Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[G-Flex]

An interesting weakness for a monster might be to be beaten with part of its own anatomy.

This is actually more likely and reasonable than you might think. For instance, imagine a creature with extremely tough skin, but also extremely sharp claws capable of piercing that skin better than your own weapon. Alternatively, imagine stinging a giant scorpion with its own stinger.

[Lord Shonus]

The vast majority of venomous animals irl are immune to their own poison, so that makes less logic than one would think.

[dree12]

The vast majority of venomous animals irl are immune to their own poison, so that makes less logic than one would think.

This isn't entirely correct, as far as I know.

The question whether individual snakes are immune to their own venom is not yet definitely settled, though there is a known example of a cobra which self-envenomated, resulting in a large abscess requiring surgical intervention but showing none of the other effects that would have proven rapidly lethal in prey species or humans.[8] Furthermore, certain harmless species, such as the North American Coronella getula and the Brazilian Rhacidelus brazili, are proof against the venom of the crotalines which frequent the same districts, and which they are able to overpower and feed upon. The Tropical Rat Snake, Spilotes variabilis, is the enemy of the Fer-de-lance in St. Lucia, and it is said[who?] that in their encounters the Cribo is invariably the victor. Repeated experiments have shown the European Common Snake, Tropidonotus natrix, not to be affected by the bite of Vipera berus and Vipera aspis, this being due to the presence, in the blood of the harmless snake, of toxic principles secreted by the parotid and labial glands, and analogous to those of the venom of these vipers. Several North American species of Rat snakes as well as King snakes have proven to be immune or highly resistant to the venom of Rattle snake species.

It could well be possible that venom will kill the bearer.

[EmeraldWind]

I agree with the above comment, that it would be annoying to have to carry around every object in the world due to possible run-ins with a creature of the night. At the same time, I assume Night Creatures will be sort of less common than seem as we talk now. In fact, depending on play style, one player might never run into a Night Creature at all while another might go hunting them down. I think Night Creatures might eventually not be an important enough of a threat to worry about under normal circumstances, unless the world somehow ends up ruled by Night Creatures (Age of the Lost Nights ). Right now, you meet up with Night Creatures pretty commonly because that is one of the few quests you can get.  Eventually, when there is more stuff to do you might not run into a Night Creature unless you are either unlucky or looking for one.

That said, it may not be bad carrying around a bunch of Night Creature weaknesses if you are specifically trying to get rid the world of Night Creatures. I imagine a vampire hunter pulling out a case with several vials with different grasses in them, silver and gold daggers, maybe a wooden stake, perhaps a holy symbol or two, and a notebook filled with research about different creatures. It's kind of a cool image and I would probably do it once or twice.

[Untelligent]

Aye, that makes a lot of sense. Very rarely will anyone stumble upon them by accident, I'd think; either you get a random quest to kill a night creature, in which case a smart adventurer would research up on it by asking around the local villages and figuring out how best to kill it off; or you make killing night creatures a habit, in which case you end up like the character Emerald Wind described. Or you DO run into one by accident, which might make for a nicely challenging/scary/interesting situation without happening often enough to be annoying.

[Quatch]

If you are caught unprepared (assuming a specific vulnerability is needed to kill a foe), you simply disengage (or apply sufficient force instead), run back to town, and plan a bit before going to kill it. There is no reason to need to win every fight on the first pass.

[Greiger]

Could be something as simple and basic as a particular materiel being poisonus to the creature. 

Like the legend of werewolves being vulnerable to silver for instance.  A werewolf may be particularly resilient, but I always thought of werewolves to still be living creatures.  A lopped off arm is still a lopped off arm no matter what did it.  The creature may have the strength of will to continue fighting through the wound, or just flies into a berserk rage.  Or maybe even has strong regeneration like a troll, and the wound quickly stops bleeding and could even grow back good as new after a week or so. 

A sword to the heart would still be very lethal, lose blood far too too quickly in that case for the wound to begin to heal over in time, should a warrior manage the strike.  Same with a decapitation or a cut throat, and other wounds would still cause the creature to lose blood, and even disable the part for the present.  But the bloodloss would be insignificant unless it's a massive injury.  And most fatalitles in DF seem to come from bloodloss.

