Barren Realms MUD

I remember asking about this on the last forum, but don't remember the conclusion...what was the decision on mobs casting as illithids?

I'd love to have the ability to add in psyonic monsters, and illithid spells are just so fitting for the icky slimy tentacled goobies that go bump in the night.

'Sides, I'd love to have a mob that could mental barrier itself and cast death field...might even make it a challenge that players would hesitate to attack, rather than just stocking up on one or two extra grails. ~_^

oh, i like this idea. probably be alot of work, but i definately like it. actually it would be kinda neat to pick and choose exactly what spells the mobs can cast, not just certain types like mage, cleric, etc, but once again that would probably take alot of work

The latter would probably be three loads of coding, but you'd never need to do mob spell coding again...just tack on any new spells to the end of the array.

The first would be nice, in my opinion, and only fair since mobs can be elves and druids.

Plus, I think DB said he had preliminary work done on this?

Dive was working on a series of specs, many of which are in - love_<race>, cast_druid, cast_elf. He had mentioned creating one which would cast illithid spells, but I don't know what's happening with that right now.
As far as revamping to make the code have mobs cast area-determined spells - i.e. each mob gets assigned what spells they should cast by the area builder - that would be an extraordinary amount of work for what I see as little gain. We already have specs which give a good range of selection, depending on what you want to do. If you want something beyond what they currently do, I recommend talking with Slart about adding a spec for you. If it's a decent one, he might even do it.

about spec_illithid, i think dive didn't make it because spells which he wanted like death field wouldn't work against a player when being cast by mob.

I think that particular one does work, now, actually... if a mob casts death field, it hits all the players in the room, not the mobs. Might be time to look into making spec_illithid again....

Most of the spells have been fixed. The issues were Death Field and Ultrablast. (Although I would LOVE to throw illusion in there but that would be a problem for numerous reasons).

It's pretty much written.

And, btw, any mob can have mental barrier now. The builder's guide just doesn't have the required number in it.

*shudder* is it just me, or does everybody have the same nasty suspicion that certain mobs are gonna become a LOT more difficult in the near future...

It's ok i get the vibe too
But its just like any other time. Theyl keep making mobs, and we keep finding ways to kill them. It gives us something to do

This isn't a reply on so much the spec_illithid, but on the idea of racial weapons and (i think in another post) of racial merchants. Is there any mobs which are aggro towards players of only a certian race, or likewise a weapon/armor which inflicts/reduces more damage towards/from avians than they do elves. I don't know how probably any of this is (or the likely fact that it would be wanted) but wouldn't it make more sense for certian races to "hate" other races more. IE if The Underdark i know that drows hate illithids, illithids hate drows and dwarves since they believe they are the supreme...ehhh... "rulers" of the underdark. I know that the immortals have been trying to keep segregation down to a bare minimum in BR so that no one feels unloved or left out, but this could be an idea on the rp factor.

there are race-hating mobs. take a visit to the impling village sometime, or to clanghammer/vessendil. those are the only 3 lowlevel areas that i know to contain race haters, although there may be others that i'm not aware of.

ok thanx didn't know about those and will take a trip out there to those places what about the racial weapons? are there any of those in the realms??

No. It wouldn't actually seem to be particularly useful except in an anti-player sense. (I.e. there really aren't many mobs that correspond to the pc races, so weapons that do more damage to pc races would only hurt the pc's without giving them additional play options.) In addition, it would require some more fields, etc. in the area files that we don't currently have, somewhat like what dive mentioned about the timing code in the races forum.

ok and that was the only reason I was thinking for it, purely for anti-player type stuff ie the arena