Improving enemies

Following up what I was saying in Drocis' thread, I was planning to make my own post with some ideas -- some of this is going to be redundant obviously, If you've read that thread.

SKELETONS

- This is a good example of how certain enemies can have resistances and weaknesses. Because skeletons are bloodless, blade skills like Rend shouldn't cause them to bleed. On the other hand, because they're brittle, bludgeons and shield bashes should do extra damage to them. The more you break their bones the more they'll die and stay dead. Also, being both bloodless and fleshless, they shouldn't be affected by standard poisons.

- Certain skeletons might be able to re-animate themselves after the player has defeated them and knocked them to the ground -- or otherwise, might be re-animated by a necromancer or lich who appears with them. Skeletons re-animating themselves has appeared in games like Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, Ultima: Pagan, and re-animating necromancers are in Path of Exile. It adds a fun element to the game, because its an extra bit of danger. How this could work is that in addition to having health, skeletons could either have a maximum health or an extra durability stat, like weapons and armor do. When their health wears down to zero, they collapse to the ground. A few moments later, the bones start to stir and re-animate, or they get re-animated by their companion. Killing them, however, either lowers their maximum health or durability. Once these go down to zero, the skeleton stays slayed. A separate durability stat, rather than maximum health, may work better, simply because it would give bludgeons a chance to do more permanent damage. Someone bashing a skeleton would be able to slay him faster simply because when his bones break, he's less able to re-animate. When fallen, a player has a choice on whether to pick the weapons off the skeleton -- to either disarm him, with the chance of running into danger, or run to get a safe distance.

- Skeletons would be much more interesting with a variety of equipment, which showed on their models using paperdolling. In addition to just rusted swords, some would have rusted shields, and some would have rusted helmets. Others might have leather caps or wooden shields. Some in temples and tombs might have tarnished gold swords, shields, and helmets. More powerful skeleton warriors in the game might have flaming swords, and archers flaming arrows. Please let enemies be paperdolled! It would add so much to the game. In addition to more varieties of equipment showing on the enemy models, and being able to see what they're using on their person, you could also strip their corpses naked, and the corpses would stay there for a while.

SPIDERS

- Spiders, and other enemies in the game, might be able to combine their power in groups, by swarming and doing a knockdown of the player -- pushing him to the ground and giving a chance of stun. The number required to do this would depend on the size of the enemy. For example, it could be two large spiders, four regular spiders, and eight small spiders.

- Other than just spitting a web at the player like a Root spell, a spider could also use the webs around him as a tactic. A spider might corner a player and push him towards a web that's right behind him. The webs of course, might be able to be slashed, or burned down. Spiders also might use a similar tactic with other spiders. Suddenly a spider might appear in front of a player, and when he turns around he would find another one creeping in from behind him.

- More powerful, venomous spiders might have poisonous or toxic blood, meaning when they're made to bleed, the blood hurts the player. In a lot of folklore, certain monsters have had poisonous or toxic blood -- for example, dragons.

- Spiders should be able to crawl on different surfaces, like on walls or upside down; this would mean they could crawl out from beneath ledges and surprise the player with a swarm. This was done very effectively in Path of Exile, where in a certain dungeon a room appeared to be clear until spiders started swarming out from under the ledges. They could also crawl out from crevices, or come from the ceiling, where a player would only notice if he were paying attention. Small, baby spiders, could also burst from cracking eggs in certain situations.

- Certain spider webs could have a chance of having desiccated corpses, with loot.

WOLVES, BEARS

- Wolves could use similar battle tactics as spiders, such as cornering or surrounding a player, and combining their strength.

- If there are wolves nearby but out of vision, an injured wolf could howl to get his comrades to help.

- Wolfs and other animals, like bears, could also have cubs. Part of their motives might be to defend the cubs.

ELEMENTALS

- Something that would create a feeling that wild elementals are a living part of the world would be "young" elementals. These would be early, formative versions of the elementals, having just arisen from their surroundings, and they would look the part. For example, as a fire elemental has the build of a woman, a young fire elemental would have the build of a young girl. A scene in which the regular aged fire elementals occur would also randomly have the younger versions, creating more of a sense of variety. On the other end of the spectrum, there could be old/ancient elementals. These would be ones that have existed for a long time and are extremely large and dangerous.

- Elementals might have the ability to disappear into and reappear from the elements in which they're born. A fire elemental disappearing into fire, or appearing out of it; or an earth elemental digging itself into the earth, or spawning from it.

- Something that came to mind was something like the para-elementals and quasi-elementals from D&D. Para-elementals are fusions of two elements: ice (water and air), magma (earth and fire), ooze (earth and water), and smoke (air and fire). Quasi-elementals are fusions of an element and positive or negative energy : lightning (air and positive), mineral (earth and positive), radiance (fire and positive), steam (water and positive), ash (fire and negative), dust (earth and negative), salt (water and negative), and vacuum (air and negative). In terms of the game, positive would be Sun magic, and negative would be Moon magic. The reason this came to my mind is I was imagining wild elementals in the game, and thinking of how they would exist in certain locations, and was thinking of a magma flow in a volcano. Possibly, you would find fire elementals. However, I was thinking of how earth elementals would appear, and realized that just regular earth elementals would be inappropriate. I imagined the rock on them becoming red hot, with a red glow behind them , and magma flowing between them. Similarly, lightning (or storm) elementals could appear in an area of high electricity and have more potent electric abilities. These would obviously be much rarer elementals, and mages would only be able to call them by doing a combo between two elemental summons.

ELVES, HUMANS, KOBOLDS, SATYRS, etc.

- All intelligent creatures, and a lot of animals, should act in an intelligent manner. If they're with a group, and they see you as a single player approach, one of them should come out to dispatch you, while the others guard the area in case more people show up or its a trap. If that enemy gets injured, another will join in to help. In a similar manner, if you're fighting someone alone, with his comrades out of vision, he should try to finish you, but if he gets injured enough, he might call for help -- or if not in a range where they could hear him, he could even run around the corner until they can hear or see them, so his comrades can join in or take his place in the battle. If you're in a party, the situation would be a little different, with your party members and the enemies pairing off to fight. That would make sure that every party member is occupied, and they can't all gang up on a single enemy. This way, the "aggro" is a bit scaled to the size of the party; although, it should be a little more complicated than that, because there should be situations where they'll help out comrades to defeat you if necessary. It should depend on the enemy of course -- for instance, smaller, weaker enemies, might go two at a time.

- Archers, if cornered and are forced to fight at close distance, really should do the intelligent thing, put away their bow and take out a dagger and short sword. Mages could fight with their staves.

- Humans, elves, and such could have things like guard dogs as companions. A military, camp, for instance, could have a dog that can be called by the soldiers to join in the attack. Certain campsites could also have horses, or other appropriate animals.

- Sometimes they could be sitting down, for example, at camp around a fire, when the player runs into them. If its an ambush, they would be caught off guard, and it would take them a moment before they could arm themselves and respond to the player. In some cases, they could be sleeping at camp, and the player could ambush them and murder them in their sleep.

- There could also be non-standard combatants. For example, a camping enemy party -- for example, bandits -- could have something like a bard playing a mandolin. He would also have some means to defend himself, of course.

SCORPIONS

- Different sized scorpions, for example instead of just giant scorpions, also large scorpions, and king scorpions.

- Different colored scorpions. In the real world they come in different colors, for example, even blue. Some might have more poisonous venoms than others.