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Extensible Creature Behaviours
Posted: 13 Oct 2003 03:17 AM |
The Animals is a more specific example to showcase something we've developed: namely, creatures that behave differently according to traits (or history) of a character.
In that example, the Animals react according to the Druids/Rangers (class), Charisma (ability), and Animal Empathy (skill) - I'm quite interested in fully exploring and exploiting the possibilities with this promising idea - here are some initial thoughts. Feel free to comment / add more / refine / discard the ideas.
(i) Undead. Neutral towards powerful necromancers/evil wizards-sorcerers (level/hitdice dependent), and hostile to everybody else?
(ii) Local Guards. Hostile towards characters that have a high Naughty-Count?
(iii) Bandits. Attempts to rob only certain characters? (e.g. not pretty females... honour amongst thieves  ... or not poor monks?)
(iv) Semi-vampires. Hostile only at night...
(v) Goblinoids. Don't hurt half-sized (halfling/gnomes)?
(vi) Giant humanoids / ogre / trolls. Neutral/friendly to orcs?
(vii) Mage-guilds that are alignment sensitive?
(viii) Religious Fanatics?
(ix) Magical beasts that sense... something? 
(x) Gypsies that those with high Lore / Charisma can communicate?
Another possibility is to let PCs further classify themselves through quests (scripted/DM-mediated). These are particularly cool as we're getting a larger character-base, CPC or otherwise - your characters can always remain unique. It'd be much nicer if Lucius can cuddle up with his fellow skeletons! (did I mention that you should be able to -talk- to 'hostiles'?)
What other behaviours can you imagine? Remember, now the sky's the limit! |
Aria
So talented, so troubled. |
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Re: Extensible Creature Behaviours
Posted: 14 Oct 2003 02:53 PM |
Wow I really like this...especially the undead factor thrown in for high level clerics who are evil or necromancers as well. Some thoughts perhaps if you care for them on some of the other custom creature factions/responses:
-Magical Beasts - Perhaps they can sense strong arcane magic, so high level wizards or sorcs would be passed over by them. Perhaps just sorcerers for some reason (always looking to give sorcs a little push since wiz's are often getting better XP for adventuring, spells, crafting, etc).
-Fey - Should get along with elves and druids/rangers of pure neutral alignments (or good/evil alignments to match good/evil fey, thus good/evil fey perhaps would attack complete opposite alignments on the spectrum).
-Religious Fanataics - If we incorporated this with a chosen diety at the beginning of vives (perhaps also checking for a custom holy symbol from the character), this could prove to be some neat stuff as well.
Just a question though. What if a party has only one or two characters that are not harmed by said monsters. Will the whole party be immune, or just the one character? If undead attack a party and the necromancer wizard (not neccesarily evil mind you) helps to strike back, do those particular undead still react neutrally? Just some thoughts. It's a really cool idea, just not sure how a party would affect it.
Oh, one more thing...I think Rangers (Druids as well) should get XP for taming wild animals (One off XP for each animal type...i.e.- XP one shot for badger, XP one shot for bear, etc). Just my two coppers.
~Fenarisk |
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Re: Extensible Creature Behaviours
Posted: 14 Oct 2003 05:06 PM |
Just a question though. What if a party has only one or two characters that are not harmed by said monsters. Will the whole party be immune, or just the one character? If undead attack a party and the necromancer wizard (not neccesarily evil mind you) helps to strike back, do those particular undead still react neutrally? Just some thoughts. It's a really cool idea, just not sure how a party would affect it.
Oh, one more thing...I think Rangers (Druids as well) should get XP for taming wild animals (One off XP for each animal type...i.e.- XP one shot for badger, XP one shot for bear, etc). Just my two coppers.
Cool bean ideas... I'll see them in (heh The toolset part - the whole project is based on DMs able to / need to breath life into the creatures) next time they come around.
The check is done on a per PC basis - that is, if Wendelyn, Gasher and Arizzle (ranger, fighter and paladin respectively) travel together in a forest, the same animal may be friendly to Wendelyn, awed by Arizzle (charisma check), and only bite Gasher
If Wendelyn attacks the beast in defence of Gasher, the beast will bite her too (but not Arizzle), and other beasts in the vicinity will have their hostility overrides the initial good impression. It should make for some interesting party dynamics, and some very real incentive for 'good' and 'evil' to segregate.
Animal Empathy - I'm not sure where the XP script is, to be honest. If and when I get to it I'll let you folks know. [Edit: had a quick look at it, don't think it's a script-based feat (it doesn't have any handle to work with) - and to route it thru different things, well, there seems to be more interesting things to do at this time.] |
Aria
So talented, so troubled. |
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Re: Extensible Creature Behaviours
Posted: 15 Oct 2003 10:50 AM |
I really love this concept. It makes the world of Vives so much more real and interactive to the players.
Very good ideas Aria; all except the "Goblinoids. Don't hurt half-sized (halfling/gnomes)?" I fail to see the connection here, but maybe that's just me *shrugs*. |
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Re: Extensible Creature Behaviours
Posted: 15 Oct 2003 11:46 AM |
Excellent Stuff..!
The Goblinoids and Large Huanoids/Giants I would prefer not to go with to be honest though..... Goblins downright hate halflings and the right-sized from my (oft skewed) perspective..... and Giants are far too commonplace in game (and will be even moreso hehe) and a tad too powerful to be "neutral" to Orcs etc.
A big split perhaps thinking on the mage idea though would perhaps be naillamne and ladriel.... those are two collections of quasi-spellchuckers who have a burning hatred for each other.
Thinking aside we could also (perhaps better suited when HOTU) comes out.... use subraces more, specifically for drow and elves. This would mean Ferein being hostile to all Drow (and we could add into that Midor and a few other places too :P) whilst they would have their own City which, whilst un-hostile to them would be hostile to all other races. This would need a LOT of debate and some thought on "rules" (I hate them but sometimes they are a necessity to preserve enjoyment for others etc).... as it could end up like other servers in constant faction bashing.
As a side note: It'd be interesting though to see how many people then wanted to play Evil Drow on the server when they can't walk into many Cities bar their own for fear of being attacked by Guards and npc'sI would think very few (although we might be the exception to the rule because of the shere Quality of RPers we have in comparison to elsewhere). Would be interesting anyway heh.
cheers
Arathon |
Vives Screenshots!
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Re: Extensible Creature Behaviours
Posted: 18 Oct 2003 08:12 PM |
Just one thing I noticed playing with a Druid. If I try to Animal Empathy them (for e.g. to get them out of the way so they don't attack the other members of the party), after I release them from their domination they become hostile and will not become neutral again.
As I see it, Animal Empathy is the ability to communicate with animals and is not a hostile action. Would it make sense for initially neutral animals to remain neutral when they are released from domination?
rgds
Ayako |
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Re: Extensible Creature Behaviours
Posted: 19 Oct 2003 02:22 AM |
Just one thing I noticed playing with a Druid. If I try to Animal Empathy them (for e.g. to get them out of the way so they don't attack the other members of the party), after I release them from their domination they become hostile and will not become neutral again.
As I see it, Animal Empathy is the ability to communicate with animals and is not a hostile action. Would it make sense for initially neutral animals to remain neutral when they are released from domination?
Unfortunately the AnimalEmpathy is a hard-wired process in Bioware's system, and one that is opaque on the scripting level (that is, we cannot modify it, nor can we know whether someone has used AnimalEmpathy or not.) Actually, it's doable - but does take a substantial amount of work that at the moment I think could be better spend on something else. Perhaps remind me sometime down the road |
Aria
So talented, so troubled. |
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