Underdeep Discussion & Interest Thread

[Steerpike]

The new Underdeep Discussion & Interest thread, because our old one seems to have been abducted by Grolhund the Heartscrew or eaten by Ceremorphs or something.

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[LD]

I posted something earlier today and I don't know if people saw it in re: idea for adventuring parties/Grolhund. I can try to think what it was and repost if Steerpike and Nomadic hadn't seen and/or responded to my idea. (before the thread was lost)

also, my oil ideas (as a hazard if not a resource) and my ideas for "superblooms" or very growth-centered areas for plantraces and generally regions that are of particular BONUS to certain factions and Negatives to others to encourage the holding of certain places.

[Nomadic]

Luckily my earlier post took several days to write out so I had it saved on my computer... here it is:

Originally I was going to PM this to Steerpike but I realized that I'd already discussed it with several of you so it didn't matter to keep it private. Also I'd love further feedback and ideas on balancing/flavoring it and you can't have that if you keep everything secret.

We had a fascinating discussion on underdeep the other night regarding faction balance and abilities and something that came up was that Grolhund isn't really fulfilling his role as a problem maker and harasser. The problem is largely that he is chained to his laboratory because he is the best defense it has should it be found and because it is where he produces everything he needs in order to fulfill his purpose. His laboratory's speed essentially means that he has a range of up to 6 but that range is locked onto a central point that can only be moved 2 spaces a week (akin to a semi-mobile ball and chain). This interferes with his purpose which requires him to be highly mobile and somewhat sneaky. Furthermore the weakness of the lab practically requires wards/invisibility which as Grolhund is largely anchored to it means that he is almost untrackable and thus unkillable by the factions (not something I want since I actually want them to come after him like they did with scorra). One of the best suggestions made was to just combine Grolhund with his laboratory. It would require re-balancing him a bit but I think it would help align him better with his purpose.

Here are some of the ideas we discussed for this as well as some I thought up on my own time:

Decrease move speed to 4
This is slower than his current 6 but still fast enough to keep him highly mobile (especially with the forced march option). It helps to balance the fact that he's carrying all his resources with him.

Size changed to Colossal
Colossal:
Colossal units take up an entire regiment by themselves (count as 51 creatures for the purpose of regiment splitting). Colossal creatures also often ignore certain types of terrain (see Movement and Terrain, below). Colossal units cannot be harmed by Pit Traps of any kind.  They also never take a penalty against Flying units. Due to their immense size colossal units may not enter dungeons or outposts. They may however attack any outer defenses or any defending units not garrisoned within the keep itself (such as those manning the walls).

This change would also make removing climbing necessary.

Remove traps/defenses in favor of Grolhund himself
Grolhund would retain the trapmaker ability allowing him to scatter traps about (adding to his goal of sowing discord) but he would no longer be able to build traps/defenses onto his lab. In fact Grolhund wouldn't be siegeable at all. Rather he would function like a massive single creature with "rooms" that would allow him to produce resources in a limited amount. In a conflict he would use his attack/defense/damage and any attacker that bested them would cause his instant destruction as opposed to leaving a captured dungeon (though he would still drop all his resources). He could still "garrison" units within himself though he wouldn't provide any garrison bonus (he'd function like the severed troop transport). Traps for his trapmaking might need to be reflavored or modified to reflect all these changes.

Modify Rooms
Replace "rooms" with "attachments" which represent a similar thing while recognizing that they aren't full rooms like you'd see in a dungeon. Seeing as Grolhund is this crazy inventor it still fits his flavor to be constantly modifying things. Now however his rooms are flavored to be in line with this, representing special upgrades to his chassis. There would be a hard cap on how many attachments he could have at any time (though I'm not sure what a good number might be). Some examples of modified versions:

[ic=Attachments]
[ooc=Cage (limit 10)]
Swinging from the side of Grolhund's enormous bulk, this cage is used to store prisoners for the inventor's hideous experiments.

Cost: ???
Construction Time: 1 week
Benefit: A Cage can hold up to 2 Prisoners at a time.

Without a cage Grolhund cannot retain more than 1 prisoner at a time (additional prisoners will flee at the earliest chance).
[/ooc]
[ooc=Steam Drill]
This drill makes an effective siege weapon for dealing with immobile defenses.

Cost: ???
Construction Time: 1 week
Benefit: Grolhund gains an alternate attack mode. The steam drill has a melee attack of +2 and a damage of 20 as well as the wallcracker ability (it receives a +10 to attacks against walls). Grolhund may only make one attack per round and must choose which type of attack to make.
[/ooc]
[ooc=Clairvoyant Oculus]
A techno-magical upgrade to Grolhund's great eye permits him to scry the unseen from a distance.

