Funny Cat Lord Idea
issueid=5834 12-13-2017 04:36 PM
Junior Member
Number of reported issues by Wigdaddy: 12
Funny Cat Lord Idea
Humanoid rat, meet humanoid cat.

When a ratling PC of any class approaches the cat lord without having killed any cat, the Master Cat should be generated peaceful as usual. When chatted with, however, the message should read:

The cat lord growls: "Thou hast respected the cat race. Thus I shall grant upon you — oh hey, lunch!"

The cat lord should then attack immediately.

In this circumstance (and only this circumstance), when the Master Cat is killed, he should drop his ring. Let's say he was already pulling it out of whatever extradimensional pocket he was keeping it in when the munchies hit. No need to be overly unfair to the poor ratlings just for a bit of humor. The ratling PC should not of course get the ring if the cat lord was generated hostile to begin with.

If chatted with while attacking, the response should be "Get over here, you scrumptuous little morsel."

Note that since kitty karma is not in play, the Lord of All Cats will not be as powerful as he normally is when PCs are fighting him. If a character does die as a result of the feline feeding frenzy, however, the death message should of course read "______ had the honor of being eaten by the cat lord himself."

To offset the slight disadvantage caused by the special treatment outlined above, ratlings should be made immune to the Dooming normally engendered by devouring the cat lord's tawny corpse.

Turnabout is fair play, after all. ;)

"Get over here, you scrumptuous little morsel."
Issue Details
Issue Number 5834
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Suggested
Priority 5 - Medium
Suggested Version ADOM 3.0.5
Implemented Version (none)
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 15
Votes against this feature 3
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




12-14-2017 10:27 AM
ixi ixi is offline
Junior Member
One of the best suggedtion I saw on the forums over last year. I just love it!

12-14-2017 03:27 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by ixi
One of the best suggedtion I saw on the forums over last year. I just love it!

Thanks, ixi. :)

12-14-2017 04:45 PM
Senior Member
While it is funny, it punishes (or rewards) players for choosing a race, which is not appropriate.

12-14-2017 05:03 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by SinsI
While it is funny, it punishes (or rewards) players for choosing a race, which is not appropriate.
Why not? All races and classes have various advantages, disadvantages and quirks, and ratlings have fewer than most. As long as care is taken to keep things balanced, why should this be any different?

Besides, the cat lord is one of the coolest characters in Adom. He deserves a bit more personality. ツ

12-14-2017 05:29 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Wigdaddy
Why not? All races and classes have various advantages, disadvantages and quirks.
True, but this is quite an obnoxious place to put a racial disadvantage. Starting the fight against cat lord in melee range after giving him a free round of attacks is an awful place to be, kitty karma or no - and this is the reward ratlings would get for managing to maintain an annoying conduct for most of the game.

12-14-2017 06:13 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Grond
True, but this is quite an obnoxious place to put a racial disadvantage. Starting the fight against cat lord in melee range after giving him a free round of attacks is an awful place to be, kitty karma or no - and this is the reward ratlings would get for managing to maintain an annoying conduct for most of the game.
It's not the only reward, though. It's intentionally balanced by the fact that ratlings would have the opportunity to get both the ring of the master cat and the benefits of the cat lord's corpse, namely Dexterity, speed and mana increases, without the drawback of dooming or alignment penalties. With greater risk comes greater reward.

But you make a fair point about the combat disadvantage. We could make it so that the cat lord simply turns hostile after the initial chat, initiating combat but not granting a free round of attacks.

As well, perhaps the cat lord might like to play with his food, batting the PC back a few spaces back or to the side with every hit, an effect similar to the PC jumping backward to avoid a falling door trap. This is the way cats really do attack rodents, and it would give the ratling PC more space and reduce the total number of incoming attacks considerably.

I'm really enjoying this discussion, btw. Thank you all for your input. :)

12-14-2017 06:36 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Wigdaddy
It's not the only reward, though. It's intentionally balanced by the fact that ratlings would have the opportunity to get both the ring of the master cat and the benefits of the cat lord's corpse, namely Dexterity, speed and mana increases, without the drawback of dooming or alignment penalties. With greater risk comes greater reward.
That's a negligible advantage. It's incredibly rare for cat lord to drop a corpse, the positive corpse effects are small to nonexistent, and other races can easily get undoomed due to how close the level is to the darkforge shortcut.

12-14-2017 07:10 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Grond
That's a negligible advantage. It's incredibly rare for cat lord to drop a corpse, the positive corpse effects are small to nonexistent, and other races can easily get undoomed due to how close the level is to the darkforge shortcut.
Another valid point. So how best can I address you concerns, do you think? People seem to generally like this idea so far, so I'd like to try to make it workable. To do that I need to make it so that the total impact is low or negligible.

