Dungeon Master Forum

Hi all

I want to have monsters in my dungeon that turn characters to stone.

The way I'd like it to work is like an alternative death. The character dies, all their items drop to the ground, and instead of the usual Linflas Bones you get a Linflas Statue. Then you can take the Linflas Statue to an alternative Altar of Vi to have him turned back to flesh again.

So it mimics the mechanics for death exactly. Basically I want RTC to have two "death" routines, one if you're killed by a normal monster and one if you're killed by a turn-to-stone monster, two kinds of bones, two kinds of dead character graphic in the party window at the top of the screen (skull and crossbones or statue), and two Altar of Vi routines for ressurection.

Is there any way to get RTC to do that?

Not with existing mechanics, this would need some modifications to the engine. There is currently no way to intercept a character's death and do something different with it.

Better to put this in RTC suggestions, but as GG seems to have stopped work on RTC I doubt this will be added.

Curses! But thanks for the answer.

Back to the drawing board.

I could always fall back on ACTION_PARTY_SLOW but that seems a bit lame for a petrification effect...

Has anyone come up with a decent way of handling petrification?

but why MY bones ?

You might be able to fake it by returning a character to a mirror. They wouldn't be dead though, they would be completely removed from the party, but you can leave their objects behind -- and maybe use some conditional magic to also create a statue of the character on the same tile. Maybe if you can make it movable you can also find a way of moving it onto a magic tile that "de-petrifies" and replaces the character back in the party from the mirror.

linflas wrote:but why MY bones ?

Lol!

Gambit37 wrote:You might be able to fake it by returning a character to a mirror. They wouldn't be dead though, they would be completely removed from the party, but you can leave their objects behind -- and maybe use some conditional magic to also create a statue of the character on the same tile. Maybe if you can make it movable you can also find a way of moving it onto a magic tile that "de-petrifies" and replaces the character back in the party from the mirror.

Hmm. Thinking that through...

Wouldn't the character petrified always be the party leader? I'd need some way of randomising that.

Edited to add: It could get really confusing if more than one character were petrified at once.

Mon Ful Ir wrote:Wouldn't the character petrified always be the party leader? I'd need some way of randomising that.

No idea, I'm just speculating. Thought I think conditional relays should allow a character of your choice to be returned to a mirror.

Can you not have the attack flip a fractionally delayed relay that will turn any party bones on the tile infront (party square) to a stone statue?

beowuuf wrote:Can you not have the attack flip a fractionally delayed relay that will turn any party bones on the tile infront (party square) to a stone statue?

Now that's clever. I'll experiment with that.

Hmm. I'd need a mechanic that clones the bones of a specific party member if they're to be resurrectable.

Mon Ful Ir wrote:Hmm. I'd need a mechanic that clones the bones of a specific party member if they're to be resurrectable.

Yep, this is the overall general problem with trying to intercept death. If you're allowing Reincarnation, which allows players to rename their characters, this is going to be virtually impossible.

I'll experiment with Gambit's proposed mechanic and see if I can make that work.

After all, I've got these lovely new cockatrice and medusa graphics from Gambit's ripping exercises, and I'm itching to use them!

Oh, that attribute can't be made to follow a convert of cloned bones? That's a shame

Does the attribute not still follow the character name, even if the character is reincarnated? So don't you still get 'wuuf' bones even if they are called beowuuf bones? It so, it would be long winded, but is there a way to query whose bones were dropped, have a counter be set with a hardcoded number (like 5 = wuuf), and then when you go to thaw the bones, that number is the attribute of the statue and is used to correct the correct version of the bones again?

Gosh... if that can be done, I don't have the coding skills to do it

And, actually, a player could exploit their way around Gambit's idea by playing the level with only one character. RTC won't drop the last character from the party, will it?

I'll think about it some more, but I might need to trouble George.

Not so much coding as relays and counters

Umm, the character retirement option wouldn't let you retire the last character...I don't htink

Try it and see

Sussed it! I can differentiate between different people's bones.

Beowuuf's idea will work.

woohoo!

Blimey! Coo! Wow! etc.

Gambit37 wrote:as GG seems to have stopped work on RTC I doubt this will be added.

Nope - I'm still here

Just a brief pausette in development whilst real life takes over for a few months; normal service will return shortly...

Good pause or bad pause?

George Gilbert wrote:Nope - I'm still here

Just a brief pausette in development whilst real life takes over for a few months; normal service will return shortly...

Woohoo!

Err--coding petrification this way is (a) fairly obviously a fudge and (b) a royal pain in the buttox if you allow a large party. Any chance of support for an extra death mechanic?

I just basically need to be able to clone "death" to "death_petrify" with alternative dead-character graphics and alternative bones.