Print

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

[Neonivek]

They can't be removed either, not by adventurers. So going to an old fort you built to defend against sieges, that's a one way trip through 3+ weapon attacks you have absolutely no choice about. Could end up lethal in Adventure Mode depending on what you built them out of.

So traps have always been functional in adventure mode, players just lack features in general to deal with them.

Yep such as eternal damnation traps

Err I mean Cage traps

[cephalo]

I'd say its high time for some kind of trap avoidance skill. The question is what makes a trap easy or difficult to avoid? The quality of the contained trap parts?

[nenjin]

Avoidance isn't so much the issue I think. Isn't that already handled by the attack rolls, ect? There's three general ways to avoid a trap.

1. Go through it and hope whatever mechanics are running cause it to miss you/allow you to dodge/fails to penetrate your armor.

2. Go around it, if you know it's there.

3. Disable it before it even goes off.

I think most of #1 is already happening. #2 isn't possibly in adventure mode when dealing with your average player fort. In terms of however Toady is distributing traps at sites, I'd say it already works fine.

#3 cuts to the heart of the issue. Traps reload indefinitely in adventure mode, do they not? Because traps are ultimately there for Fort mode right now, they're set up to work best for it. Goblin choppers, whatever. When they miss in fort mode, it would suck to have to assign dwarves to go reload that trap. Maybe dwarven traps are just so awesome they're self balancing and instantly reset, like the ones in Indian Jones and the Last Crusade (versus the boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark).

So that's what I think really needs to be addressed in Adventure mode. Traps in adventure mode need to be things that fire off and are done. The blades/spears/spikes shoot out and stay out. The cage trap comes down and stays down.

Cage traps need special consideration because we expect to be able to break out of some cages but not others, based on strength of the character and the quality of the materials its built from. I don't doubt Toady is cognizant of all of that, it just hasn't figured large enough in the current arc for him to sit down and flesh out. Depending on how much traps come into play at these sites, he may still not feel it's enough to warrant what I'm sure is a re-write of some sort.

If he did though, all those things also logically lead to a simple trap disarming skill, which tries to activate a trap safely while you're on the tile and set it to off. I imagine what's not happening right now is that traps aren't writing any information to the site file. They just exist and have a function and don't update in any sort of way.

It's also worth noting that as soon as we're allowed to create sites in adventure mode, people are going to want to add traps to them. And that's going to bring the issue back again of traps going off and staying off, or not, and how much of a pain it is to end up with two different versions of the same thing in fort mode vs. adventure mode.

[tfaal]

I take it that since stealing from graves is encouraged, adventurers will not be as prone to civilization-wide exile for such crimes?

[Areyar]

Wouldn't observation allow trap detection? (maybe in combo with mechanics, dunno how much it is geared towards skulker detection specifically)

mechanics could allow trap disarmament.
avoidance skill just allows one to get out of the way of that axeblade that jumps out of the coffin.

[rhesusmacabre]

Will the raised dead retain experience (skills) and attributes?
For example, will legendary fighters be more dangerous than others?

Will the raised dead have equipment?
Obviously creatures that die in game 'drop' their gear, but will they try to pick it up if raised? Will they seek out their favourite axe/sword? Will necromancers equip their armies before they lay seige (or are besieged/adventure'd)?

[Untelligent]

Succeeding at an observation skill check allowing you to bypass a trap without setting it off sounds very reasonable.

[metime00]

I think toady should take a day to have trap disarming and just making traps work the way they need to. That would be a really good time investment.

also

Succeeding at an observation skill check allowing you to bypass a trap without setting it off sounds very reasonable.

^this

[Neonivek]

It isn't that reasonable.

It can be tough to move past a trap without setting it off even if you know it is there, or even impossible.

Anyhow the person forgot an EXTRA possibility

4. Activate the trap from a safe distance

Unless a trap resets... often setting off a trap safely is the best way to deal with it.

So throwing stuff at the trap, firing at the trap, and hitting the trap from the next tile should all have a chance of setting it off or disabling it.

Cage traps are only terrible because items are currently indestructible. Otherwise you are likely to eventually get out unless your disarmed and the trap is particularly hearty.

[PlainTextMan]

Hi, and thanks for reading

SUMMARY of my question/argument:

Toady and Three Toe, what are your plans (short and longer term) for counter-forces to the whole undead menace? A sort of natural way to balance things out and prevent any necromancer or zombie virus to become semi-world-ruler easily except in extreme cases. Different levels of necromancy, and consequences to dabbling in the darkness stuffs that are difficult to deal with, even to experienced necromancers. Or magic-energy systems that balance things.

And how about forces of life and good and shite like that? I presume they should also play some significant roles.

The fullness of post here:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As I was reading all the new announcements and the surrounding hype about undead, it kind of struck me that no one mentioned overall balancing of undead and other unnatural creatures in some fundamental respects, but rather the discussion tends to center around the less important details of undead.

(I know this is DF and is prone to insanity, but losing isn't fun without being able to give it a decent shot at least).

A bit vague, so let me elaborate: generally in story themes including undead (and in other games) undead may be raised 'naturally' because of evil areas or monoliths or certain kind of deaths, but rarely to be anything more than a small nuisance, not a coordinated menace. It takes a (great) necromancer to really terrify a civilization. But if the power to raise found corpses is unlimited, we have a problem, and undead overtaking the world could become boringly common. Basically, the power to raise undead (and that of viral spreading) I see as a force pushing in a certain direction. There should be plenty forces acting against it for balancing and interestingness' sake.

