As an alternative to choosing a race at the start, I thought it'd be cool if you could create some kind of technology that could change it for you. Like, if you captured a certain creature, you could splice its DNA into your own to become like it, like a fishman or beastman, gaining special abilities. This change would could be temporary in some cases (wearing off over time), or you might need a vaccine to get rid of it. Or, you could amalgamate numerous DNAs together to create some sort of mutant superpower. There could be certain effects from splicing DNA often: Rarely getting elemental powers; gaining a weak but long lasting power as a side effect, or horribly mutating for a short time. Any other ideas? Edit: Never mind this post!
I like the idea of this but It just seems like it would be very challenging to combine the combinations of all the mobs in the game (assuming its a lot from the pics). I also feel that if they did accomplished all the mechanics working together the player would be to over powered. Another problem with this idea is the characteristic of all these mobs aren't going to be fully unique with very small differences that to have the abilities would take short amount of time to collect them all
Good points. A randomness element, and perhaps a cap on the number/powers of abilities you could have should exist, as well as incompatibilities (preferably where a certain combo could be broken). The power levels/nature of abilities could also be dependent on the quality of the player's equipment; like you have to research many different creatures to go a certain direction. Some machines could promote the physical aspects (like breathing underwater) or sensory aspects (night vision). I agree it'd need a lot of tweaking and limitations to make it interesting/fair.
