Every play-strength item, in one education. DOORS: the pathfinder
walks through doors it can open — already-opened ones freely, locked
ones when holding Master Key or Pick Lock, casting the key at the
door on the path before stepping through (and a loop where the
clockwork re-keyed an already-open door forever is fixed: opened
doors read as open). TREASURE DEFENSE: a wizard carrying the
automaton's gold becomes the priority — chased over all objectives,
shaken down with DROP OBJECT when held, and attacked first. WIDER
SPELLCRAFT: blaster wands charged by number and fired; teleport as
escape when wounded and hunted, and as a counteraction clear of big
incoming spells; SPEED cast on sight; WARD armed to guard the gold;
shieldstone displayed so spare numbers soak small hits; ANTI-ANTI
pressed against counters (never against escapes); the berserker grows
BIG with an enemy near, the worrier fades invisible or slams a
CREATE WALL in its pursuer's face; ambushes armed from held
interrupts — the worrier trapping its doorstep, the others trapping
the treasure. Tournament suite green across all temperaments.
And the clockwork speaks: sparing, temperament-voiced table talk on
its own deeds — "ACQUISITION COMPLETE.", "SCHEDULED DEMISE:
DELIVERED.", "good wall. safe wall." — through the same chat ledger
as everyone else. The tally gains "games fought against the
clockwork", and automatons no longer pollute the count of wizards
seated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The automaton now plays number cards where they matter: attached to
value-scaled attacks (waterbolt, powerthrust) choosing the biggest
for damage, and played for movement when the goal is just out of
stride. It raises its monsters when no wizard is in spell range and
commands them every turn — creatures march at enemies by the same
hazard-shy BFS and maul whoever shares their square. Targets are
picked by lowest life.
And it has moods. The HUNTER plays the classic game: gold first,
violence when convenient. The BERSERKER hunts wizards over treasure
and finishes games by last-wizard-standing. The WORRIER paths around
enemies, counters at a lower threshold, shields against chaos, and
never brawls. Hosts pick the temperament when seating one (or the
workshop assigns at random); it persists with the seat, shows in the
roster, and the tournament harness proves every pairing finishes.
Across ten seeds of berserker versus hunter: six treasure wins to
four kills — the moods play genuinely different games.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Phase 4 begins. The automaton is a pure function in the engine —
automatonCommand(view) — playing from its own redacted GameView, the
same information a human seat receives: hidden hands stay hidden from
the clockwork. It ranks simple damage spells, counters what hurts
(full shield at 3+, reflection at 4+, blunt at 2+), discards its
worst cards by a value order, BFS-pathfinds to enemy treasures and
home again, refuses to path through hazards, brawls when there is
nothing to steal, and always has a safe fallback; the server's drive
loop steps any bot-held seat through the same runCommand path as
humans, so bot commands log, persist, replay, and broadcast like
anyone's.
Hosts seat them pre-start with "⚙ seat an automaton" (Automaton,
Automaton II, ... V); bot seats persist as tokenless join lines and
restore on boot. Proven three ways: bot-vs-bot engine games conclude
across seeds in 8-14 rounds (~100 commands — human-scale), a full
four-automaton table finishes, and a live websocket game of human
vs. automaton ended with the clockwork carrying two treasures home
through a do-nothing opponent.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5