I'm fairly certain this has already been suggested. It just seems so obvious. But I would like to see this in the game very much. I'm just curious how exactly the regeneration would function. In real life, in order to regrow a limb, any organism that can do so(mostly sea polyps and other underwater beasties) must have the matter required to regrow the limb. I think it could use extra parameters that regulate the following
speed - the speed at which the missing or damaged or heavily damaged body parts would regenerate.
fatigue - regeneration can be an energy intensive process. This would possibly cause some loss of strength while the process is going on(Also, more fun if the value is set to negative.
Pain - Simply put, does it cause pain? perhaps this might be a binary option or a set 0 - 100 or some other system. I do not know the current system of how pain works in DF. As with fatigue, imagine the fun you could have by setting this to negative. Would that mean that by losing a special *nerve* body part a creature could become "pain immune"?
Extra factors might include:
- special checks that stop the regeneration process for the specific body region if it is damaged while regenerating.
- special checks that cause the regeneration process only under certain situations or environments(Examples : underground, during the day and above ground, on a full moon, when in water, when in a martial trans, when fighting, upon killing a unit, while unconscious/sleeping, while out of combat, while on fire etc, while eating/drinking)
- special checks for when the regeneration process CAN NOT take place. (examples : in contact with silver/other metal, on fire, in sunlight, while conscious etc)
- COMPLETE REGENERATION, which basically means that as long as a specific special organ or limb remains intact, it will be able to completely chain-regenerate the rest of the body. (note: interesting situations when losing this organ may not be lethal to the original body would be fun)
- the posiblity of there being a limit to how many regeneration processes can take place at once or in a row (example : your legs will only regrow 4 times, you are missing an arm and a leg but only one area can regenerate at a time(this means that the arm or leg will try to regrow first before the leg begins to regrow))
- A posibility that certain organs or body parts may COMPLETELY REGENERATE the entire original creature if it is dead and the body part is not destroyed/damaged when put under certain conditions. For instance, a flesh demon may have a special revival ritual where it's skull must be thrown into a pool of blood to begin regenerating the demon menace. Or an great tree father might regenerate from his "beard-root" body part if it is in the rain. Cults could seek to do this.
I also think it would be interesting if there was a way to cause regeneration to also activate a side-effect. Perhaps a syndrome of some sort or something else. Suppose regeneration caused the creature or limb that was being regrown to change it's material makeup or become a different limb. Then we could have situations of things like special golems, where each limb cut off regrows as a different element or material, either getting stronger or weaker with each regeneration until it is killed(stone to clay to wood and eventually it is just dust for it's adversaries.) Or perhaps strange bugs that, when they lose their extremities, the original extremity regrows back as a tentacle or something crazy like that.
Would love to see this also be a side-effect of a syndrome. Imagine a night-creature bite that turns your dwarves into maniacs that go insane and start rampaging and have mass regeneration. Or perhaps they have their limbs regrow as wooden limbs. This would ofcourse require the game to have more options of controlling how and what your military does. But the text
*URST MCFISHCLEANER HAS BEEN AFFLICTED BY TREEBLIGHT*
only to be followed by Urst running around, slowly turning into a wooden little dwarven golem, attacking random things until eventually the military comes and sets him ablaze and all that is left of poor Urst is his heart, which has turned into a deep green special large gemstone called mossheart(cause that would be cool if the syndrome did that, right?)