Character Classes for animal monsters

[notacorporal]

Snakes with longbows is quite fun, but totally bizarre. I guess it becomes easy to take this for granted after a while. I had some ideas for character classes that would suit beasts.

Mother
She has a number of lower level "young", and gains hate based powers if anything happens to them.

Rutting Bull
"This stupid beast has somehow mistaken you for a rival." A bit like a berserker.

Maneater
"This beast has grown accostomed to the ways of men." It uses cunning based talents.

Wartrained
It wears spikey metal armour.

Arcane Experiment
It has been mutated in some hideous fashion.

Venomous
It gets the poison tree.


I had more written down somewhere, but this is enough to start a thread. I would like to see other peoples ideas.

[darkgod]

More!

[The Revanchist]

Peregrine
Dives (rushes) at you? Or do we not like instadamage?

Siphonophora
Hope I spelled that right...
A strong enemy with an attack/ability that divides it into multiple weaker enemies.
Almost like a Worm that Walks that can divide into a few... Worms that Walked? Blighted Worms? Either dividing totally, or for a percentage of HP.

Maybe more. Depends on how poorly-received these are.

[notacorporal]

Here are a few more.

Primeval
"It comes from a time before history." Lots of buffing and toughing, but slow.

Totemic
"This beast seems to embody the very essence of its kind. It is at once natural and supernatural. It is guardian spirit, intent on correcting some hideous wrong you have unknowingly committed merely by being here." Whatever Wilder abilities seem to fit.

Wizard's Familiar
"The animals eyes glow with arcane energies. There is an intelligence behind them beyond the animals own base cunning. It is observing you coldly from a place unknown." Has an Archmage ally? Can cast spells itself? Maybe works like an arcane blade.

Lycanthrope
Obviously it can assume human form. I don't know how this can be made tactically interesting. Also immunity to normal weapons wouldn't work unless the player got a chance to prepare.

Faerie
Supernatural evasion and confusion talents. Will come in/with a mob. "Siphonophora" could fit here, although there are plenty more options.

Disease Ravaged
Might borrow some Reaver/Corruptor trees.

The only class I seriously tried to stat out is the "Mother" class. Some of the others like "Rutting Bull" should be a straightforward port from an existing class. Do specific classes merit their own threads?

A few of these only justify one talent tree. This thread is argueing that the difference between uniques and norms needs to be narrowed, so that is not necessarily a bad thing. Something that might help are talent trees for specic natural attacks, such as a "technique/horns" tree.

Note there are slimes and oozes would not fit any of these classes. It would be a stretch to apply these to insects even.

Peregrine
Dives (rushes) at you? Or do we not like instadamage?

Siphonophora
Hope I spelled that right...
A strong enemy with an attack/ability that divides it into multiple weaker enemies.
Almost like a Worm that Walks that can divide into a few... Worms that Walked? Blighted Worms? Either dividing totally, or for a percentage of HP.

Maybe more. Depends on how poorly-received these are.

At the moment any ideas are good ideas. Even if they don't get used directly, they might provide inspiration for something that does.

[Zireael]

I love the ideas!

[Marson]

I really like this approach.

[The Revanchist]

Accidentally deleted my post. All those ideas lost!
Ah well.

Calcareous
Gives an ooze (or slime) Bulwark abilities and increased armor.

Festum de Mortum
Sorry for the bad latin.
The gist is, an enemy that gains a... considerable bonus from every enemy you kill near it.

After some idle thoughts, here's a few more!
Festering
Gives an enemy poison abilities, and/or the player a nasty poison when they kill it. Might be too similar to Venomous...

Bloated
Significantly less health, but higher attack power to compensate. Think of a glass cannon.

Possessed
Has decent buffs to Health, Attack and Resistances/Armor, and when you kill it, it transfers this buff to a nearby creature. Perhaps gains a compliment of Force of Will talents? And/or Hateful Whisper?

Avenger
Manaclashing, antimagic theme. Could we have it only generate against players who have Mana, Vim, Positive, Negative or Paradox? Seeing as Nature doesn't need to avenge Wilders...

