This release finally puts the Pos in PosChengband. That's right, we finally have a Possessor! How does it work?First, the possessor is a monster race and is available under the Monsters menu during racial selection. When you choose this option, you don't get to select a class (just like with all the other monsters).Next, you begin life as a "soul" which is really nothing but a pathetic ghost in search of a body. You can't wield anything other than a light source, and you have no physical attacks. But don't fear, you have a nice wand of magic missile to play with, fully charged.So your first order of business will be to procure a corpse. Most human type monsters drop them and are good starting choices. You might mosey on out to the wilderness surround Outpost for example and snag a Novice something or other. Corpses are not guaranteed to drop, but they are quite a bit more likely to show up when you are in your native ghostly form. So don't get greedy using up all your missiles on something too big as you might not get a corpse!Once you have one, use the racial power of Possession to inhabit the body. At that point, you won't be so weak and can probably wear some gear as well.At any rate, that's how to start. I haven't done a whole lot of playtesting yet. Also, I moved the body type information to an external file (b_info.txt) which required me to change all of the existing monster races. Hopefully, I didn't break anything obvious.Oh, one final note: Uniques no longer drop 100% of the time. And I guess I should also mention that corpses now have realistic weights, at least when you are playing a possessor. Some more on Possessor mechanics:When you possess something, you gain stats and skills based on that form. Obviously, you get resistances and abilities too, but you don't always get the monster's armor class (e.g. a novice warrior is wearing armor and does not have intrinsic tough skin!).If you gain spells, then your spell stat will vary depending on the form (e.g. priests use wisdom, mages use intelligence, etc).If you gain intrinsic powers, then these are usually breath weapons and generally run off constitution. There are some exceptions, like throwing boulders which runs off Strength. Remember, intrinsic racial powers ('U' command) can be used when berserk or in the presence of anti-magic. Their costs can be paid for with hp if your sp run out, etc.Possessor's still need to gain levels just like everybody else. Racial powers and spells generally have minimum casting levels and fail rates too.Your current form limits how much experience you may gain. Everybody can get to CL15, but generally the rule is you may advance to the monsters level + 5. So, you really can't stay as a baby white dragon forever as you just will stop gaining levels pretty soon. And you won't ever "evolve" the way monster races do. No, you need to find another corpse!You can *identify* a corpse and it will tell you some info. You can probe a monster and learn more!Edit: Innate attacks can be blocked by equipment. So, if your form has a "Hit" attack or a "Touch" attack, then you need at least one empty hand to use it. Innate attacks are generally what is specified in r_info ... They don't progress the way they do for other player monster races.
* Players always get at least 1hp* Possessors start with 15 extra hp. Should be easy to get that first corpse now.* Added autopicker option to only keep corspes above a certain level (See above in this thread). Note: The leave_special option is on by default so that new savefiles don't auto destroy corpses for the possessor. You will want to turn off leave_special at some point if you are using the autopicker.* Innate monster attacks are now slightly more powerful for The Possessor.* Tweaked a couple of monster body types (Manticore and Benedict).* Possessors no longer display as -99 speed during birth.
Change #1: The Possessor can become ejected from their current form!I resisted this for a bit, but decided to give it a go after all. To make things playable, it is a low probability event that triggers if your health goes very low (less than 25%). Early on, this might happen more often than later, but it is something to be concerned about. For a must win fight (Serpent, Oberon, Quest monster) you might consider bringing a spare corpse, just in case.To compensate for this change, the Possessor Soul (native form) now has more hp and can advance all the way to CL50. It also as a few slots (2 rings, helmet, light and cloak) so that ejection won't auto dump your speed to 0. Also, when ejected from your current form, you get fully healed first!Change #2: The Possessor is unable to possess a body above a certain level.This is designed to prevent wilderness scumming a massively out of depth corpse in the early game, a tactic I pioneered, but one that will also diminish the early game. Also, your power always depends on your current level in a strong fashion, so having a 20-something in an Ancient Dragon form, for example, is a bit unbelievable as you are still rather squishy!To compensate for this change, you no longer need to leave your current body to possess a new one. Indeed, the game will block you if the target corpse is too high for your current level and it would be cruel indeed if you were forced to jettison your current body (thus destroying it) first.Change #3: Many monster forms were rebalanced. Early breath amounts were extremely OP and have been adjusted down.Change #4: Monster shatter attacks now cause earthquakes rather than giving a ridiculous damage increase.Change #5: Nerf the humanoid prejudice.To achieve this, humanoids only get 1/3 of the speed boost and their AC bonus decreases for each piece of armor worn. Non-humanoid forms can get full speed from their form, but still suffer the AC reduction. But many monster forms cannot wear body armor so they end up with a higher AC bonus.Change #6: More forms! I added Spiders and Hounds for early stealthy options. Both forms can detect monsters as well. I also added some nice high level forms to the mix which I don't want to spoilOther minor changes include fixing the heavy corpse bug (no more negative weights) and implementing the fear aura. Also, the possessor is now born with a tiny ring of damage to encourage adoption of non-humanoid forms.