Cost: ???
Construction Time: 2 weeks
Benefit: Grolhund can use the Scry spell once per week.
[/ooc]
[/ic]

Simplify resources slightly and modify upkeep
Grolhund doesn't really seem like the kind of person who cares about wealth. He's too practical for that. Instead I would drop gold and food and make his resources solely Bodies and Metal (reflecting his flesh and technology flavoring) with the additional requirement of live prisoners for his experimentation. Upkeep for units would be in bodies and/or metal as would the costs to make them in the first place. His minions don't eat or require pay but they do require repair and healing which they receive in the form of weekly skin grafts, spot welds, etc. Without upkeep his units function like undead, losing 1 hp a week until they are rejuvenated or destroyed. Additionally all of his attachments/upgrades/traps would be solely in bodies/metal as they represent Grolhund modifying his own form. This means Grolhund doesn't need farms and his drill doesn't need to collect gold (though he probably still needs a way to collect metal, perhaps using the steam drill for that as an additional ability). It also means we probably need to re-flavor things as every attachment, invention, and experimentation should reflect that melding of machine and flesh.

Change units
Mostly a flavor thing, I think all his units should be some melding of machine and flesh and most should be represented as experiments with different experiments requiring different prisoner types (a psychic ceremech for example or a upkeep free but slowly degrading robotic puffball mine). It gives me more focus and requires that I harass and attack all factions equally (also gives them more reason to hate me when it's more obvious which unit of mine used to be their drinking buddy or something). Maybe give him a single unit that he can produce without prisoners (like the jelly or perhaps a completely mechanical servitor)

Remove Unscryability (no wards attachment)
Making him unscryable would probably be too cheap and unbalanced and almost certainly would frustrate players (not good since I ultimately want Grolhund to add fun and challenge to the game, not ruin it). Probably ok to keep invisibility as well as other spells since they're temporary and defeatable.

Make him a tough target
The above means he'll almost always be visible on the map. So Grolhund needs to be tough enough that he doesn't just look like a juicy target to the factions with their big armies. People don't just freely attack visible things on the map like dungeons because they have heavy defenses, are immune to save or suck, and presumably a respectfully sized defense force. Grolhund has neither a big army as he can't (and shouldn't) produce units in the numbers the factions can nor inbuilt traps/defenses (meaning his units can't man the defenses and get free attacks in). Granted, unlike a dungeon and more like an army Grolhund can attack, however again he'll never have the numbers that a proper faction army can field. So he needs to be brought up to a level where he represents a comparable threat. For one I think he should be immune to mind-influencing effects (his warped mind is alien to anyone that tries to alter it) to protect from domination since as it stands domination is actually an insta-win against him. He might have his hp/regen buffed to make him a harder nut to crack and to reflect his massive size.

Note that none of these are demands, just requests and suggestions. The one about combining him with his dungeon is probably the most serious request I'm making as it should fix most of the problems with Grolhund, the rest is mainly just me trying to balance this change. Feedback is encouraged, resistance is futile. :P

[Polycarp]

All I had to say in the last thread is that people should let me know if I owe them any responses, and that I'm still awaiting a response from Dolmar if the Nocae intend to give me one.

[LD]

Ok. I think I recall what I wrote about adventuring parties- now that I see what Nomadic had written;

I've been thinking about adventuring parties and how they could run in the game.

what about if Grolhund/the parties have the following benefits:
1. Can go past outposts if they don't end their turn in them.
2. MORE IMPORTANT. They can attack, but can choose to flee if anyone attacks them. Therefore, other factions can't attack them. Thus, they can lose troops when they personally plan an assault, but cannot lose troops due to an ambush. This power might be too powerful, since something should exist to counter the harassing parties, so perhaps 'traps' would apply against them...
3. They are invisible on the map.

[Raelifin]

HERE'S THE SIMULATOR DOWNLOAD LINK

[Polycarp]

1. Can go past outposts if they don't end their turn in them.
2. MORE IMPORTANT. They can attack, but can choose to flee if anyone attacks them. Therefore, other factions can't attack them. Thus, they can lose troops when they personally plan an assault, but cannot lose troops due to an ambush. This power might be too powerful, since something should exist to counter the harassing parties, so perhaps 'traps' would apply against them...
3. They are invisible on the map.

