Before I go into this request, let me start off with a little background.

First of all, I'd just like to say how much I loved the food/water system in Book 2. Games have done food systems before (New Vegas for example) but the feature often feels pointless, since money for purchasing supplies is usually quite abundant, which merely forces the player to make a few extra mouse clicks now and then.

With Eschalon it was a lot better, because money was fairly rare early in the game, meaning that food management was a very serious tactical consideration which affected your every decision. I remember delaying my trip to Port Kundaad because I didn't know if my food supply would hold up, and one time I chose a particular quest over another because I knew the first one lead me to a spider cave, where I might find some juicy spider legs to keep me alive. Having to make these choice really grounded you in the world, and it was this feature that really made Book 2 stand out from all the other RPG's I've played.

But there was one occasion where the immersion was broken. In my first playthrough, I played a steathly rogue with very few combat skills. This ended up being a mistake, since it prohibited me from taking on the many quests which required me to kill things. As I fled empty-handed from the many monster lairs, I suddenly came up with a macabre, (yet somewhat creative!) idea. In desperation, I went to an isolated cabin and murdered the owner in cold blood, hoping I could get some gold from him and, if necessary, butcher his corpse for the meat, but sadly he didn't drop any meat upon death! Luckily my character managed to get back on his feet, but I was still a little disappointed that my character's unspeakable act of inhuman depravity netted him nothing but some stale, calorie-free xp.

Also, on another level, I think it'd interesting to play a character who has to to horrible things out of stark necessity, rather than playing a character who does evil things just because he's some unrealistic sociopath. So not only does cannibalism make sense for players edging up on the left side of the food bar, but it also makes for some interesting roleplay scenarios. What do you guys think?

You can do all the quests without making a single kill, except for one.
I haven't done it myself, but I believe you'll need to use 'Charm' a lot. Charm a baddie and let him kill another baddie for you.
Or drag hostile beings to guards or other volunteers that will do a job for you.
The only quest where this will not work is the spiders in the warehouse quest, as you'll always be left with one in there.

Yes, the food and water system is well done, I agree. It doesn't make the game more difficult for competent players, as they don't need to rest much, so they don't use food and water that much, but then it still adds flavour. For fairly inexperienced players the food and water requirement can indeed be a serious concern.

But cannibalism? Not for me, sorry. Maybe in a horror RPG, but in Eschalon this would seem misplaced.

yes i gotta kinda agree with you even though i don't know what cannibalism means "cause English is not my first language" But on the first time ever i played EB1 I killed an NPC thinking i'll get some gold from him but he dropped nothing he just lowered my health to dangerous levels and gave me maybe 10xp i found that useless
i also had a post on this topic about two years ago but no body listened to me

i think at least some NPC should have money on them or a weapon or at least armor or food but they all seem to be poor and have nothing on them even the sellers don't have nothing on em

Like I said, I was playing a rogue who focused on stealth skills. However I wasn't skilled enough to hide from all the enemies, so fighting them was really the only viable option. I guess I could have just run passed them and gotten to the quest objective, but that's just not a style I enjoy.



There's one other type of player you didn't consider: competent players who like a challenge. I'm not an inexperienced player at all, in fact I've played enough fantasy RPGs to know that rogues often get the short end of the stick. That's why I like playing them, because it makes the games more tense, challenging and exciting. As difficult and sometimes frustrating as my rogue playthrough was, it was much more enjoyable than my second "competent" mage/ranger playthrough, which was so easy and boring that I didn't even bother finishing it.

I think that is a very bad idea and completely unnecessary. It would only cause me to look elsewhere for games to play.

Why? All it would take would to be to make a "human flesh" inventory item that NPCs would drop once you killed them. No one would be forcing you to eat it. Also it would be necessary if you had no food and couldn't get it anywhere else, unless you wanted your character to die and have to start a new one.

Aldbeski, cannibalism means eating the flesh of your own people, in other words eating human flesh. Not a thing most people want to do!

I don't think we need 'human flesh' bits dropping as loot. Just a random, cheap food item. Or, use the foraging skill to find bits of vegetable/fruit items along with alchemy items. Yambi berries, apples, potato, carrot, wild onion, etc. might be better to help you survive. Of course, you can always take 5 points of Divination and spell "Create Food" to get along.

Come to think of it, I've always found the fact that Tauraxes drop steak to be kind of disturbing.

Dragonlady Thank you for Explaining Cannibalism
and I Must agree with you on what you said
i was thinking that npc's would drop some Gold coins or food or equipment randomly and some npc's like blacksmiths would drop weapons or armor
i think u can see where i'm going with this.

Now that you remind me, I remember finding it disturbing too!

Aldbeski, Yes I see where your going and your welcome!

Actually I think that is kind of a cute touch. I'm not really fond of steak tartare, but it beats rat meat and spider legs.......

It is funny, and I'm not bothered by it, but it is a bit... macabre. Feasting on the flesh of your fallen foes is in character for my barbarian bludgeoning weapon specialist, but not so much for my ranger. She'd probably rather roast up some of those wolves that seem to be popping up everywhere lately.

Snow Pup Kebabs?

That's a depressing thought...
Maybe it's a bit less vicious to just say -
"Roasted Wolf Meat"

Perhaps the game could allow you to eat some of the remains of what you kill. This could give you nourishment or make you sick (i.e. depending on what your race/type/alignment). If you look at the Rogue game, if you ate some of a monster you killed you could also gain some of the attributes of that monster.

For instance, if a monster that could poison you in an attack, then perhaps eating some of that monster might confer some resistance to the poison attack of that monster in the future.

This would incur some overhead in the program. It would have to determine if enough of the monster remained after an attack to be available for eating. It should also take into account the type of attack on the monster to determine the remains. Killing something with arrows would leave a lot of intact remains. Killing something by exploding a barrel would probably not.