Doppelgangers

[Xel]

This was briefly mentioned in the NG, I had had a similar idea earlier but never bothered to post it, as it was a long time ago;



Clones in the arena. besides monsters, we should also be able to fight 'ourselves', or clones of ourself. /narrate Xel walks up to the coliseum fight guy and says "I'd like to fight 2 Xel's", and some little wizard guy in the back room makes up some lil Xel clonies. (mwaha, I will take over the world! =p Heh.)



Would be cool to be able to fight certain quantities of other peoples clones too, but with their permission.



Though I think that the AI the doppelganger has should be randomly chosen from a list of all monster AI's out there. So you'll never really know what kind of a fight it'll be until you're in the ring.



Branching off of this idea, a new mystic ability; The ability to create temporary doppelgangers of a given exile.. the strength will only be a certain fraction of the strength of the exile from whom the doppelganger was based, but the amount increases as the cloner becomes more proficient.



The doppelgangers only last a certain length of time, or until their health runs out. They can last longer with increased training. And basically the doppelganger AI would be a follower kind of thing.. It should simply follow the nearest exile and help them out (ie fight monsters, heal exiles, whatever.)



Perhaps also the doppelganger should die if the mystic who cast the spell dies. I dunno, open for suggestions in that area.



Hows it look?



-Xel

[Twilth]

Or maybe... create illusions of an exile, to distract monsters? Since they're just illusions, they've got unlimited brick ability, but they can't fight. However, they could perhaps look a bit different, so smarter monsters (GM controlled for example) could ignore them.



-TWC Twilth

[Xel]

I mentioned a similar idea somewhere else as well, I don't think anyone responded to it, much less read it, but its there somewhere.. I think in some mystic ability thread here on the Sentinel. *shrug*



-Xel

[Eldon]

I mentioned a similar idea somewhere else as well, I don't think anyone responded to it, much less read it, but its there somewhere.. I think in some mystic ability thread here on the Sentinel. *shrug*



-Xel

I'm reading all of these, even if I don't respond to every one.



This idea has merit, but I think it would take a lot of thinking before being implemented. For instance, some choke points use lightning as the creature's main advantage in holding back the characters. If we introduce a decoy, especially a decoy, then the lightning advantage is negated or reduced.



I'm not saying this is a bad idea. But, it needs a bit more thought put into it.

[Mjollnir]

Or maybe... create illusions of an exile, to distract monsters? Since they're just illusions, they've got unlimited brick ability, but they can't fight. However, they could perhaps look a bit different, so smarter monsters (GM controlled for example) could ignore them.



-TWC Twilth

I think this is where somebody is supposed to chime in with, "unlimited detha bots cheepen those people who trained detha to be bricks"



And "People would just send in a bot to gather up and brick the enemies so people can peel and pick them off one by one"

[Xel]

Eldon, one of the primary ideas that I had going for the doppelganger thingy was not that it had unlimited detha, or that things couldn't harm it.. The health would be tied to the spirit of the caster. As the decoy gets hit, it deals a blow to that person mental energy/spirit, so it's limited to the point that the caster runs out of spirit. (And possible death resulting from the decoy getting hit too hard.)



I'll try and find my original idea if I can, though I don't think I know where it is.



-Xel



[edit:]

Okay, I couldn't find the post I made about this, so I'll hijack my own thread with what I thought I proposed somewhere;

Mystic abilit(y/ies), Exile illusion.

Ooc; Mystic casts a "spell" which makes a detached-spirit type version of the mystic himself. The mystic controls this spirit, and has no control over his real body until the incantation is ended or the illusion is destroyed. The illusions health is tied to the mystics spirit, and when all spirit is gone, the illusion poofs, and the mystic falls, due to a "spiritual crisis". (I believe thats what people fall to if a non-healer tries to use a moonstone, no?)

Basically the illusion is just good for locating people, scouting out snells, checking out things away from town while still being in town, etc. The illusion does not have any other statistics, and can do no damage to anything, nor has any items, can't pick up items, etc. The illusion can go through whatever pf barriers the normal exile would be able to. So basically it just moves around. Yippie.



IC; The mystic, having attained proficiency at mastering illusion-breaking and several other mental/spirit related arts, learns to project their spirit from their body and search things on to a spiritual plane of pudby, or something like that.



Idea #2 is like that outlined in my previous post, except that the illusion actually has all the statistics of the exile it was cast upon, or perhaps only a percent, based on the training of the mystic casting it. Perhaps it takes more training to accurately "summon" doppelgangers of high-rank exiles. The doppelganger would have some rudimentary AI such that they could help exiles. (Heal, Fight, Mystic, whatever.) Also, these illusions shouldn't be able to last forever, a time limit would be needed.



I couldn't explain the one above in IC language, but you get the idea. A number of different permutations could be derived from the two ideas outlined above. I'd be glad to respond to any other issues anyone has with the idea. Oh, yeah, and I bet this would be pretty hard to code, but what do I know? Heh.

[/edit]

[Hidden]

If the decoys are illusory, lightning won't target them, since they don't conduct electricity, right?

[Xel]

Don't warlocks aim the lightning, who are likely to be just as fooled by the illusion as anything else? Unless they're illusion breakers like our mystics. *shrug*



-Xel

[Xel]

Double post, bah.

[Mjollnir]

Basically the illusion is just good for locating people, scouting out snells, checking out things away from town while still being in town, etc. The illusion does not have any other statistics, and can do no damage to anything, nor has any items, can't pick up items, etc. The illusion can go through whatever pf barriers the normal exile would be able to. So basically it just moves around. Yippie.

Wasnt this one of the objections to letting the demo characters wander freely?

That people could bring out a demo character and wander into a dangerous snell to scout?

[Valtrim]

Wasnt this one of the objections to letting the demo characters wander freely? That people could bring out a demo character and wander into a dangerous snell to scout?

Right, except that a character using a trained skill to do the same thing has, presumably, paid the price for it. We don't want demo characters soloing the web cavern, but that doesn't mean that we should object to a highly-trained fighter doing so.



HWC for Valtrim

[Zephyrus]

Ok, quoting is being a pain and it's not giving me love, so bear with me. Eldon claims that the decoys would make things like lightning become to easy to remedy. There's an easy solution, make powerful decoys hard as hell to make. No healer can train for a day and then go rod lightning, it should be along the same principle. If it would be just as hard, if not harder, for a mystic to create a successful lightning rodding clone, as it would be for healers to rod, there would be a feasible idea. If anything, creating dopplegangers would be an entire sub-class or mystics that they'd have to practically devote their life to. Any idea is a bad one when it starts out to powerful, but if a mystic wants to spend thousands of ranks to create an uber decoy, more power to him.

[Aldernon]

Illusions, being the realm of the phantasmonomicon, are highly anticipated! There are quite a few people around w/ "full" phantasm training, books, and desire...maybe we could prod phantasm GM to take another look at 'em?



/action hopes!

[Hrothgar]

^^^^^

I was thinking pitchfork ald. I'm sure Cap'N stinky could fasion a mighty rusty one.

[Eldon]

Illusions, being the realm of the phantasmonomicon, are highly anticipated! There are quite a few people around w/ "full" phantasm training, books, and desire...maybe we could prod phantasm GM to take another look at 'em?



/action hopes!

Keep the hope alive! This has been on my list to readdress for some time. It's definitely after the island.



I've been really antsy about opening it, but I've promised 100% and I'm sticking to it. But that last 1% is killing me!