Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[pingas]

Witch covens or witch houses could be added to adventure mode.
Maybe you can go there to buy healing potions, invisibility potions, strength potions etc.

The witch could have a random pet cat/rat/raven and maybe even non hostile goblin slaves.

[reundwarf]

 I don't really agree with the idea of healing potions, invisibility potions, and strength potions, but I feel like witches themselves would be reasonable, although we have night trolls which fulfill a similar niche, in my opinion. Maybe randomly generated syndromes in cauldrons might be better than potions. Sentient servants is a reasonable idea as well.

[neblime]

having randomly generated syndromes you could pour on people's food (or force feed them I guess) sounds like a lot of fun. adding that to night trolls sounds fine, but wouldn't it be good if there was a non-hostile (at least not necessarily) witch you could go see and perform some service (or maybe just pay money) in exchange for these potions

[Dirst]

A potion shop would be a bit too "industrial magic" for DF, but some brews with procedurally generated syndromes would fit.  Depending on the mythology you want to use, witches consort with demons or commune with nature.  They're also associated with familiars, which in DF terms is basically an animal with syndrome giving it intelligence and a couple useful tags.

[neblime]

not a potion shop per se, just someone living out in the hills you can track down and negotiate with (or kill them if you're an angry peasant or have some kind of moral opposition to them maybe?)

[Deboche]

I think healing poultices and balms should be fine, even in fortress mode to give happy thoughts and speed healing. As well as anesthetics for performing surgery and what not(though not for dwarves who are constantly drunk anyway).

Also some stat enhancing foods and drinks like coffee, coca and what not but I doubt Toady would ever implement performance enhancement drugs.

[neblime]

Also some stat enhancing foods and drinks like coffee, coca and what not but I doubt Toady would ever implement performance enhancement drugs.

why do you doubt that?  it sounds pretty fun, I'm sure toady can be convinced if you add an eternal suggestion thing for it

[Deboche]

You're right, I just always assume Toady wants to stay away from things that will define Dwarf Fortress in an unflattering light when it's publicized, which is kinda the reason he doesn't want to implement human(dwarven) waste and manure.

Things like drunk dwarves and gay marriage are good publicity but fortresses full of poop makes the game sound goofy and childish. I wonder where PEDs fit in.

[neblime]

ugh, it's unfortunate that such considerations need to be made.

[Beznogim]

In a fortress mode, a witch would arrive to fortress (similar to caravan or diplomat) and make some demands. If you refuse or ignore it - she would cast a curse upon fortress, which may have different results and duration. Turning landscape into Evil lands, summoning hordes of savage animals, inflicting some kind of contagious illness, putting your mayor into eternal slumber, etc.

[Dirst]

I think healing poultices and balms should be fine, even in fortress mode to give happy thoughts and speed healing. As well as anesthetics for performing surgery and what not(though not for dwarves who are constantly drunk anyway).

Also some stat enhancing foods and drinks like coffee, coca and what not but I doubt Toady would ever implement performance enhancement drugs.

Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.  Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

[thvaz]

Night trolls are the original witches. I don't see the need for a Disney witch in the game.

[neblime]

Night trolls are the original witches. I don't see the need for a Disney witch in the game.

but night trolls are opposed to all life (or at least to all adventurers) so you can't get their procedurally generated stuff in cauldrons without killing them first (which would also mean you can only get once batch of it)

[IndigoFenix]

I think adding some extra complexity to night trolls would be the best way of doing this.  Give them personalities and motives that would allow you to befriend one, and maybe some of them could wind up being fairly decent folk who were ostracized from society because they were strange looking, etc.

And I do like the idea of randomly generated potions and poisons, maybe even naturally growing magical herbs and fruits, they are a standard fantasy world element after all, and would be quite easy to implement under the current syndrome system.

[Dirst]

I think adding some extra complexity to night trolls would be the best way of doing this.  Give them personalities and motives that would allow you to befriend one, and maybe some of them could wind up being fairly decent folk who were ostracized from society because they were strange looking, etc.

And I do like the idea of randomly generated potions and poisons, maybe even naturally growing magical herbs and fruits, they are a standard fantasy world element after all, and would be quite easy to implement under the current syndrome system.

Well, one mandatory tweak would be making them (at least potentially) non-hostile.

As for the brews themselves, they can be made in a process vaguely like cooking where two, three or four ingredients are combined.  The procedurally generated part would be the mystical use (creature effect) for each ingredient, probably a decent positive and a mild negative for each.  Similar effects in the same brew would stack, and Herbalist skill would give knowledge of the mystical uses.

Not sure exactly how to parcel out that knowledge, but it can be assumed that Witches (or night trolls) would have very high skill in this area since that is their ecological niche in the game.  Something like:

• Famous ingredients from legend
• Common plants in homeland
• Common animal extracts in homeland
• Processed products (alcohol, golden salve, etc.) from homeland ingredients
• Uncommon plants in homeland
• Uncommon animal extracts in homeland
• Common ingredients in aligned-sphere biomes (for now, call that Good regions)
• Common ingredients in opposed-sphere biomes (for now, call that Evil regions)
• Common ingredients in unrelated-sphere biomes (for now, all neutral regions not in homeland)
• Uncommon ingredients in aligned-sphere biomes
• Uncommon ingredients in opposed-sphere biomes
• Uncommon ingredients in unrelated-sphere biomes

So for example, suppose strawberry seeds get the mystical use of speeding healing by 25% with a side-effect of dizziness for six hours, honeybee ichor gets speed healing by 25% with a side-effect of coughing for a day, and elk bird heart counteracts coughing with a side-effect of dizziness for an hour.  A human herbalist could whip up some strawberry-honeybee potion for 50% faster healing but with a couple unpleasant side-effects.  A dwarven herbalist whose homeland includes the caverns could throw in some elk bird heart to get rid of the coughing.

A simpler system would be to just generate a crap-ton of syndromes with 2 or 3 random ingredients.

In either case, the witch might send the adventurer on a mini-quest to get an ingredient, or one visiting a fortress could offer to make additional brews if provided certain ingredients.  The demanded ingredients need not be related to the brew that the player is trying to acquire; it might simply be valuable to the witch and hard to acquire otherwise.