Aggregate
Gains a buff (exponentially?) for every other Aggregate creature in range. Because we love the player, it spawns in swarms. Imagine one of those Kor'Pul rat-vaults where these showed up!

Foo-Forged
Has total (TOTAL!) resistance/penetration/conversion (maybe not penetration) for a single element. So a Fire-Forged would deal only Fire damage (no matter the attack), never receive Fire damage, and if we greenlight the penetration, always deal FULL Fire damage. And have it exist for any damage type, hopefully.
Imagine the Oozemancer that finds an Acid-Forged, or a Nature-Forged.
Physical-Forged doesn't sound too cool though.

Anyway, there's a few more ideas. Most of which seem separate enough.

[Zeyphor]

Fast
obligatory
+100% global speed, yes, this means snakes with 230% global speed by default, as well as bees with 300% global speed by default; in addition, all other speeds that are innately below 100% are increased to 100%, excluding physical attack speed's influence from weapon speed

pending name
quite a few of these enemies spawn in a given zone, and they are spread out throughout the level
they all have range 10 telepathy:you, and once one spots you, all of them know where you are, and they will come and get you as long as you're in one of their sight/telepathy radiuses
they also all get psionic/feedback, or something appropriate
cannot spawn on important non-hostile NPCs, or Myssil/Lillanill

pending name
gains access to the ability, Multiply; the same one that worm masses have
imagine a champion of uh'rhok or a dreaming horror with this one, or the withering thing on insane/madness; this sounds very !!fun!!
cannot spawn on important non-hostile NPCs, or Myssil/Lillanill

Desynchronized
when some chronomancer was screwing around with the fabrics of spacetime, this guy got really, REALLY (!&@ed up, and he didn't get fixed
this enemy has access to one random chronomancy class tree, and one random chronomancy generic tree, and he also has a random value, positive or negative, added to the following:
each of his stats
his class points
his generic points
all of his damage types resistances and resistance penetrations(multiply temporal by two)
EDIT: damage affinities(values below 0 are changed to 0, and <50% all affinities is impossible, even though a big enough hit can kill it if at least one if any number below 100%)
EDIT: life regen(can be negative)
EDIT: heal mod(should below 0 be allowed?)
his speeds
his sight radius
his physical/mind/spellpower
his saves
his defense
his base armor(gear comes after this)
critical chances
critical multiplier
accuracy
additionally, he might have a telepathy or two of range 1-(15?), and he gets 2-5 skills added to completely random skill trees that are obtainable by players

Dreamer
access to psionic/dreaming, psionic/dreamforge, psionic/slumber/psionic/nightmare, and psionic/dreamsmith

Deranged Lunatic
hostile towards all except itself and, if it can make any, its minions
always has 20-50% Confused on it, which cannot be removed, regains it at the same % if resurrects by being an eternal bone giant or something
has +20-100% global speed, +20-100% movement speed on top of that, +15-30% physical/mind/spell critical strike chance, +20-50% all damage, 0-20% extra stun resistance, +5-20 physical/mind/spellpower, +20-50% critical multiplier, 1 point in a passive skill that reduces all skill cooldowns by one turn(1 per point, to a maximum of 50% faster cooldowns), and access to Technique/Bloodthirst's talents, and many random talents(not trees) that the Cursed class gets, always including 5(or more) free points in Unnatural Body
also has -20 to 20 "added" to mind resistance and cannot spawn on important non-hostile NPCs, or Myssil/Lillanill
EDIT: also has a free passive ability that gives +5 constant hate generation and ignores passive hate decay when any enemies are in sight radius, and makes hate decay twice as slowly otherwise; additional points have no benefit
imagine this one on a random npc in Sunwall or something
hope you like em DG

[Suslik]

Just a thought. There was an enemy in planescape:torment named Many-As-One. Rat is a very weak creature but when they gather in groups they form a hive mind and with enough of them their intelligence gets far superior to human. 3 rats can cast a magic missle, 5 rats can cast a fireball, and some basic protection, 500 rats are the mastermind that you don't want to mess with.