Version 2.0.3 has been released, mostly focusing on possessor changes, of course. Nothing too major has been added, except quite a few new forms and some rebalancing. Oh yeah, one slight adjustment has been to replace monster base immunities with normal resistance, and of course this will be reflected in possessor play. A few monsters still have normal immunity, but the days of 600+ monster races being immune to basic elemental attacks are over!
Please be kind as I made some rather aggressive and risky changes ... hopefully I've found all of the crashes.What has changed?* The wilderness is now continuously explorable. As you move about, the wilderness will "scroll". I also added a few scripted encounters. In general, the wilderness is more difficult than before, so be careful!* Ego items have been massively overhauled, particularly for rings and amulets. Lots of new stuff here! (I've liberally borrowed ideas from other variants including the latest Hengband, Angband and TinyAngband.)* Dungeon generation has been massively overhauled with the addition of 165 new types of rooms! (Rooms can be added to v_info.txt rather than created in source code. New submissions would be welcome! But don't look in v_info.txt unless you want the game to be "spoiled" ...)* I added a new command to list nearby monsters ('['). This is useful if you play on a small screen like I do.
* Vanilla Town and Light Town options now work.* Monster List ('[') no longer exposes shadowers.* Monster List ('[') and Object List (']') are not available while hallucinating.* Cold resistant monsters resist ice bolts (again).In addition, clouded was kind enough to design more than a hundred new room types, so there is currently quite a lot of new rooms to explore (over 260 at the moment). I did make a few minor changes to some of the new rooms as they tended to have lots of out of depth monsters!Finally, I made a minor effort at cleaning up some of the many thousands of compiler warnings that I inherited from Hengband. Unfortunately, a couple very minor changes caused the game to become unstable, but I think I fixed all of the obvious new crashes (This, btw, is one reason why I have made minimal efforts at a legacy code cleanup.)Source code can be found here and I think we should be working on Linux again. I fixed the curses port to use an 80x27 window size to accommodate the enhanced pack size.
* Strong sensing of cursed items has been restored where appropriate. Some of the feeling names have been changed. If you turn on the Easy Destroyer ('=' '6') and enable the leave known worthy items option, then anything that pseudo-ids as 'bad' will get destroyed automatically. These options are on be default.* Weakly sensed non-cursed items are now labelled as 'enchanted' rather than 'uncursed'.* The autopicker ('_') now has a verb for cursed items (called 'cursed').* Fire Elementals can teleport onto deep lava. Their fiery touch will no longer destroy scrolls of destruction.* Clouded provided an awesome new Light Town redesign. If you are put off by the wilderness in Poschengband, then give this option a try!* The Vampire Lord in The Arena now drops a scroll of mundanity.* Aggravate, Permanent Curse and Ancient Foul Curse are now much more rare, and should no longer generate on weak cursed ego items.* Back to the autopicker, corpses and skeletons now have separate names to support the possessor (who only cares about corpses, after all).* The demigod Loremaster talent now functions the same as the Stone of Lore
This update adds a new player monster race: The Vampire!Vampires are powerful, undead creatures of darkness and shun the light. They are vulnerable to light based attacks and this vulnerability can never be fully overcome. They feed on the blood of the living and managing their food state is an important aspect of gameplay, so the vampire will want to enable the display_food_bar option under 'Text Display Options.'The vampire also has limited shapeshifting abilities, and you may notice that re-equipping gear upon transformation can be a bit tedious. To help with this, you may inscribe the name of the appropriate form (vampire, bat or wolf) in lower case on your gear and the game will automatically equip that object from your pack whenever you enter the inscribed form. For example, a wolf cannot wield a weapon, but the vampire can, so inscribe 'vampire' on your weapon to have it automatically re-equipped when shifting out of the wolf form back into the vampire form.Vampires use Charisma as their spellcasting stat. They have a powerful gaze ability can dominate their enemies and they can also create vampire servants by killing humans with their bite attack. Their bites are vampiric, of course, but the vampire only regains hitpoints with this attack if they are not full. Thus, you need to manage your food status a bit more aggressively than with other characters who might be in the habit of filling up every time their stomach rumbles in the slightest manner.Vampires are strong and quick, but don't have a lot of hitpoints. So you will need to play somewhat cautiously. They are, of course, very stealthy as they are quite comfortable moving about in complete darkness.Other changes for this release include the following:* Farmer Maggot and Lionheart are back in town (Thanks for pointing that out, Hugo)* Hydras now get fractional blows.* Angels start life with a mace.* The Servant of Khornes starting weapon of sharpness now actually has the sharpness attribute.* Golems get a "two handed" punching bonus when forgoing a shield.* Golems are stupid.* Fixed infinite loop bug when killing a pet that drops loot.
I pushed a woefully undertested interim release (3.0.5) in the usual place:* Stairs no longer collapse in the wilderness when using the ironman_rooms option. Previously collapsed stairs should now be available again (untested).* Wilderness now correctly prints town status when scrolling about.* Mirror Master spell stat fixed to Int. Mirror Concentration power now correctly detects current mirror status.* Some new lance ego types added for riding classes and a couple miscellaneous new artifacts added.In addition, I added some new Mauler goodies as requested (untested):* Dice boosted ego weapons and rand-arts now gain extra weight, but only for the Mauler.* 3 New mauler artifacts added. Also, the Mauler now has a good shot at some of the heavy monster king rewards. Finally, a couple of already heavy artifacts got a bit extra weight to make them useful for the mauler.
