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[Warlord255]

After a long, long, LONG haitus, I've returned to Dwarf Fort... after fighting off a satisfying and suitably scary siege in 42.03, only to have it end in a rout, I've decided some mods are in order.

While looking through the syndrome page on the wiki, however, I noticed the following;

CE_MENT_ATT_CHANGE
CE_CHANGE_PERSONALITY
CE_SKILL_ROLL_ADJUST

Immediately, an idea struck. What if one were to make an "amnesia" effect - resetting all skills to 0 (PERC:0:PERC_ON:100 in CE_SKILL_ROLL_ADJUST argument) and wiping personality variances to 0 to make a mind-wiped, soulless dwarf? Such an effect, if successful, would be a threat worse than death; a soul-sucking monster or brain-melting interaction could ruin years of training and generally scare the hell out of you when it appears. Adding it as a custom evil weather option would also be suitably hideous (if that's possible).

However, I'm encountering a few problems: CE_SKILL_ROLL_ADJUST doesn't specify what skill, if any, it targets. That's the big one. Also, CE_CHANGE_PERSONALITY calls for FACET:facet token:modifier, but doesn't list what measurement units "modifier" works for - is it just 0-100?. And CE_MENT_ATT_CHANGE calls for Attribute:percentage:fixed boost(?), but doesn't specify whether the boost can be negative...

If the skill wipe alone is possible, I'll be thrilled to add another terror to the potential arsenal laid against me, but any help would be appreciated. I'm also curious how to make it a multi-stage syndrome, so that a dwarf will be put to sleep for a prolonged period afterwards to help indicate to the player what's happened (and then have them get better from that.)

[Bearskie]

Skill roll actually has nothing to do with skills. It's basically the RNG luck stat of the creature. Perc 0 with perc on 50 would make 50% of all the creature's 'rolls' completely and utterly fail (0%)

Change personality should just be a simple addition or subtraction of a number to the creature's facet value.

[Warlord255]

Well, that's disappointing... I suppose one could still use the "personality wipe" syndrome, but most players would find that a boon more than anything else. No more pesky "individuality".

Edit: What does SKILL_ROLL apply to, anyway? Combat? Crafting? Trying to drink beer? Depending on what it affects, then it'd certainly be useful for a "brain damage" syndrome...

[IndigoFenix]

I think SKILL_ROLL applies to everything that uses a skill - combat, crafting, floundering when swimming, and so on.  Any time the game checks the creature's skill and applies a random value, the syndrome will have a certain probability to multiply their effective skill by a particular amount.  It doesn't have to be a critical failure; that's just what the mummy's curse does (20% chance of multiplying effective skill by 0).  For instance, I have an effect that halves their skill all the time, and another that multiplies their skill by 1000 all the time for a short period to make them awesome at everything.

Brain damage is probably best simulated by severely lowering important mental stats like KINESTHETIC_SENSE, which is used for almost everything.  MEMORY is also a stat, though it isn't as important as you might think.  Chronic dizziness or bouts of unconsciousness can also result from brain damage and will make a dwarf significantly less effective at everything.

Granted, all of these things will mostly contribute to making the dwarf permanently less useful, rather than 'resetting' them.  As an alternative, you can make the syndrome long-lasting but not permanent; like a gradually lowering dizziness that lasts for one or several years before fading away.

Some people have also had their personalities change due to brain damage, so you can simulate that by throwing a bunch of randomly applied personality-altering syndrome effects.

This would actually be cool for a lightning bolt spell - it would simulate the effects of a REAL lightning bolt as opposed to the dinky RPG lightning zap.

Keep in mind that random syndromes might still be subject to the 'apply all possible effects on loading a saved game if the syndrome is still active' bug, so make sure to put all random effects under their own separate syndrome tags.