Print

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

[rico6822]

Players and NPC should only become immune to aging. Some enemies cannot hit you at all when you have high enough dodge and you cannot get exert. You can also seclude yourself in a location where there is nothing that can come to murder you. This is due to no need for drinking or eating.

Real world necromancers were supposted to communicate with the dead but had no superpowers. I think necromancers could encounter spirits of any sapient race during the night that were actual characters before they died. Those spirits can be hostile but may also explain how they perished. Characters with need for learning something can satisfy this need. This can also help when solving intrigues.

It would be a shame if necro towers suddenly were unable to be generated due to those changes.

I think that everytime a necromancer will exist there should be another necromancer created "ex nihilo", that act as nemesis to all "traditional" necromancers. This one has privilages players currently have in the game for being necromancers but CONSTANTLY hunts down necromancers who read the slab. They never stop and never move slower than jogging, or faster crawling or faster swimming and so on. They are above average quick on fast travel screen. If they decide that the player is being too challenging to fight they will not try to engage and instead will improve they're combat skills and gather an army of the dead before challenging him. They may also decide not to fight the player that lacks companions or combat skills if he is in a well armed fortress or other site.

Hostile necromancers may decide to attack by surprise weak animals to make them they're undead minions. This is so far the only way of encouraging necros to move slower on the world map as undead wildlife is pretty clumsy. This also includes undead former sapients. Eventually he may numerous enough in he's minions to attack random travelers and once he gets enough of them a tower will be built just like in vanilla game. This is to scare off intruders and give them partial safe haven. After all they still have they're own psychological needs.

They still leave some small structures on they're territory for looters hoping that they're greed and adventure tendency will make them suffer death.

I believe those necromancers should always be able to summon bogeymen/nightmares and turn people into ghouls. Bogeymen/Nightmares allow safe killing without being spotted while some people who wish to serve necromancers for they're own may request being turned into thralls.

Upon killing necromancer who hunts down those who read slab the ones who read it will lose they're necromancy traits and become once more normal beings. They will however have they're ages reverted back to they're adulthood tresholds or other age value stated in raw files.

Children cannot gain any necromancy by reading slabs and won't be major hunting targets. I actually wonder if necromancy should be triggered by seeing the slab from one of it's sides. This would mean that knowing those secrets is a metaphor for being cursed and how haunting it is. Those aren't secrets in fact at this point. This makes necromancy only more interesting.

But what if necro succeeds at killing those who read it or they already died on they're way for some reason? Hunting necros simply vanish into mist, even if they know nothing about the death.

I think other ways of immortality (vampires, werebeasts) should also feel like curses in some way instead of giving many advantages but that's for a different thread.

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

Necromancers not needs rework. The only thing that I want for make them more like to their name (necromancia - divination by dead) is add them ghost summoning, that not present in current version only due to a bug.

[rico6822]

Necromancers not needs rework. The only thing that I want for make them more like to their name (necromancia - divination by dead) is add them ghost summoning, that not present in current version only due to a bug.

Ok, that may not be a terrible idea actually.

[JAL28]

Personally my idea of balancing for necros would be to strip them of all intelligent undead warriors(except  luitenants, and intdead of necromancers from their group). I highly doubt any sapient creature when returned to life as an int-dead would want to side with a necromancer.

I feel like crowd killing siege engines like catapults, ballistae and possibly rudimentary rocket launchers with iron head missiles will make undead much easier opponents, especially when they are finally given wheels.

[A_Curious_Cat]

The problem is that there are two conceptions of the “necromancer”.  The first is the “classical” necromancer.  This is basically what would nowadays be called a “spirit medium”.  The second is the “Christian” necromancer.  Christians have a long history of outright lying about other religions in order to demonize them and stir up fellow Christians into violence against them.  This can be seen at work with how the early Christian church spread slander and libel about the necromancers of non-Christian religions in order incite violence against them in the hopes that the necromancers (who, again, were basically spirit mediums) would be killed.  The necromancers in DF are obviously of the “Christian” conception.

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

Personally my idea of balancing for necros would be to strip them of all intelligent undead warriors(except  luitenants, and intdead of necromancers from their group). I highly doubt any sapient creature when returned to life as an int-dead would want to side with a necromancer.

I feel like crowd killing siege engines like catapults, ballistae and possibly rudimentary rocket launchers with iron head missiles will make undead much easier opponents, especially when they are finally given wheels.

No damned balance for this game! Real life has no balance, so why magic world can need it?

[NW_Kohaku]

No damned balance for this game! Real life has no balance, so why magic world can need it?

