Re: Disease headaches

[Jeffrey Hantin <jhantin@derringer.net>]

Oops.  I sent the message that started this thread just to peterm and 
not to the list.  Should I forward it to the list?

> Hmm, thanks for the feedback.  Have you got any comments on 
tuning/playability,
> other than you've given already?

Not much at this point.  Humanoid-restricted diseases become rather 
low in usefulness after a while, and pneumonic plague is WAY out in 
space at level 85.  Admittedly, it's very powerful, but maybe we need 
some other stuff in the gap.  I've been crufting up some new disease 
archetypes over here, maybe I could make spells out of some of them.  
I have a whole truckload of spells fixes and a few new spells to 
submit, maybe I'll get those in before the next person bumps 
NROFREALSPELLS...

> > * there is no race 'humanoid' defined... kobolds, orcs, etc. are 
all=20
> > race 'goblin' as shipped, hill giants, titans, etc. are race 'giant'. 
=20
> > Annoyingly, there is no concept of subraces... this may be 
something=20
> > I'll need to work on, cleaning up race definition structure.

> lib/races also effects the race field:  another annoyance.  Same 
thing,
> two places.  I'll change the diseases to specifically list things I
> consider "humanoid", if you haven't done it already.
> It'd be really cool if you could do something with this.

Probably would involve modifying the lib/races stuff to support 
subraces, and adding some new predicates to do the matching (and 
hunting all over the blasted code for strstr calls to replace them 
with the new predicates!).

> > * a diseased needle would insert the disease (or any other object 
it=20
> > contained!) even if you had an immunity... intentional or not?

> If you have an immunity you would become a carrier.  This was 
intentional.

Well, that won't happen with my patch.  If that behavior is really 
desirable, I could add a new mode to infect_object() ...

> > * cause disease spells 'miss' entirely too often on low-infectivity=20
> > diseases... intentional or not?

> Not intentional.  I never got around to fixing it.  I tolerated it 
instead
> because disease spells don't suck grace if they fail.  I'm not sure
> causing disease should work all the time, though, since they've been 
toned
> down, maybe this is OK.  Your hacks are useful however and I'll put 
them in
> as they are pending comments from people-at-large.

If push comes to shove, a saving throw or something is in order.  
However, the disease's spread infectivity itself should not be a 
factor in the spell connecting.

> > * an immune carrier only keeps the disease for as long as it would=20
> > ordinarily last, not indefinitely... intentional or not?

> Intentional.  The disease "food" can be set very high for these 
specific
> disease objects:  that way they'll live a long time.

The main reason for my annoyance here is treasurelists.  Putting an 
expiring disease in a creature's treasurelist can be an exercise in 
futility if it's going to take the player a while to reach the 
creature after the map loads.  I think immunity archs and/or negative 
race matches would be handy for things like making mice immune to 
bubonic, then making 2-5% of them randomly carriers...

> > This patch changes:
> >
> > * humanoid -> goblin,giant on disease archetypes

> This is fine for now:  I had also wanted these disease to work on
> humans so there would be the possiblity of backlash.

I can hear the fireborns and other non-human PCs snickering from here. 
:-)  In any case, any disease that affected humanoid in your archs 
also affected humans, so the backlash is there.

> > Anyway, I figured that since you seemed to be the disease czar, I'd=20
> > run this patch by you before putting it out for general 
consumption.=20
> > :-)  Let me know what you think (or just integrate it if you want,=20
> > it's reasonably tested :-) )

> I appreciate the feedback and the help.  I wrote nearly all of the 
disease
> stuff and since I'm still around I take an interest when people 
mention it.

> The whole point of the disease stuff was to give some of the cause 
disease spells
> to deficient religions to balance their power:  have you got any 
thoughts
> on which religions need "help"?

> PeterM