Some include (which I'd like to see elaborated on):

• The knowledge of (more than just dabbling) necromancy is rare (seems to be covered)
• It takes some sort of energy or mana to perform it (and some individuals or races have a natural affinity with certain kinds of magic) which can be developed but must essentially be limited by some (preferrably natural-seeming) effect (like that an individual can channel only so much power w/out damaging themselves etc). This may cause some necromancers to grow greater than others as they discover deeper secrets.
• Along this vein, it should require 'energy' to sustain 'unnatural' undead somehow (so a necromancer or lich has a reach limited by his or her power for eg.)
• There are 'forces of light' at work. Priests and stuff doing holeh magicx0rz. Dieties of light intervening. Amulets. Hey how about plain sunlight being deadly to any undead creature not imbued with enough magic?

Specifically, I'm curious about your short-term/placeholder plans for things like these. Certainly, undead can't be allowed to run unbridled armok?

So generally, my rant is just that zombie apocalypse should be decidedly not the default state of things, and given the different forces and counter-forces at work to naturally balance things, rarely result from world gen. Cause after all, it's usually the living that do the interesting stuff like trading and mining and creating useless artifact scepters that weigh 53 kilograms.

Of course we still absolutely need these dangers to play a role in the game, but I think it would be less monotonous if they would for example be an almost non-existant threat in some regions of the world, and play a dangerous role in some others (instead of as with The Omnipresent Killer Bogeymen at the moment).

And of course, we all have that desire deep down; we all want to at least once try to survive in a zombie apocalypse world. So it would make a killer world-gen option!! 

[BronzeElemental]

Angels!

[PlainTextMan]

Angels!

YES

The other part to my last paragraph: every one will certainly at some point want to try and become the evil menace in a peaceful world were people are widely guarded by angels or such things. To battle with the forces of good. (haha but of course dwarves already do this a lot if you consider 'remaining alive' as good )

[CypherLH]

Hi, and thanks for reading

SUMMARY of my question/argument:

Toady and Three Toe, what are your plans (short and longer term) for counter-forces to the whole undead menace? A sort of natural way to balance things out and prevent any necromancer or zombie virus to become semi-world-ruler easily except in extreme cases. Different levels of necromancy, and consequences to dabbling in the darkness stuffs that are difficult to deal with, even to experienced necromancers. Or magic-energy systems that balance things.

And how about forces of life and good and shite like that? I presume they should also play some significant roles.

The fullness of post here:

A bit vague, so let me elaborate: generally in story themes including undead (and in other games) undead may be raised 'naturally' because of evil areas or monoliths or certain kind of deaths, but rarely to be anything more than a small nuisance, not a coordinated menace. It takes a (great) necromancer to really terrify a civilization. But if the power to raise found corpses is unlimited, we have a problem, and undead overtaking the world could become boringly common. Basically, the power to raise undead (and that of viral spreading) I see as a force pushing in a certain direction. There should be plenty forces acting against it for balancing and interestingness' sake.

Some include (which I'd like to see elaborated on):

• The knowledge of (more than just dabbling) necromancy is rare (seems to be covered)
• It takes some sort of energy or mana to perform it (and some individuals or races have a natural affinity with certain kinds of magic) which can be developed but must essentially be limited by some (preferrably natural-seeming) effect (like that an individual can channel only so much power w/out damaging themselves etc). This may cause some necromancers to grow greater than others as they discover deeper secrets.
• Along this vein, it should require 'energy' to sustain 'unnatural' undead somehow (so a necromancer or lich has a reach limited by his or her power for eg.)
• There are 'forces of light' at work. Priests and stuff doing holeh magicx0rz. Dieties of light intervening. Amulets. Hey how about plain sunlight being deadly to any undead creature not imbued with enough magic?

[/spoiler]

Specifically, I'm curious about your short-term/placeholder plans for things like these. Certainly, undead can't be allowed to run unbridled armok?

So generally, my rant is just that zombie apocalypse should be decidedly not the default state of things, and given the different forces and counter-forces at work to naturally balance things, rarely result from world gen. Cause after all, it's usually the living that do the interesting stuff like trading and mining and creating useless artifact scepters that weigh 53 kilograms.

Of course we still absolutely need these dangers to play a role in the game, but I think it would be less monotonous if they would for example be an almost non-existant threat in some regions of the world, and play a dangerous role in some others (instead of as with The Omnipresent Killer Bogeymen at the moment).

And of course, we all have that desire deep down; we all want to at least once try to survive in a zombie apocalypse world. So it would make a killer world-gen option!! 

Well, presumably all of this stuff will be tweakable via world design params. So you could have a world with no curses, and/or no undead at all, or a world bursting at the seams with undead and gazillions of procedural curses and typically ending up as a apocalyptic continent-spanning graveyard, or anything in between. (I expect the same sort of world param control over magic when that gets introduced) As a worldgen junkie, I am thrilled at the idea of more worldgen design params and creating worlds of all different flavors.

[Mountain-King]

If there's a bad luck curse, there should be a luck stat.

[G-Flex]

Will the raised dead retain experience (skills) and attributes?
For example, will legendary fighters be more dangerous than others?

Judging by everything we've heard so far, the raised corpses/body parts have no connection to the mind/soul of the owner, therefore they won't (or at least shouldn't) have its skills.