Isn’t the whole not human anymore already implied by the thresholds?
That’s what it is, but NPCs are such a marginal part of the game that it doesn’t seem that way.
With enough visibility/ugliness points (which you’ll naturally rake in with enough mutations) most humans WILL be either fleeing or hostile on first sight, and when they aren’t, you get stuff like 0% chance to persuade and 100% chance to intimidate. Loads of fun!
Wait, why does growling voice decrease Persuasion chance? There’s probably a really good explanation, but I’ve always thought that growling voice just made people sound like a character from a Noir film.
Decreases persuasion and increases intimidation.
Theres an epic duel inside me as I wonder if I should sig that or not.
Hoo boy! Bit of a thread necromancy on my part, but I figure it’s better than starting up a whole new thread for the same topic.
Picking up where I left off, some more suggestions!
Focused - A ‘what it says on the tin’ sort of mutation. You gain focus faster and lose it more slowly due to poor morale.
Wall Crawler - Spider Mutation - Requires Arachnid Arms - Thousands of tiny hairs now bristle eagerly from the surface of your spidery limbs. You’re finally ready to hang with the big boys.
Effect: When adjacent to a wall or other suitable impassible terrain you gain a dodge boost and ignore floor based hazards like water/lava/traps. I figure since the lizard style deadly venom tells you it’s going to change this would be a good time to usurp its effects.
Unshakable - Requires either huge/freakishly huge or subterranean anatomy - By virtue of sheer girth your solidly built form flouts the forces that would upend it.
Effect: Greatly reduces recoil from all sources and protects you from knock-back
Sprinter > Marathoner >> Feline Prowess - This would be a mutation that could have the first level taken at creation and the second gained through mutagen. The third tier however would be a feline threshold mutation reminiscent of cheetahs and the like. It’s a stacking on move buff of a flat move cost reduction. At level one it stacks every three turns spent moving and up to three times. At level two it’s every two turns spent moving and up to four stacks. At level three it stacks every time you move and up to five times. Attacking an enemy or taking any action but movement clears all stacks of the buff. Essentially it allows you to haul ass quite masterfully, and by tier three you should be able to outpace anything you come across.
Great arm - You’re a right tosser you are!
Effect: While you’re not even a lick more precise with thrown projectiles you’ve a heave ho that would make a major league pitcher jealous. Greatly increases the range and force with which you hurl items and gets extra distance out of any throws triggered by a martial art.
Water weight - You’re becoming rather adept at storing vast quantities of water as fatty tissue. While certainly a beneficial adaptation it has also provided unexpected insight into the irritability of camels.
Effect: You can gorge yourself on liquids, allowing you to stay hydrated for days at the cost of a ‘bloated’ morale debuff and occasional pain inducing cramp
Rat’s nest - You don’t know how you ever managed to get a good night’s rest outside the comfort of a well gnawed heap of trash.
Effect: You gain morale the more items are cluttered up on the tile you’re sleeping on, either placed on a bed or the ground. Inversely you’ll wake up in a terrible mood should there not be enough of such odds and ends heaped where you bed down. Additionally you chew these items in your sleep, reducing their durability and eventually destroying them.
Also, on the topic of new mutations I’ve been turning over few more ideas. First and foremost I don’t think mutagens or serums should ever be identifiable unless you’ve brewed them yourself or taken a hit. The scientists weren’t likely helpful enough to label their flasks with anything the uninitiated would be able to decipher.
Secondly their could be stat dependent mutations. As in mutations that only manifest in characters that have sufficiently low enough stats.
Brutish - Requires intelligence of 5 or lower - You derive a simple, child-like contentment from acts of violence thanks to your less than comprehensive understanding of the ramifications. Smashing things, pulping corpses and witnessing explosions all increase morale by a small degree, though you’ll suffer a ‘bored’ debuff if you go to long without indulging yourself.
Manchild / Simple Sue - Requires intelligence of 3 or lower - Most people would consider you to be one of ‘God’s special creatures’ thanks to your toddler-like demeanor, making it harder to fault you for your actions or take advantage of you through their own. While anyone shy of a psychopath is bound to treat you better you’re not going to convince any self respecting survivor that tagging along would be in their best interest.
etc. etc.
Mutations like these should most assuredly be a mix of good and bad and exist mostly to hammer home whatever major deficiencies plague the player character.
Finally I’m going to lob in the suggestion of cross-category mutations. These would occur when two mutations from differing trees, for example stretchy limbs and tentacle arms, act as prerequisites for a non-categorized mutation that replaces them both. Cross-category mutations would be beneficial but potentially undesired, as they’d serve up the secondary effect of locking you out of certain thresholds while they exist and nudge you closer to an “abomination” threshold that’s just a hot mess.
[quote=“Logrin, post:187, topic:3755”]Hoo boy! Bit of a thread necromancy on my part, but I figure it’s better than starting up a whole new thread for the same topic.
Picking up where I left off, some more suggestions!
