The hound awards a passive mind power which plays with initiative. Basically it will allow you to avoid being hit twice in a row without getting your chance to attack. It is not perfect however – you must pass a (Mind - 2) in Mind random chance, otherwise the normal initiative rules apply.
I’m sure that in terms of numbers the hound is not balanced. I guessed at some values based on other monsters, but Victor might have a better idea. The power is meant to be fairly weak - you’ll want to use it against groups of enemies, but it will help little against singular enemies. The dog is strong though, so you’re awarded 4 melee and 2 defence but only 5 health.
Great to see a new monster! I like the basic idea of the hound, but I think it could be made more interesting, both as an enemy, and as a power. Let me first describe the power as I believe it works now: the vigilant person – either the hound or the player who has the hound power – will update its initiative in a such a way that there is always exactly one person who gets to act between two actions of the vigilant person. Did I get that right?
I don’t think the power should work that way. First, it can punish the vigilant person in some situations, because it means she’ll never be able to take two turns in a row. Second, it makes allies way overpowered. If you and two allies attack some guy, the player will effectively get three turns for every turn the guy will get! (Ignoring the mind check, but still.) I’d suggest that at the very least, the power is only triggered if the main actor is hostile to the vigilant person, so that you don’t get extra turns afters your allies have acted.
But I think it can also be made a bit more interesting, because right now, (a) you’ll never have to make a decision based on this power; and (b) fighting the hound in a one-on-one situation, which is quite common, is somewhat boring, since its special power won’t really come into play. So what about this (feel free to disagree with this idea!):
As I see it, this has three advantages:
It feels right for the hound: you can attack, but it immediately snaps back at you. Closing in on the hound is dangerous!
It makes fighting the hound different from fighting other creatures, because this is a creature you don’t want to miss any attacks against. Not only do you miss, but you’ll give the hound a free opportunity to maul you! So it is better to try to get more concentration before you attempt to close in.
It gives the player a new interesting tactical choice once she has the power of the hound: will she attack on the retaliatory turns, or not? Sometimes, the answer will be easy, but suppose she has little concentration, or suppose that she’d prefer to kill someone else first (she has been attack by the defender, while she has been killing off the healer first)… should she stick to her plan, or is the one-time attack bonus too good not to use?
Let me know what you think. Also, I like the fact that you have given the power of the hound a very low health bonus. I imagine the hound, and its power, somewhwat along these lines: low defence, high attack, little health, high damage. That would fit very well with the idea that attacking it is risky, and that you’d really prefer to attack it when you are certain you will hit.
Fixed a bug with the power of the bomb, and updated the power’s description.
Changed keys for menu options.
Added some “does the player mean” rule for the teleportation beacon (which can help parsing when the player also carries a scroll of teleportation).
Changed the stun power so that it doesn’t work with ranged weapons. That seems sensible, and it’s good to have something at which melee weapons are better than ranged weapons.
Praying now increases your chance of being detected when hidden.
Re-enabled the essences of caution and rage, which I had commented out when I was working on mind/body/spirit and forget to comment back in.
Fixed a bug that sometimes applied the difficulty twice, which would for instance lead to monsters having less than 50% of their normal HP on apprentice mode (when they should have 70% of their normal HP).
I’m glad you like the idea Victor! And I think your ideas will much improve it.
A few questions:
Should it remain a hound? I had forgotten the aswang can turn into one.
I like your idea of getting a turn immediately after being attacked. Should it be an extra turn - so that you keep your normal turn too? Should the normal turn sequence rules follow it?
Should it remain a mind power? And should it be a simple random low failure rate like it is now?
Well, the aswang transforms into a dog, not a hound – which is the same thing, but you know, it’s a different word! Plus, the aswang is rare and the aswang as hound is even rarer, so I see no problem here.
I’d say that it’s OK to just have an initiative boost, rather than a real “extra turn”, which might create all kinds of problems. The interesting thing is that you always get it right now, and that you have an attack bonus.
Maybe a body power? Perhaps we can have no failure rate, but instead improve the attack/damage bonus based on the person’s body (or mind, or whatever we choose to use)? let me know what you think.
Also, would it be better to call it “vigilant” or to call it “retaliation”?
I think we need more random and special case prose all throughout Kerkerkruip, so I’m completely happy with it. Perhaps you can just push the hound to master?
I’ll take that as your approval of the hound then! I’ll merge it tomorrow when I get the chance.
It feels a little easy to defeat, however that may be the apprentice mode bug you’ve fixed in master. The numbers can always be altered after more play testing.
Cool stuff, looking forward to a new enemy and a new power. Would it be a good idea to have some code in the next test build that requires the hound to appear in every game, for better playtesting?
FYI, I probably won’t be much help on the testing front this week (houseguests). Lurkers, feel free to step forward!
Erik, I don’t think that’s needed as it appears in about half of all games at easy difficultly levels (at higher ones the demon of rage can be placed, dropping the hound to 40%.)
Victor, that looks good. I’m planning to put up a webpage for ATTACK (with a new manual) sometime too.
New build! A bunch of tweaks and fixes, but the highlights are the addition of the hound; the fixing of a bug that made hiding way too easy; and the fixing of a bug that made some body/mind/spirit bonuses not show up in the calculation (though they were applied).
Dannii, would you mind if I changed the power of the hound to a body power, and the flavour text from “anticipate” to “retaliate”? It just seems a little weird to me that this feral hound is managing to land extra bites because of its mental prowess and tactical thinking… rather than just because of its immediate instincts!
I played a bunch of games today… and I’m really liking this new version of Kerkerkruip. I’m pretty excited about it! Kerkerkruip - Release 6 - BETA.gblorb (1.5 MB)
Victor, I picked mind because it had the least powers currently. I guess which faculty is used doesn’t really matter, but I do like the mind based prose. The hound is not feral – it is highly intelligent and somehow even precognitive. This scene from Sherlock Holmes was a little bit of an inspiration. I don’t want to change the character or power, but I’ll freely admit that I may not have communicated it clearly enough, so if you think it needs it, we can change the description and location text to more strongly suggest its intelligence/precognitive powers.
Thanks for fixing those hound bugs you found! I was indeed assuming that the initiative must be >=0, because of the first initiative update rule which sets it to 0 if that’s not true. But later update rules must be able to lower it again.
I left out the command text because there is no new command for the power. It might confuse people into thinking “retaliation” does something.
Perhaps you can just push the hound to master?