[grayswandir]

Rooted: Cannot move, gets a 0cd, ranged 1 tile pull (so they have something to do if they're pure melee), and a passive melee attack every turn.
Sunken: Half move speed, stealth and strife trees.
Illuminated: +8 Light Radius, blinding retaliation damage, and maybe the sun tree.
Infused: Gets 2 more infusions, and all infusions are generated as if they were 10 levels higher.
Jittering: Lightning Rune, Movement Infusion, Rush, and Flurry.
Tenacious: High physical save, Endlees Hunt tree. Can never lose the player as their target.
Blessed: Gets 10 turn invincibility upon first seeing you.
Fearsome: Get the Fears tree and Fearscape.
Slumbering: Always asleep, cannot move. Only has the feedback/discharge trees.

[notacorporal]

Okay, now I am a little overwhelmed by the response. Lots of ideas. Lots to like.

I would like it if people pick up on ideas that appeal to them, especially if they can give reasons.

---

Festering & Bloated
I can see these two working together somehow, with the monster exploding when it is killed. (If they player can use this to their advantage, all the better.)

Possessed
There was a possessor player race somewhere in the pipeline isn't there? If it does make it into the game, it would only be natural to include possessed animals. What stage is this at?

Avenger
Depends on whether anti-magic is a people thing or a nature thing.

Aggregate
I would make that very rare and only for slimes. (Although compare and contrast, Many-as-One below)

Foo-Forged
I would say not total penetration. Would work best if it were location specific.

Lets call this Mindlink
Any power that help the enemies work together is worth considering. It could be problematic if there was no indication to the player as to what was going on. Also, sometimes monsters can wake each other up. I would want to be sure this did not wake the whole floor.

Desynchronized
I like the theme, not so sure about the implementation. It adds way too many random factors. Think how the player is going to interpret all those stat changes. Personally I would focus on the chronomancy talents. Blinking and Step Out of Time would work well here. Stuff that makes it difficult to predict, but not entirely in control of its own actions.

Deranged Lunatic
Stick it in a 1 square room, with a message like "Garbled barking, yelping and whining noises are coming from behind this door". Give it a chance to break out when the play comes in range
[This addresses the question of why it hadn't already killed or been killed by everything else in the room.]

Just a thought. There was an enemy in planescape:torment named Many-As-One. Rat is a very weak creature but when they gather in groups they form a hive mind and with enough of them their intelligence gets far superior to human. 3 rats can cast a magic missle, 5 rats can cast a fireball, and some basic protection, 500 rats are the mastermind that you don't want to mess with.

This reminds me of the rat king, a real, but very rare phenomenon. The rats get their tails tangle together and they wind up living like that for years. Apparently they are are unlucky.

A lot of these, look clever in ways that would have to be explained to me very slowly and patiently, Slumbering in particular.

Sunken and Tenaceous look like they would well together, especially if the creature could move between levels. Oh, and blurred mortality with a really long lag time.

I like Fearsome. Is this basically a demonic theme?


---

There are some important decisions that need to be made at some point.

My original plan was to make custom classes that work just like PC classes did.

A more tightly focussed approach might be better here. PC classes are designed to provide a wide range of options that a player can use intelligently, but the ai's struggle with.

What degree of focus is best? Is there room for a variety of approaches, and if so, how would this be managed?

Is it a good idea to narrow the gap between normal monsters and uniques?

[darkgod]

Those sound to me actaully more like NPC egos really, which is fine and good =)

[Delmuir]

I highly endorse Faeries.

I like the idea of them have low HP and Strength but huge amounts of Mana, confusion and mirage abilities with very short cool downs.

It'd be nifty if they had extremely high magic and elemental and status resistance.

Essentially, a very hard to hit creature which spams status effects but, by itself, does very little direct damage.

Of course, they'd be vulnerable to guaranteed hit abilities along with lingering area effect spells like Glacial Vapors.

[The Revanchist]

Those sound to me actaully more like NPC egos really, which is fine and good =)

This is what I was operating under, actually. Probably not the intended way, but enemy egos would certainly go a long way to making them more... Notable.

