Trading too much could be helped by limiting distance from baseline.
Tradeoffs would not be very interesting because we don’t have many interesting negative mutations yet (food-related problems are almost uniformly boring), but it would, for example, buff those who have slot-wrecking beast parts.
Can you explain this more? If beast mutation lines are bad now, I don't see anything about your proposal that would fix them.
By assigning noticeably negative points to bestial mutations such as fur (hard to stay cold in summer), slot-wreckers and encumbrance where we really don’t want it, those lines would gain a lot of points to counterbalance the bad mutations.
Compare to what we have now: random mutations are more likely to pick bad mutations in bad lines, simply because the distribution is uniform and filled mostly with bad mutations.
allowing mutations to fundamentally alter playstyle is one detail, but what about people that only mutate a little? Is this applied in depth, with every mutation adding new play options and removing others? Or is it just when fully mutated that this applies?
People who only mutate a little would be fine, except if they got bestial part (slot wrecker) in the process - then they’d want to purify or mutate fully. That could be helped by allowing “soft thresholds” - only giving out beast mutations to those who are sufficiently mutated.
Not full playstyles per mutation, just modification to what we have now.
For example, we’d want bird line to focus on sniping, hit+run, but avoiding getting surrounded. Bear on the other hand should be powerful enough to get surrounded, rip everything apart (with mutated claws or a battle axe), then heal it off quickly, but also be bad at running away.
In this system, cherry-picking single mutations should be allowed only for low grade ones, with the more serious level requiring commitment (not necessarily breaking threshold - I really don’t like current thresholds). For example, if one was to get too birdy, a beak or weak bones would almost certainly pop up, but if one tried to cherrypick non-bird bad mutations, it should be likely that instead the good bird mutations are taken away - this could be an actual mechanic.
"Like now" kills this, forget how it works now, it's a mess of nonsense. What I would like to see is the design of mutations from the ground up, until we have that, anything you add is just one more layer on the pile.
I’ll start by listing what I liked/disliked in other games, so that my motivation becomes more clear:
Caves of Qud has a voluntary mutation system where the player picks mutations from full list (at start) and from lists of 3 possibilities (later on). Except for a small set of mutations classified as bad, all others are considered good. No mutations ever go away. The problem with this system is that this randomness in selection creates permanently unviable characters. On the other hand, cherry-picked characters are fun (if broken).
On a less related note, Qud is also notable for having both mutations and bionics, though no character can have both (one “race” has mutations, other gets bionics).
Dungeon Crawl has demonspawn, which have fixed (at birth) mutation lines, which can never be cleansed but can be added to by regular mutation system. They are notorious for turning unviable in the middle of play due to acquiring a set of mutations that clashes with selected playstyle.
Also draconians, which have significantly differing win rates depending on color they gain at the end of early game (color grants some stat changes and usually one special attack).
In DDA, the most fun characters I played were invariably Genetic Chaos mutants. On the other hand, most of my characters who start crafting mutagen are instantly and permanently shelved due to being incredibly boring.
So I’d like the system to possess the following qualities:
[ul][li]No forced, per-character mutations without player control[/li]
[li]Cherry-picking allowed, at least until we can figure out how to get rid of it cleanly, but should always come with negatives (those could be cherry-picked too)[/li]
[li]“Cherry-grinding” on the other hand should be unviable - no sustainable method of mutation should ever be better than cherry-picking above[/li]
[li]Not sure about forced mutations. I like them, others don’t. Maybe forced mutations only until cherry-picking starts?[/li]
[li]CBMs should softly conflict with mutations. They should decrease quality of mutations and mutations should decrease slots or even functionality of CBMs. Where both fill the same role, the results should not stash (say, hydraulic muscles should not stack with strong mutation).[/li]
[li]Purity should be softly discouraged, by making mutants better than baseline (but not base+CBMs) and bundling uncontrolled mutations with useful items[/li][/ul]
To achieve this:
[ul][li]Mutagen drops should be relatively common, but varying in quality (not too much). A bad mutagen could still cleanse bad mutations for very badly mutated character. Early mutation junkies could reroll their mutations, but never cherrypick them due to limited supply of quality mutagen (and purifier)[/li]
[li]Branch mutations would become easy to craft. Mix mutagen with eggs in a pot - acquire bird mutagen. This could skip the crafting system and become just a property of mutagen - mutagen use asking you which branch you want, having character mix components and consume/inject the mix.[/li]
[li]Purifier would still exist, but would be treated as a bad mutagen (preferentially clean good mutations), to discourage usage for cherrypicking[/li]
[li]Mutagen/purifier binges would be obsoleted by cherrypick mutagens. Though that’s just the post-game grind thing.[/li]
[li]Thresholds aren’t a thing you cross once, but instead are based on current set of mutations. That is, if you’re birdy enough (and not beary enough to counter that), you have the bird threshold. When coming down from a threshold, all post-thresh mutations have to be removed BEFORE (or during the mutation “surge”) the threshold is un-crossed. That is, if a bear with hibernation drinks bird mutagen, the only mutation sets that are considered are those that stay post-bear-threshold and those that remove hibernation (and those that do both).[/li][/ul]
My point is, if it's really bad, we have options for eliminating it entirely, like having aspects of how a player will mutate fixed at creation, requiring the player to deal with the hand they are dealt instead of converging on a standard build.
It is bad, but post-game grinders use it as a goal to keep going. Until we have meaningful endgame, it’s better to go with a bandaid fix that improves quality of life than to cut it out entirely and give nothing back.
As for standard build: I don’t see a good way to fix it at post-game without it getting too… anti-player. So I’d rather fix it only for the midgame and then treat it as a necessary evil.
