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Dungeonlike

Turn based roguelike with an advanced health system · By Sheriour

Meet the TOWER WIZARD!

A topic by Rakune created Nov 15, 2017 Views: 674 Replies: 5
Viewing posts 1 to 4
(1 edit)

Magic, so mysterious that it requires a lot of practice to manipulate it correctly for the advantage of the user. 

The Tower Wizard is a strong wizard capable of stopping even ogres for doing any kind of harm to him. His powers are far than enough to tear apart any enemy he might find in the dungeon, but that leaves exposes his weakness, a frail body that can't take too much damage before falling apart. Yet the Tower Wizard learned how to surprass this weakness and that's how he earned his title as Tower Wizard. A wizard who carries not one but two towers shields along with heavy armor plus powerful enchantments to make himself even more resilient against any kind of damage. 

The spells: 

Power Word - Crush

The main weapon of a Tower Wizard, which he uses to break the skulls of his enemies, as the wizard becomes stronger his power rises to the point nobody can stand this spell, which instantly kills anyone on his path. 




Power Word - Dissapear

Pretty self explanatory. The wizard whispers a word which forces the target to banish from his presence. 



Power Word - Mass Stop

This spell forces all the enemies inside a room or corridor to slow down and act only at half of they normal speed during five turns.


Power Word - Stop

Unlike the AOE spell this one focuses all of the caster's power against a single target, which results in a much stronger spell.


Power Word - Hurry

the opposite from the spell above, this spell imbues the caster with quickness for a long duration.


Power World - Invulnerability

The Tower Wizard enhaces his body to become even harder. Only a enemy with titanic strenght would be capable of causing harm to him. 


(Killed even the boss with a single hit from his spell)

Thanks for reading!. Have you made your own, custom classes yet?. 

Developer

I absolutely love that tanky armored mage build :D.

But killing the main boss with one hit? Poor orc. He just wanted to pillage and plunder in peace. But I guess thats what happens when you betray the horde, get a bounty on your head and attract attention of some elona-hardened wizards carrying multiple shields. He should have known better.

You played Elona? I'll never forget my mutant wizard with 8 hands, he had so many weapons. I wish races were customizable and you simply had points to add whatever limbs you wanted, and even ways to grow more limbs in game maybe with a malus to global speed. And maybe a way where enemies just escale by a % that lets you keep going. Have you ever played Tyranny? The customization for spells in that game would fit Dungeonlike really well. Here you have spells like Fire aura that enchants your weapons with fire. On Tyranny you had something like a "Weapon enchantment" as a base, and then you could enchant the weapon based on which elements you mastered. (Fire, force, cold, lighting, death, etc). It might be a good lead for the game, i like it so far!. 


Also, i'm not sure if its intended but i had always +100% chance to hit every bodypart of everyone, except enemy wizards which i barely had between 91-95% to hit they head. Yet when i used the spell shield on myself and tried to attack myself i had -90% chance to hit. Right now there aren't many enemies with magic powers to fight, but that shield would be the meta to defeat them. 

Developer (2 edits)

I consider Elona one of my main inspirations, along with ToME, Dwarf Fortress and some others. I liked the customisability of your character, all the wacky mutations, many ways of influencing the items (changing materials/making stuff +4 etc) and on top of that an open world with your own house/museum etc... On the other hand I played a fair bit of Dwarf Fortress, and I loved the damage system with all the limbs and armor pieces. Dungeonlike is meant to be (at some point in the future) a merge of my favourite features from these games, together with all the brilliant UI solutions that exist in ToME. 

Did not play Tyranny though, might need to take a look. My idea for spell customisation was based fully on my experience with Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, but your description of what Tyranny achieves  sounds very interesting. With respect to race customisation. I recall your comment from several months back with these suggestions, got this listed somewhere in "things to consider" list (which is a huge list...).

Hit chance for spells relies on spell power,  so while your spells start hitting harder, they also pierce through enemy  hex resist easier (that is defined by Intelligence stat + Concentration skill). I suppose you reached a level of power which left enemy stats far behind in the dust, which might mean I need to adjust some of this, especially for enemies later in the game. I might also introduce "partial resist" mechanic, as currently such "200 dmg crush" spell like yours either hits and kills the enemy instantly, or just misses entirely. There should be something in between I feel, or some additional layers of defense against magical attacks. Otherwise all bossess will be always wiped with ease by any mage character.