I'm just going to rehash my response to this nonsense argument that I used the last time you trotted it out:

Toady not need to do any balancing. Real world have no game balance at all.

While partly true, it's also kind of a false metaphor.  Real-world people react to the "imbalance" of their "game", and that tends to create a new equilibrium we would consider "balance".

To give a very generalized summary of military technology, the Middle Ages were "balanced" around castles and wearing heavy metal armor favoring the super-wealthy that could afford such things dramatically over masses of peasants, and then cannons "ruined the balance" of castles and metal armor, only to create a situation where you tended to have a "rock-paper-scissors" dynamic between musket infantry, cavalry, and cannon units where armor was useless for a few hundred years before that "balance" was ruined by technology like machine guns and tanks in World War One.

In fact, in one game I was playing recently, they included a real-life US Army TRADOC (Training and Doctrine Command) manual that they said inspired the balance of the game, and sure enough, on one of the first pages talking about how infantry should be expected to be carrying anti-tank weaponry, they straight-up include a rock-paper-scissors "balance" of modern military units diagram in a discussion of how there "is no 'ultimate' or invincible weapon. The modern battlefield is a contest of measures and countermeasures which, taken together, and on balance will determine the outcome of battle."

The problem is that, unlike real life, there is a limited capacity to adapt new measures in this game to changes to the meta.  That's why people complain about game balance in games, since you're not allowed to invent your way out of problems the way that real people do by the nature of the game's restrictions.

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

No damned balance for this game! Real life has no balance, so why magic world can need it?

I'm just going to rehash my response to this nonsense argument that I used the last time you trotted it out:

Toady not need to do any balancing. Real world have no game balance at all.

While partly true, it's also kind of a false metaphor.  Real-world people react to the "imbalance" of their "game", and that tends to create a new equilibrium we would consider "balance".

To give a very generalized summary of military technology, the Middle Ages were "balanced" around castles and wearing heavy metal armor favoring the super-wealthy that could afford such things dramatically over masses of peasants, and then cannons "ruined the balance" of castles and metal armor, only to create a situation where you tended to have a "rock-paper-scissors" dynamic between musket infantry, cavalry, and cannon units where armor was useless for a few hundred years before that "balance" was ruined by technology like machine guns and tanks in World War One.

In fact, in one game I was playing recently, they included a real-life US Army TRADOC (Training and Doctrine Command) manual that they said inspired the balance of the game, and sure enough, on one of the first pages talking about how infantry should be expected to be carrying anti-tank weaponry, they straight-up include a rock-paper-scissors "balance" of modern military units diagram in a discussion of how there "is no 'ultimate' or invincible weapon. The modern battlefield is a contest of measures and countermeasures which, taken together, and on balance will determine the outcome of battle."

The problem is that, unlike real life, there is a limited capacity to adapt new measures in this game to changes to the meta.  That's why people complain about game balance in games, since you're not allowed to invent your way out of problems the way that real people do by the nature of the game's restrictions.

Sorry for curse word, but game really not need any balance at all.

[NW_Kohaku]

Sorry for curse word, but game really not need any balance at all.

That has nothing to do with what I wrote.

The game does need balance, and real life has balance, too.

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

Sorry for curse word, but game really not need any balance at all.

That has nothing to do with what I wrote.

The game does need balance, and real life has balance, too.

Real life has no balance, so game no need it too.

[towerator]

Sorry for curse word, but game really not need any balance at all.

That has nothing to do with what I wrote.

The game does need balance, and real life has balance, too.

Real life has no balance, so game no need it too.

This is somewhat of a strange argument to me because, well, real life does have balance! Say, physical laws are somewhat of a balance patch in themselves, say, because they prevent the creation/removal of infinite energy. In a society, there is balance by central banks so that money doesn't inflate/deflate, balance of power, balance of justice and so on. And if someone finds a "game-breaker", there are many cases where it is "patched" by laws or else.

[voliol]

Optimally, the game should be able to adapt to whatever magic/technology/mechanics are made, and find its own ”balance” that way. This can be done by actors simulating a few strategies and using the one that works best. This mirrors the real world in that major advancements can be done, but eventually are counteracted. Sometimes, the best strategy may very well be to just adapt that advancement in return. Toady has talked about this (in one of the DF talks, I believe). Something like ”magic worlds are inherently imbalanced, but as long as both sides have the magic it should be fine”.

The problem with necromancers, is that using necromancy gives a clear military advantage, but both sides can’t have necromantic powers. The ”good guys” can’t get necromancy as that would turn it into a crapsack world nonetheless, which shouldn’t always happen, and current necromancers have no reasons to turn against each other, being seemingly driven only by a hatred for the living rather than having a wish for world domination. The living also can’t rise up once necromancers have won. The consequence of this is that all worlds with necromancers will sooner or later fall to the armies of undead, and then become stale, the only balance met is that of stagnation.