There are substantial changes to Archery and Extra Attacks in melee, so I think this update warrants a new minor release (3.0 -> 3.1). You may update savefiles if you like, but, as always, I recommend making a backup first. I definitely updated my characters from 3.0 to 3.1 without issue, but that doesn't mean I didn't mess up something obvious.So, what changed?[1] Archery:* The bow multipliers are now specified in the edit files rather than being inferred.* The game supports fractional bow multipliers.* Ego bows of Velocity get +.25x to the multiplier.* Extra Might now "dice boosts" the bow on item generation (Warning: Upgrading will only give +.75x for ego bows)* Extra Shots now always use the object's pval, and grant +.25 shots per plus (Warning: Upgrading will give a pval of 3 if one is not present).* Equipment combat bonuses now mostly apply to archery as well as melee. Exceptions include all gloves (except sniper), rings of combat (of course) and a few combat helms like Terror Mask and Hammerhand.* Pickup preferences now treat dice boosted shooters like dice boosted melee weapons, so you can see these at a glance in map mode or with the object list command (']').* Various shooting classes have had their extra shot values toned down.* Rings of Archery are less likely to grant both Extra Might and Extra Shots.[2] Melee changes* Extra attacks are now fractional, and you get +.5 attacks per round per plus.* Many items have had their pvals shuffled to compensate.[3] Device changes* Magic Mastery no longer gives device power. Instead, there is a new Device Power flag and it is currently extremely rare.* Magic Mastery can now spawn on some of the wizard amulets.* Wands of Rockets are more rare (and deeper)* Wands of Disintegrate are also more rare (and deeper).[4] Miscellaneous* Death Swords now gain fractional blows for extra attacks. The number of blows possible is open ended, but in general, the final form will have a limited number of extra attacks.* Death Sword retaliation for the Death Scythe form now only triggers 1 in 3.* Scouts got some minor adjustments and an improved character dump. Scout terrain effects to AC and Saving Throw now scale with level.* Mariliths get a usable starting weapon and their Enchantment power is now super cheap and easy (since they must eat corpses for food).* Monsters with Pass/Kill Wall will no longer spam spells when a player is hiding out of line of sight.* The out of bounds wilderness bug has been fixed.* Rand-art helms/crowns are more likely to gain ESP.
This release features the new ring player monster race which is hopefully stable, but not yet fully balanced.Changes:* Added new player monster race: The Ring. A start guide pops up automatically upon player birth which is hopefully detailed enough to get the player going. This race is the magical version of the death-sword, absorbing rings and jewelry for power and spells. Also, this race must 'ride' a suitable ring bearer in order to get about.* Various *Slay Foo* weapons now no longer automatically get the KILL_FOO brand. Warning: If you update a Death-sword, all of your KILL_FOO essences will get changed into SLAY_FOO essences!* Various ego changes, especially with regard to more flavorful activations.* Death-swords may no longer use town enchantment/reforging services.* Resists are a little harder to come by for Death-swords.
That's it, I'm going into hiding now until the comp starts. A final, final update before the comp is available:* Ring bearers no longer revolt in the town arena or battle areas.* The code for losing your current ring bearer had the saving throw logic backwards (So it was easier to keep a more difficult pet, and harder to keep a weaker pet).* Economical Mana, should you ever have achieved it, was not working!* Scrolls of Summon Pet now always bring forth a ring bearer. So if you are worried about an untimely revolt during the final battle with the Serpent, you can stock up on these. (Personally, I think it would be much more cool to win without a ring bearer!)* Finally, my limited playtesting led me to boost some of the damages slightly.
* Graphics now update when the doppleganger shapeshifts (tiles only)* Fixed wilderness bug that allowed '<' to escape awake monsters* Fearless personality now gives resistance to fear (again)* Various changes to the Time-Lord class including a more appropriate Old Castle reward. Time-Lords now use Wisdom as their casting stat.* Extra attacks on rings/gloves have been tentatively added back into the realm of possibilities (albeit, unlikely possibilities)* Teleportation is now possible in The Royal Crypt quest.* Fixed weaponmaster bug* Fixed bug generating encounters on the wilderness edge (Thanks, Hugo!)* Fixed necromancer bug that allowed dual wielding shields to retain the ability to touch opponentsFinally, numerous changes were made to the Ring race:* Rings start with electricity vulnerability and elec resistance is a bit harder to attain* Rings no longer gain automatic resists (cold, poison) or abilities (hold life)* Faramir activation supported* Ring levitation now applies to current ring bearer* Ring casting costs adjusted. The number of essences effects costs as well as damage. Economical Mana is no longer all or nothing, but gradually reduces costs as essences are found.* Rings can dig a bit better.* Added a few new ring bearers (sorry, no giants or Olympians yet ... I'm still considering these)
