Add player ghosts

[mbj]

Add player ghost summoners with the same crew that the player had at the time of death, possibly including dead demons if there's room left in the party. Also player ghost heroes if you add them . It'd be really fun to fight against other players, and it could make the early game more interesting. I'm not sure if the demons should be recruitable (maybe if they survived the player's death), and unique demons might have to be special cased to not appear elsewhere in the tower or on other players' teams.

[Ferret]

Relic wraiths, you mean? It is on the list. No ETA at this time, but it is on there

[Sandman25]

Please make it optional. Player ghosts is a feature which I dislike the most in DCSS.

[Ferret]

I've had some bad experiences with them in DCSS too, but mostly because of trolling of sorts that isn't as possible in Demon.

I'll never forget the time during a tournament win-streak my poor Deep Dwarf Fighter ran into a ghost on D:3 that was capable of spamming Lightning Bolts. I judged I could not safely run from the thing so ended up meleeing it since that cuts the use of special abilities to 50% at most. I won, but had to burn most of my starting wand of heal wounds charges. Not happy.

That sort of thing isn't really possible in Demon though: you don't start with (and can't find early) truly overpowered things like that. You can definitely get lucky and find something helpful, but not to the degree of chucking Lightning Bolts on D:3 in DCSS.

But, enough about me, what is it that you don't like about them Sandman? I should note I'm not opposed to making them optional (I may have to anyway, people already sometimes object to the little bit of server communication Demon already does, and this would mean more of it), just curious what your reasons are.

[Sandman25]

If we are sharing ghost DCSS experiences, here is mine below
I entered a bailey as Mummy Summoner of Chei with rF- and found a player ghost with sticky flame (ignores both AC and EV) 1 tile away without exit in view. I died.

I am not sure there cannot be OP ghosts in Demon provided my last character found XL 16 Shoggoth while being level 8 himself. Add Soul Armour on the PC, Haste/Pounce/Might etc. for double fun

[mbj]

Ok cool. Ghosts could be optional yea, but if someone wants ghosts without network communication they could just run into their own summoners. Veil tank ghosts would be "walk away to win". Gandayah challenge ghosts would be hilarious to run into. It'd also be interesting to see how different player builds stack up against each other. Speaking of which, PVP mode when?

[carnegie]

Ooh yeah, this would be really appropriate for a game like Demon where everything is rigorously balanced (i.e. not like DCSS). And it would be even better with online players' demons although I don't know how feasible that is.

[Ferret]

I would probably still need to restrict it to only happening after a certain floor... probably Tower:4 or 5? Demon is somewhat well balanced (I'm not sure I can in honor accept the compliment of "rigorously" yet though I thank you for it!), but very early on you can still luck into something unusually good for your build long before a build usually gets a chance to properly take off.

[Ferret]

Speaking of which, PVP mode when?

When ferrets fly, probably. It isn't that I don't like you guys enough to do it so much as it would basically be coding a new game

Player ghosts would be closer than it would be in most games though. Unlike DCSS ghosts, they won't play by a different rule set, and would use AI rather than RNG behavior.

[Sandman25]

I don't think ghost will be balanced. What is current composition of a typical band PC has to fight on early floor? 4-5 demons who share the same weakness and attack type? Now compare to a ghost who can have 6-7 fused demons with different weaknesses and attacks while being a beast itself too. Enemy summoners are already the most dangerous things and ghosts can be even worse than that.