[CF List] wraight (& fireborns)

[Steven Lembark]

-- Mark Wedel <
     
     mwedel at sonic.net
     
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      Steven Lembark wrote:
     
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      You can cast str spells, which uses mana, which requires
     
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      food, which...  Low str is a general problem that makes it
     
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      hard to play. Not carrying food would be a plus...
     
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       Probably true for all races.
     
     
More so for fb's due to limited str and inability to
use stat-raising equip's. Having a str spell run out
just as you're dodging a demilich or whatnot is a a
real pain.

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      for food, and will probably be around fire-causing items in dungeons
     
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      frequently enough to get "fed" on the fly.
     
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      If we leave the char's "food" at zero and have it live on hp, the
     
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      code changes are minimal:
     
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       I still don't see why that is an advantage to still having them use
     
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      food.  Its a fairly trivial change to modify the code such that when a
     
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      fireborn gets hits by fire, his food goes up.    Fairly easy to also make
     
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      it so they can't eat normal food, or gets less effect.
     
     
I was just trying to find a way of doing it with minimum
code changes. Having fire == food would be just fine for me.


One idea: Come up with a hack character (other than fb) to
test the whole thing on. Call it a "hakophile" and see how
the thing works. If people like the thing changing it to
fb isn't all that difficult; if we don't it vanishes w/o
a trace.

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          (1) The damage caused by fire stat needs to be changed to a
     
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              negative number in the struct (no code change required).
     
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       Not sure what you mean here - remember, fire still has to cause damage
     
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      to non fireborns.
     
     
For fb's only, the struct entry for damage could have its sign
reversed. This would cause an increase in hp rather than decrease.

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          (2) The number of hp may need to be raised (also no code change).
     
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      actually, I'm pretty sure hit point for all characters is hard coded.
     
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      Increasing con will increase hp to some extent, but probably not as much
     
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      as you mean.
     
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          (3) The hp cycler already has a max value limit (used for healing
     
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              spells). This should prove sufficient for clampng the hp
     
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              to a reasonable level when fire exposure causes negative
     
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              damage.
     
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       Actually, I'm also not sure of this - this may be the case for the cases
     
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      which natural re-gen hp, but it may certainly be possible to super charge
     
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      the hp above the max, like can happen with mana and grace.  In any case,
     
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      wherever/whatever adds food or hp would be pretty easy to make sure it
     
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      doesn't exceed max.
     
     
Given your note on (2), above, then don't modify the max and
allow fb's to supercharge their hp. However much fire they
"consume" will increase their hp to the point that they
don't need food for that much longer.

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          (4) The "eating" code needs to be adjusted so that non-flesh
     
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              char's (fb's and w's) get no/miminal benefit from normal
     
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              food. This involves one modification to the "food benefit"
     
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              calculator to multiply a "how much benefit do you get from
     
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              food" entry in the char's struct.
     
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       yeah - this is fairly easy.
     
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      This assumes that the char survives w/ [near-] zero fp all the
     
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      time, living off slowly reducing hp that get regen-ed by fire
     
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      (in the case of fb's) or a "suck the life out of" spell/skill
     
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      in w's. Which in turns requires that they both get fairly high
     
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      hp to begin with (so that the slowly reducing value doesn't get
     
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      them killed every 10 sec).
     
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       As said, I don't think fireborns living off hp is a good thing - this
     
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      would seem to put them at greater disadvantage if no fire is around, and
     
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      probably make life really easy when fire is around (the fire from the
     
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      wyverns or dragons might more than offset the physical damage they do).
     
     
That was the point, if fb's are composed basically of
flame in the first place. And flame spells are among
the lowest-level ones available (e.g., flaming hands,
small fireball).

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       If fire gives them food, it means they don't need to carry around food
     
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      (just need to have spells), yet doesn't really provide any shift in
     
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      balance otherwise (the big question is how hard is it for the fireborns
     
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      to get fire for food).
     
     
The shift in balance is in having to plan getting fire w/o
either giving one's self away or frying all the treasure.
Other theory was minimizing the changes required in code.
Given the idea of "supercharging" hp it seems possible that
the entire issue could be tested by negating a constant and
a one-opt test like if( char_type == CHAR_FB ) food_value /= 20;
in the "eating" code.


--
Steven Lembark                               2930 W. Palmer
Workhorse Computing                       Chicago, IL 60647
                                            +1 800 762 1582