Alternative dialogue between Afflicted and NPCs

[nate]

I love the Cursed class. But I don't love the way they interact with the story. Saving lumberjacks, rescuing damsels in distress, etc. I recommend "Give in to your rage!" option for dialogues involving NPCs. In fact, I think that depending on your willpower stat, that should be the only option. Here's how it might work:

Yeek in the Halfling Ruins: If your willpower is not >=10+2*(lvl of dungeon), rage is the only dialogue option with the yeek. Otherwise, it is added to the menu. If chosen, it gives -2 Willpower permanently. If you kill the Yeek, you get something like permanent +20% mind penetration. (Or maybe allow training of fateful aura?)

Lumber jacks: As a cursed, you shouldn't be able to swap with the lumberjacks. Because of the design of that level, that would mean slaughtering your way through them, to reach the Cursed who's slaughtering them. I think that's a good way for Cursed to deal with the situation.

Escort Quests: Difficult to balance. Same option/mandatory effect from willpower as with the Yeek. If you strike them down, you lose 2 willpower permanently, and gain the choice of the magic or antimagic options. (With the exception of the temporal explorer: I would recommend giving something like permanent 10% temporal resistance upon striking down your future self )

Merchant: Again, slightly difficult to balance. Same willpower requirements to choose to spare him, same willpower cost when giving in to your rage. If you give in to your rage, you now receive something like 0.5*sqrt(gold) bonus to max hate.

Hidden compound slaves: Even after you kill their controller, keep the slaves red (although not hostile), so you have to slaughter your way through them, rather than being some kind of savior.

Hidden compound arena master: Same requirements, same WP cost. Gives you the ring and +4 mental saves when you slaughter him.

Melinda: Same requirements, same -2 willpower if giving in to your hate. If you strike her down, get +4 spell saves. If you don't, I would personally prefer that she reject you when you hit on her. (but still give you the ring). Making a happy little family with Melinda is the least Cursed-like thing in the game.

Aeryn: Just can't imagine it working with her without breaking the rest of the game. Not a big deal, since she isn't doing provocatively whining, "Save me!"

I think that should handle the wrong-ish situations that come up, without breaking any questing, and do so in a flavorful way.

Not totally sure about these benefits-- some of them may be a little out of whack-- but I think without benefits, and without ever being forced to, Cursed players will just choose the min-max, good guy option all of the time. One thing I like about this proposal is how giving in to your rage is a sort of positive feedback loop, with you becoming increasingly incapable of choosing not to once you start indulging. (I would like to see all NPCs treated as red bordered enemies, but I can't imagine that working well in the towns.)

[SageAcrin]

I don't like the forced Cursed-only changes(like not being able to romance Melinda).

If a Yeek Solipsist is okay with Melinda and vice-versa, a Cursed should be fine.

Similarly, forcing people to kill feels out of character for Cursed-a class that feels like it could easily be about giving into and reveling in your curse, or overcoming and controlling it, depending on your mindset. It works either way, with how it's constructed-forcing people into options like that feels off.

Now, having said that, I'm not against the idea of cursed-only dialogue options, and the ones that are choices-which are the majority of what you listed-strike me as neat. People that much into Hate, so that they literally use it as psionic weaponry, are not precisely paragons of normalcy, either, and options like that fit them.

[nate]

Yeah, I don't want to take away choices either. With the willpower requirement for the default dialogue options, I was imagining that a Cursed could engage in the game as normal, so long as they kept their willpower up, which they're likely to do anyways. But if you start giving in to your hate-- it would get harder and harder to keep up.

I'm especially interested in any suggestions for different benefits. It's really hard to give up on the benefits from escorts and the Yeek. It's equally hard to assign benefits to escorts that could be accrued before escorting them! Make it as good, and why bother ever trying; make it even barely poorer than the regular benefits, and nobody would ever give in to their rage; make it different, and people will give in when it will lead to the outcome they want. (Maybe -2 WP for giving in, +4 stat options, no +willpower options? Maybe with temporary penalties/bonuses?)

It's really hard to fathom the Melinda romance with a Cursed, especially when you could have dialogue like, "You place your hand on her scar. Melinda recoils, trying to conceal her revulsion." But maybe if it involved a rejection first?

[Mewtarthio]

Melinda grounds the Cursed. In a life full of constant slaughter, she is the one thing they've managed to protect. Why shouldn't that romance be an option?

And, no, I don't think Melinda herself would consider the curse to be a deal-breaker. She's perfectly willing to overlook you wielding "crazy" arcane magic--including blight! Besides, even if you're something totally wholesome, like a Bulwark, she does watch you purge an entire temple of cultists right before her eyes. All she cares about is that you saved her from having a demon tear its way out from her womb.

[nate]

Why shouldn't that romance be an option?

Because any curse that didn't deny one the opportunity for meaningful love would be a trivial curse.

A doomed romance would work; that would be sufficiently cursey (or as they like to say in the learning-place, tragic). A romance that was constantly tested, with your character only holding tenuously onto that vital lifeline, with the inevitability of your character's will failing given enough time-- that would be sufficiently cursey.

(But that gets into territory that video games don't handle well, so being denied love via rejection seems like a better bet to me. Another option would be to base it off of Medea )

But with a happy home and a wifey to kiss, and hate-based superpowers on top of all that, one doesn't feel particularly cursed. One instead feels rather blessed.

