CF: attacktype: "mental"

[David Andrew Michael Noelle <dave@Straylight.org>]

    I'm continuing to experiment with AT_MENTAL, and it's taken rather a
different turn, so I wanted to update everyone on where I am now and see
what you think of this new direction.

    AT_MENTAL is now an attacktype modifier, like AT_MAGIC.  If included
with anything else, it signifies that the attack if mental in origin i.e.,
it's all in your head.  The victim gets a saving throw to ignore the
attack.  This allows things like illusionary attacks which do no damage if
the target realizes it's an illusion.  If AT_MENTAL stands alone, it calls a
seperate "brain damage" function that determines various special effects.
    If the victim is not immune and not undead, a contest of wills occurs. 
The levels and Int stats of the attacker and defender are compared and
success or failure depends on the result of a weighted roll of the dice.  A
significantly negative result means your opponent overpowers you and turns
the spell back at you.  Undead are immune to mental effects, but are quite
good at reflecting them, so don't try Mind Control on a vampire.

    If you win the contest of wills, what happens next depends on the
particular spell.  The spells I'm working on are:

- Mind Stab

     Mind Stab is a rather cheap spell that hits one creature you point at,
and you must hit the creature's head.  The spell passes right through
creatures' bodies until it hits something in the head.  The effect is
random:  30% confusion, 20% fear, 25% slow, 15% paralyze, 10% blind.  The
victim also takes some damage and loses a few spell points.

- Mind Scream

    Mind Scream is a cone-area Mind Stab, and is much more expensive.  Since
you're hitting more creatures, there's also an increased chance that one of
them will reflect the attack.

- Sleep

    A 1st level cone spell that puts its victims into a deep sleep.  They
will not wake up on their own until the spell expires.  However, if they
take any damage, they awaken immediately.  Note: there is no specific
immunity to sleep.  (Yet.)

- Mind Control

    The victim becomes your golem for the duration of the spell.  I'm not
sure yet how to handle this when a monster reflects it.  Maybe the caster
would just suffer a Mind Stab attack.  What would Crossfire do if a player
accidentally turned himself into a monster - temporarily?

- Thought Shield

    Grants the caster protection from mental attacks.  All damage that has
the AT_MENTAL modifier is cut in half.  For attacks that are only AT_MENTAL,
protection doubles your defense strength.

- Forget
- Mind Steal

    These two are on hold for now.  Monsters don't have spell lists to
forget spells from, and most don't have any skills to steal.  Some of their
flags, like being able to use a weapon or a bow, translate into skills, but
I want to find a cleaner way to handle this.  When the proposed known-spell
objects are implemented, this will be a whole lot easier.

    Note that none of these spells are particularly effective ways to kill
anything.  They're intended to disable creatures without doing much damage,
in the spirit of moving away from hack'n'slash, but if there's enough of a
level and intelligence difference, a powerful caster can probably kill with
Mind Stab.
    For offensive spells, I'm considering these:

- Illusion

    Invoked with the name of another spell, an illusory version of the named
spell is cast.  Example: invoke illusion large fireball - a large fireball
is cast, but it has the AT_MENTAL flag set so that a) anyone who makes a
saving throw takes no damage and b) non-living objects are unaffected.
    Problem: How to determine which spells can be cast as illusions and
which cannot.  Fireball, Ice Storm, Ball Lightning, and Magic Bullet, but
not Detect Magic or Destruction.

- Phantom

    Invoked with the name of a monster, an illusion of that monster is
created as your golem.  Like Illusion, the Phantom golem has AT_MENTAL added
to its attacktype, so creatures who disbelieve it, or have no mind with
which to believe or disbelieve, take no damage.  You can only create
phantoms of creatures less than half your level.
    Problem: Once a creature has disbelieved the Phantom, it shouldn't have
to make any further checks for that Phantom.

-- 
            -Dave Noelle,                 dave@Straylight.org
            -the Villa Straylight,  http://www.straylight.org
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