This would be crushingly powerful.  Ignoring #3 for a second (and it's largely redundant anyway, since they can't be attacked because of #2), this means that an adventuring party could just waltz on over to anywhere in your realm without you being able to do anything about it.  The only possible way to stop it would be to have all entrances to your realm blocked by heavily trapped outposts, and even then I doubt that every faction has a sufficient trap list to stuff an outpost full enough to kill an adventuring party, which will presumably be made up of quite powerful units.  Fungoids and Kobolds could probably manage it, since they can lay traps anywhere, but even that requires a lot of time and resources to set up.

I wouldn't have a problem with parties getting substantial bonuses to fleeing - for instance, the +5 Def when fleeing like goblins have - but if you remove absolutely all risk of being attacked, adventuring parties probably aren't going to act much like adventuring parties, who should be reasonably apprehensive about knocking around the Underdeep rather than confident that nothing in all the UD can harm them as long as they don't start the fight.

I think it's important to remember that adventuring parties are an unknown; it's presumably hard to know what they want or what their intentions are automatically.  Most factions won't really have a reason to attack them just off the bat.  Everybody knows that Saerid is on a particular mission, for instance, even if not every player might know what his exact objective is.  As a result, they don't need to be like Grolhund, whose very purpose is apparently to be a "problem maker and harasser."  Factions seem neutral to Saerid by default; factions do not seem to be neutral to Grolhund by default.  Adventuring parties, unless they are here to literally kill everything, seem likely to behave more like the former than the latter.

[LD]

>>I wouldn't have a problem with parties getting substantial bonuses to fleeing - for instance, the +5 Def when fleeing like goblins have - but if you remove absolutely all risk of being attacked, adventuring parties probably aren't going to act much like adventuring parties, who should be reasonably apprehensive about knocking around the Underdeep rather than confident that nothing in all the UD can harm them as long as they don't start the fight.

I think that's more interesting though; that way the adventuring parties can go anywhere in the dungeon. Your solution of a substantial bonus to fleeing though is probably a good compromise situation- rather than make them unassailable, have it so that they need to reserve some speed to flee. Perhaps they can spend 1 Speed to "Avoid Army in Region" and 1 Speed to "Flee if Attacked" during the round.

And I think there's a distinction between a Saerid and an adventuring party- an AP is a Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Thief. I would *not* suggest that anything like Saerid have these powers.

[sparkletwist]

Adventuring parties, unless they are here to literally kill everything

Do you mean to imply there is some other kind?
We're the dungeon dwellers! Clearly we're just here to for them to kill and take our stuff. :grin:

[Polycarp]

I think that's more interesting though; that way the adventuring parties can go anywhere in the dungeon.

I suppose that's the point of our difference right there - I don't any attraction or anything interesting in letting a party "go anywhere."  All I can see here is immense frustration when a party is quite obviously gunning for some location of yours but you have to sit on your hands as they walk through your territory, able only to watch and shift garrisons around.

For me, the bottom line is this:  If I want to attack something, I should be able to do so, with absolutely no exceptions whatsoever.  Maybe I'll fail miserably, but I should still be able to do it.  Sure, some units/monsters may be exceptionally hard to find or difficult to kill, but it shouldn't be impossible to even attempt to strike at them.  Grolhund, in his current incarnation, can potentially be incredibly hard to find and pin down, but it's not impossible to do it - Nomadic and I have discussed several strategies for doing so in chat.

And I think there's a distinction between a Saerid and an adventuring party- an AP is a Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Thief. I would *not* suggest that anything like Saerid have these powers.

I wasn't suggesting that they were mechanically similar, only "diplomatically" similar, to illustrate the point that an adventuring party, unlike Grolhund, would probably not be on everyone's automatic hit list.  For that reason, parties probably don't have to have as many defensive countermeasures and means of evading detection as Grolhund.

[zcynthr]

Last week of classes this term- running late on orders this week. Might have to put them up tomorrow.

[Steerpike]

Not to worry, deadline has been extended!

[Humabout]

But I want to read what happens already!!!! :p

[Dolmar]

My orders are up, though I may take advantage of the deadline extension still. ^_^

To the peeps who are waiting for a reply from me: it's been a crazy week, so I may not respond to you until next week. Since it's the glow and watchers, IIRC, I think Dolmar's too depressed over Lothe's death to be sure how to respond to fungus and nightmare fish at the moment. We'll go with that.

Also, still waiting for a response from the Legion kobolds, but no rush. ~_^

EDIT: Also, I know I owe the cleversmarts a response too. Didn't forget that, srsly.

[Xathan]

Since this thread is the one that is usually on the top, and since this is the first page...

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