What do you think about my additional proposals, with the cat lord both not attacking immediately and batting the PC away constantly, giving them a distance advantage and reducing the (already weaker) master cat's damage potential dramatically? If ratlings would have a big an advantage like this in the fight, do you think the proposal might still work?

I worship at the altar of Game Balance. The last thing I want to do is destabilize the game, so any additional suggestions to avoid it would be most welcome.

12-14-2017 07:15 PM
ixi ixi is offline
Junior Member
Well, as an alternative cat lord could give the ring as usual, give PC several turns and than he could suddenly realize that he just gave away a ring to his lunch... I suppose it wouldn't be that punishing and still would be fun.

Hey, wait a bit... Ain't you my lunch?

12-14-2017 07:37 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by ixi
Well, as an alternative cat lord could give the ring as usual, give PC several turns and than he could suddenly realize that he just gave away a ring to his lunch... I suppose it wouldn't be that punishing and still would be fun.
That occurred to me as well! A cat chasing a rat... I love it. Though this is a guy who uses his thees and thous, so we should probably avoid the use of "a'int." ;)

Once the PC gets a decent distance from the cat lord, he could boom out a warning spontaneously, like a shopkeeper:

"Honorable rodent, you look so... tasty. Thou hast been a friend to my people, so I strongly suggest you run."

If the ratling manages to escape the level, the cat lord will be peaceful again when next encountered.

Maybe there might be a chance he'll turn hostile again, though? Cats are capricious...

12-14-2017 07:39 PM
Ancient Member
Maybe have the ring of the master cat not be able to explode if the cat lord is dead? Would make some sense, and would let you take petty revenge on the cat lord's subjects. The achievement line could be changed to "He/she pilfered the treasure of the Cat Lord and thus rose to great fame." Possibly combined with ixi's suggestion (give a grace period of a couple turns), this would be pretty fair.

12-14-2017 07:42 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Grond
Maybe have the ring of the master cat not be able to explode if the cat lord is dead? Would make some sense, and would let you take petty revenge on the cat lord's subjects. The achievement line could be changed to "He/she pilfered the treasure of the Cat Lord and thus rose to great fame." Possibly combined with ixi's suggestion (give a grace period of a couple turns), this would be pretty fair.
I love this idea, Grond! To never have to worry about killing cats again would be an awesome reward.

12-14-2017 09:25 PM
Junior Member
I really like where this is going. One question though: if I understand well, the current suggestion is to make a dead cat lord universally prevent the ring explosion?
Additional note: one advantage of designing roguelikes (or single player games in general) I think is that you don't need to get in the way of creativity by being too hung up on "balance": certain races/classes can be deliberately more/less challenging (as is already the case in ADOM anyway).

12-14-2017 09:34 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Taederias
I really like where this is going. One question though: if I understand well, the current suggestion is to make a dead cat lord universally prevent the ring explosion?
Additional note: one advantage of designing roguelikes (or single player games in general) I think is that you don't need to get in the way of creativity by being too hung up on "balance": certain races/classes can be deliberately more/less challenging (as is already the case in ADOM anyway).
As I understand it, the dead cat lord trick will only work for ratlings, and even then only if they never killed a cat before meeting him. The difference is that the cat lord betrays the PC, not the other way around. So his spirit no longer has the right to enforce the restriction on the ring, or something.

In any case, the point is to give ratlings a special reward to compensate for their special difficulty. The ability to freely murder every cat one sees without penalty is obviously a deeply desirable reward for any experienced Adom player. ;)

Good point about some races being more challenging than others. I do find that in this game there tends to be more of a focus on balance than in other rougelikes, even if some races and classes are easier overall. Drakelings have good stats and start with a powerful spit attack but have a hell've a time in the ToEF and the ice level. Trolls are strong and heal fast but eat a lot and are insufferably stupid. Archers are death incarnate with a good bow but useless if they run out of arrows, etc.

As it stands there's nothing terribly remarkable about ratlings one way or another, so I think this might be a good way to make them more interesting.

12-14-2017 10:56 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Wigdaddy
As I understand it, the dead cat lord trick will only work for ratlings, and even then only if they never killed a cat before meeting him. The difference is that the cat lord betrays the PC, not the other way around. So his spirit no longer has the right to enforce the restriction on the ring, or something.
Oh that's okay then, it also kind of makes sense. It does sound better that way, and would also probably make me do a ratling run for once. :)

12-14-2017 11:58 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Taederias
Oh that's okay then, it also kind of makes sense. It does sound better that way, and would also probably make me do a ratling run for once. :)
Me too. :)

12-15-2017 09:47 AM
Junior Member
Given the improvements in the comments, this starts to sound as fun enough. Supported. :)

01-18-2018 12:47 AM
Junior Member
I'm in support of this. Ratlings are already a flavour-race and weak in various aspects to begin with. Why shouldn't they have a tiny additional bit of fun if they actually make it all the way down to Mr. Cat?

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