Batty Belfry

[Vryl]

Well, if you want to encourage people to post ideas, I guess I might as well. The Batty Belfry is what it sounds like - an underground room that somehow still has access to the outside world, and so bats come to call it home. Vampire bats, of course. These have agility-based defense and while they don't do a lot of damage, they can heal themselves if they've been injured. Even better, if you manage to get a champion that calls this place home, you have a real vampire - and they're a lot more potent instead of being a good delaying tactic and presumably low-tier minion in the ruins resource.

[Sol_Protege]

Sounds pretty cool. I think the floor would probably need a large bell/windows in the background (maybe some gloomy clouds scrolling past?) to show that its high up and that it's an actual Belfry. Would the bats have life-sapping abilities or just heal naturally after taking damage?

[Vryl]

I'd been thinking life stealing, but it's certainly possible that they'd have a way to heal outside of combat.

[Jake]

This seems like it could be an early beast floor, maybe opening up right after wolves. I'm not sure if it needs other prereqs--maybe a temple or cathedral-style floor? I like bats as another simple minion that you can kind of spam, but you've given them a unique life-stealing trait, and they are also beasts, so they would benefit from any bonuses other beasts receive, and that all makes them a bit more interesting than just spam material. With regards to life-stealing, I imagine this will mean regaining an amount of health equal to actual damage dealt; maybe later on, with larger life-stealing creatures, this may just be a portion of damage dealt, or these monsters may become pretty OP. With the bats, however, this will probably only be one or two damage per turn. They would be most powerful coming into an in-progress fight, where opponents' defenses have already been worn down, but their own are intact.

While I like the idea of champions being full-fledged vampires, I would really rather give vampires their own floor, because that minion deserves champion varieties of its own. This floor would make an excellent prereq for it, though, probably alongside an undead floor of some sort. We could always have Zelda-style ice or fire bat champions--although we won't call them "keese."

[Vryl]

I thought you might have vampires elsewhere, but it was worth a try. I'm glad to hear that you think the floor has merit, but your mention of Zelda's Keese does bring up a question - will fire attacks ignite their targets, causing ongoing damage? And will ice freeze a foe so they have to skip a turn, and maybe lose defense... especially if they have agility-based defense? Possibly only if they deal health damage, since otherwise it can be assumed that the fire/ice failed to penetrate the enemy's armor, was dodged or got deflected by a ward?

[Jake]

I think for pre-reqs, we might do Lupine Lair (beast path) and Seedy Cellar (urban path). If there were an early cathedral floor down the road, I might replace the Seedy Cellar pre-req with that. I agree with the large bell and windows appearance that Sol proposes, but maybe instead of clouds we'll just have dark mist and spires, so it isn't overtly "outside," but it does look like it is up in the air, overlooking some dark subterranean city. Maybe there will also be some stone gargoyles. Sounds like a ruin-heavy floor. If I make the bell mechanism look complex, maybe I could justify a scrap cost, or if I make it overgrown with vines, possibly some growth cost, but it really just sounds like ruins. I'm not sure what the bats themselves should cost...they don't eat flesh or bone or growth. I guess flesh is the nearest thing, though.

The goal with the elemental damage was to present weaknesses and immunities to characters, but you raise some interesting possibilities, Vryl. I've been concerned that adding too much of an effect to each element might be a mistake, because I want to add a lot of elemental damage characters in order to emphasize those weakness/immunity countering tactics, and I don't want the inherent effect of the elemental damage to overshadow that emphasis. I think your suggestions sound pretty reasonable, though; I may open up a thread to discuss this later (if you don't).

[ThirdAnguis]

If there were an early cathedral floor down the road, I might replace the Seedy Cellar pre-req with that.

If you make a chain of pseudo-religious floors that tie into the Heretic/Dark Elf paths, like my Blasphemous Basilica from another thread, then you could use one of those as a pre-req. Cavernous Cathedral! Acrimonious Altar!

[Jake]

If there were an early cathedral floor down the road, I might replace the Seedy Cellar pre-req with that.

If you make a chain of pseudo-religious floors that tie into the Heretic/Dark Elf paths, like my Blasphemous Basilica from another thread, then you could use one of those as a pre-req. Cavernous Cathedral! Acrimonious Altar!

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I want to give the Dark Elves a spider/shadow temple, and I feel like the Heretics call for a chaos/death temple of some sort, so I'll probably pit those two as alternative versions of a dark cathedral-style structure, and they'd make a nice pre-req for the Belfry. Incidentally, I'd like to have some other classic elemental-themed temple floors (Charred Chantry (fire)? Overgrown Oratory (nature)? Shivering Shrine (ice)? Sinking Synagogue (water)? Howling Hallows (Air)? there are plenty of options to consider), but many of them will probably vary more wildly in appearance than those first two.

[Vryl]

If there were an early cathedral floor down the road, I might replace the Seedy Cellar pre-req with that.

If you make a chain of pseudo-religious floors that tie into the Heretic/Dark Elf paths, like my Blasphemous Basilica from another thread, then you could use one of those as a pre-req. Cavernous Cathedral! Acrimonious Altar!

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I want to give the Dark Elves a spider/shadow temple, and I feel like the Heretics call for a chaos/death temple of some sort, so I'll probably pit those two as alternative versions of a dark cathedral-style structure, and they'd make a nice pre-req for the Belfry. Incidentally, I'd like to have some other classic elemental-themed temple floors (Charred Chantry (fire)? Overgrown Oratory (nature)? Shivering Shrine (ice)? Sinking Synagogue (water)? Howling Hallows (Air)? there are plenty of options to consider), but many of them will probably vary more wildly in appearance than those first two.

I like the idea of a gloomy glade or some sort of stone circle for a nature shrine - more druidical that way. Maybe a Stygian Stone Circle because it is underground, after all.

[ThirdAnguis]

I like the idea of a gloomy glade or some sort of stone circle for a nature shrine - more druidical that way. Maybe a Stygian Stone Circle because it is underground, after all.

Some manner of Hopeless Henge, perhaps?