What about THIEVES?

[Peter Mardahl <peterm@soda.berkeley.edu>]

Okay.  My 4-skill area proposal is all well and good.
Believe it or not, folks, i think the coding needed 
for Fighters, Clerics, and Mages is pretty straightforward,
except for the X stuff, which I am unfamiliar with and would
need help on.

But What About Thieves?

As it is now, there is NO place for thieves in crossfire.
Let's change this FIRST, before we even think about doing
any 4-class thing.  (I really love the idea, but it's too
much to do all in one step, without the thief stuff done
first.)

I think EVERYONE will agree that crossfire would be much
enriched by thiefly things being in the game.

What i suggest below probably isn't controversial....so please....

HELP!!!!!!

What needs doing:

  1)  a disarm/search/pick-lock/backstab/pickpocket range attack
     I envision this working this way:  there would in fact be
	all of those new range attacks.  Search would be the
	most commonly used.  If a trap is found, the range attack
	automatically would change to 'disarm'.  It might be a good
	idea to use separate keys to select and toggle this range
	attack. (the - key?)  Pick-lock would be used on doors.
	backstab would be a critical attack which would ONLY work
	on monsters who were facing the other direction.  STEALTH!!!!
	AND party coordination!  Pickpocket is sort of obvious.
	Success should depend on <target> level, player dex, player level.
	Searching should have a chance of detonating the trap.

  2)  Physical traps!!!!  Any of you who have seen the cloaks know
	an example of my absolute best bitmap art.  Sucks, huh?
	I'd like SOMEONE BETTER to please make some bitmaps for
	physical traps.  The code support is already in the game for
	these....  Runes would make perfectly okay physical traps,
	they ONLY need faces and archetypes.  Runes are well-documented!
	Please????  Physical traps are needed for thieves to disarm,
	so that they may gain experience.

  3)  Trapped chests!  Every chest should have a chance of being trapped.
	Don't you think it'd be a barrel of laughs to be moseying around
	in a treasure chamber full of chests, and detonate a FIREBALL????
	HAHAHAHA!!!!  Traps' viciousness and damage should depend
	on dungeon-difficulty.

  4)  Trapped doors!  It'd be real cool if you could be mindlessly banging
	on a door, and suddenly, it explodes into shards, shrapnelizing
	everyone around into hamburger?  Gee, think that might inspire
	caution and prompt people to USE thieves?


Regardless of whether we actually do the 4-skill area thing or not,
these changes would be really cool.  It's a major project, though.
If no one loves this idea and is willing to do it, I will take it up.


Timescales:  
  My next few projects:  
1)  I'm finally going to generalize magic walls so that they
    can cast any spell at all. I promised this a long time ago,
    and I just forgot, but I'll do it now, if it isn't already
    done and I simply forgot doing it.  ( by next week, prob.)

2)  Tower of Demonology and Summoning:  a map which actually uses
	the word-activated teleporters in an interesting way
	(by June 5th.)

3)  june 5th to june 20th:  vacation!  OFF the net, AWAY from crossfire!!!

4)  june21st  come back, start work on the thief stuff.  Hopefully by
    then, people will have made some faces for physical traps.
    Actually, I hope people will have done all four of the thigns I
    mentioned above!

5)  After that gets done, (prob. 2 weeks or so later)  I will begin
    work on the 4-skill area stuff, assuming there is support for it
    and I can talk some X-guru's into helping me with the display
    stuff that'll be needed.

Regards,

Peterm