Draft:Houses

Omega 0.90.4

Houses are ordinary private residences in Rampart, between the smaller hovels and more heavily defended mansions. Entering one opens a separate interior with domestic rooms, possible occupants and concealed safes. They are burglary sites, not purchasable versions of the condo.

Location and entry

Most residence types are assigned to random building entrances when Rampart is created. Ordinary houses are the most common type. Four out of five residential front doors start locked. Open, unlock or force the exterior door, then accept the entry prompt to go inside. Leaving through the western exit returns to the same building entrance in the city.

The standard house has a dining room, kitchen, closets, bathroom and bedrooms, with open internal doorways. Its walls are sturdier than a hovel's but much easier to tunnel through than a mansion's. Two possible resident positions independently have a 50% chance to be occupied. Residents come from the game's character history and can be living people or undead versions of earlier characters. They are hostile intruders' opponents, asleep at night and awake during the day when generated.

There are four hidden safes. The interior is rebuilt on entry; it is not persistent storage for a player's belongings. Use the owned condo for that purpose.

Safes

Search for a concealed safe, then enter its tile to choose between picking its lock, forcing it or leaving it alone. Picking depends on Dexterity and Thieves' Guild rank; forcing depends on your current combat damage rating. The safe does not require a lock-pick item.

For a precise comparison, let your approach strength be twice Dexterity plus ten times thieves' rank when picking, or your combat damage rating when forcing. Subtract a random number from 0 through 99:

Result	Consequence
10 or more	Safe opens; 50 experience and alignment -4
-9 through 9	Harmless failed attempt
-19 through -10	Alarm; a Rampart residence forces you back to the city for prosecution
-29 through -20	0-24 fire damage; safe becomes rubble
-39 through -30	Strength-30 lightning ball centered on you
-40 or less	Acid spray: destroys a worn cloak, otherwise corrodes worn armor, otherwise hits bare flesh

With a cloak or armor, the acid branch also inflicts 10 acid damage; bare flesh receives 0-99. Armor corrosion reduces its protection and worsens its hit and damage modifiers by three. Elemental resistance affects damage, but does not turn a destroyed cloak into a surviving one.

An opened safe is empty half the time. Otherwise it yields at least one generated object, with a one-in-three chance to continue after each object. Even an empty safe gives the opening experience and alignment change. Ignoring a safe is harmless, despite the resulting failed-burglary message.

The safe alarm differs from an ordinary floor siren: it can summon prosecution from a hovel as well as a house or mansion. It also forces the city return before the Order-destruction exemption is considered.

Strategy

Compare the two approach strengths before choosing how to open a safe. A high damage rating can make forcing better than picking, while thieves' ranks add predictable value to Dexterity. An approach strength of 109 guarantees opening; at 90 or more the worst random result is a harmless failure, so repeated attempts avoid the harmful safe branches. These thresholds do not protect against residents or other traps.

Night entry gives sleeping residents rather than guaranteed safety. Search carefully, decide what to do if an occupant wakes, and keep an escape route. The standard house has no preplaced floor sirens, but its safes can still lead to the gaol.