[CF List] wraight (& fireborns)

[Mark Wedel]

Steven Lembark wrote:
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      > I'm strongly against making fireborn eat fire instead of eating
     
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      > food.  Nearly all the maps are designed to sustain creatures which
     
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      > eat food, not fire.  Fireborn would thus be screwed--unless they were
     
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      > saddled with lots of wands of fireball/scrolls, WAY harder to obtain
     
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      > than food.
     
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      Cast burning hands at yourself or any size fireball near
     
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      a wall. Now try casting "create food" in a dragon cave when you're
     
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      already covered in flame and pick up the food before it burns.
     
     
 Not necessarily a fair test.

 As I think about it, the problem with fireborn eating food is somewhat balance
- at low levels, most fire spells either the fireborn or someone else casts
won't do much damage, and thus the fireborn won't get much food value from it.

 If each town has a fire pit or similar free fire around, that isn't too
terrible, since most low level adventures are near/in town, so you go to the
firepit, wait for your food to be 999, then wander off.  But that may not help
you if the dungeon you are going to is a ways around.

 the biggest and most important question is whether such a change will make
things more or less fun.  Its easy to say that right now that if your strength
is 2, carrying around food is not that fun.  But if the change is made, and now
the fireborn is hunting for fire or using all his mana to create fire, that
probably isn't fun either.

 At a certain point, then need for fire is not a big deal - the real question is
if the fireborn can get to that point easily - most of the very low dungeons
don't in general have spellcasters, so the fireborn will need to provide its own
fire.

 I still think it would be a neat idea to try.  I'm just not positive how well
it will really work.

 I would say a fireborn with str == 2 has other problems, like just the general
inability to get much loot.  Of course, the str == 2 problem should in general
only be a fairly low level problem - at some point you get the stat potions and
raise up to something reasonable, and/or cast strength spells.