ToME WikiNerdanelVampire: Just as an aside, this page is of a great interest to me. I've been thinking that I should make Cannibal a subclass of Warrior, but I haven't been sure how exactly to go along with it. Overall I think serious corpse-eating, despite being Tolkienish only for Orcs and Trolls, is a seriously neglected aspect of ToME that could potentially amount to something interesting in a module.
MayLith: Hmmm.... interesting, Nerdanel! I agree there's some canon issues with it, but it could certainly make a fascinating module.
NerdanelVampire: Cannibals are on my to-do list for Zothiqband. They are thematic in that setting and I got the idea from reading the source material. I think I need to invent a Cannibalism skill that allows its practitioners to avoid the worst negatives and gain extra positives from corpse-eating, but I need to understand the current situation first.
MayLith: Technically speaking, I believe one is a 'cannibal' when one eats other members of one's own race. I wonder if that counts if you're a Wood-Elf and you're eating, say, a High-Elf? Hmmm....
You'd probably need to extend duration of effects with higher skills, too. Hacked meats are individually light, but packing a lot of them around is going to add up.
NerdanelVampire: I won't have any Elves, and I think being cannibal refers to species, not race. So for example if I ate an African I would be a cannibal, and I would remain a cannibal even if I also ate some White Icky Thing salad on the side.
I could also call the class Antropophage, I suppose. Both terms are used to refer to people in my canon. Ghouls (who are non-undeads in my canon) eat dead humans and I'm intending to allow Ghoul player characters. But we don't know (some) ghouls don't eat each other and I prefer Cannibal. Both terms are somewhat inaccurate, but I think the essence of the class could be best conveyed by telling that they eat even their own kind than by saying they eat humans.
My extremely preliminary ideas indeed include lenghtening the effect with increasing skill. I would also make it more worthwhile to eat powerful enemies (you are what you eat) and have enemies that are weaker than the player even have a detrimental effect (you are what you eat).
MayLith: Hmmm, yes. If you haven't already (and I suspect you have) a study of past traditions of cannibalism would be worthwhile. I'm no expert (heh) but I know that in some cases, one eats parts of one's enemies in order not to be haunted, or to have revenge, or to gain part of their aspects. In other cases/realms, one eats parts of one's deceased loved ones as a gesture of respect.
Possibly one side effect of cannibalism is the generation of an angry mob. Sort of like a cluster of co-aligned pets like high elves or whatever, only they do NOT like you....
Anyway... this discussion probably belongs on its own page somewhere. You're welcome to cut/paste my comments if you wish.
NerdanelVampire: In fact I haven't studied real-world cannibalism. I got the idea to have a Cannibal class from reading Clark Ashton Smith. In his stories, in addition to there being traditional cannibal tribes on some islands, you can inherit a dead wizard's powers by eating the remains. I'm not going to go quite that far in a game in which a successful non-pacifist character is going to kill thousands of monsters. Cannibals will have to rely on lesser effects and the permanent increase to mana is going to be a one-off food item artifact.