Opinion on Lovecraftian monsters

[kingvictory2003]

I just thought I'd put out my opinion on the Lovecraftian-themed monsters. I guess they're often also referred to as aberrations, although I'm not totally certain as I've only skimmed Lovecraft's books, and they all seem to be charnel-house this, stench-of-death that, tentacled eldritch unimaginable horror of megadeath there.

The current aberrant monsters add a nice sinister flavor to ToME, and I'm okay with them as they are pretty rare. Encountering one gives you a nice surprise, and seeing unusual attacks seething out of the darkness at you induces a good bit of trepidation. I'm in favor of keeping their rarity in the bestiary as they stand, and NOT more. If there were to be more flavors of aberrant monsters added, their rarity in my opinion should be kept in proportion. I really enjoy the orcs-humanoids-demons-cultists fantasy feel of ToME, and would hate for it to become the squirming writhing pit of horrors that inexplicably seems to appeal to some people. (NOTE: I really mean no offense whatsoever here; I just cannot for the life of me enjoy it myself.)

[Grey]

I agree they should be rare. They add a nice flavour, but should only be a minor background thing (though there's nothing to stop there being an optional dungeon full of lots of them). I'd personally like to see more varieties of humanoid NPCs in the game, especially equivalents of the player classes.

[edge2054]

I don't know where Darkgod stands on this so it's in no way an official explanation but the horror monsters I've been writing I've assumed are not native to the world. They're either from another dimension or multiple other dimensions but either way they should remain quite rare in Tome simply for that reason if none other.

As far as Demons go though (and there's some overlap here) I'm not sure where they stand in the whole cosmos. They also seem to be quite a bit more common then horrors which is cool, they are more fantasy oriented then lovecraft stuff.

That said I plan to suggest at least a couple more horror types as I get more chronomancy stuff done to kinda showcase those talents before the complete package is finished and I think some darkness horrors that use the Doomed stuff would be cool as well.

Maybe at some point a dungeon or two where the player has to travel to one of the horror types home planes would be appropriate but otherwise I don't think a whole dungeon full of horrors really makes sense (maybe an open portal or gate approach would work too but then the player might need to go through the gate to get it to shut ).

Anyway, just my thoughts on the subject. I personally like them but then I'm quite biased

[Ataraxzy]

I would love to see a horrific side-quest and dungeon that deals with cthulu-oid monstrosities - have the first few levels of the dungeon be cultists, the second few be cultists and monsters and the last few be monsters and abberations. In normal areas of the world, there should be a small chance of enountering these abberations (I think there already is, iirc) and that chance should draw from a very large list - a rare chance against a huge list will make them exotic quite naturally.

Maybe it's not available in every playthrough for one reason or another. Maybe there's a whole lot of work that goes into opening the dungeon. You never know with the Old-Gods, they're tricksy like that.

[darkgod]

Oh yes an horror dungeon is planned