The Red Prison
New version with six new playable races
Now there's six new races to play: half-elf, half-orc, tiefling, aasimar, kobold and bugbear. This opens up some interesting new character builds:
* Kobold rogue - high natural dexterity makes a natural fit for a rogue, but the pack tactics trait synergises really effectively with sneak attack. When you and an ally are both next to a target, you get advantage on your attack from the pack tactics trait and the bonus damage from sneak attacks which becomes very powerful.
* Bugbear fighter/rogue - the key feature of the bugbear class is natural reach on all weapons and bonus reach using weapons already with that trait. What it means is that you can be a great weapon fighter and use a polearm to hit monsters 3 squares away. Or you can be a rogue with a finesse weapon and sneak attack from 2 squares away. Both builds become excellent support fighters because you can always attack over the heads of your allies who can take the brunt of the damage for you.
* Half-orc fighter - this build makes for a really powerful and direct fighter. The savage attack trait means that when you roll a critical hit, you roll an extra die of damage so you hit extra hard, particularly when combined with the fighter's improved chances at critical hits at higher levels. The relentless endurance trait gives you an extra buffer before being knocked out. Knowing that you can drop to 0 HP once and automatically be given 1 HP to keep fighting means that you're extra resilient in the front of a party.
* Aasimar are still under development, but they are already useful support characters no matter what class you choose. The healing hands trait gives you a once per rest ability to heal damage up to your character level. It might not seem like much, but it can revive an unconscious ally during combat which can make all the difference.
* Tieflings are also still under development, but a race with darkvision, fire resistance (still a work in progress but will be really helpful to survive enemy spells) and high charisma is a versatile choice for any class.
New version released with two-weapon fighting
Without that fighting style, the player can wield a light weapon in both hands. Light weapons include: daggers, clubs, handaxes, light hammers, short swords, scimitars, and sickles. The weapon in the player's main hand works as normal but the weapon in the off hand can make a single attack per round as a bonus action only without any bonus damage from stats and the like.
If a fighter takes up that fighting style, then both attacks are made with normal bonuses to damage.
It hopefully adds a bit of flexibility to builds and weapon choice in the early game and it seems like it could really come into its own if you manage to track down two powerful light weapons to use together.
Reach weapons, new encounter system and a bunch of other changes
Made reach weapons work. This was something which didn't really occur to me as being a core part of the game but it's something that a few players have gone looking for almost immediately so it needed to get done.
They work via the ranged combat menus by pressing 'f' or 'F' with a limited range. You can select a target within range manually or just use 'F' to auto-target within range. It works alongside thrown weapons as well so that if you're at range, those commands will throw at the target and if you're closer then they will default to a ranged melee attack.
Reworked entire encounter and monster generation system. Single monsters are still generated depending on dungeon level and CR of the individual monster.
Mob generation was reworked from scratch with new classes for Encounters and Monsters within that encounter so that special types can be defined and mobs can be specified easily with combinations of monsters along with spell users and ranged fighters. It should prove to be easily extensible in terms of special features and new mobs.
Full change list (apart from the above):
* Updated menu options for ranged/reach attacks.
* Updated display to show when wielding a reach weapon.
* Redid the following mobs in the new system: bandits with captain; mix of low level undead; kobolds with mages, shamans and slingers; orcs with mages, shamans and chuckers.
* Created new mob types: lizardfolk with a large number of weak lizards; single ogre with goblin followers; solo ogre mage.
* Turned off seperate factions being generated for different mobs of monsters to experiment with no in-fighting.
* Added extra customisation of monster types in mobs. Now individual stats can be specified along with character level so that casting levels can be simulated. Applied upgraded stats to all spellcasters already implemented.
* Fixed bug where doors could appear on the outer boundary which let the player walk out of bounds.
* Doubled food ration spawn rate.
* Fixed issue where fighter's second wind ability took a turn when it should be a bonus action.
* Added two different starting kits for fighters. If strength is higher or equal to dexterity, you start with one of longsword, battleaxe and spear and ring mail. If dexterity is higher, you start with one of scimitar, shortsword or whip and leather armour.
New monsters, map segments, improved graphics and user interface
* Fixed problem with combining various enchantment names by adding a name_tail variable for '+1' and the like to go along with name_prefix and name_suffix.
* Added new monsters: plesiosaurus, poisonous snake, polar bear, pony, pteranodon, quipper, rat, raven, reef shark, riding horse, saber-toothed tiger.
* Fixed bug with misnamed hawk as blood hawk.
* Added change so that when trying to cast spells or do ranged attacks, if the attack or spell doesn't eventuatuate because out of ammo or spells slots etc, no turn is taken.
* Added number of new dungeon vaults with emphasis on wide corridors to enhance party play.
* Added feature to autoexplore so it finishes on the downstairs.
* Resized native tile size from 16x16 to 24x24. Previously I had every tile at 16x16 for some forgotten reason during development and sized these up or down as needed as I used them. This process through the bearlibterminal library had the effect of smoothing out the images as they were upsized which always left me feeling that they looked a bit blurry. Now that effect is removed on a trial basis to see if it feels clearer.
New version - name changes for player and NPC's, poison reworked and new monsters
* Custom names for player and for NPC's. During custom character creation you are still given a suggested name (and implied gender) but you can regrenerate this until you're happy or enter your own name. During the game, when giving orders to your allies, you can also choose to name them now as well.
* Reworking of the poison system. Before this I just lazily created a 'poisoned' condition which applied 1 hit point of damage per turn for a set number of turns. This didn't really reflect how poison works in the rules where there are a number of different poison types which instead apply damage instantly with various dice rolls to determine this, along with the chance of saving throw against variable difficulties with differing results if you succeed... there's a lot to deal with there from a programming point of view! But it's all implemented now and each monster with venom follows the rules as written in terms of how it's applied, how much damage it does, and whether you have a chance at a saving throw or not and what chance that is.
* New enemies: owl, owlbear, panther, pegasus, phase spider.
The poison rework actually has been a sorely needed buff for the rogue class because they start with a blowgun and poisoned needles. Needles only do 1 hit point of damage, but on top of that you add the dexterity bonus along with a possible sneak attack bonus and a further possible critical hit bonus AND now a further 1d4 poison damage. The end result is that rogues can dish out quite significant damage against poison vulnerable enemies right from the start of the game and it's even possible (although very hard) to play an effective solo rogue without a light source and specialise in hiding and sneak attacking from the shadows.