So how do you solve this?
You could nerf the necromancers, but then that only decreases the likelyhood that they will achieve world domination. It will still happen in older worlds, as they will have more chances during worldgen in those, just as the chance of getting a Nat 20 is higher the more times you roll a die, even if you switch from a D20 to a D100. Nerfing them too much also removes them as a threat for the player to deal with which would be a shame.
Alternatively, you could allow the world to return to ”normal” by having the necromancers and their underlings fight internally. Perhaps the necromancers really want world dominion? Then you could have late-game necromancer entities replacing the mortal ones. The undead lieutenants may also want some share of the power, or maybe the technically mortal experiment populations could rise up against their overlords, wanting to reestablish the old world. You could even go as far as having some natural counter against necromancers, like divine summoning of new populations of dead races to fight back, or anti-necromancers. But these counters must act after the necromancer apocalypse, and be able to arise spontaneously, otherwise the main problem of necromancer stagnation will not have been dealt with.

[Orange-of-Cthulhu]

Alternatively, you could allow the world to return to ”normal” by having the necromancers and their underlings fight internally. Perhaps the necromancers really want world dominion? Then you could have late-game necromancer entities replacing the mortal ones. The undead lieutenants may also want some share of the power, or maybe the technically mortal experiment populations could rise up against their overlords, wanting to reestablish the old world. You could even go as far as having some natural counter against necromancers, like divine summoning of new populations of dead races to fight back, or anti-necromancers. But these counters must act after the necromancer apocalypse, and be able to arise spontaneously, otherwise the main problem of necromancer stagnation will not have been dealt with.

Yeah I also suggested to have them keep themselved in check by adding some mechanism that had them fight each other before they get so strong that they dominate the world.

I think it is the easiest solution, as you don't have to add a lot of new powers and being to the game to make it work. You just nead to tweak the agressivity of necromaners, and make it their top priority to fight each others. This should kick in a while before they reach total world domination.

It would honestly make sense to me that a necromancer sees another necromancer as a bigger threat, plus he doesn't want to share his knowledge with anybody. It just bugs them there's other necromancers out there! More than it bothers them that the other races are out there.


http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177808.0

[JAL28]

Honestly, this may be a little off topic, but I feel like necromancers shouldn’t all just go out and build towers and stuff like that. Learning the secrets of life and death is just, that. You read a book and you get them. There theoretically shouldn’t be anything that changes a necromancer’s personality, but that is what we see right now, with them having personalities that just make them shitty people(like wanting to conquer the world). Perhaps some necromancers, when they turn, hide their identities and decide to live quietly in a town until they are found. After all, they have become immortals, what else could they want? I’m sure not everybody wants to rule the world. Right???

[NW_Kohaku]

I think one thing that deserves mention in this thread overall is that Toady intends to expand out the rules that necromancy abides by into a general magic system.  Eventually, you'll have someone reading tablets of pyromancy and becoming pyromancers and can throw fireballs to wipe out armies of undead, and presumably, at least some of those powers aren't coded as inherently evil.  Then we'll just have to worry about all the collateral damage and wizards burning to death in the wildfires their fireballs cause all over again...

Honestly, this may be a little off topic, but I feel like necromancers shouldn’t all just go out and build towers and stuff like that. Learning the secrets of life and death is just, that. You read a book and you get them. There theoretically shouldn’t be anything that changes a necromancer’s personality, but that is what we see right now, with them having personalities that just make them shitty people(like wanting to conquer the world). Perhaps some necromancers, when they turn, hide their identities and decide to live quietly in a town until they are found. After all, they have become immortals, what else could they want? I’m sure not everybody wants to rule the world. Right???

The origin of necromancers right now are people who want to cheat death and conquer the world and such, and the power puts one against life.  The problem more comes with people who read the books of necromancy by accident.

There are two ways to look at it, though.  One is that just looking at the book imparts information as you read, but what you do with that information is up to you.  The problem with this, however, is that the in-game effects don't really line up with this interpretation.

The other is that you're dealing with a mind-altering or even soul-altering object.  Undead hate all living, but they ignore necromancers.  Necromancers do not age.  That kind of implies necromancers aren't just people who read a book, but are actually undead, themselves. The process of becoming undead alters zombies such that they try to kill and eat the living no matter their personalities in life, which we accept as a matter of course, so if becoming a necromancer forces one to become undead like a vampire or zombie is a former living that was forced to become undead, is it odd that the transformation comes with a change in personality?