood supply, but total blood pool is limited. Advances either to Vampire Lord or Vampire Mage. Lord improves attack and self-buff powers, as well as gaining the ability to spend blood to turn grappled enemies into Vampire companions (profile much like with banshee). Lord has significantly increased blod pool and bite attack is much faster. Mage improves magical abilities further, gains natural mana recovery, and can summon via spell - as Liche, if not quite as well. Also gains bloodspells that temporarily augment all summoned minions. Mage has only minor increase to bloodpool capacity, but spells increase in efficiency and blood steal spell improves in effectiveness. Lack of combat improvement in mage renders bite attack useless in most cases.
  • The Vampire gains the special ability of "bite attack" with which to gain blood. Attack is at significant penalty to hit (trying to bite a guy with a sword). If attack successful, then grapples enemy. each turn, player may disengage voluntarily, or enemy may disengage with successful check. Player and enemy take no other actions while grappled. Until grapple is broken, both are at penalty to AC. Each player action, enemy loses HP and player gains blood.

Plague Zombie: Very rare, this is what happens when a zombie manages to get its hands on sufficient plagued flesh before anyone else manages to kill it. Zombie acquires plague intrinsic in melee attacks. Zombie is surrounded by a cloud of disease and toxin that weakens and damages everything not immune to same. Otherwise as zombie. The player can still improve as normal to zombie caps with normal flesh (if he has not capped out already) but advancing any further on the plague track (and thus, at this point, advancing at all) requires either plagued or demonic flesh. Fortunately, natural monsters killed by plague effects drop plagued flesh, so this is not as bad as it might be. No increase in corpse capacity.

• branch 1: Rotting Mass: You discard your useless bones. Gain HP regeneration. Speed increases to normal. Significant accuracy increase. Melee attacks can gain grapple component - successfully grappled opponent takes HP damage every monster round and can do nothing but attempt escape. Grapple is broken if player moves from the square. Player can gain drain life on both melee and grapple damage. All monsters killed by either melee or grapple count as automatically eaten. Player can gain various debuff effects on both melee and grapple attacks. Player can gain counterattack effect - attcks all enemies who attack in melee, requires no action. Disease and poison effects continue. All flesh consumed counts as diseased. Corpse capacity increases dramatically. Advances to Avatar of Putrescence - noticeable improvements across the board, major improvement in speed, and living creatures killed by disease/poison effects but not grappled have a chance of rising again as plague zombies and rotting masses. All plague zombies and rotting masses are generated as allies. Any allied plague zombie or rotting corpse that you chose to attack is automatically consumed without upsetting other allies. Advance via rotted flesh (no, really?)
• branch 2: Plague Fiend: Your flesh knits itself together a bit better as the demonic essence flows through you, transforming you. You also bloat into a freakish, morbildly obese thing with an enormous tongue. Your HP, attack power, accuracy, and resilience increase dramatically. Your attack gains a grapple effect. Successfully grappled enemies have one turn to attempt escape. On your next turn, if you attack them again, you automatically swallow them whole. If you do anything else, they break free. Your walking speed slows noticeably (and it isn't all that high to begin with). Your speed for all other actions increases dramatically. You get a tongue attack with an initial (extendable) range of 3. All enemies hit are drawn to you and grappled as above. Your disease cloud increases in intensity, and can be further increased in both intensity and range. You can develop a poison/disease breath attack. You can develop the ability to enslave any weaker demons that enter your disease cloud. Grabbing enslaved demons with your tongue and swallowing them whole will not upset any allies you may have left. You become a demon. Any demon that is totally immune to both disease and poison, and not subject to your enslave power (either because they're too strong or because you haven't developed it yet) will be generated at least nuetral to you. Everything that is not totally immune to both disease and poison will be generated hostile. Having tasted live flesh, you no longer desire dead, but anything that you swallow that is not immune to disease will register as diseased flesh. Corpses no longer generate. Your corpse capacity increases noticeably. No further racial advancements, but all improvements bought with either corrupted or demonic flesh.