I think if you want to make a more realistic health system like in Dwarf Fortress you should start by making multiple hp pools. Tissue > Muscle > Tendon > Bone. 


And maybe add pain to the game, something like a pain threshold based on endurance and intelligence (Willpower). Someone with a pierced muscle will do less damage since his muscle can't properly work. But like in Dwarf Fortress when you attack someone each weapon should have different abilities. Maybe you could have daggers that do little damage but most of the damage is done internally. 

Lets say you  have 100 tissue hp, 50 muscle hp, 150 bone hp. and 10 tendon hp Then depending on the weapon they get a % to bypass the first tiers of natural armor. Swords and axes doing slashing damage does mostly tissue and muscle damage, while a hammer would harm the bone pretty much every time, but it still hurts the tissue and muscles slightly. And instead of a critical strke that simply does more damage you could make critical strikes hit tendons or maybe bypass more tissue and hit directly depending on where are they aiming. 

Some examples for injuries.

Damage is reduced by the % of missing hp on the bone of a limb. If your arm is shattered you shouldn't be able to attack with full force, now when its broken you can even do anything without screaming in pain.

Speed attack reduced by the % of missing hp on the muscle. The only thing that lets you move your arms are your muscles, and if they're cut in half you can't expect to move your arm like nothing happends. 

Now tendons are more of a lucky strike, if you cut that you're making someone unable to move his arm at all, Pretty hard to hit unless you're either skilled and now where to aim, or just lucky when you swing your axe. 

As for armor threshold it could work based on the % of the missing hp. The more tissue you lose the more chances to hit the muscles and the bone. 

Not sure how hard this would be to implement, but it's mostly math and numbers. 

But then you could also have something like this. 

Head - Tissue - Muscle -  eye - eye - skull - brain

Upper Chest - Tissue - Muscle - Ribs - Lung - Lung - Hearth 

Lower Chest - Tissue - Muscle -  Stomach - Kidneys - Guts

Groin - Tissue - Muscle (Pain x3)

Legs/arms - Tissue - Muscle - Bone - Tendon

Cut eye = -30%-ish accuracy loss. 

Pierced lug = -50% stamina regen

Pierced stomach = Lots of bleeding

Pierced Kidney = Pain + blood

Pierced guts = Pain + pain + blood.

Also having internal organs hurt should automactly cause internal bleeding (Which i seen in the game very rarely). 

Another way to see it could be the way Rimworld uses bodyparts. For example you have two eyes that gives +50% accuracy each. If you lose one, you lose the bonus from the eye. (Which was also easier to implement having extra eyes and they already had bonuses). So instead of implementing a system where you have to give a malus to someone based on every part that is hit, you give them a bonus based on which parts they have. And from there the more parts, the merrier. 

Developer

Oh wow, bloody Itch.io did not bother to notice me about your answer. With the corner of my eye I noticed "hey, there shouldn't be 5 posts under that topic!". How unreliable, I assumed it just gives me notice of everything... So there goes a month-delayed response:

With respect to how complex the health system is/will be I definitely want to hit that sweet balance spot between super-simple "one hp bar" approach and DF's "your thumb's fingernail was broken" approach.  It has to be simple enough to allow good UI readability without going into menus (at the moment you can see your entire health state on the bottom panel, and that needs to remain possible). Yet it has to be complex enough to allow multiple approaches to combat and different handling of various enemies.

Oh and many weapons already have their own specific attacks like stabs, flatside attacks, arced swings etc.

Now, I like the mechanics of the first solution and I think some of it could make it into the game even without additional health types. The game already features two, which is Tissue (which could be understood as tissue+muscle, pretty much all the "meaty" stuff) and Structure (which can be understood as bones, but for future enemies like stone golems, it's... wel it's structure :D). So I like the idea of influencing combat performance through missing HP - at the moment you need to cut tissue to 0% or damage structure dramatically to break the bone, but otherwise, an enemy with 5% tissue health on his arm still hits the same as he did with 100%, which is rather silly. That could definitely get some upgrades. Also, instead of having a dedicated hp pool for tendons, having them damaged could be a Condition which arises in certain situations (eg. critical strikes with slashing weapons) and it would block the body part from use altogether (much like having your bone broken works at the moment).