Since I am very much against empty posts... I'll fire off more templates, and express an apology at my coding ineptitude.

Returned
A modifier that is blocked for undead. And essentially a skeletal version of a living creature, with Bone talents thrown in. Perhaps also some Cursed talents. I migh be thinking of Endless Hunt.

Tenebrous
Generates stealthed (at a decent but manageable power), and with Darkness talents. Although it might be too similar to an Umbral Horror thematically. Especially if we gave it Shadows...

Ravaged
The theme here is "high-priority target". The way to accomplish this is that it has very low health. And an attack that HURTS. To balance this out, it's either low-range (not optimal) or takes a manageable time to use (ideally). Could an attack " bake" as a sustain, almost like the Mindslayer Projection talents?

Schrödinger's
Spawns as several actors. Identical actors, that is. And the "gimmick" if we want to use so crude a word, is that killing (or perhaps even damaging" one will affect all its duplicates. At the same time... You've got several potential enemies (I'm thinking with Age Manipulation talents) who are all gunning for you... At the same time.
(I'd be open to a better theoretical physicist's name here, I just can't remember any)

Now that I've added a few more ideas, I'll offer a hopefully helpful critique.
Delmuir's idea of a fairy fits well, I think. They aren't a real priority. Just a real bugger.
notacorporal's revision of Deranged Lunatic seems more applicable and less... Ohgodimbeingmauledbyaderangedlunatic!
Zeyphor's Fast concept might be more interesting if it gained global speed for health lost. Or perhaps the opposite?
Regarding the Mind link, it gave me the idea of Stalking where, once they detect you, they enter Stealth (high power), and stalk you. What makes them dangerous is that they'll join in when you're distracted (read: on the brink of death) with other enemies. As a counter, you need to be very vigilant. Always. Because you NEVER KNOW. This might be another "too cruel" idea, though.

Finally, my apology for the ineptitude I have with coding. Otherwise, I'd be putting some of these into practice.

[Zeyphor]

Desynchronized
I like the theme, not so sure about the implementation. It adds way too many random factors. Think how the player is going to interpret all those stat changes. Personally I would focus on the chronomancy talents. Blinking and Step Out of Time would work well here. Stuff that makes it difficult to predict, but not entirely in control of its own actions.

Deranged Lunatic
Stick it in a 1 square room, with a message like "Garbled barking, yelping and whining noises are coming from behind this door". Give it a chance to break out when the play comes in range [This addresses the question of why it hadn't already killed or been killed by everything else in the room.]

Regarding the Mind link, it gave me the idea of Stalking where, once they detect you, they enter Stealth (high power), and stalk you. What makes them dangerous is that they'll join in when you're distracted (read: on the brink of death) with other enemies. As a counter, you need to be very vigilant. Always. Because you NEVER KNOW. This might be another "too cruel" idea, though.

but thats the appeal, the intended value, the main attraction of the concepts... it makes it feel more like a roguelike
its so cruel, so unforgivingly painful to unexpectedly lose a character when you're down and almost out, and you expect to easily win in your current situation
the lunatic, on the other hand, makes the game very interesting, and should be significantly increased in power from what I had though of; maybe with muchlower minimum values than I had listed; it'd make you feel like you're fighting a boss
imagine a WtW deranged lunatic running around nur lvl 3; almost everything there would die on nightmare+, except for maybe other WtWs; and imagine it guarding the staircase after everything else is dead
wouldn't that make the game so much more... interesting?

they make the game stop being a bumpfest in some areas, for example, the 4th, 5th, and 6th T1 dungeons that a player does, or most of old forest on nightmare+, which doesn't get the nightmare+ scaling where enemy level is concerned
Desynchronized does an especially good job at making the player stop in their tracks during a bumpfest and go like, "okay, so theres a desynchronized, what the )!_& does he do, what the &!%^ is he weak to, and what the )!)% do I do to kill it" and then, theres the more obligatory question, "should I get the hell outta dodge?"

I like the stalker idea much more than what I had come up with, and I hope that DG implements this without the one square vault thingy

I also like the randomly blinking around and randomly out of time ideas for the Desynchronized