Assassin Lord

[wobbly]

I've always felt there should be a 2nd part to the assassin lord quest. He does say something about having a use for you later. It feels a little like a plot dead-end at the moment. A quest to take out one of his enemies? You could even do something similiar to farportals where he occassionally gives random jobs.

[Camcolit]

I didn't even notice. After all, it's YOU (and Derth) who begs the mages for help, not the other way around (and they do help you, with free intel and a free ride to Urkis' lair.) Why are players always so ungrateful?

"Yes, we have noticed the devastation that happened there. I have sent some friends thence to disperse the cloud, but the true threat lies not there.
He who created this abomination is Urkis. He is a Tempest, a powerful Archmage who channels the storms.
Years ago he went rogue, severing himself from Angolwen. At first he remained quiet, and thus we withheld action, but it seems we have no choice now.
Cleansing the skies will take much time. In the meanwhile, if thou art willing, we can send thee to Urkis' lair to face him.
I will not lie to thee: we can send thee thence, but this could be a death trap, and we have no means for thou to depart his lair, as he lives atop a tall peak in the Daikara mountains."

Translation: "We trained Urkis in devastating destructive powers that have very few peaceful applications and are known for driving their wielders insane. Then he went rogue, but we couldn't be bothered to do anything about it because he wasn't being obviously evil. Now he is, and people are dead, and we've dispatched some guys to get rid of the murder weapon before it kills anyone else. But although we are an entire city of powerful archmages, with a freaking demigod as our leader, and we know the exact location of his lair and have the teleportation magic to get there, we're not planning to do anything about Urkis himself unless some random adventurer volunteers for a suicide mission to clean up our mess.

P.S. If you, unlike us, don't have powerful teleportation magic, well, you're just plain out of luck."

Oh, yes, I think they owe the player a reward.

Hilarious writing - very much appreciated.

My two cents about the unbalanced choices - one of the best things about DCSS was the effort to cut down on no-brainers. No-brainer decisions are boring. Let's see, should I use the awesome pwninator of general destruction myrthil greatsword, or the slightly rusted copper pipe whose makeshift hilt rattles alarmingly when using movement infusions? As a previous poster mentioned, though which was not necessarily his opinion, easy choice = no choice. Perhaps the weapon analogy is misleading, since of course you need scaling weapons, but for plot events it seems pretty clear that they're going to be more interesting if the rewards are balanced.

[Hunter]

I get the idea that not everything needs to be balanced, but the blandness of balance isn't any worse than the blandness of meaningless choices.

An interesting -- and entirely do-able -- idea would be introduces both competing rewards and competing consequences. For instance, siding with the merchant gives you your reward...but cause random and unavoidable ambushes by gangs of thieves (in their various incarnations, cutthroats, pickpockets, etc) as a special event (a hidden pickpocket escaped up the stairs before you could kill him and he proceeds to spread the word.) Siding with the Assassin Lord immediately turns all roaming patrols to turn hostile (they interrogated a captured thief, for instance, and discover what you did.) Similar rewards/consequences could easily by applied elsehwer (if you fail to kill Urkis before going to the East, you return to find that certain cities are being randomly attacked by gwy...gweg...tornado thingies as Urkis' power spreads. If you do kill before going east, Urkis' very powerful lich reincarnation tracks you down on the next-to-last floor of the mines.) And so forth. ToME is becoming more complex, and things like this add to the complexity without much effort and only requiring minimal new content.

[martinuzz]

Just an idea for a follow up quest for non trap users siding with the Assassin lord:

When doing the jeweler's quest in the East, after defeating the hordes pouring from the portals, the Assassin Lord will teleport in, and ask you to help him kidnap the jeweler, for obvious reasons.
You will then have to intercept and defeat Limmir, who will beeline for a portal to make his escape. He should probably summon a spicey golem.
If you succeed, the Assassin Lord will set up shop in the valley, and you can ask him to infuse your weapons with various poison effects on hit, if you bring him a weapon and a gem. Higher tier gems make him produce better effects on those weapons.

If you fail, the Ass lord will attack you. You get no special services, but at least you get some loot from killing him that way.

[Faeryan]

It's more that antimagic players get congratulations and one of best defensive generics as a reward, everyone else doesn't even get a thank you.

Simple fix, go antimagic.

If we're looking at this a different way, why does an antimagic character have to kill a badass rogue mage to get their thing? For all I care mage chars shouldn't get magic before killing Urkel.

I actually had read about fungus several times but haven't had it ever on any of my chars. Guess the next time I play AM I should go talk to Zigs after doing Urkel.. or is it that I've never reached Urkel with an antimage. Now that I think of it it's highly possible.

As for the assassin Lord I'm fine with how it's handled and like DG already said about bland gameplay I agree totally. After all in life not every choice gives the same rewards.

The idea of Lord giving higher poison proficiency is rather nice. Definitely worth implementing if it's not done already (wouldn't know as I've only sided with him once for poison unlock).