This is very interesting. So you'd really have to use your experience with what works best against monsters with your current opponent's characteristics, like exuding steam or having the smell of rotting flesh, in order to figure out how best to fight it? I really do enjoy that aspect of ADOM. One problem I see though, if I understand this correctly, is that if every battle is like this it will take forever to get through dungeons (e.g. every time you encounter a hobgoblin you have to look at and read its description before you can attack it, and for your time and effort you just get very little experience) if every monster is like that.

I think it would work best if these kind of creatures would be encountered rarely. I'm not suggesting that every creature should be randomized.

I'm not sure how corruption will be implemented in JADE (or if it will be at all), but I think it would be a good way to piece together corrupted creatures with a method similar to this. Chaos does imply some degree of unpredictability after all.

How about including classes for monsters, in form of modifiers? :) You could encounter a goblin necromancer, an orcish weaponsmith or a dwarven paladin without having to have these specific combinations hard-coded.

So what your saying having "corrupted" templates that can be put on most creatures, and then doing that with other templates and having the occasional creature have these templates.

Well, I don't know if that's anywhere near what you were going after. But here's some NPC theory for ya. It's certainly expected to have the same creatures carry small difference between each of them. But imagine letting loose an ogre in Central Park. What when we see lots of varied, unique individuals getting killed by an orge, the ogre see's a bunch of the same creature over and over getting smashed by his attacks. If one of those little monkeys was suddenly all different (armed to the teeth, grossly mutated, or wearing unique garb) I would assume he'd notice it without having to think too hard or move his cursor over them and hit 'L'. :)

But what good way is there to tell a player that some moppet is not just different, but vitally different? In ADOM, it's a different race, so make it a different color. Or make it change color each turn (karmic beings). That worked most of the time, and plus it's not THAT important to know if the thing's a Hyena or a Coo-Shoo (sp?), but then I was hoping it was a blink dog so I might get to eat it.

So what now? What options do we have? If a goblin is actually wielding a dangerous weapon that we should like to know about, or is corrupted partially, or what have you, shall we adjust the color a little? Perhaps make the creature's color flash on the turn that we'd be close enough to notice a difference? Something must prompt the player to look closer at this potentially vitally different opponent.

Or we ditch the idea and keep picking off humans like an ogre in central park--if it's a special human, it's its own creature altogether as far as we're concerned.

I don't see a problem with identifiability, corrupted creatures could have an own symbol and color, simple as that.

It wouldn't only have to be used for corrupted creatures, another application of modular monsters could be to generate random powers for demonic creatures (as well as looks).

I think it would generate a nice variety to the set of creatures.

In response to Marek14: I think meeting other "adventurers" would be a nice feature, they wouldn't necessarily have to be hostile either. :)