The Undead

@Devs

I think I read somewhere that you had planned to look at NPC's and make them more immerssive in future releases, but I haven't been able to find that quote. Anyway, whenever you guys make another push towards doing that, please start with the Undead.

The Undead do not work, should not work, the way they currently do. I'm just going to make a list of do's and don'ts because that's what's easiest for me. Yes, I'm approaching this from a classic D&D perspective, but generally this follows a very basic (and I think fun) framework for MOST fantasy roleplaying.

Undead Do's and Don'ts:

• Resistant to non-magical attacks the higher level they are. (A Lich is not going to be killed by someone with a non-enchanted sword)
• Undead are fearless, they do not run from fights. Undead attack, swarm, hunt for living beings until those beings are forced to join them in the world of the unliving.
• Undead can not be healed by normal means (Life Magic). This just doesn't make any sense. If you summon a skeleton, you should not be using Healing Touch to restore its hit points. There should be another spell in the Death Magic sigil that restores the health of the undead.
• The Undead are generally not very smart at lower levels (Skeletons, Zombies, Ghouls). They don't use coordinated attacks. They don't follow many commands. You can't tell an undead to "Only kill people wearing a green hat on a Saturday in the moon light on the 1st of September". You can command an undead to "kill" or "guard" which is really more like stand here and "kill" anything that comes in your area. You may also include other command, "dig", "hide", etc.... But the key here is that the more complex or the more numerous the commands the less likely the undead will follow them as intended. It's a lot like telling a 3 year old to "stop doing that". They will stop (probably). But if you say "Stop doing that AND clean your room AND pick up your socks" there's no way they're doing all of that successfully. They just can't hear more than one basic command at a time.

This speaks towards "level design". If you're placing skeletons (for example). Think about who put them there and why? Whatever the motivation is, the commands they follow will be based solely for a specific goal.​

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Here are some examples:​

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-"Guard the Tomb" will result in X number of skeletons standing around the tomb motionless, lifeless, waiting for intruders.​

-"Patrol this Hallway" will result in X number of skeletons pacing a hallway waiting for intruders. They will not want to leave that hallway and have a very short leash. They will not be kited very far at all because of the commands they were given.​

-"Hunt for intruders" Now we're bordering on a very wide open and confusing (for undead) type of command. A case could be made that the undead given this instruction will endlessly move about in search of anything that may be an intruder.​

• Undead should be immune to poisons, direct forms of death magic (like Death Ray, Death Fist, Death Field, etc) Undead should take extra damage from Fire, Life, Air (Lightning) and Sun, but have resistance to cold magic.
• Undead should take more damage from bludgeoning weapons and less from blades.
• Undead should take less damage from arrows.
• Undead should be completely immune to mind effecting spells like Confusion.
• High level undead should have special secondary active spells like FEAR or CORRUPTION or POISON or DECAY that will generally create a WIDE area of effect around them that changes the playing field for players trying to slay them. It may be easy to wade through their minions, but getting close to a Lich might be a huge struggle if not equipped properly!
• The Undead are not really dead or living, they're somewhere inbetween. So when a player becomes a ghost, I think the player should still be able to see all of the undead and not the bright lights. It think this is something that would be a nice detail to add to the game to make it more immerssive. There's quite a lot of fun you could have with this. High Level undead might attempt to recruit (or command you) to join them. You may be mocked by the undead!
• I don't believe Liches should be moving through walls. They're not ghosts, they still have some physical form to them.
• Not all undead need weapons. Claws work very well, especially for skeletons. (this might also help the balancing of your economy)
• There should be a "Control Undead" spell, that would basically turn an undead into a summoned creature for a length of time. (the higher the level of the creature the harder this spell would be to cast successfully, and the shorter it would last once it was successfully cast)
• The undead do not need torches. It's ok that you have them in your dungeons, but the default of all the torches should be OFF because undead can already see just fine in the dark.
• GOOD NEWS! The undead don't need idle animations because they are not alive. They don't need to twitch or scratch themselves or mumble things. They just need to stand there and be lifeless. (you're welcome development schedule!)

