Mimics

[CoM]

Watching the Irc, I saw something about mimics and thought id leave a suggestion. My suggestion would be to have two chests shaped npc's be able to randomly spawn within quest area treasure areas, kind of how legendary npcs can spawn in the quest themselves. However, with these two npcs you could make them neutral to all the mobs and give them a simple dialogue, for example, for both chests it would be "1: open chest {Warning this may be a mimic, are you sure you want to open this chest?} or 2: Leave chest alone" Depending on what random npc had spawned there (Either the regular chest or the mimic chest) You would either get a reward or a mimic chest would spawn a fairly dangerous hostile chest and attack your group.

[zDark Shadowz]

Maybe the mimics, after a while, swivel briefly, or have black tendrils come out for 1 second, if you watch them for too long. Or change position when you aren't watching... ... Then 'spawn' if you clicked on them.

[zDark Shadowz]

Mimics are indistinguishable from any other object, unless they move. To symbolise this properly, work it into the opening script of the chest as an object, to spawn the mimic as a creature, as well as have a reaction to being hit before being opened.

Soon as a mimic is found once you'll have people being paranoid and hitting every chest before opening them...

So then you put in an additional script that breaks objects inside if they are attacked before opening...

...and induce more and more paranoia into people if the mimic is particularly strong for a quest, and randomises where it appears during the quest...

Introducing a mimic needs to be done classy so a player has a chance, however small, to detect that something isn't right.

Maybe a gnawed-on dead body is in the area, or the bloodspatter covers everything except the chest. Maybe there's no dust on the chest, or the chest if left alone in it's room for too long, it moved to a different location to be more visible so when you come back later you're like - what? Was that there before?

Death attack, paralysis, knockdown would be the scary things to go for with a mimic.

If you want to work in the above descriptors, have
them chosen from the list at random and only show up if someone with a HIGH(ish) Search skill passed over a trigger that's near a randomised chest flagged to become a mimic, to be given as a private combat-log message that's thrown in so it seems like a basic quest description message and don't show the search roll.

If the person isn't paying attention to all the fluffy and pretty messages describing the area... Snap. That's how I'd do mimics anyway. I'd limit them to only one or two quests at most.