Monster egos

[Sirrocco]

Splitting this off from the "reworking difficulty levels" to go a bit orthogonal.

Basically, a place to gather together interesting ego idea for monsters, in case anyone does decide to run with the monster ego concept. I'll start it off with a few of my own.

<element> enhanced: melee attacks get bonus damage of the given element type, add damage shield of the given damage type, +25% resistance to the given damage type, and elemental attacks based on the given damage type are boosted by 30%. Numbers for bonus damage and damage shield based on monster level.

Splitting: gains the "chance to split when hit" ability

Spawning: gains the "reproduce" ability, used randomly about 20% (10%?) of the time when not in melee (or some such).

Brood Mother: gains the "reproduce" ability, used randomly about 50% of the time, but the generated monsters do not themselves have egos of any sort

Regenerating: recovers charlevel HP every turn.

Brutal: melee damage increased by 25%, and melee attacks have a 20% chance of stunning for one turn.

Gloomy: has a few talents off of the Cursed's Gloom tree, turned on.

[Mushroomhermit]

Quick: moves 50% faster.

Cunning: +25% crit chance

Invisible: ...duh

[Zonk]

Quick: moves 50% faster.

Cunning: +25% crit chance

Let's not go overboard, these are some huge bonuses. I'd have 'Quick' give say, +10% speed but to all action types, not just movement.


Here's some random thoughts from myself.
Note that all ego types should have requirements as to which monsters it can be applied on:

Shadowy
Monster is stealthy(even invisible perhaps?), gains resistance to darkness, vulnerability to light. Has a darkness/blinding attack, low physical resistance.

Brutish
Significant bonus to Str, Con, gains some berserker talents, AI is changed so it's biased towards powerful melee attacks.

Relentless
Significant bonus to saves and max life, some life regen. Perhaps a slight speed penalty? Basically, hard to bring down, but not particularly powerful offensively.

Phasing
Can Phase Door around. Should be 'interesting' on monsters with ranged attacks.


Warlike
Bonuses to str, con, dex. Bonus fighter-type talents.

Insane/Raving Mad
Sometimes moves randomly, high resistance to mental effects, slight bonus to Constitution, might have some random talents.

Degenerated
Slight penalty to all stats, loses a few talents(starting from the highest-level ones, as to avoid breaking prerequisite requirements).

Crippled
Significant penalty to physical stats, slight penalty to movement speed.

[kingvictory2003]

Along with the overboard, I think the splitting/spawining egos would be way too powerful. Maybe if they were limited to a certain subset of enemies, it might work, but a pack full of Naga Psyrens? Good luck. Otherwise, good ideas coming forth.

[Sirrocco]

You'd just have to make it worth enough class levels. My understanding is that psyrens are pretty much end-game foes - which means that if you do run into them with a particularly powerful ego, it's going to be in the very last dungeons of the game, on the hardest difficulty level, if there - and I was thinking that part of the point of the ego system as a way to control difficulty would be that some fights would simply be too difficult - that you'd have to stay alert, so that you could see the situation going bad and get out. Levels do refresh after a while, after all, and you don't necessarily have to kill everything before you head down the stairs. For normal difficulty - well, sure, moving twice as fast makes something a lot more dangerous, but if you're level 45, and it's a monster that was common in the first level of Moria, is it still a major threat?

As a side note, one of the great things about the ego system is that it allows an arbitrary level of difficulty, with difficulty increasing in interesting ways, without significantly increased coding times. You set a few numbers - chance of ego, max number of egos, and class level modifier - (with "normal" being something like 5%, 1, 0, and "insane" being something like 30%, 3, +8) and let it go.

[Susramanian]

Things like reproducing greater demons are grossly overpowered and totally unfair. Despite this, I want them. If I'm playing the game on nightmare mode, then by God I want to encounter some nightmares. Nowhere is it guaranteed that we can somehow kill everything we encounter, and that's a good thing.

[Mushroomhermit]

for Quick I meant for the bonus to only be applied to movement speed not global speed. Pretty much just keep you from running away.

[Sirrocco]

Oh - yeah, buffing only the movement speed wouldn't even be that big a deal to most characters.

[Sirrocco]

Pack leader: somewhat healthier, moderately higher defensive stats, and a 10% bonus to damage across the board. Spawns with 6-12 non-ego creatures of its base type in the immediate vicinity.

[Sirrocco]

Eternal: respawns when dead. Has a reasonably long cooldown on his resurrect power, but if you take long enough, he'll be able to respawn again. (borrowed from the Bone Giants)
Explosive: Generates a significant amount of area effect damage (25% of base HP, say) of some random type when killed
Slippery: 25% additional move speed (only move), significantly increased evade, and a teleport self power

[Nagyhal]

Most of these are quite fun and creative. My own suggestions might not be quite so original- because it's perhaps too easy to draw from the great stockpiles of inspiration already out there, such as D&D's monster 'templates'- but this is because I want to raise an obvious point that I haven't seen yet, namely that different monster types should have different sets of egos available to them.