And then a creature's weakness comes in.  A seasoned warrior may be able to handle such creatures with normal methods.  However most are not seasoned warriors.  A local average Joe town militia would need an advantage.  Silver in the case of a werewolf.  For example silver could act as a strong anti-coagulant, causing a werewolf to bleed out from even a minor wound.  Or a creature with special 'impenetrable' hide's flesh could react chemically with a certain element, causing necrosis.  Or it could even just be a simple allergy.  Even without magic being involved.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me anyway, and as long as the object comes into contact with the creature it doesn't seem too hard to explain it without magic being around.  An adventurer could still brute force their way through a fight.  But it still gives incentive to obtain such items if possible.  If you and 5 buddies in full armor want to go kill a single werewolf or something in the woods, going through the effort to obtain silver weapons is probably not worth the trouble.  However if you were a lone adventurer in leather who can barely hold a sword right, or you replace the werewolf with something akin to a dragon, the extra preparation is prudent, and could very well be the difference between amazing glorious victory and unfortunate chewy defeat.  While not being completely necessary for success.

[Untelligent]

Aye, I suppose you could just punch it in one of its noses and run like hell.

[NW_Kohaku]

The vast majority of venomous animals irl are immune to their own poison, so that makes less logic than one would think.

Less often than you would think.

Real-life spiders are capable of being trapped in their own web, for example.  They just always build their webs with only certain strands being sticky, so that they know to only walk on the strands that they know don't have sticky parts. 

Defeating a GCS by tricking it into getting caught in its own web would be an amusing adventure tale. 

Generally speaking, it's more evolutionariliy advantageous to save venom and develop a venom delivery system that will not accidentally inject yourself with venom than it is to actually make yourself immune to your own venom.

Also, who knows how the physiologies of magic creatures work?  Maybe some creatures have flaming steel-like horns whose magical upkeep requires portions of their body be vulnerable to fire or a steel-like horn piercing it?  It could be using flammable liquid stored in a pair of bladders that cause the fire by being combined at the tip of the horn.  By breaking the flammable liquid bladders, they'll combine inside the creature's own body, and cause it to start internal combustion.  Just like in actual battles from ancient Japan, attack the weak spot of that giant crab for MASSIVE DAMAGE.

[Lord Shonus]

I admit that most of my knowledge of aminals comes from the local zoo. In my defense, it's a very nice zoo.

[Arihim]

Does anyone know what release, if any,  Toady plans to implement activities for city citizens ?
like the following:

- walking their dog
- going to the market
- walking down a street, meeting a person they know, then having a conversation
- hobos, (a must in cities). Hobos that get drunk  and get taken away by the guards
- They'll be guards or some form of law inforcement right ?
- Some citizens should walk in pairs or as a group. I've yet to see this in games.

[monk12]

And then a creature's weakness comes in.  A seasoned warrior may be able to handle such creatures with normal methods.  However most are not seasoned warriors.  A local average Joe town militia would need an advantage.  Silver in the case of a werewolf.  For example silver could act as a strong anti-coagulant, causing a werewolf to bleed out from even a minor wound.  Or a creature with special 'impenetrable' hide's flesh could react chemically with a certain element, causing necrosis.  Or it could even just be a simple allergy.  Even without magic being involved.

This actually got me thinking about different types of heroes- you've got the "seasoned warrior" types who beat down their enemies through legendary strength and battle prowess (Hercules being the classical example, and Superman being a comic book example), and you've got the "trickster" types, who use planning, foresight, and quick wits to out-think their enemies (Perseus being the classical example, and Batman being the comic book example.)

In DF, you can obviously emulate the former by genning a demigod adventurer who is legendary at everything and has great stats, or by training up the skills of a regular hero, and then going and killing monsters. There's basic tactics and skill at fighting at work, and the contest comes down to skill, strength, and a bit of luck. The addition of night creature weaknesses opens up the second type of hero more, allowing the adventurer to do a bit of research and grab the silver sword/random shrub/misc. object that will enable him to easily overcome an otherwise formidable obstacle.

