Long-long time ago charisma (CHR) stat was removed in Vanilla (V) Angband. The reason behind this decision was that CHR were used only for shop prices and V maintainers decided that to get rid of it was actually easier than to make it useful. Minimalism trend is strong in roguelikes for quite some time already (eg DCSS removed food recently) and I see the point.. but it’s quite opposite vision to my concept: “the more – the merrier”… and I loved CHR stat very much so it was my dream for years to bring it back – as having it gives plenty of special flavour to the game – being a powerful, but ugly troll who have not trouble to crack a few skulls in the dungeon, but getting robbed by huckster every now and then in town shops – makes sense.
So as recently I’ve finally started to train my coding skill a bit, I’ve tried to implement a few simple tricks on making CHR more interesting. I wanna remind that CHR is very special end-game stat – the only way to increase Charisma is to drink potions of Augmentation. As it’s quite new approach – I’ll have to do some rebalance later on. So here is Tangaria’s latest update…
Charisma now:
- helps vs seduce attacks
- helps to resist confusion, fear, sleep, life drain
- reduce chance of being robbed by thieves
- sometimes allow to charm monsters even if you are aggravated
- improves HOLD (command spell for monster to stop at one place – “You shall NOT pass!”)
- improves your summoning and allows to control more minions
- influence on max mana and improves max. fail rate for priest, paladin, rogue, telepath and summoner classes
- influence price in Expensive Black Market
- gives bonus to starting gold
- low CHR character worse at dispelling monsters
- having high CHR could sometimes dispel even different family of monsters
- defines max storage space in Storage House (“You’ve used all the space which you were able to bargain with storage keeper“)
- affects person‘s (intelligent humanoids) willing to notice (attack) player
- charismatic character could rarely inflict fear on monster while in melee
- defines welcome message in stores
- defines will WANDERER monster attack you first or not
- added WANDERER flag to some ‘good’ monsters. It means that from now on it’s possible to avoid killing folks like Farmer Maggot and his dogs, Bullroarer, Beorn, Shadowfax, Robin, Phoenix, Fundin Bluecloak, Radagast the Brown, Fangorn, The Unicorn of Order.. Just avoid coming to them too close and they won’t hurt you. Though if you wanna be ‘bad’ guy – you may fight with them and even get some reward.. But there is a rumor that there could be a payoff for it later…
Beat around the charisma bush:
- new attack type – hypnotize which got special ‘seducing’ sound (thanks to Shtukensia for voicing!)
- more monsters (male and female) could now seduce ( * ) ( * )
- neuter sex characters also could be seduced
- new end-game monster: Spirit of Lust
- new object flag: LOSE_STAT
- potion of ugliness now actually makes you ugly (previously: “You feel that something missing!” – it was CHR stat missing hehe)
- A lot of items, egos and arts got charisma sustain and CHR bonuses/debuffs
- rot jelly, ghast and osyluth could reduce charisma
- new trap: “beauty”
- new curse: “of deformity”
Housing
- MOUNTAIN flag assigned to most of highland terrains
- mining mountains on daylight surface could give you foundation stones used in building houses. Though it takes more effort than in dungeon to get these stones there
- it’s not possible to buy foundation stones or House Creation scroll from NPC (you could buy them from other players though)
- the only way (except trading between players) to get House Creation scroll is to complete quest (to get quest:
Ctrl+Q). Then town Major awards you permission to build a house
etc
- after you cut down a tree it, after some time random tree will grow again
- fix NO_BOOTS flag for wearing equipment and it’s identification
- Rock become Throwing rock
- New true artifacts: Space-time Anchor, Ring of Durin
- Store prices adjusted a bit. General Store now always have Magic projectiles (though at high price). Rings in magic shop become cheaper (though they are still more expensive than at Black Market).
- added new sounds: afraid, cut, hall, para, poison, slow, stun (self-voiced)
- some old sounds revamped (monster flees in terror; touch attack; quaff potion)
- assigned colors for condition’s messages