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[Zared]

Who says it's solid lichen?  A werewolf is half man, and half wolf.  Therefore, a werelichen, would be half man, half lichen.  (Or if you prefer, half man, half fungus, half algae.  That's an extra 50% right there, so already this monster sounds pretty deadly)

So, a big guy, thick green skin, thick layer of lichen to pad him against blows.  I'm sure it would be at least as dangerous as a werewolf.  Make it bigger on account of that extra 50% of being, and it's pretty tough!  Can we add extremely fast healing of wounds?  Have that represent the symbiotic algae in its blood helping to restitch severed tissues.  Sounds like a mean foe to me.

In the 2003 Hulk movie, wasn't he supposed to be green because they threw in some algae DNA?  So there you go:  Werewolves transform into their "lycan" form during a full moon, werelichens transform to their "lycan" form when they get angry.  Scientifically proven fact! 

Also, I remember you could kill moss on your deck just be leaving a penny on it, the copper kills it.  If lichens are similarly vulnerable, then instead of a silver vulnerability, a werelichen would have a copper vulnerability!  Not that we can put that in the raws just yet, but it's the thought that counts.

A stone golem heated to stone-melting temperatures will have more mass than a stone-cold stone golem. Because energy has mass, and molten rock has more stored energy than just a rock.

Infinitesimal.  One tonne of stone melted into magma would weigh like one tonne plus one billionth of a kilogram.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Infinitesimal or not, if it's greater and not equal, it's more mass.

[Shoku]

Seeing it happen the once in some game would make an appropriate joke but I want to do a double surprise with it actually being a dangerous were-creature. Not really sure how to make moss into a tank-like killing machine without just turning into into magical material that somehow has heavy armor type properties and other such nonsense though.

Make it fragile and weak but with a poisonous breath weapon, so it's lethal if you're close but vulnerable to ranged attacks.

But they're just a little fungus-plant symbiont. They can't even send spores out very far (though that makes the "I was bit by the werewolf" spread of the condition more fair.)

I want the opposite where as soon as they say "oh, it's a plant/fungus so it can't more" it stands up and starts smashing down walls and such as it chases them.
You know, the way werewolves do when the worse a wolf would normally do is eat some livestock or surround you in the woods. It's not that they've turned into a wolf or a lichen- it's that it's a demihuman manbeast now.

Spoiler:  stuff most people probably don't care to read (click to show/hide)

I could give it a deceptive moss fur that obscures the whole animal-part and probably bullshit some muscle integration thing for the super-strength but at that point I'd need a different trigger than the moon because of photosynthesis. I could pull that crappy "there's something special about moonlight" crap but here it's only wavelength that matters.
Plus I can't act like I don't understand chloroplasts well enough to say "no" and look myself in the mirror in the morning.

One of those alien worlds with multiple suns might work but I'd have to figure out how those things orbit each other and make the circadian rhythm all goofy. Well, actually I think I've got something that would work there.

Anyway it would probably do grow attacks where it sends out a bunch of algae strands real quick and then the fungus catches up and after awhile it withdraws that into the main body mass before the next attack. Feels too much like prototype's disease junk.

I guess it could throw those and have it be sort of like getting caught in a net, or just have it sit on the ground soaking up light and then manually walk over to grab it back up.

No heavier than a stone golem, unless you account for the mass of the energy it contains.

Even thousands of degrees don't translate into enough mass to bother mentioning that. That's sort of why a basketball sized hunk of uranium can make a disturbingly large explosion with mushroom cloud and such.

*Anybody wanna estimate how many megatons that would yield?

[Reese]

The new system allowing metal bolts to be used for training means that the melt rounding up to 1/10 and bolts not being destroyed bug can come together for easy splitting of metal bolt stacks.  Do you plan to address either of these at this time, or are they going to have to wait for the balance pass?

I'm not sure I understand this.  Is it about getting extra metal by melting down individual bolts?  I haven't done anything with that, in any case.

Yeah, pretty much.  Honestly, I don't care if we can exploit it or not, just the question occurred to me.

[Walliard]

*Anybody wanna estimate how many megatons that would yield?

I attempted the math and got a number somewhere in the teratons, and I don't feel like trying again.

Also, this is getting a bit off-topic.

[Footkerchief]

No heavier than a stone golem, unless you account for the mass of the energy it contains.

Even thousands of degrees don't translate into enough mass to bother mentioning that.

I'm pretty sure he was just trying to shield himself from the inevitable nitpicking.  Let it go.