The former type of hero is well modeled (which I actually find rather refreshing, in a very Beowulf sort of way,) while the latter is sorely lacking. Right now, about as tricky as you can get as a hero is to bring half a castle along with you on your adventures. It even (kinda) makes sense for this sort of thing to come in parallel to caravan arc stuff- after all, what kind of city market doesn't have a lovable rogue in it?

[Ghills]

And then a creature's weakness comes in.  A seasoned warrior may be able to handle such creatures with normal methods.  However most are not seasoned warriors.  A local average Joe town militia would need an advantage.  Silver in the case of a werewolf.  For example silver could act as a strong anti-coagulant, causing a werewolf to bleed out from even a minor wound.  Or a creature with special 'impenetrable' hide's flesh could react chemically with a certain element, causing necrosis.  Or it could even just be a simple allergy.  Even without magic being involved.

This actually got me thinking about different types of heroes- you've got the "seasoned warrior" types who beat down their enemies through legendary strength and battle prowess (Hercules being the classical example, and Superman being a comic book example), and you've got the "trickster" types, who use planning, foresight, and quick wits to out-think their enemies (Perseus being the classical example, and Batman being the comic book example.)

In DF, you can obviously emulate the former by genning a demigod adventurer who is legendary at everything and has great stats, or by training up the skills of a regular hero, and then going and killing monsters. There's basic tactics and skill at fighting at work, and the contest comes down to skill, strength, and a bit of luck. The addition of night creature weaknesses opens up the second type of hero more, allowing the adventurer to do a bit of research and grab the silver sword/random shrub/misc. object that will enable him to easily overcome an otherwise formidable obstacle.

The former type of hero is well modeled (which I actually find rather refreshing, in a very Beowulf sort of way,) while the latter is sorely lacking. Right now, about as tricky as you can get as a hero is to bring half a castle along with you on your adventures. It even (kinda) makes sense for this sort of thing to come in parallel to caravan arc stuff- after all, what kind of city market doesn't have a lovable rogue in it?

The well-fed and thought-fully policed kind. If there are enough legitimate ways to make money fewer people become criminals, and if law and order is enforced carefully and with planning then fewer criminals stick around.

I'm interested in the chances to be thoughtful and clever legally, and it sounds like that kind of thing is coming up with chances to buy/sell real estate, run caravans, etc.

[Untelligent]

Does anyone know what release, if any,  Toady plans to implement activities for city citizens ?
like the following:

- walking their dog
- going to the market
- walking down a street, meeting a person they know, then having a conversation
- hobos, (a must in cities). Hobos that get drunk  and get taken away by the guards
- They'll be guards or some form of law inforcement right ?
- Some citizens should walk in pairs or as a group. I've yet to see this in games.

Release #2 has villager activities and farmer schedules, so that seems the most likely.

In other words, there'll be the upcoming version with yet another town revamp, then a few releases in which many bugs are swatted and several more emerge from their fallen corpses, and then after Toady takes a flamethrower to all those digital arthropods he'll start working on a feature release with people doing stuff and more interesting mineral stuff.

I don't know exactly what Toady means by villager activities, but we should get at least a few things. Releases 3 and 4 will have taverns, and inns and fairs, respectively, so villagers'll do even more stuff to do in those.

[NW_Kohaku]

after all, what kind of city market doesn't have a lovable rogue in it?

The well-fed and thought-fully policed kind. If there are enough legitimate ways to make money fewer people become criminals, and if law and order is enforced carefully and with planning then fewer criminals stick around.

I'm interested in the chances to be thoughtful and clever legally, and it sounds like that kind of thing is coming up with chances to buy/sell real estate, run caravans, etc.

Believe it or not, not all rogues are criminals.  Some rogues are just scouts, army irregulars, or exceptionally multi-talented businessmen.

Anyway, yes, I do look forward to an adventurer mode where combat is less a matter of just having more stats and experience points and better armor than the other guy.  It smacks of the exact kind of common RPG grind that DF is supposed to be avoiding.