Friday, December 16, 2011

Revised professional abilities for thieves

After yesterdays great suggestions on thieving abilities I have refined them somewhat. Here's the revised list (and BTW you still might want to vote JADE to the top as the favorite roguelike of the year on the right of this blog ;-) ):

  • search for traps, secret doors, etc. automatically with every move at level 1 if thief is the main profession, do so only 30% of the time if chosen as a secondary profession while multi-classing
  • increase the carrying capacity for small items (those of small size or less or of a weight of 10 stones or less) by 90% at level 3 (thieves are good at pilfering lots of small goods)
  • receive double the usual DV bonus from the dodge skill at level 6
  • move at only 80% energy cost starting at level 10
  • increase the damage multiplier on critical hits while backstabbing by +2 at level 15
  • as a treasure seeker double the amount of treasure found in dungeons at level 21
  • pickpocket anything from an opponents stuff list (independent of size of weight) at level 28
  • become invisible when adjacent to walls at level 36
  • be able to teleport by spending 80% of your power point total at level 50
  • +40 to speed at level 75
  • pickpocket any equipped item from an opponent at level 100
More stealing related powers, speed bonus later but a lot more powerful and a kind of prerequisite for the level 100 ability which should be at least somewhat cool and will not be reproducable by anything else in the game. And it should allow for some pretty funny moments ("You pilfer the Sceptre of Ultimate Chaos Godhood from Andor Drakon while he is trying to smash you with it. Andor Drakon appears to be truly surprised...").

Love the idea and since I saw "Puss in Boots" yesterday the ability also seems to be strangely appropriate.

16 comments:

  1. It's coming along quite well Thomas! I love your updates. They make me excited again each time lol :) It's like Christmas all year round ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good job, that's genuinely a set of powers it'd be worth going full thief for. I'm still curious about how the teleport ability will work in practice - 80% of max PP, or current PP? Does it have teleport control intrinsic to it? Can you pick a general compass direction to teleport in? In short, will this be any different to the spell.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wonder if Cat Lord was thief or assassin.Imagine he could join party with you*dreams

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sounds good, but "increase the damage multiplier on critical hits while backstabbing by +2 at level 15" sounds more like an assassin's power(if there were assassins, anyway).

    I completely do not understand "be able to teleport by spending 80% of your power point total at level 50". The thief should not be a magical class IMHO.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ^ Think of it as... automatically moving invisible againts walls to get to your current destination ;) in the blink of a smoke bomb

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Dirk Gently
    An epic thief might be able to disappear once in a while.
    Also its a profesional ability so it is not a spell. We could debate how to explain this ability, but IMHO it suits the thief class :)

    A way of reworking this ability would be uber-invisibility for X turns (can't be detected) and maybe a speed boost.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Just one question: are you going to implement classes (or at least certain class abilities, which is probably more sound) in NPCs, too?

    In other words, will a high-level thief – or any other PC, for that matter – be able to encounter a High Master of Shadow Assassins who is invisible when next to a wall?

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Staszek: Each being in JADE already has one or more classes. What I so far haven't done is worked on the AI that allows them to utilize the non-automatic powers. There's a lot to do in that area but for now I'd prefer to implement all the basics and then tune up the opposition ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. This sounds great, thank you for the answer. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. With double DV dodge bonus on lvl6 and +50%DV dodge bonus on fighter lvl3 won't it be a bit too easy toget a ridiculous amount of DV early on?

    ReplyDelete
  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Regarding the thief teleport ability, instead of using PP how about using satiation points? I.e., using the ability makes you hungrier, with the caveat that you cannot use it if it would cause you to starve to death.
    This would differentiate it from a Wizard's teleport spell. The Wizard uses genuine mystical power, but the thief uses a physical ability that in effect *seems* like magic.

    ReplyDelete
  13. That is a capstone I can get behind. It's not that it's mechanically powerful, it's that I could see myself taking 100 levels of thief just to see what I can steal.

    Though honestly, if you ask me, if you stop getting things at level 100, that's the level limit to me, even if you could technically get level 101. Why would anyone want to, except to spite me saying it, or check if the game crashes at level 255 or something? I'm guessing most players will treat 100 as the de facto limit.

    @5318008: It IS magic. As in, it's supernatural. It's impossible for people to physically stop being in one place and start being in another without moving there. Whether the thief's ability is supernaturally fast movement, or actual supernatural teleportation, it's still supernatural.

    That's not to say your suggestion doesn't have merit. Even if the ability uses saturation instead of power points, it's still supernatural, just fueled by a different kind of energy. But apart from all that, the merit I would see is that compared to the spell it would then be a DIFFERENT Teleport rather than an essentially inferior one (assuming the Teleport spell, if possessed at level 50, would cost much less PP than 80% of a level 50+ thief's PP), with different advantages and disadvantages, depending on how food is handled in JADE. It would still be an excellent fit for a high-power class power awarded to a non-spellcasting class.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I think using PP to teleport is better idea,because of:
    1)It's suposed to be the last resort\trump card,but you most likely will have enough food to replenish your nutrition then you will use that again relatively fast one after another.On the other hand potions of restore energy aren't that common.
    2)if you'll use up 80% of your nutrition value you can be pushed to the verge of death,which is highly undesirable,right?
    3)and besides,what's thief need PP for anyway then?
    PS:sorry for my english, please

    ReplyDelete
  15. I'm very happy about the current abilities, especially lvl 100 :) Maybe the teleportation could be a once in x turns-ability if people don't like it now? Also, how about making the lvl 75 speed bonus accumulating, as in +1-3 points of speed per level up? That way it would be appealing to develop even beyond a lvl 100 thief as the speed bonus would keep getting bigger. This would though make thieves quite overpowered if other classes won't have similar accumulating powers, like hp bonus for fighters (hint hint).

    ReplyDelete
  16. This is all very exciting indeed! Class abilities are one of the things I really love about games like this; Every handful of levels you gain there's something that opens up a whole new fun aspect of the game.

    I'm also a bit unsure about the Thief teleport ability though... I can just imagine that by the time I get a Thief to level 50 I'll already have a few wands and scrolls of teleportation, and possibly even have found a spellbook for it. That would be a bit of an anti-climax since my last class ability was obtained 14 levels ago, and I've now got another 25 before the next one! Still very cool to be able to teleport almost on demand though... Maybe I should just zip it ;)

    ReplyDelete