Wererat pack! [Archive] - Boards o' Magick

Sylvus Moonbow

Fri, 9th Feb '01, 4:45am

Here is a post by Bob McCabe concerning the wererats that are mentioned in their last update:

Okay :) Here's my novella for the week...

How do the wererats know when to be skittish and when to be brave? You, the DM and module designer, tell them. You can have them "cheat" and check the levels of the players. You can have them check out the worth of the players' equipment. You can have them initiate a battle to feel out the players, so that they only really attack or flee once they see how that first round went. You can probably do it in a hundred and one other ways, as well, limited only by creativity. We certainly have! :)

But also... as we've experimented with the scripting language, especially with behavioral scripts, trying to see what we can learn, we have occasionally been surprised by little quirks that – more than anything – add exciting realism and unexpected behavior to the game.

As one example, Brent wrote a script a month or two ago for a group of newly-spawned wererats. I think, for simplicity, the script called for the first wererat spawned into the game to declare himself leader, and each creature spawned in afterwards became a member of the tribe. Once the leadership was settled, the tribe was sent out to hunt for prey, but with the provision that no attacks could be made without the leader's presence.

While we were watching this scene unfold, we found that one of the tribe had stumbled across a lone werewolf. The wererat "scout" called for the rest of the tribe to join him in an attack, and then charged. As soon as he got there he lunged in at the surprised werewolf, but then pulled up short, not wanting to attack before the leader was present. The others of the tribe joined in quickly afterwards, each of them lunging in and out, circling around the werewolf as he fought to keep the wererats at bay. Once the leader arrived, the group attacked en masse, and the werewolf was quickly defeated (just a note, there were no accurate monster statistics used during this testing – for all intents and purposes, the leader, the tribe and the werewolf were all identical).

In this one situation, the wererats looked as though they were not "brave enough" to fight without their leader, even though that wasn't exactly what we had scripted. It might have even been interesting to have the tribe flee as soon as the leader arrived, allowing for a cocky wererat to take the werewolf in a one-on-one battle. Regardless, it was pretty exciting to see the behavioral scripts play out, and this gives you an non-technical example of how scripting works, and surprises :)

As an aside, fellow-designer Preston described to me a brief encounter that occurred during a 2nd Ed. pen & paper campaign that he is involved in, and is a further example of how a DM can have creatures behave realistically.

Preston's party is mostly made up of high-level adventurers (15-20 or so) that are moving through a campaign that has lasted many years. I think they're nearing the conclusion, and are preparing for a module where the end battle is against Orcus, I think(?). On their travel to one particular adventure, they were surprised by an ancient wyrm red dragon. I forget the exact details (maybe he'll recount it), but the dragon swooped in with his breath weapon, killing 2 or 3 of them instantly, grabbed their ranger, dropped him from 1000 feet up or something, and started to circle around for a second pass. In the interim, the cleric managed to cast a spell that altered time, restoring each of the adventurers within the spell's radius (that excluded the poor ranger) to full strength. The dragon, realizing this wasn't a group of pansies, decided to fly off after easier prey.

So, the dragon never knew the parties CR. It simply behaved in its most intelligent, cautious manner. It felt the players out, realized that it would be a bloody battle if it were to win, and decided that it wasn't worth the effort.

Bob McCabe Writing & Design Neverwinter Nights @ BioWare, Corp.

Syl...