elite and boss special abilities

[goombaboy]

I love the implementation of bosses and elites in the game. It is, so far, the closest I have seen in any variant of a 'random unique generator'. And while the special abilities are very nice (and frustrating!), sometimes they don't seem to make much sense. For example, having an elite with no magic attack do double magic damage is kind of a waste, as is scare/blind/confuse attacks from monsters that almost exclusively cast spells. As a thought to customize the special abilities with what is already in the game, how about the following:

Each monster gets a flag. The flag type reflects the basic profession/class the monster would belong to. (So trolls would be 'fighter', monster priest types would be 'priest', creature with steal and flee would be 'thief' and so on)

Then, when generating an elite, simply assign a skill from the basic (level 1-5) skills that belong to the class of the flag. For bosses, assign one of the higher skills (level 6 or 10 required).

This way, thief types will have more thief type specials, monster mages will have more powerful spell specials, generic monsters would get the fighter abilities, and higher level bosses/elites might even be able to pull from the appropriate advanced class tables.

Just a thought, although one I might not live to regret if it was implemented...

[Variaz]

Interesting proposal, and an easy way to tell what kind of ablities a monster should get... Though perhaps not that needed... the conditions for abilities could already be done with what we have(if there's a S:1_IN_5, for instance, then give the magic boosting ability)...

And once I change the way the r_info is made, I may make changes to boss abilities and flags as well... But thanks for suggesting that!