Mounted subclass

[DeathlyCold]

My idea for a new sub-class- Mounted

The mounted subclass is basically, you have your character plus a horse (or meara, whatever they call those beasts of burden). Like the rohanknight you have speed that increases with level but you take a major hit to stealth and perception (its hard to find the secret door when the smelly dung that was half-excreted by your mount is assaulting your nostrils). THere should be a 15% exp penalty. However, they are unlike rohanknights because they do not have the racial abilities and since they are less trained for horseback than the knights they do not have their bonuses. ents and deathmolds should not be able to select this. RIght now I cant think of any stat changes, so give me feedback.

[Atarlost]

I've got a better idea, implement the mount system from Hengband.

[Neil]

It'd be a lot more useful if you were to describe the mount system you want. Just pointing to another game is worthless unless everyone else knows intimately the game you're talking about.

[feathin]

Weapon modifiers. Some weapons should be practically useless (fighting with a dagger on horseback?) and others given bonuses (lances, some longer weapons, but things like axes and double handed weapons wouldn't work too well). Archery could get pluses since you are up higher and have a clearer view of the surroundings, and maybe increase sight distance as well. Maybe at higher levels the horse could give some funky abilities, like smelling monsters (like infravision, but for smelly things).

[Atarlost]

Neil, anyone who doesn't know that's interested can look in the Heng source, but since you insist:

There is a riding skill which governs your ability to ride, affecting things like your speed and combat modifiers as well as your ability to break new mounts. You can change ride a monster you meet, provided you can break it to a bit and saddle.

Specific for ToME both Rohirim and Thunderlords would be given a sizable bonus to the riding skill, and would start with some sort of horse and a great eagle respectivly. Warriors would have acess to the skill, but wouldn't start with points in it. It should be available from fumblefingers. The basic horse should be available from the pet shop.

Possibly the horse should give you a second inventory and require food, or at least water, and large amounts of it.

[Jules]

It's easy to think of cool horse ideas, it's harder to balance them. Anecdotally I'd point out the mess that riding was (is?) in nethack.

But I'm here to think about cool ideas, not talk down bad ideas, so:

Charge: A riding power or ability. You project yourself (and your mount) at high speed, relatively short maximum range. If you connect with an adversary, you hit them with normal melee hit, but doing some significant (especially at high levels) damage.

Certain ridable monsters (not ordinary horses) will attack like symbiotes do (i.e. not guaranteed to attack every time you do, but chance increases by level in skill). At high levels of skill you get to use some of your mounts powers (breath weapons, for example).

I think at least a good prototype of this skill could be written entirely in LUA, so that's an interesting challenge for any would-be module hackers out there...

[Neil]

I understand that hengband's source is available, but I'm not going to spend hours digging through sources for a feature I don't know anything about and don't even know if I like, I hope you understand.

It's exceedingly unlikely that Heng's implementation would apply to ToME at all, anyway, so it might take days before I could find it and understand what's going on. And if the riding bits are spread out through the source code, I might never find it all!

As for the idea: It's reasonable and could conceivably be used with those two races, but I don't imagine I'd want to give other races the riding ability. Giving large bonuses to speed and/or flying would just up the power level of the game.

[Atarlost]

Lets put it this way, in return for a whole lot of skillpoints you can get a speed bonus, but not much of one without quite a bit of skill, probably not much more than you can get from running, though you caould also run (have your horse run) for a significant speed boost. You would also further hose your stealth, both from riding, and from riding quickly, mess up your perception, both for riding and for riding quickly, though you could get to normal searching (but not stealth) at whatever slow movement mode gives you 0 net speed. You would need quite high riding skill to use anything but a polearm effectively, and it might be sensible to also lower the max blows cap by 1. Unless you can manage to tame shadowfax you're not going to get enough for your skill investment to be unbalanced. Limiting the available mounts more than Hengband does might also be a good idea, as in, nothing that wasn't ridden in the LotR should be rideable. (horses, ponies(more readily available than horses, but with no attacks and lower speed), shadowfax, mumaks, fell beasts, great eagles, and eagle uniques)Putting a size check on riding, and probably removing traps of growing/shrinking to prevent scumming, would also be sensible. A hobbit riding a horse is rarely workable, and a troll riding a pony should never be workable.

[Wastrel]

The animal has a new flag (mount) instead of pet, coaligned, or companion. Only animals with a MOUNT flag in r_info.txt can be mounts. A player may have only one mount at a time and only if they have the skill or ability for riding. The animal can follow the player around or it can be ridden.

Certain mounts cannot enter certain terrain. For example just because you can walk through trees, doesn't mean the horse can. Same with rings of flying (the horse is not riding you). Assume most mounts will not walk across the lava no matter what the rider wants. (You'll have to go back up the stairs after a princess rescue to find another route if she is surrounded by lava). Eagles will not swim with you in sunken Numenor.

Horses/Ponies will need to find grass grids to eat.

Mumaks/Oliphaunts pull trees down to eat them.

Eagles need corpses to eat.

[DeathlyCold]

this wasn;t what i had planned, but if its better...

I think your horse should fly. Give it the ring of flying and your horse sprouts wings, pegasus-style. A iunique coaligned horse could be shadowfax, Red Rabbit (the horse in romance of the three kingdoms) or pegasus.

[DeathlyCold]

I'm going to use this topic to house my less-than-important idea... how about the "Demon Eyes" corruption? adds to infravision, see inviz, and add 1 llight radius, but causes random (very few and far between) hallucinations and decreases charisma. Since i can post today without the invalid session error i will post as much as i can whether you like it or not (well that depends if you are a moderator or a regular guy)

[Professor_Scissors]

What is the point of this poll? What if I want to vote agains the mounted subclass?

[Atarlost]

A skilled rider should be able to get a well trained horse to go just about anywhere, but it had better have barding or resist fire if you don't plan on losing your well trained mount. (the mount should have its resists and immunities tracked independantly of yours.)

[feathin]

A skilled rider should be able to get a well trained horse to go just about anywhere

Yes, and an unskilled should have big trouble riding it into any dungeon or place other than open country or town. Think of Aragorn and company trying to take horses throught the Paths of the Dead. Maybe dungeons could be given a fear factor for mounts, if you aren't skilled enough (or your mount isn't high-quality enough) they might refuse to go into a dungeon or rebel occasionally inside of it.

[Atarlost]

Agreed, especially with the pseudo-dungeons where low level charachters can go until they get their skill up. (the downs and Rhun should probably have a fear factor of near 0, and mirkwood and the old forest should have something relatively low as well, being as they're above ground. The Paths of the Dead, Erebor, and mount doom should have extremely high fear factors, and angband, moria, and the orc caves should also be fairly high. (It is well known that horses don't like dragons or orcs)

Perhaps the fear factor should apply to all animal companions. (most animals have keener smell than humans, and much of the fear derives from unpleasant smells, such as the stench of dragon or of orcs)

Your mount should probably respond to fear attacks differenty from you in general, becoming unruly and possibly vicious rather than refusing to fight. (as if you were posessing a monster with one of the random movement flags, depending on the 'level' of fear affecting your mount) It should be alleviated by your riding skill and the mount's training, but not by fear resistance.

Hmm, this could be an actual use for iron spikes: hitching posts so you can deal with foul abominations while leaving your horse in another room with the assurance that it won't run off. Perhaps they could also be used as horseshoe nails, but this would require adding a farrier skill and get rather silly. (though having to return to town periodically to get your horse reshod or having to carry an anvil, bar stock, and iron spikes and spend skill points on the farrier ability could be another way to balance the potential power of mounts)