General notes for world: armor improves AC, and may have other benefits, but does not cover anything vital (like resists in the base game). Resists are generally static, though some races will have some initially and the advanced races will have the opportunity to buy up a few more. Pretty much all of the races will have to deal with a few resistance holes no matter what they do, and damage should be scaled appropriately. It may be that some armors will cover some resists - it still should not be possible to have all resists covered by any one character. Note that some damage types disappear. Everyone is immune to darkness. Everyone is immune to disease and poison, and a large enough percentage are immune to nether that none of the enemies bother to carry it. Light and Holy, on the other hand, are serious threats, and some enemies have spells that cause banishment damage, which only effects the two demons and the spirit tree, but hurts them pretty badly in both HP and mana. There are no levels here. Instead, each character type has an advancement resource that they spend to purchase skills, much like in Bone.

Not that I have the coding skill (or time) to *do* anything about this, mind, but I felt inspired, and thought I'd try to share a bit of that inspiration with others.

--- Sirrocco

JohnGilmore: I stand in Awe. Really. I differ a bit in how I see progression going, though. I really liked the "Bone" structure, and I hesitate to add any more types of xp. Instead, I see this as a more-or-less logical expansion of the Bone To Be Wild plotline - Something along the lines of after you kill the old mage, you investigate his books, and ---

Hmm, Seems here that though you can bolster the spell to remain after the 24 hour limit, 
you will have to fundamentaly alter its form. 

...

That will also alter your physical form, and determine your abilities and even shape

...

Blah, blah, blah, etc. etc. etc. Lots of useless junk here. 

...

It seems that's it then. Time to make a choice.

And then prompt for which of the first four to become. Maybe with a quick side quest to get the reagents. (go kill something different, or such)

Then the further down the plotline you'd get further choices. Obviously, some rearanging of side quests and such would be in order. Uhm, actually I suppose you'd essentially have to write a whole new set quests, really.

Put the incompetent Necromancer's library at the end of his dungeon, and have it be his books instead of the wizards which give you the first choice, and then put the quest(s) for the second choice in place of that dang-near-impossible elemental level. And then off to kill the wizard!

Anyway, I figure each choice would have at most three kinds of souls/flesh/blood to store, and I think most should have two. The skeleton kings should have only one (spirit is folly, flesh is ignorance, it is in the BONES that true power lies) and should further have a cheap "summon multiple minor skeletons" which, if cast seven or eight times, should darn near fill the room with skeletal warriors. Uhm, at high levels of course. Vampires should also have just one, though to do the vampire legends justice you'd really have to make it one of the first choices, with several subtypes that may use souls or perhaps even flesh.

I really like the plague demon though. It's twisted. Anyone who ran would be safe forever though. Well, I guess there are always corners, and the AI is pretty stupid, you'd get them eventually. The undead demon consuming living flesh in preferance to dead conjurs visions of handprints forced out from the inside as the prey fruitlessly struggles to climb back up your gullet. It's nice.

Sirrocco: I appreciate the praise, but I have to disagree with you. Bone is small and simple and beautiful, and with the "all resources are limited and finite" aspect, its simplicity is the only reason it's even *possible* to balance. Let it be its thing. This is a different thing, though it shares some thematic elements. It's also somewhat different. In Bone, you could sit around if you wanted to, vibrating in place, but it didn't *do* anything for you. In this game, there are some characters that decay over time, and must keep moving or starve. Also, to be perfectly frank, unless someone likes this thing enough to implement it, it is a meaningless thing. Ideas are cheap. Sweat is what matters.

DarkGod: Yeah Bone is fine as it is(what ? more souls ? what ? ;> ). But I too like the ideas, maybe someday ... ;>

Orvin: How about a module playable only with Bone winners...or, for that matter, ToME winners