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[praguepride]

Add a [SADISTIC] tag to monsters that does certain "sadistic" things. Examples include

- toying around with injured dwarves. So imagine a dwarf is fighting a troll and the troll mauls the dwarf and the dwarf passes out. Instead of just going in and kill the dwarf, the troll might pause, waiting for the dwarf to recover before attacking again. The dwarf would probably again quickly pass out and this would repeat, effectively having the troll torture it's victims.

- playing with morbid objects. The creature will pick up bodies, chunks, bones and skulls and randomly throw them around. They might then go over, pick it up again and throw it around some more.

- use morbid objects as weapons. Imagine a creature that decapitates a dwarf, picks up the dwarves head and then throws it at another dwarf, stunning it long enough for it to rush in and decapitate. This would use logic simliar to throwing stuff in adventure mode, but obviously would neded to be nerfed heavily so that a dwarven chunk doesn't blast right through plate mail. This would also provide an opportunity for non-ranged combatants to gain temporary ranged weapons. Damage for chunks etc. should be minimal, but it should have a high chance of stunning (you'd be stunned if some creature just threw the head of your squad mate square in your face!).

- gather morbid objects. Basically a sadistic troll might go around and gather skulls and bones to "decorate" it's cave with.


Perhaps with the [SADISTIC] tag there should be a [MORBID] tag to indicate that an item is "unpleasant". How does HFS know to spawn chunks and blood and gore etc.?


Basically, the "toying" around stuff wouldn't really do anything for the creature (except train it's "thrwoing" skill...) but it would do this randomly instead of walking around or attacking nearby dwarves. Perhaps if it doesn't have a toy to play with and occupy it's attention, it has an increased likelihood of attacking your dwarves. Thus a "sacrifice" situation might happen where to keep the huge group of ogres away from your fledgling fort, one unlucky dwarf is chosen to be their "plaything" for awhile...

[Farce]

Should not a sadism level be a function of personality traits?

[praguepride]

Perhaps, perhaps not. The funadmental question that would be asked is could a normal dwarf do terriible atrocities?

Do you want your dwarves toying with enemies and chucking chunks at each other as the norm, or as a mod?

I'd say that this could be associated with the [EVIL] tag. Technically Evil/Good should be part of the personality as well, as you could have good & evil dwarves. However, for game mechanic purposes, [EVIL] represents so much more then just being bad. The same could be sad about the sadism tag. It would represent and use certain behavior patterns that other creatures would never do. So this way if animals ever get personalities you don't have to worry about horses throwing your dwarf corpses around.

So certain evil creatures wouldn't have this. I'd say goblins & kobolds would not be sadistic. Yeah, they're evil, but not sadistic. (this is a judgement call though, there's no real right or wrong answer). However, in the powergoals, it specifically mentions trolls playing around with skulls & captives, or demons might easily get this as they go aroudn raping your dwarves with tentacles...

[snus-mumrik]

If I'm not mistaken, each species has its maximum and minimum values for personality traits. So while dwarfs would only have something like "he finds pain and blood attractive" (increasing the chance of fell mood). And a troll (or dwarfs in modded game) would have "he is a psychopathic sadistic maniac".

[praguepride]

Then why is [GOOD]/[EVIL] a tag? Why is [BENIGN] a tag? It's more then just personality traits, it's programmed defined behaviors.

Perhaps one day all that will be reduced to the personality so you'll have evil dwarves volunteering under demon armies, but until then, I'd say that pulling out sadism into a tag on it's own is a far better system to deal with the specialized behaviors.

Plus, I'd like sadism to actually DO stuff as opposed to just exist like it does with personalities. Other then governing a few happy/bad thoughts and likelihood of using social skills, personality traits do not define behavior.

Sadism would define behavior. Thus it needs a tag.

[kotekzot]

The tags you listed have to do with biomes for the most part. You don't expect a fluffy wambler to decide whether it should live in a terrifying forest or not, do you?

I see no reason why a tag would be preferable to a proper personality trait, which allows varying behavior among creatures of the same race, and is more elegant overall.

[Footkerchief]

Then why is [GOOD]/[EVIL] a tag? Why is [BENIGN] a tag? It's more then just personality traits, it's programmed defined behaviors.

They're placeholder tags, just like good/evil regions are placeholders (and soon to be removed).

[praguepride]

Are you saying that BONECARN should be a personality trait? That INTELLIGENT or CAN_CIV should be personality traits?