[hamrkveldulfr]

I feel that part of the cursed's adventure is the struggle between giving in to the madness or overcoming it. the curse manifests itself already as 'unnatural body' and your abilities, area of effect crippling depression, projection of mental instabilities, and a strong desire to feed of the death and emotion of others. Why would that mean they can't rise above their affliction? If you are strong enough to single handedly save the world why don't you have the power to suppress or even dispel your curse?
So I do think you should have the option of giving in or resisting, but I don't think a cursed suppressing their abilities for r the greater good is off mark for them. Redemption is possible! At least I hope it is.... As for the cost, a loss of will is thematic, but for a will driven class that is pretty harsh. Maybe mix it up a little so you don't end up with a deficit of thirty will?

[ironroby]

You seem to be mixing "hate" with "mindless berserking". If your character needed to make an actual will check basically every time when he encounters people, then he would have been "dealt with", like Ben Cruthdar was, when he enters his first higher level down.

Its clear that your curse is either different than Ben's or that you are at the level when you can yet steer it to a controllable form

"Hate" is also different from "mindless berserking" in that it can be targeted. Perhaps you only really hate people who forced you to become this or those who you think have or want to hurt you (since it describes the vast majority of beings in the game and even all the animals, mice and bunnies included, that's not really a limiting factor ), not automatically everyone. Your hate could also be soothed by those few who are nice to you, after all, it does go down fast if you stop killing for a while, doesn't it?

As for Melinda and romance? Real life serial killers with no supernatural excuse have had "happy families"! Human nature is very complex and yes, it's sometimes "unrealistic". If it makes you feel better, you can imagine that the Cursed and Melinda are both yandere for each other.

And while I'm always in favor for more choices, they should be about roleplay, not forcing you to raise one stat before you can make a story choice that you want to, in a game that's mostly about surviving, not social interaction.

Some people are roleplaying their Cursed as just a dark antihero, not an indiscriminate berserker. Your will check would basically be you making your roleplay choice of the class as the default and punish those who think otherwise.

[Sirrocco]

I could actually see the will penalty - but if you're going to hose down the will, the rewards that your dark side gives you should be commensurate with that. Make it a permanent debuff rather than a cost of stat points, so that each time you choose it you're reducing your max possible will, and then turn your character into a massive frothing ragebeast. Possibly say that the "Give in to your hate" options become non-optional below 10 will, so that once you give in, you keep giving in. possibly even have a few of the skills get better as your will decreases? That might be taking things a bit far, but it could be cool. Alternately, make each time you take the ragebeast option give you a +2 permanent str, -2 permanent will on top of something roughly equivalent to whatever you would have gotten (perhaps not quite as good).

Mind you, that doesn't work at *all* for the Doomed, but that's a different story.

...and back in the day, when we had the old version of Unnatural Body and the old version of cursed equipment and both were mandatory, they really did feel Cursed at the beginning. Now you start down by 50% healmod, and then you get superpowers.

[nate]

Thanks for all the feedback-- I'm trying to figure out lua and the tome structure to get this idea prototyped, and appreciate all of what you all have to say.

ironyroby: I think that you're maybe reading something into what I'm suggesting that I didn't intend, but the strength of your resistance suggests that anything like this has to be done with options in mind. I'm leaning now, because of what you said, to not having any mandatory checks unless a player at least once gives in to rage voluntarily. As much as I don't feel like the Melinda end-point is appropriate to Cursed characters, I now understand it's important enough to some people that it ought to remain an option (at least, for perfectly controlled play!). I'm also leaning toward prototyping a new Redemption generic tree to free Cursed from hate, in various degrees, and perhaps even a prodigy to allow them to get rid of that first point of Cursed Form entirely. I envision a character that sacrifices a decent bit (in mid-game, mostly made up for by end-game) in order to be more free of hate and resources in general, and in order to be more resilient (but a little less aggressive).

Sirroco: I agree with you, benefits to forsaking 2 WP have to be significant, but I've been troubled by the fact that killing escorts is much easier than actually escorting them. I believe I've come up with a solution to raging an escort being too easy: just give the escorts a movement infusion, make them pop it the instant you rage, and have them race for the portal. If you can kill them before they get away, and before any monsters do, then it's at least a similar challenge to an escort quest, and dangerous under the same circumstances (a bazillion monsters loitering by the stairway).

Recently, I was leaning toward choice of +4 strength/con/cunning or +8 save (one stat or save each escort, without any menu choices, no mindstars/dreamwalk/etc for you my friend!) for escorts killed in a rage, to make up for both the -2 WP and the fact that killing an escort is easy mode, but it depends on how hard it is to actually kill off an escort under the circumstances I'm imagining. If it was as difficult as escorting, there'd be call for more in the way of player choice.

I'm also considering using mental save instead of WP-- that way, you'd get a mental save once you'd undertook the path to Rage!, with something like a -4 for each time you gave in. Would that maybe make it a more workable option for Doomed? I'm not familiar with them, but I'd like to see the same mechanics work for both. (It's just too bad that using mental save makes it seem like a less significant choice.)

(I couldn't figure anything comparable to the Yeek bonuses, but fluffy-- I was considering the same bonuses regardless, as he seems like a pretty merciful guy, and I'm sure he'd find some way to give you the vision even if you raged him.)