1.Illiterate character can still read book titles. Illiterate should have book titles replaced with ambiguous descriptions - “Some book”, “Some magazine”, “Some periodical”.Examination attempt should give similar vague description, since indywidual can comprehend only through indirect means, like watching illustrations.
Example:
Literate Illiterate
Under the Hood ->Book about cars, large colorful pictures.
What’s a Transistor? ->Lots of text, some schematics, nerdy.
2.Add Old Zombie or Geriatric Zombie - “Atrophied zombie of aged individual, weak and slow. You gonna feel guilty for killing it”. Large population at hospitals, some stay at homes, few wander the streets.
3.Animated skeleton is a fantasy BS. You might rename it Skinny Zombie or Gaunt Zombie -
“These specimen of zombie has shed most of its tissues and organs. Only bones, tendons and thin muscles remain”.
Zero change to stats, just semantics.
Yeah, skeletons always bothered me a bit. If that ooze can just make skeletons walk around without any kind of musculature, you’d think it would be doing a lot more than reanimating corpses.
[quote=“Gatleos, post:3, topic:3266”]Yeah, skeletons always bothered me a bit. If that ooze can can just make skeletons walk around without any kind of musculature, you’d think it would be doing a lot more than reanimating corpses.
[quote=“Gatleos, post:3, topic:3266”]Yeah, skeletons always bothered me a bit. If that ooze can just make skeletons walk around without any kind of musculature, you’d think it would be doing a lot more than reanimating corpses.
What is it with everyone and being up in arms about “fantasy BS”? We’re playing a game where science caused a zombie apocalypse, but creepy myth is still what gives us the weird chasm thing in the mines. There’s floating eyeballs that shoot beams of light, and if that’s not a beholder, I don’t know what is.
I like the current blend of “mostly cheesey pesudo-science” with hints of some of the weirder fantasy. We should embrace that, not reject anything that can’t perfectly fit our fake-science canon.
[quote=“ArgusTheCat, post:6, topic:3266”]What is it with everyone and being up in arms about “fantasy BS”? We’re playing a game where science caused a zombie apocalypse, but creepy myth is still what gives us the weird chasm thing in the mines. There’s floating eyeballs that shoot beams of light, and if that’s not a beholder, I don’t know what is.
I like the current blend of “mostly cheesey pesudo-science” with hints of some of the weirder fantasy. We should embrace that, not reject anything that can’t perfectly fit our fake-science canon.[/quote]
Agreed. There are lovecraftian horrors emerging from dimensional rifts, and giant amorphous ooze monsters roaming the land. Realism was never a part of this.
Virtually every roguelike has skeletons(same with zombies though). Most fantasy settings imply, that skeleton is a set of bones, kept together and moved by purely magical or magical-like force. Skeleton is essentially a bone golem.
If any piece of inert matter can be animated in Cataclysm, then i want, for example, a shrub golem. How about a possessed furniture chasing you. Monster-bed engulfs and digests you, if you foolish/unlucky enough to laid down on it. Or animated galon jug of rotten milk molests you. Drink me! drink me! drink me!
Currently defeated skeleton leaves no remains whatsoever. If you want to keep them, make them drop few bones upon death. Tainted bones? Same with zombies, they should give you some bones and sinews, when buchered.
One more idea. Spitters are perfectly intact when “alive”, but completely dissolve upon death. Why? Make them salvegeable. Buchered Spitters would give you an acid-soaked tainted meat chunks or acid glands. Glands could have been used as crude granade against non acid-proof opponents. Tainted meat would lend concentrated acid, when boiled.
A note on skeletons, but they aren’t actually magically reanimated golems or anything like that. Rather they are zombies that have simply been so destroyed that pretty much they are just a pile of bones and the goo. For example here’s a picture which pretty much illustrates what a Cataclysm skeleton would look like:
[quote=“i2amroy, post:9, topic:3266”]A note on skeletons, but they aren’t actually magically reanimated golems or anything like that. Rather they are zombies that have simply been so destroyed that pretty much they are just a pile of bones and the goo. For example here’s a picture which pretty much illustrates what a Cataclysm skeleton would look like:
And yeah, skeletons should probably drop bones on death, it’s just nobody has gotten around to making them do so yet.[/quote]
Jesus Christ that’s frightening. We could always edit the in-game description to mention that they’re animated by nothing but the ooze.
Doesn’t the current description basically say the same thing? It’s a skeleton held together with nothing but ligatures and ooze or something to that effect.
They aren’t traditional fantasy skeleton warriors with swords and shields on the hunt for barbarians.
I’d compare them to:
Crimson heads from Resident Evil NGC
Those ultra agile headcrab zombies from Ravenholm. Screamers?
I love suggestion #1, and suggestion #3 is good too (skele does feel a little out of place… I’ll have to pay attention next time I’m playing to see why).
As for #2, I don’t like the idea of adding guilt to another class of zombies. Especially since our character may feel that he/she is giving these people rest from their tortured, animated state. Feeling guilty about kid zombies makes more sense… there is just so much lost potential with a kid that turns into a zombie. It rages against instincts to hurt a kid. You want them to have a bright future ahead of them.
Kevin’s tweak of capturing the idea of geriatric zombies as the existing skeletons works. I just don’t want to see guilt in play. If anything, there could be a morale bonus for bringing rest, but no morale change is probably best. If I don’t get a morale boost for killing a hulk ( c’mon, you would feel like like a total baller for taking down a huge hulk ), I probably shouldn’t get one from killing a skeleton.
It makes sense, but really shouldn’t all the zombies drop bones? I mean, there’s a skeleton inside every zombie just waiting to get out (spooky!).
I’ve explained it away as, for whatever reason, the player character has an aversion to working with (ex)human remains. That’s why you don’t get bones or sinew from human corpses or zombie corpses. For the same reason killing child zombies bothers you, and eating human flesh bothers you, using humanlike remains for crafting is a no-no for PC’s so they just don’t gather those materials.
It would be a cool addition to the Cannibal trait to allow you to gather those materials (since you obviously don’t care) and also scrub that penalty for killing child zombie (again…you probably don’t care).
The real reason was because players can eat bones and therefore human bones became a near-endless supply of food. When we get around to adding human bones that aren’t useable for many of the same purposes (or at least without special recipes) then zombies will probably get their bones back.
