Creature Types

[Shadow Stranger]

Certain items are weapons designed to work especially well against particular types of creatures. The Frost Brand long sword is useful for fiery creatures, the Flame Blade for creatures of cold, then there is the variety of Long Swords for use against Lycanthropes, Reptiles…
Now some of these creature classifications don't occur among the prescribed forms:
"// Form (combinable - none, mammal, animal, snake, giant, large (even if icon is 1x1)".
Possibly, creature classifications like Reptile, Dragon, Humanoid, Lycanthrope could be made into Special Abilities. Hopefully an item script can check if the wielder's opponent has the relevant Special Ability and is thus a Dragon, Reptile, creature of the lower planes or whatever.

[Uatu]

One thing that is difficult about AD&D is that although fiery monsters tend to be weak to watery/cold attacks (for example), the result can be many various things (and is not unified), like:

Double damage (rare)
+1/die damage
Other effects

Perhaps we should try to list up all the possibilities given first...

[Shadow Stranger]

DC scripting would enable the damage done by the scripted weapon to be totally variable? If that is the case you won't need to worry about having a template capable of handling all possible cases. Need to check this with Manikus.

[manikus]

To answer the original question, yes and yes.

I believe the example I used in the other thread was that if you want to check one-eyed, pigeon-toed dwarves who did their post doc work in Calcutta, no problem. All of these classifications are very easy to check for using Special Abilities and a simple script.

[Shadow Stranger]

If a Baaz Draconian is killed by a melee weapon, the weapon may or may not get stuck in the Baaz corpse for some time. In a computer game this means that the weapon is unreadied, removed from the PC's inventory and added to the treasure pile. (The treasure the party gets if it wins rather than loses or flees the combat.)
This could be effected by having the Baaz steal the weapon when it dies.
Aurak Draconians have a special dying form that is immobile and attacks with double damage blows. Then explodes with a bang some rounds latter. So when it dies, an Aurak could be replaced by a new monster, a Dying Aurak

[manikus]

I'm not sure what you mean by giving weapons variable damage - they already do a random amount, like 1d5 or 3d4 (1-5 or 3-12).

Everything else sounds like it can be done.

[Shadow Stranger]

By "variable damage" I meant damage that was not chosen from a list of possibilities like:

• Double damage
• +1/die damage
• Target slowed/diseased

Damage whose formula could be written by the designer from scratch.

Baaz script should handle the weapon stuck in Baaz body issue. Otherwise every melee weapon in the game would need a script just to handle the Baaz.

[manikus]

I find what you call variable damage confusing. All of the stuff in your list is accomplished by script...is it that you don't want to use other peoples? Perhaps there is still miscommunitcation about Special Abilities - they are all scripts. Even the ones hardcoded in .914 - they're not hard-coded any more (well at least by the time the next release comes out), I'm writing scripts for all of them.
Scripts can be attached to all database artifacts - items, monsters, spells, Special Abilities, NPCs, race, class, baseclass. Scripts can also be used to trigger events and in the Logic Block event.

[Shadow Stranger]

"Variable damage" sounds like 5d6&. Perhaps a better description would be: "damage derived from a formula where the designer can write the formula however he/she pleases".
Possible formulas include: one point per level, the wielder's current hp...
(The last one you will need for a Krynn Dragonlance, said lances are staples of Krynn's history.)
If the designer can write the formulas any way he/she wants, we won't need to list all possible formulas in advance before we can begin scripting.
Edit:
It does not matter what a Special Ability is, script or not, as long as it is detected by other scripts. A script for a Frost Brand sword would need to be able to detect the Special Ability of fire-dwelling creatures. (If we are using Special Ability to record creature type, being fire-dwelling would be a Special Ability. Presumably the Fire-dwelling special ability script would contain nothing much, but as long as it can be detected by other scripts.)

[Paul Stevens]

The Special Ability capability is a little
bit a misnomer. And it is very confusing,
perhaps because of its generality. But your
second paragraph (the "Edit:") captures
much of its essence.

A Special Ability is something that is attached
to an object along with a parameter. So, for
example, we could attach "Alergic to Peanuts"
to a "Blue Ant" with parameter 2 and "Alergic
to Peanuts" to a "Red Ant" with parameter 3.

Special Abilities can trigger scripts. "Alergic to
Peanuts" might trigger the script named "Compute
Damage" (at the time damage is computed in
a combpat context). The script could look at the
weapon used (was it a Peanut?), look at the
target's Special Ability to see if it was "Alergic
to Peanuts", and, if so, multiply the normal damage
bmy the parameter (2 or 3 in our example.)

So, in this case, the Special Ability, "Alergic to
Peanuts", is really a disability.

The key concepts:

1) Special Abilities can trigger "Hooks" in the code
to run scripts at critical times.
2) Scripts can examine Special Abilities of the objects
involved.
3) Special Abilities and their associated scripts will
come pre-coded for the standard objects (Manikus is
doing a lot of this and has become the world-renowned
expert in all things Special).
4) The Special Abilities and their associated scripts
are open source to any designer to modify, add, or
delete as desired.
5) We are finding (Manikus can set me straight if I am
wrong) that a certain base-level of scripting functions
has sufficed to do a LOT of the necessary work. So,
it seems likely to me that they, and perhaps just a few
more, will suffice for many of the requests on your
wish-list.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...cial_Abilities

and

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...lities_Scripts