Focused - A ‘what it says on the tin’ sort of mutation. You gain focus faster and lose it more slowly due to poor morale.
Wall Crawler - Spider Mutation - Requires Arachnid Arms - Thousands of tiny hairs now bristle eagerly from the surface of your spidery limbs. You’re finally ready to hang with the big boys.
Effect: When adjacent to a wall or other suitable impassible terrain you gain a dodge boost and ignore floor based hazards like water/lava/traps. I figure since the lizard style deadly venom tells you it’s going to change this would be a good time to usurp its effects.
Unshakable - Requires either huge/freakishly huge or subterranean anatomy - By virtue of sheer girth your solidly built form flouts the forces that would upend it.
Effect: Greatly reduces recoil from all sources and protects you from knock-back
Sprinter > Marathoner >> Feline Prowess - This would be a mutation that could have the first level taken at creation and the second gained through mutagen. The third tier however would be a feline threshold mutation reminiscent of cheetahs and the like. It’s a stacking on move buff of a flat move cost reduction. At level one it stacks every three turns spent moving and up to three times. At level two it’s every two turns spent moving and up to four stacks. At level three it stacks every time you move and up to five times. Attacking an enemy or taking any action but movement clears all stacks of the buff. Essentially it allows you to haul ass quite masterfully, and by tier three you should be able to outpace anything you come across.
Great arm - You’re a right tosser you are!
Effect: While you’re not even a lick more precise with thrown projectiles you’ve a heave ho that would make a major league pitcher jealous. Greatly increases the range and force with which you hurl items and gets extra distance out of any throws triggered by a martial art.
Water weight - You’re becoming rather adept at storing vast quantities of water as fatty tissue. While certainly a beneficial adaptation it has also provided unexpected insight into the irritability of camels.
Effect: You can gorge yourself on liquids, allowing you to stay hydrated for days at the cost of a ‘bloated’ morale debuff and occasional pain inducing cramp
Rat’s nest - You don’t know how you ever managed to get a good night’s rest outside the comfort of a well gnawed heap of trash.
Effect: You gain morale the more items are cluttered up on the tile you’re sleeping on, either placed on a bed or the ground. Inversely you’ll wake up in a terrible mood should there not be enough of such odds and ends heaped where you bed down. Additionally you chew these items in your sleep, reducing their durability and eventually destroying them.
Also, on the topic of new mutations I’ve been turning over few more ideas. First and foremost I don’t think mutagens or serums should ever be identifiable unless you’ve brewed them yourself or taken a hit. The scientists weren’t likely helpful enough to label their flasks with anything the uninitiated would be able to decipher.
Secondly their could be stat dependent mutations. As in mutations that only manifest in characters that have sufficiently low enough stats.
Brutish - Requires intelligence of 5 or lower - You derive a simple, child-like contentment from acts of violence thanks to your less than comprehensive understanding of the ramifications. Smashing things, pulping corpses and witnessing explosions all increase morale by a small degree, though you’ll suffer a ‘bored’ debuff if you go to long without indulging yourself.
Manchild / Simple Sue - Requires intelligence of 3 or lower - Most people would consider you to be one of ‘God’s special creatures’ thanks to your toddler-like demeanor, making it harder to fault you for your actions or take advantage of you through their own. While anyone shy of a psychopath is bound to treat you better you’re not going to convince any self respecting survivor that tagging along would be in their best interest.
etc. etc.
Mutations like these should most assuredly be a mix of good and bad and exist mostly to hammer home whatever major deficiencies plague the player character.
Finally I’m going to lob in the suggestion of cross-category mutations. These would occur when two mutations from differing trees, for example stretchy limbs and tentacle arms, act as prerequisites for a non-categorized mutation that replaces them both. Cross-category mutations would be beneficial but potentially undesired, as they’d serve up the secondary effect of locking you out of certain thresholds while they exist and nudge you closer to an “abomination” threshold that’s just a hot mess.[/quote]
One or two suggestions at a time, please. (And yeah, Plant got some more love a while back. Let me know what you think.)
Wall-sticking would work for Lizard as well. It’s kinda dangerous thanks to the lack of proper Z-level support: you can’t just go straight up the wall. The sprinter line would take some doing but is theoretically workable, and the only thing blocking water-weight is the UI’s inflexibility with levels past Full/Slaked. I’ve tried messing with those, and it simply didn’t show up. Not sure why. I like the HW mutation…but Huge might be too large to comfortably fit in the trigger guard.
Item-ID is the worst part of Nethack IMO. Sure, we can obfuscate mutagens & serums, but in practice I don’t think there’s much point. Either people look 'em up/memorize 'em, Weird Metagaming needs to happen to work out what something is, or found-mutagens simply don’t get used until people can craft 'em anyway.
The stat-dependent traits? nope, and those were about the worst possible examples you could have offered.
