User talk:Phol ende wodan/Monster letter rearrangement

I would love to see this in one of the future versions of vanilla! Several thoughts, though:

• I think & is not as illegible as all the other punctuation marks, plus this marking for demons is quite traditional. However, ampersand is also quite a crowded symbol. So, what about moving all normal demons and devils to I, but leaving demon lords on &, changing their colors to make them distinct from each other? Just as you have Juiblex &, you could have other demon lords colored differently from each other, and maybe even leave Riders on ampersand and color each of them with distinct color.

• Maybe blobs and jellies could be united under j (jellies and gelatinous creatures) rather than b? Many roguelikes use j for all jellies, oozes etc. (eg. Angband, ADOM, most modern 7DRLs), so it would come naturally to players that all gelatinous creatures are now j. And you would have b freed up for eg. bears (I like bears, I would love to see them in NetHack).

--Red kangaroo (talk) 20:20, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. The idea of having & for "boss" monsters only is tempting, and fighting two demon lords at the same time because one got gated in and not being able to tell who's who without farlooking them is annoying. I think I would keep all the Riders on &, and maybe have Juiblex &, Geryon &, Asmodeus &, Orcus &, Baalzebub &, Dispater &, Yeenoghu &, and Demogorgon &.

The choice between b and j is arbitrary, but is probably a good idea for consistency with other roguelikes, as you say, and because j is a less used letter and the chances that something else would come along to take b are higher than something coming along to take j. (Interestingly, when talking about this in Fourk, I learned that bears are on U for ursine monsters, and include owlbears and bugbears.) Modified this.

Well, b could also be used for birds, if there ever is the need to split them from bats, or who knows what else. :) Yeah, owlbears and bugbears definitely need to fall under a "bear" class of monsters. (Bugbears are technically a breed of goblins from D&D, but that should not stand in the way of a cool pun! :D )

One more silly idea I had was to move invisible stalkers from E to _, if ghosts are to become W. Being invisible is kind of their only shtick, negated by see invisible that every end-game character has. If they were hard to spot even with see invisible, though, that would make them quite nicely distinguishable. Plus, they do not feel right in the elementals class.

--Red kangaroo (talk) 15:35, 17 August 2017 (UTC)