Quest: Obelisks of Corruption / Fleeing Apprentice

[Fubar Obfusco]

This is a work-up of a quest idea suggested originally by Nerdanel, with some tweaks. For some reason it feels more like a standalone quest rather than a repeated random quest, but it could be done either way.

A fleeing apprentice priestess approaches you from out of the forest. "Oh, help! A band of orc shamans has set up camp nearby. They're working a ritual that will set a plague on my village! Destroy their foul obelisks and save us!" She runs past and vanishes into the night.

There are two variables here: the type of the quest-giver and the type of monster. The quest-giver is either a priestess, a geomancer, or a ranger; this influences what reward you get for completing the quest. (See below.) The monster type is always an ego spellcaster: shaman, priest, mage, or lich; its race is appropriate to the level.

In the level, there are a small number (say, two to four) gangs of these monsters, each gang surrounding an obelisk of corruption. These obelisks have a substantial number of hit points and sturdy armor. They are also immune to poison, chaos, and darkness; and resistant to fire, electricity, cold, and disenchantment. They are however evil, so they take extra damage from holy fire ... or you could always just pound at them with weapons.

Your goal is to destroy the obelisks. The obelisks themselves don't put up much of a fight -- though they do take a beating -- but you have to get through the monsters to get to them.

When you destroy the last obelisk:

The rune-covered stone crumbles with your last blow. You get a sense that a doom has lifted from this area. The apprentice priestess and an older priest appear, looking greatly relieved. "You've saved our village, and in return we will reward you ..."

Depending on the type of character, you get a reward as follows:

Priestess: You get a choice: bless a single piece of your equipment, or receive a piece of magical jewelry. The blessing conveys a straight +2d2/+2d2 to weapons, +3d2 AC to armor, and a 20% chance of either "blessed by the gods" or "slay evil" to weapons, or one random resistance to armor. The jewelry is a random (good) ring, amulet, or crown.

Geomancer: If you are a user of elemental magic (i.e. have any points in Fire, Water, Air, or Earth) then you receive a bonus -- calculated as per Fumblefingers -- to one of these, chosen at random. Otherwise, you receive a random (good) wand, staff, or rod.

Ranger: You get a choice: learn ranger skills, receive a good missile weapon, or (if you already have one) have your missile weapon improved. "Ranger skills" are random -- one of Archery, Bow-Mastery, Stealth, or Corpse-Preservation. If you elect to have a missile weapon improved, it receives one random beneficial power and +1d3-1 to hit. If you elect to get a missile weapon, the weapon has a random beneficial power and also +1 Stealth.

The idea with these rewards is to have both choice and randomness play a part. You aren't guaranteed great stuff, any more than you are with the current quests ... but you aren't stuck with junk extra weapons as often, either ....

[boucman]

would the obelisk be hurt by earth remover ?

[fearoffours]

once again, a top notch idea. I thought it was good when Nerdanel first mentioned it. You've just spruced it up a little.

[Xandor Tik'Roth]

I'm certainly impressed. A very well thought-out idea, and presented even better.

Xandor gives it two thumbs up (he'd give it three, but the whole two hand thing is kind of restricting).

[Tachyon]

Very, very cool. One gripe: why priestess and not priest? Yes, I know it's minor, but I think the gender ought to be random.

[Lord Dimwit]

Priestess: You get a choice: bless a single piece of your equipment, or receive a piece of magical jewelry. The blessing conveys a straight +2d2/+2d2 to weapons, +3d2 AC to armor, and a 20% chance of either "blessed by the gods" or "slay evil" to weapons, or one random resistance to armor. The jewelry is a random (good) ring, amulet, or crown.

Hmm... Me likes. But you mean a special sort of enchantment that can actually exceed the traditional limit (+11 or so) imposed by Scrolls of Enchant Foo, right? I mean, if you're wielding a longsword (+18, +15), and the game tries to perform a 'traditional' enchantment on it, it'll certainly fail. You would want to enchant the weapon to about (+20, +17) regardless, right?

[Xandor Tik'Roth]

Or you could just wait around and get some killer artifact (Sting, Ringil, Calris (once it's enchanted) or something like that. Heck, even Mormegil would look pretty good).

What do you mean by 'Scroll of Enchant Foo?' I've never seen that one before.

[Blackdog]

What do you mean by 'Scroll of Enchant Foo?' I've never seen that one before.

Foo indicates a placeholder, variable, or unknown. In this case it means 'enchant weapon' or 'enchant armor'.

[Fubar Obfusco]

Very, very cool. One gripe: why priestess and not priest? Yes, I know it's minor, but I think the gender ought to be random.

The geomancer and ranger don't have specified sexes in what I wrote -- it could go either way. I can be all sexist if you like and point out that the priestess hands out jewelry -- how girly!

But seriously, I only noted sex for one of them so that if anyone wanted to implement it, they'd note that it can differ -- and get the pronoun right.

[Fubar Obfusco]

Hmm... Me likes. But you mean a special sort of enchantment that can actually exceed the traditional limit (+11 or so) imposed by Scrolls of Enchant Foo, right?

Sure. Though I would be interested in a sort of enchantment that would ''roll over'' pluses to other sorts of bonuses ... for instance, if you have a weapon that's +10 and you get it enchanted by a quest reward, it might end up +2 but, say, fiery.

Naturally, this mustn't work for scrolls, unless there gets to be a super-rare **EnChAnT wEaPoN** scroll.

[Arendil]

Great idea. And how about upon destroying last obelisk, it kills instantly remaining guardians ? Huge explosion or something, maybe even dangerous to player.

[Fubar Obfusco]

Great idea. And how about upon destroying last obelisk, it kills instantly remaining guardians ? Huge explosion or something, maybe even dangerous to player.

Want a dramatic effect? When an obelisk is destroyed, it sends out a circular wave of disenchantment, which should do nicely to clean up any nearby monsters ....

[Tachyon]

Yep, that should work. Unless you're dealing with corrupted GWoBs or GWoPs...

Oh, I've got another one: fire_fast_wave(GF_CLEANSE, a, b, c, d, e, PROJECT_WAVE) or something like that. Fire_fast_wave would be a new project_ thingy that would fire a wave at speed e; GF_CLEANSE would be a new GF_ flag that would kill corrupted creatures and slightly damage everything else.

By the way, did I put in the right code? How do you get waves to starte somewhere other than the player square? (I've tried in debug mode with ^a>, but haven't succeeded.)

A final note: GF_CLEANSE should only be used in the Obelisk missions, and shouldn't be accessible by any other means

[fearoffours]

Fire_fast_wave would be a new project_ thingy that would fire a wave at speed

What do you mean? What effect would this have?

[Tachyon]

The same effect as fire_wave, except that it would generate a wave moving at a specified speed instead of at speed +0.