Dungeon Master Forum

As mentioned on the editing forum, some
provision for dungeon creatures to be friendly
could be cool.
I tried giving a monster ATTACK_METHOD_HEAL
but it didn't seem to do anything.
If this worked you could have a creature who
when you went up to it, would heal someone in the party.
You could confine it to a certain area with monster teleporters
or you could just let it follow the party around healing them!
That could possibly result in it blocking in dead ends where
you would have to kill it though

The next stage along this line of thinking is having a monster
which follows you, but then attacks enemy monsters when encountered.

Any other ideas what a friendly creature might do?

Can I add a bit to this as well.

Would it be hard to make the attacks generic for all. So that monsters could freeze the party and heal the party by taking out user input for a while or something but still processing the AI of the monsters.

Also, how difficult would it be to allow a authors to create their own attacks with a min-max damage (that could be a negative for a healing value) with an effect, sound, range, recharge time etc and apply it to anything you liked for an extra bit of bendablitly

It would also be really great for creatures to have properties that could be accessed or changed by item or game triggers (for example):-

Hostile= true/false
This would allow the monster to not attack the player (but move around), you could even give them the ability to ATTACK_METHOD_HEAL and make them hostile when you go near them so when in range you get healed.

Moves=true/false
Allows the monster to just stand motionless (like the shop guards in DM2) until provoked (triggered by another item/event)

Any thoughts?

This second one is kinda possible already, you create a clone of the grey lord so you have a harmless creature not moving, and 1hp
Chest a hostile version of the monster same graphics but based on another creature) inside this and bang - you attack him and you are in for trouble

For friendly monsters, i think what we need are some hard coded variants not usually present in DM. Current monsters are fine as long as they can have a zero attack, or some friendly versions coded. Such as actually generate text as an 'attack' You could make it 'hello' 'would you liek to buy a weapon' 'the weather is nice' or 'beware! watch out'

Gigglers are the best model for general creatures/people. They sometimes come up to the party, other times wander off.
Scorpions, funnily enough, are also good. They are quite fast, but tend to lose interes if you aren't directly in their line of sight.

The types that don't exist are:
Dedicated followers - ones that have a high perception and will follow the party anywhere, but perhaps have a high temporary fear, so if you need to do soemthing you can war cry them out of the way but they will come back soon
Ignorant - don't care about a party at all and don't really detect them or have a low detection radius (liek the rhino things in DM2) and will simply wander around aimlessly. Good for background creatures, general populous, etc.

As ssaid earlier, you don't really need to make any of these have a hostility trigger, simply if they naturally drop a hostile version of themselves on death.

Other effects can also be generated by backgroudn mechanics not ocde, so it would really depend on if poeple feel that is too complex

So you put the monster (hostile) within (same Square?) the friendly one (grey lord) and set the grey lord to 1 hitpoint. When he dies, his graphic comes alive, and kicks you're ass

or have i missed the point?

Not the same square, but you can put monsters inside other monsters as you would a key, or other items
You kill the cloned grey lord (passive guard), it dies, and on death drops say a cloned stone golem (hostile guard) that will now chase you around and whack seven kinds of stone from you

OOh, another one for the guide. Like it.. Thanks Wuuf

Hey, you could implement statues that come alive using this trick... I like it! Have you actually tried this in RTC Beowuuf? Isn't there a delay between killing the original and the clone appearing? Plus you'd get the 'dust cloud' too which might look a bit odd...

Just tried it: you can't kill the Grey Lord in RTC....

hmm.. I dunno if you can give them 0 attack.. but even if you did wouldn't they walk up to you and do the attack anyway even though it did no damage. I think this is something that has to be introduced as there are a number of situations in DMII where this comes up.

moo

Ah, of course...stupid grey lord and his invulnerability!
Well then, we need a grey lord like vulnerable non-moving monster in the engine too : )
And no, i hadn't tried that speifically in RTC, thoguh I did think abotu the statue already (you attack it it moves to get you, you move somewhere and trigger a damage tile so it comes to lfe).

Actually ,the monster drop has the opposite problem from what i've found , it happens too quickly The monsters dropped are liekly to get damaged by the same thing that hit the original - so I have had two series or creatures killed in one fireball! This was a few versions back though...

And for the zero attack, true, it would still count as an attack - but if your attack and normal graphics are the same (like the ruster) then who would know : )
You could have it staggered so the monster usually does its zero attack most of the time, and maybe once in a while does it's 'hello' or 'heal' attack...or perhaps a steal item

for the statue. Could you not make a monster impervious to conventional weapons and then make a spell activated tile to release the monster(monster blocking forces thingies)? so if you fire a spell it comes to life but you swing your weapons and you get nothing. I dunno.. I'm just talking out of my butt.

As for the monster drop.. well the carrier would have like 1 or two hitpoints yeah? And the other would have it's real amount. So if it were damaged would not that make sense? Since from a user standpoint you just tossed a fireball at this guy and he should be hurting. Pissed, but hurting.

moo

It would be a very important addition to RTC to have friendly creatures, for this would provide dungeon designers with many more options of implementing story elements into the game. I strongly support that suggestion.

This can be done with V0.38

For the dungeon I have in mind though, I'd need to expand this idea a bit more: Can creatures be not only neutral, but actually be allies that attack other monsters in a future version?