[CF-Devel] race/classes notes/thoughts.

[Mark Wedel]

 I've been playing a troll barbarian lately, and a few notes.

 His natural intelligence is -3 (shown with the statistics command).  Not a big
problem, as that the fix_player (or someplace) is smart enough to raise it to
one.  However, I was fortunately enough to find a potion of intelligence, but
drinking it did not work (it did nothing).  Looking at the code, I can see the
reason - the change_abil function makes sure that when we change a stat, it is
still in the valid range (1 to 30), so drinking cursed potions won't drop you
too much.  Unfortunately, since the character had a -3, drinking one potion only
raises it to -2, which is still out of this threshold so it doesn't work.  So I
guess the question is:  Is this a bug in that his natural stat is -3, or is it a
bug in change_abil, which should be improved to see what the potion is doing and
then verify that it remains within bounds (so if increasing a stat, it only
makes sure it doesn't go above 30, and decreasing, it only makes sure it doesn't
go below 1).

 A misc. thought came to me that probably not all races/classes should be
willing to eat flesh items.  I see no problem with a troll barbarian gnawing on
a goblin leg, but I really don't see that elf wizard doing the same thing.  I
wonder if it might be worth while to add some ability/skill like 'will eat
flesh'?  Granted, this is generally an advantage, since it supplies a great many
more sources of food, but probably isn't a very big one.  Or maybe a skill (or
extend woodsman skill) that let you turn flesh into food?  Unrelated to this,
but something that I think should be done is to add a decay factor to flesh
(like what demon ichors do).  So you might have the leg being fresh, then as it
gets older, it has less nutritional value, becomes poisonous/diseased, and then
finally decomposes into nothing.  Converting it to found could be assumed that
you are drying it/salting it/whatever so it lasts indefinately.

 Not having the literacy skill makes some things difficult.  What immediately
came to mind was the hall of quests in the castle of scorn - without literacy,
you can't read the information scrolls.  I knew from past experience where the
goblin and ogre hole were, but I wonder if it might be better to make those
scrolls readable by anyone, or use magic mouths?

 This question might more belong the the non developer list, but I'm lazy so I'm
grouping it here.  I've noticed that pretty much skill scrolls and stat potions
have disappeared from shops (its been a while since I've actually played a
character serious compared to working on crossfire).  After the newbie tower,
goblin hole/quest and ogre hole/quest, my 6'th level barbarian has around 1400
platinum.  What do people generally spend the money on?  The only thing I can
really think of is to search for a good ring/amulet.  The character already has
a +3 sword, +1 plate, +2 boots, girdle of damage (reward for quest), +1 helmet
and shield, most all of it found, since in term of mundane items he is in pretty
good shape (and going to the shops, it is unlikely he will find anything much
better than most of that).  With an int of 1 (-2), he obviously isn't going to
be casting spells anytime soon.

 Granted, 1400 pp isn't a huge some of money, but that usually enough to buy
something pretty decent.

 One thought I had would be to stock a portion of the shops with non random
merchandise.  Ie, the armor shop will always have a +2 shield and helmet (at
least when initially loaded), if your willing to pay for it.  You could actually
set a stack of 10 items for that matter.  Maybe different shops should stock
different good items (so perhaps the shop in scorn is a shield shop so has good
shields all the time plus the usual random stuff, while the shop is santa
dominion is a good helmet shop, etc).  I just wasn't interested in doing town
hopping looking for something good in all the shops, but something like that
might add character.

 this could potentially be tied into the god code.  For example, its been
discussed certain gods would be interested in certain pieces of armor/weapons
and not really use the others.  So if you want that god blessed/improved helmet,
you must first buy that helmet from the high quality helmet shop or the like. 
This could perhaps even help balance things out if it is difficult to get to
certain towns (it isn't right now, but I think it would be nice to actually have
random monsters in the countryside - granted, a high level character could clear
the path for newbies, but there could also be more intelligent monster
generation for the wilderness - the fewer the monsters, the faster they generate
for example - this would also effectively put a cap on the maximum number in any
area, so you wouldn't get a case of the map filled with hill giants).

 Thats the end of my various thoughts for now.