 

The rule you listed about the undead being stupid is intentionally being broken by the game, from what I'm told; the undead are as conscious and intelligent as they were alive and can speak. --- Although that would certainly bring up the question of what's going on when a player Necromancer is summoning a skeleton -- whether he should feel sorry for bringing someone out of the grave -- and whether this is an unvirtuous action that should get him in trouble with the Oracle.

I brought it up during a previous release, though. I was asking why skeletons needed gold on their bodies, whether they needed to go to the local village to buy things in their time off from guarding tombs. I was also wondering how a skeleton could be a mage. But they're breaking some fantasy conventions on purpose. That means Confusion should also work on a skeleton, if he's conscious and sentient.

I haven't found a ghost yet in the game, though it says they're in on the release notes. IMO, you shouldn't even be able to hit a ghost with a non-enchanted weapon, since they don't have a corporeal body.

Its not very clear what a lich is by the game's lore yet, except for a "boss undead". In traditional fantasy, they're usually described as a wizard who has extended his life somehow by remaining in his corpse after his death. So we know liches appear half-corporeal, half-ethereal. Do we know what makes them this way?

 

Yes, I've heard the developers respond before that "these undead talk". That doesn't make sense to me. In fact, I find it hard to believe that the undead NPC's are any smarter than the living ones. It's all very unimmersive for me, partly because of my predisposition to D&D style undead, but also because it just doesn't make sense logically.

Low level undead have no brains, no working vocal cords, no reason in most cases to do anything more than simple commands. I think they should reevaluate what undead are and are not and lean more towards traditional fantasy (because it's more fun that way).

 

Drocis,

The vocal cords and brains isn't the problem; if they can move their arms without muscles, they can talk without vocal cords. We've all seen fantasy material with talking skulls, too. I also wouldn't be surprised if this was a major aspect of the story. Meaning, they couldn't remove it without rewriting parts of the story... and that its not just a game design choice.

But I still don't know how they're going to reconcile the "intelligent undead" with other facts of the game like Necromancers doing summoning.

 

Point taken. But if the undead are intelligent, and this goes back to your questions about "why do they need gold?", what are they doing with that intelligence? It's not very intelligent to stand around waiting to be killed. In a lot of ways if an NPC were being smart they would constantly be traveling away from Avatars, carry as little loot as possible, giving Avatars they do come in contact with as little reason as possible to fight them.

And yes, to summoned undead, they're certainly not very intelligent. They're actually less intelligent than they need to be.

 

Just checked in the game, since I wasn't paying attention before... skeletons can take rend damage, which is the damage over time effect from blades! Isn't that supposed to be a bleeding effect? No way they should be able to take rend damage.

 

No it's baked into the lore! Spoiler: Skeletons are made of (super smart) white blood.

I don't assume that all of this is lore based. I think they just haven't gotten around to fixing the immerssive qualities of NPC monsters and so I thought I'd make this thread as a possible guide for the undead.

 

* Resistant to non-magical attacks - I support this, especially if we get more variety in the undead. It would appear the undead are a huge part of the plot of the game, so I sure hope that is the case.
* Undead are fearless - That depends on how SotA depict the undead. Are they mindless zombies? In Ardoris there are spirit-talkers and dialogue that references negotiating peace with the undead by speaking to them. Perhaps that intelligence to flee.
* Healing - Again, are we relying on classic undead tropes? What does it mean to be undead? I don't mind re-inventions of classic ideas, but I'm also not fully opposed to removing healing magic from them.
* Intelligence - See above.
* Damage types - I'm not sure if the game differentiates bludgeon vs blades, but I sure hope they have elemental resistances.
* Mind effects - See intelligence above
* Claw attacks - If we get zombies and the like that would be great.