ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This has probably already been thought of, suggested, and/or done in other games I've not played, but with all those necromancers running around Maj'Eyal, I've always thought it would be neat if undead uniques could spawn based on characters that have previously been killed in the game. Maybe even have them drop some of the equipment the character was using at the time of death.

It used to happen in some versions of Nethack, you'd find ghosts of your old character. Often was game-breaking, it would either be stuck on a level too early for you to take it out, or you'd find a ghost with a mass of good equipment & become ridiculously overpowered with little effort. Was a neat idea but tended to play badly.

the idea of fighting previous versions of yourself was handled much better in crawl stone soup, they wouldn't drop equipment, and there were ways to get away from them if you couldn't deal with them at the moment. Also, they had greatly reduced skillsets, but there were still ways that players could make their ghosts op.

The idea of ghost characters would work well for ToME, as long as they were encountered at an appropriate time. Their drops shouldn't necessarily be from a previous character, but completely random, this could be explained by a necromancer finding and refitting them.

I don't think the idea of bones levels is a good idea for ToME.

eliotn wrote: Their drops shouldn't necessarily be from a previous character, but completely random, this could be explained by a necromancer finding and refitting them.

True, the necromancer would probably take all the good stuff anyway, and that's assuming the corpse hasn't been picked over by the time he finds it.

Noooooo player ghosts. I routinely delete the ghost files from my Stone Soup folder just so I don't get smeared by an overpowered version of a character who was nibbled to death by rats. Monsters with player-like talents are already too much of a problem.

Umm pretty much all monsters have player talents...

I'm talking about a player-like spread of talents, such as already exists in random bosses, random elites, and adventurer parties.

This does seem like a bad idea to me.

I like the idea, provided the ghosts don't become more powerfull (rather:weaker) than the player was when it was alive. (this really bothers me in Stone Soup) Also, it would be nice if the ghost was restricted to the area in which it died. More like a necromancer fiddled a bit with a corpse it randomly came across rather than a project to create an undead monster.

Perhaps they could be in graves, like other undead randelites? That would make them optional and might make graves more interesting.