My personal belief is that things shouldn't be laid out too conventionally, and if the game occasionally wants to throw at you something as nonsensical as a time-travelling giant rabbit forged from impervious voratun, then so be it.

However, a considerable gameplay advantage of this approach would be that it'd make these souped-up creatures easy for the player to identify (Oh, these worms are breeding a bit fast- obviously the swarming type), and thus the game could use these egos more often without making the effect overly complicated, or allowing the novelty to wear thin quickly. Besides, you weren't planning on making every single Insane-tier monster have an ego, were you?

Also, it'd help guide the more dangerous egos towards the later game's content. Anyhow! We begin:

Animals:

Dire: The dullest of egos, because it ought to happen to something intentionally unintimidating like the animal type. Makes an animal tougher, larger and generically scaled-up.

of Legend: Hunters and wild-eyed vagabonds alike will tell, in loud boasts or in song, of the existence of these gorgeous animals, paragons of their kind, which are said to be spirits, or the passing embodiments of the wilds that they dwell in... but they are seldom seen, and never known to be caught. Animals of Legend are as tough as dire animals, but imbued with infusions from the natural powers that flow around them. If the player attacks one of these animals, it will attempt to flee at a great pace, and after a small number of turns will disappear into the wilderness if it is able to. If the player can kill one of these, the material reward will be tremendous.

Vermin:

Swarming: Similar to Sirrocco's splitting / spawning, turns up the threat on reduplicating worm masses, and adds the same ability to creatures such as rats, spiders, or actual swarms. Just the same but with potential to be vermin-specific.

Generic / Undecided:

Horrific (i.e. Horrifically Bright for luminous/radiant types, Horrifically Bloated, Horrifically Warped for temporal, etc.): Grants the properties of a horror, and turns a mundane creature into a terrifyingly dangerous hybrid-blaster nuisance.

Wyrmblood: Grants breath, stun immunity, and other nasty dragon powers.

Purulent: The unwilling beneficiary of the gifts of corruption, a purulent creature threatens to inflict disease with its attacks, splashes acid when wounded, and upon dying explodes with a gory corrosive worm effect.

Colossal: These lumbering, living mountains were warped by the residues of the spellblaze from their natural forms into restless colossi, capable of wreaking destruction over the range of an entire country or even a continent. They act half as quickly as usual but have twenty times the hitpoints, in addition to a formidable array of bonus stunning / knockback attacks. They may also possess great reach, able to strike a player in melee from several tiles away.

Anomalous: Dislodged from the normal flow of spacetime, the temporal anomalies emitted by these creatures leave reality itself churning in their wake.

I have a lot more in mind which I shall add later, especially after dusting off the old D&D books and seeing how they relate to ToME in novel ways. It's easy to imagine many more simple templates based on pre-existing ToME classes and creatures; The divine/celestial/solar/lunar, the psionic, the vampiric, the orc-blooded, or spider-bitten...

[martinuzz]

I am very much in favour of adding monster egos.
Here's a few more, to add to the fun:
I added some more complexity by giving the egos more talents depending on monster level

Leprous:
- level 0+: inflicts a random disease when being hit. Duration and severity increase with level.
- level 10+: gains the Drain talent (5/5 at 1.00 Mastery?)
- level 30+: inflicts a random disease on doing damage (regardless of type)
- level 50+: gains Blood Spray talent (5/5 at 1.00 Mastery?)

Observant:
- level 0+: erects a Premonition shield of 20% effectiveness against the damage type last recieved. Only 1 shield can be erected every 5 turns.
- level 10+: shield 40%
- level 30+: shield 60%
- level 50+: shield 80%

Foolhardy:
- level 0+: daze immunity, blind immunity
- level 10+: stun immunity, knockback immunity
- level 30+: confuse inmmunity, pinning immunity
- level 50+: teleport immunity, silence immunity

Bloodthirsty:
- level 0+: +10% to critical hit chance
- level 10+: gain Bloodbath talent (5/5 at 1.00 Mastery?)
- level 30+: + yet another 10% to critical hit chance
- level 50+: and another +10% to critical hit chance

... of Dreadfell:
- level 0+: spellpower +5, physical power +5, resist dark, blight +5%
- level 10+: spellpower +10, physical power +10, resist dark, blight +10%
- level 30+: SP +15, PP +15, resist dark, blight +15%
- level 50+: SP +25, PP +25, resist dark, blight +25%

... of the East:
- level 0+: +5 to all stats
- level 10+: +10 to all stats
- level 30+: +15 to all stats
- level 50+: +25 to all stats