No, because those tags define BEHAVIORS. Personality traits do next to nothing at the moment. They trigger an occasional good/bad thought or allow a a dwarf to train "persuader" or other social skills and that is the extent of that.

The [SADISTIC] tag would define actual, programmed behaviors. Building skull thrones, tossing enemy corpses around, using body parts as impromptu weapons.

Those are behaviors, not personality traits. Again, in an "ideal" game yeah all those things could be controlled by personality traits. You can have an "inteligence" level that determines the civilization capability of a species, so higher intelligent critters build more cities. You could have a Immunity: FIRE scale that determines how protected they are from fire (completely, a lot, a little, none). You could have  "Lock picking" attribute or a "Trap avoidance' attribute that determines the quality level of doors/traps that a creature could pick.

But a system like that is what, 5 years away? 10 years? WHo knows?

Right now, we have tags that define behaviors:
BONECARN
LOCKPICKER
MISCHEVIOUS
TRANCE
TRAPAVOID
VERMINHUNTER

etc. etc.

These tags define behaviors. The game is currently set up to read tags, not behaviors. Plus, what would happen if you wanted to put the sadistic tag on a creature without a personality? Say a demon spawn that is a fairly mindless killing machine. And last time I checked, only civs have personalities.

Trolls, which this tag is specificaly designed for because of the PowerGoal mention, do not have personalities. So until personalities are useful enough that creatures like Trolls, Ogres, and other non-civving baddies have them, this tag should not be a personality trait.

NOW, you could have a seperate sadism personality trait that would generate good/bad thoughts from inflicting violence, but that would be a HUGE difference from a creature that prefers to make a bed out of the crushed bodies of it's victims.

[darkflagrance]

So to clarify, you are suggesting that while personality traits lead to generic torture and satisfaction, [SADISTIC] leads to specific behaviors, that may even be independent of satisfaction?

[praguepride]

So to clarify, you are suggesting that while personality traits lead to generic torture and satisfaction, [SADISTIC] leads to specific behaviors, that may even be independent of satisfaction?

Yes. The creatures this is intended for do not have intelligence, personalities, or morale, so things like "good thoughts/bad thoughts" or "interests" or "personality" doesn't really apply to them in the current build.

[Footkerchief]

Yes. The creatures this is intended for do not have intelligence, personalities, or morale, so things like "good thoughts/bad thoughts" or "interests" or "personality" doesn't really apply to them in the current build.

The creatures that you mentioned as examples, trolls and ogres, both have CAN_LEARN, so they are at least semi-intelligent.

[praguepride]

Yes. The creatures this is intended for do not have intelligence, personalities, or morale, so things like "good thoughts/bad thoughts" or "interests" or "personality" doesn't really apply to them in the current build.

The creatures that you mentioned as examples, trolls and ogres, both have CAN_LEARN, so they are at least semi-intelligent.

But they don't have personalities. Nor do personalities do anything.

[Eagleon]

Yes, but the plan is to make them do things. Putting all this behavior into a tag wouldn't make sense now that the personality system is in place. It would be backtracking - like adding a button you had to click in order to fix a bug. There's no reason for it. Your suggestion fits with the personality system well, and these are behaviors a sadistic creature should have. There are certain cases where a dwarf/human/etc. should degenerate to possibly do these things (corrupted by dark forces, witnessed his entire family brutally murdered and butchered, etc), and that should be handled by a range of sadism levels, not an unalterable static race-level tag.

[praguepride]

And when are tags being brought out into personality traits? I don't think we're doing away with all personality traits in this upcoming release. So what, something like this should wait 5 years until personality traits actually do something?

It would not be a difficult process to convert this over to personality traits anyway, and it has to be done with other tags as well so it's hardly a huge step backward. It's like 1/2 step back and 3 steps forward

[Footkerchief]

So what, something like this should wait 5 years until personality traits actually do something?

Wider use of personality traits is certainly going to happen sooner than this suggestion (it's a gradual process, the next version already has more personality stuff, etc), so yeah, that seems reasonable.  You seem to think that this has a greater chance of being implemented quickly if it's simplified, but that's not the case.  Toady's generally not eager to spend time on placeholders.

Anyway, even if personality (especially the Sympathy trait, maybe Anger too) and ethics influence such behavior, it might also be useful to have a tag like MATERIAL_CLASS_VALUE_MULTIPLIER so that various creatures can be more attracted to certain types of materials.