Multiple-category mutations already exist, and the system is fiddly enough without deliberately adding anti-threshold mutations.
is there any way of there being a vampire or like mutation? 
live off blood alone with regen close to invincible and high stats maybe disintegration and sunlight intolerance
It’s a really interesting dynamic, being parasitic amongst your own kind. It really requires a good, stable population to feed amongst in order to be an enjoyable approach to gameplay I think. It might be easier once NPC’s are less batshit insane, and a thus a viable target for your vampirism. Heh, bats.
Nigh-invincibility would take a lot of the fun out of it, you’d really need pros and cons that are balanced well to promote a different play style. The night-loving sun-melting-ness of it almost sounds like the troglodyte mutation tree, though KA will have a much more informed reply in that regard.
[quote=“Pthalocy, post:190, topic:3755”]It’s a really interesting dynamic, being parasitic amongst your own kind. It really requires a good, stable population to feed amongst in order to be an enjoyable approach to gameplay I think. It might be easier once NPC’s are less batshit insane, and a thus a viable target for your vampirism. Heh, bats.
Nigh-invincibility would take a lot of the fun out of it, you’d really need pros and cons that are balanced well to promote a different play style. The night-loving sun-melting-ness of it almost sounds like the troglodyte mutation tree, though KA will have a much more informed reply in that regard.[/quote]
My take hasn’t changed since Logrin asked. On the technical level, I’m not sure how to grab critter species/poison status to the melee code, nor do I have an active-mutation system, so there’s no way to implement a drain. (If I did, there’d be Eat & Run available to the Chimeras, likely to the Beasts as well. Lupines might get a lesser version.)
Practical level, there was enough backlash from Elf-a that I’m presuming the Stop Having Fun Guys would likewise make my devving hell for a week or two, and I don’t feel like putting up with that at the moment.
Honestly vampirism legitimately sounds like something for the mod zone.
Pthalocy has a really good point about it being difficult for the game to provide you with enough targets to meaningfully implement it in the game, we’d need either a large supply of mooks for you to feed on, or require you to feed on animal blood. It’s pretty problematic all around.
That’s assuming a reasonable vampirism implementation, none of this:
Is going to happen.
See Stake Land for a better fit. The baddies in there are some kind of cross between zombies and vampires.
On the less wild side of life, what about a crab line of mutation? I can see the armoured shell and amphibious adaptation being traits of interest to Cata’s weird scientists.
C-c-c-c-c-RAB BATTLE!
We need some more XL clothing for our survivors, like XL Power Armour.
But, here are my ideas.
Lupine Mutations
Enhanced Jump
You realize that your legs have started to bend slightly, allowing for larger (And longer) jumps across Z-levels.
Basically, this allows you to jump out of pits, and possibly leap/pounce unto enemies, knocking them down. Also allowing you to jump a few squares, like three or two.
Sharper Claws (??)
Your claws have started to grow outward, and have become even sharper than before…
Claw damage is slightly increased, and gloves become less effective. Can also affect holding certain objects.
Stalker (Needs Enhanced Jump, maybe Sharper Claws??)
While you were hunting the woodland creatures, you have developed a crouched figure while hunting prey…
Pounce attacks on enemies have a high chance of you auto butchering, Jumping has been improved and you can jump a much longer distance, you can also jump a Z-level up too.
When pouncing an enemy you make no noise if you instantly kill them.
Insanely Sharp Claws (??)
Your claws are extremely long, and you feel confident that with enough practice, you can possibly decapitate enemies! Glove encumbrance increased by two. If it has tag (Fits) Encumbrance is decreased by one.
Elf-A Mutations
One-With-Nature
You feel one with nature, as if nothing can harm you in the forest…
Bow accuracy increased, In the Forest you make no footstep noise. Basically the Elf-A version of Animal Empathy.
[quote=“TinHead, post:195, topic:3755”]One-With-Nature
You feel one with nature, as if nothing can harm you in the forest…
Bow accuracy increased, In the Forest you make no footstep noise. Basically the Elf-A version of Animal Empathy.[/quote]
Foams out mouth
Dear god, Why would it add JUST bow accuracy, it is made out of wood… I guess the later on bows don’t get this affected if their not made out of wood, while Arrows get a slightly damage increase and accuracy increase. Because their wood.
WARNING, DWARVES MAY POUR HOT MAGMA ON YOU
I don’t like double posting, but I want to say one thing…
Add some more XL clothes.
I NEEDZ IT
Actually, to follow up on the proposal for a Crab line of mutation, put the recipes in a USMC feasibility study alongside a Frog mutation line.
Has anyone considered a cosmetic mutation category that basically amounts to duds? Like, every time you mutate or purify, there’s a small chance you’ll get a mechanically meaningless cosmetic mutation instead (purple eyes, fast-growing hair, sixth finger, your sweat cures cancer but no one cares anymore, etc.). Also something to fall back on if it can’t find a real mutation (if you have all the pre-threshold mutations in your category but failed the roll to break through or whatever), and maybe sometimes add a cosmetic mutation instead of nothing if a weak mutagen rolls low. Might be too much work for something so trivial, but I think it’d be kind of cool.