Dungeon Master Forum

There has been a thread about this long ago in an early state of RTC developement, but since there had been far more important aspects of RTC to be programmed, had met little response so far. Since RTC is by now pretty far developed I would like to bring them up anew.

I would like to see implemented one or two of the few features, that EOB actually improved compared to DM:

In FTL-DM the off-hand was pretty useless except for holding empty flasks and ammunition. As far as I know George already has improved that somewhat by making sure that off-hand shields do increase the armour value and allow stat-boosting weapons like some staffs, wands, the mace of order, the executioner, etc.., to impose their stat-boosting effect even when in the off-hand. Yet while this does allow for useful combinations like shield&sword, shield&staff/wand, sword&staff/wand, staff&wand, etc.., the only combination that comes close to useful 2-weapon-fighting is mace of order + executioner.

I would like to have real 2-hand usage. It would be not that difficult to be implemented. Just split the 4 large action hand icons vertically in half so you get 8 smaller icons, with 4 in the first row for the main hand and 4 in the second row for the off-hand.

No matter whether this idea should be supported by others or not, I would also like to have a slight improvement of the weapons interface implemented: I would like to be allowed to trigger weapons immediately with a right click on the weapon's action icon (on the right side) or item-icon (in the hands on top of the screen). The weapon should then simply execute the last action that has been manually chosen, or the last action of its action list if it hadn't been used before.


Aside from that, there once had been a topic where many players agreed that the ninja is a somewhat unbalanced, that is largely useless, class, that many players used to train only to boost their fighters' stats. This has already been adressed by George I think by increasing ninja missile damage. Yet, the second problem, that of having to bother with picking up ammunition all the time to refill the tiny quiver hasn't been adressed so far. I would like to have 2 things implemented to amend that, one pretty simple and one rather complicated:
As far as I know there is a DM2-like quiver available for custom dungeons. While such a quiver would be out-of-place in O-DM, I would be very well-placed in the RTC-DM dungeon. Please, George, can you have a quiver added to either the tile of the spell-book, or better to the tile of one of the bows?
More difficult to implement: If a character with a ranged weapon and empty off-hand or quiver could automatically pick up befitting ammunition ammunition into his quiver, that'd be absolutely great. Characters with bows would take slayers first, arrows secondly, characters with slings would take rocks first, both filling the (free) off-hand first and only then the quiver, while characters with throwing weapons would fill the quiver first and the off-hand only if it is free but the quiver is full, taking the best throwing weapon first.

I would like to modify one of the above suggestions: Have appropriate actions triggered by right-clicking the weapons' action icons, but if right-clicking a weapon's item icon in a character's hand, have it exchanged with the weapon in the belt/sheath/quiver. Imagine you're a warrior who wants to sheath his diamond edge and unsheath his vorpal blade. This would require an action represented by such a right-click, but you wouldn't have to look into your backpack and avert your eyes from your foe, wouldn't you?


Beside that I would like to add another suggestion: Instead of having a maximum of 3 actions available when left-clicking a weapon's action icon, have "warcry" added permamently to that actions box. I mean, why should a paladin (fighter/priest) carrying the shield of lyte and the mace of order or a theurge (wizard/priest) carrying the staff of Manar and the Theowand be unable to utter a warcry while doing so?

After quietly pushing for rear attack ability aka polearms I did mention two handed weapons. Allowing the designer to have a two handed flag which would disallow the offhand from holding objects.

2c worth

With a few small additions all of the quiver stuff could be done using existing dungeon mechanics.

The idea of menus has been asked for to get more than three attacks - it would be up to you to create your own RTC based DM with this option I guess

Two handed attacks were fun in DM2, but then I've never rated DM2 for long term playability, part of it being the intense damage you could inflict two handed. Weapon delays were there for a reason, i think adding the two handed attacks to original dm would unbalance the engine we are all used to. Especailly add the instant attack option you are asking for, and DM becomes liek an FPS with the ability to inflict massive instant amounts of damge and spells. (8 sets of damge in as many quick mose clicks)

The ammo picking option maybe has some merit, but does dumb the engine down - the idea is you should equip the character and prepare, not just toss around a bow and random ammo in the packs and it will all sort itself out. Again FPS gettign to shoot rather than RPG use your weapons and items intelligently

Another one: The magic map and its spells has been one of the very few improvements of FTL-CSB compared to FTL-DM. While it would of course be out of place in RTC's O-DM dungeon, I absolutely think that it should be implemented in RTC's RTC-DM-dungeon. The 4 spells should be also activated there so you can cast them in order when you have gathered enough of the spell rune scrolls that include amongst others their runes too.