[JaaSwb]

Nitpicking ahoy! (spoilered for off-topicness)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A stone golem heated to stone-melting temperatures will have more mass than a stone-cold stone golem. Because energy has mass, and molten rock has more stored energy than just a rock.

I thought you might have been talking about stored or potential energy, but wasn't sure exactly.

Let's assume your stone golem is a sphere of hard granite with a diameter of 10 metres (ridiculously big). That's 524 cubic metres of stone, with a mass of 1220 tons. The energy needed to completely melt those 1220 tons of granite is approximately 3.22e12 joules (3.22 TJ), equivalent to 3.58e-5 g (0.358 µg).

Infinitesimal or not, if it's greater and not equal, it's more mass.

Bullcarp. Can you provide a mass figure for rock golems accurate to fractions of micrograms? Thought not. The above difference means nothing. The difference between individua golems is likely to be orders of magnitude greater.

[Greiger]

Weremoss would probably be quite dangerous.  Sure if they punch you or something it probably wouldn't hurt much, too much cushioning.  But if one grabs you, I imagine you could get all the nutrients sucked out of your body pretty fast.  I mean, isn't that what fungi do?

And as a minor aside, me and some buddies made a AD&D "Werecow".  Beware the average adventurer that confuses it for a minotaur! For they can flee down a dark cave and drop 'mines' that when stepped in have a stinking cloud or cloudkill effect, and inflict acid damage on footwear.  Better be good at those search checks!

Thanks for answering the questions Toady!

[CobaltKobold]

In the event of a fort-wide flood your pumice golem can be used as a flotation device.

Pumice is not in-game yet, 85% sure, since it requires structural information and not just material properties.

On that note, do birdbones have something indicating structural strength other than material?

[JoshuaFH]

In the future, will it be possible to create creatures that 'transform' upon receiving certain stimuli, or after meeting some condition? Like, a snake that transforms into a bird and back? Or a caterpillar that undergoes the various stages of cacoon to a butterfly?

[Mephansteras]

In the event of a fort-wide flood your pumice golem can be used as a flotation device.

Pumice is not in-game yet, 85% sure, since it requires structural information and not just material properties.

True, although it might be worth modding it in after the release. Won't be super-realistic (we don't have violent eruptions yet, which I think are necessary for pumice to form) but it could be useful. Especially for custom reactions. The Romans used powdered pumice as an additive to concrete, for example.

[Footkerchief]

In the future, will it be possible to create creatures that 'transform' upon receiving certain stimuli, or after meeting some condition? Like, a snake that transforms into a bird and back? Or a caterpillar that undergoes the various stages of cacoon to a butterfly?

Metamorphosis type stuff will go in eventually, yeah:

I'm hoping we'll be able to define phases of development (i.e. [Child] of creature has its own tokens, and at [Age] it becomes [Adolescent] and its tokens change).

Not yet -- I didn't want to deal with wound/inventory transfers yet for completely different bodies, but I'm hoping to get there in some future release.

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering about--whether there will someday be the option of having more than one "growthspurt", rather than just accumulated size, and additionally, whether that "growthspurt" can also alter/enhance the form and/or nature of a being in question, as the being ages (A classic example would be a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly.).

I don't understand the distinction between growth spurts and changing the size.  As far as I know, a growth spurt is a period of time where something is growing faster than it normally does, and you can set up as many of those as you want with the creatures size.  Something like a metamorphosis is much more involved.  We'll have them at some point, but the bodies need to be handled, and that can be involved.

[Mephansteras]

Can we use water (in buckets or barrels) as part of reactions with the new custom workshops? I think we can, but I can't find anything that says so...

[Diablous]

I think not. Foot will probably find a quote.

[Footkerchief]

Can we use water (in buckets or barrels) as part of reactions with the new custom workshops? I think we can, but I can't find anything that says so...

I think not.

Yeah, the problem is getting the water into the bucket:

Yeah, water has always been very hardcoded, even more so than the few other materials that are remaining hardcoded.  It's not clear whether reactions will be able to access it, although it would come in handy all over the place.

I would love to use a mod that separates the brewery/winery/etc. from the still, forces you to use water in brewing, and requires pipe sections and fuel at the still.  Oh, and the still should have a 1/100 chance of "exploding" (steam would come in handy there too!).  And the still should be able to use magma instead of fuel.

Reactions don't know how to handle buckets of water as reagents in terms of getting somebody to fill an empty bucket at a water source as an intermediate step.  You can get at the materials in terms of products or simple reagents (like a boulder of ice).  You can set your custom still to be magma-fueled, at least, or to use regular fuel for the reaction.