Well, I\'ve though about this a lot, and I think it\'s time for me to actually post it and share my thoughts with the rest of you
Have you ever felt symphaty for all the monsters you so happily put down when you invade their home and steal their treasures? Have you ever though about why those bandits in Morrowind just attack you without even saying so much as a word, or why they attack you even if you\'re wearing an ?ber-armor and the best weapon in the game when they themself run around with rags and penknifes?
And are orcs or trolls so stupid that you cannot converse with them other than with a broadsword? Are all monsters mindless fools who attacks everything they see, even if they know that they wont stand a chance and that they could as well avoid a fight?
I want to change the fact that most monsters in RPGs are stupid and mindless creatures who exists only as XP-sources. I want to have an option to all this hack n\' slash and give each monster a personality. Monsters who you can form bonds to, and even refer to as friends or allies.
I will try to explain what I mean by giving you an example.
Your character are wandering about in Yliakum when he suddenly bumps into a monster. The monster takes a quick look at your pathetic armor and weak sword, and decides that you\'re easy prey, so it attacks you, but it underestimates your skills and with a little luck you beat it to the ground.
The monster becomes scared and begs of you to spare its life, and you do, because you find it unnecessary to kill the poor thing for some reason, so you cast a healing-spell on him. This changes your relation to the monster to \"neutral\", which means that he wont attack you unless you attack him first. Later, with help of your charisma and charm you manage to raise your relationship with the monster to \"friendly\". The monster will now defend you if you get attacked, give you gifts, or sell things to you, and if you go even further he will eventually consider you as an ally and perhaps even stand by your side on your adventures.
To avoid stupid AI, monsters who works in groups such as clans works as one single unit, meaning that if you help one member of the clan it will spread it amongst the other clan-members so that eventually all members sets you to \"neutral\" for example.
So each monster has a special relationship to every player, and threats all players different, and if they get killed the monster simply dies and the data is lost.
This could create pretty intresting situations between players who hunts for food and XP and players such as druids who defends their allies.
Being allied with normally hostile creatures could give you access to their stores (with special offers), give you free food, a place to sleep, important information and so on...
You could also get special, random quests that raises the clans belief in you, or gives you items or trias.
There should be many ways to create a bond to monsters. If you get captured by their clan for example (this would be nice to see in a later version), you could use your charisma to manipulate the members. Perhaps you\'ll manage to convince them to release you, either by bribing them, or simply by using your charm.
Also, if an NPC gets attacked by another creature and you side with the first (or the other) creature he will think of it as a friendly act and raise his relationship to you.
Perhaps I\'m a bit enthusiastic here, but it would be great to see some of those ideas in PS someday. Ah well, you can always dream
