[MUD-Dev] Graphic MUDS/Ultima Online

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <Pine.GSO.3.95q.970812171845.1864E-100000 at uhunix2>, on 08/13/97 
   at 07:16 PM, Nathan Yospe <yospe at hawaii.edu> said:

>On Tue, 12 Aug 1997, Richard Woolcock wrote:

>:I think you'll soon find players burrying bodies after them ;)

>Now THAT is the kind of thinking I like... if a _player_ could find a
>way to become a Lich Master, or equivalent, that would be even
>better.

Of course I allow a player to just steal the Lich Master's body, which
pretty well handles most of it.  However, it also doesn't.  Stealing a
body gives the player control of the features bound to that body. 
Typically this means the physical stats like strength etc, and
physically based abilities like flight, and the like.  Occassionally
it also encludes specific questionable abilities which are presumed to
be nascent in the body at a very low level, and thus "leak-over" to
the character with increased possenssion of bodies of that type (eg
teleportation is native to some body types, and stealing those bodies
for long enough will tend to give your character the ability to
teleport any body).  

Getting back to the Lich Master, stealing his body merely gives you on
big ugly body of unsually high fortitude.  You would get a heightened
awareness of dead things, and the locations of undead and corpses
while controlling the body, but you would not gain any powers *over*
the (un)dead merely by stealing a Lich Master body.

The other aspect which retains bound to the body are any social
considerations.  Thus if you steal the body of the King Orc, that body
is still the King Orc, and thus so are you.  Ergo all the Orcs will
bow and grovel, do your bidding etc, but you don't get any weird and
wonderful Oricish powers the King Orc might have had.

Of course, if you do want to become a Lich Master, stealing a Lich
Master's body is about the best way to start...

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...