Beta 6: Berserkers have no talents!!!

[SerPounce]

Dwarf!

Yes, a good ol' hard drinking dwarven battlerager! Of course if you implemented Blood Frenzy as I wrote it I'm going to want all the stamina/willpower I can get my grubby little hands on and a ghoul frees up more attribute points. But I guess with a dwarf I have more skill points that I can put into stamina renewing abilities for an Endless Blood Frenzy

[Elkan]

Possibly overpowered, but it suits the heroic berserker theme perfectly in my opinion.

Undying rage: "When your health drops below zero in melee combat You refuse to let death take you and enter an undying rage for [1/2/3/4/5] turns, during which you may only move and make melee attacks and special attacks. healing and damage effects are nulified for the duration of the rage. if at the end of the rage you have slain all foes in sight, you refuse to die and are restored to 1 hit point, otherwise your rage alone can no longer sustain you and death claims his due."

[edge2054]

Yeah, probably overpowered Elkan but a really cool idea that could probably be toned down a bit to not be broken

Maybe something like this.

Undying rage: When reduced to zero or fewer hit points you enter an undying rage for 2 turns (base but maybe a high Con could push this up to as much as 4). While the rage is active all healing effects are negated but you can survive up to -20% of your normal hit point total per talent point invested (-100% at level 5). If at the end of the rage you have slain all foes in sight, you refuse to die and are restored to 1 hit point, otherwise your rage alone can no longer sustain you and death claims his due.

So in this version the rage doesn't last as long and you're not invincible. You still take damage and can still die if you drop far enough into the negatives. Still really cool though in my opinion and still really useful, especially if you're playing a character with a ton of hit points. Also dropped the from a melee attack clause to simplify it and prevent the 'why didn't it activate?!?' moments I'm sure would come up. Maybe could make it when reduce to zero or fewer from an enemies attack so traps don't trigger it?

[greycat]

You need to prevent the player from simply reading a teleport scroll and saying, "Look, I've slain every foe in sight!"

[edge2054]

Right.

So replace...

'While the rage is active all healing effects are negated but you can survive up to -20% of your normal hit point total per talent point invested (-100% at level 5).'

with...

'While active you may only perform actions that require stamina to use or attack with your equipped weapon but you can survive up to -20% of your normal hit point total per talent point invested (-100% at level 5).'

Solves a lot of issues unless a stamina based teleport crops up at some point.

[shani]

Or just disable reading/drinking/whatever while rage is active,
Considering the fact that your are totally enraged, It seems quite logical...

[Elkan]

Basically just moving and using melee attacks and melee attack abilities, as I originally said ^^

[Elkan]

Possibly overpowered, but it suits the heroic berserker theme perfectly in my opinion.

Undying rage: "When your health drops below zero in melee combat You refuse to let death take you and enter an undying rage for [1/2/3/4/5] turns, during which you may only move and make melee attacks and special attacks. healing and damage effects are nulified for the duration of the rage. if at the end of the rage you have slain all foes in sight, you refuse to die and are restored to 1 hit point, otherwise your rage alone can no longer sustain you and death claims his due."

Its already baked in, the only allowable commands are conventional moves and attacks, error message are "you are too angry to do that!" on attempt to foo

[Elkan]

Yeah, probably overpowered Elkan but a really cool idea that could probably be toned down a bit to not be broken

Maybe something like this.

Undying rage: When reduced to zero or fewer hit points you enter an undying rage for 2 turns (base but maybe a high Con could push this up to as much as 4). While the rage is active all healing effects are negated but you can survive up to -20% of your normal hit point total per talent point invested (-100% at level 5). If at the end of the rage you have slain all foes in sight, you refuse to die and are restored to 1 hit point, otherwise your rage alone can no longer sustain you and death claims his due.

So in this version the rage doesn't last as long and you're not invincible. You still take damage and can still die if you drop far enough into the negatives. Still really cool though in my opinion and still really useful, especially if you're playing a character with a ton of hit points. Also dropped the from a melee attack clause to simplify it and prevent the 'why didn't it activate?!?' moments I'm sure would come up. Maybe could make it when reduce to zero or fewer from an enemies attack so traps don't trigger it?

As for the five turn suggestion the reasoning is this, 5 turns is a long time to deal with a single conventional mob, but then single conventional mobs are rarely game enders its when you accidentally blunder into a pack of half a dozen nasties or more at varying ranges or that out of depth boss you really weren't expecting. finishing off what's left of a large pack with only 5 moves is likely to be very hard to pull off, especially if they are at range so its not god mode, and helps gives berserker a bit more survivability. yes, they are supposed to be able to take a lot of damage, but they are also supposed to be bloody hard to kill and I think that sits well with the theme. the -100% max damage cap works well in my oponion.

The melee combat should stay, but can be reworded internally too "triggered by an attack from an NPC whilst a hostile NPC is in an adjacent square" this presents you from refusing to die from traps, or that mage who shows up two screens away and one shots you with a manathrust, which should not induce rages (Except behind the keyboard) Basically its all about the berserker working up into that unstoppable frenzy whilst slugging it out toe to toe, and if you are on 5 hp fighting some ugly demon and backpedal onto a frost trap, well. you DESERVE that game over screen

[darkgod]

Hey got internet access in my holyday

I quite like the idea, maybe a tad hard to code up good but worth the try

BTW in next beta warriors get two new talent trees available: Warcries and Superiority with some fun stuff inside
Should make building them more fun as it gives more options

[edge2054]

As for the five turn suggestion the reasoning is this, 5 turns is a long time to deal with a single conventional mob, but then single conventional mobs are rarely game enders its when you accidentally blunder into a pack of half a dozen nasties or more at varying ranges or that out of depth boss you really weren't expecting.

Five terms seems to long to me. My reasoning is that it would basically make boss fights to easy. You'd effectively have double your hit points for every boss fight.

The melee combat should stay, but can be reworded internally too "triggered by an attack from an NPC whilst a hostile NPC is in an adjacent square" this presents you from refusing to die from traps, or that mage who shows up two screens away and one shots you with a manathrust, which should not induce rages (Except behind the keyboard) Basically its all about the berserker working up into that unstoppable frenzy whilst slugging it out toe to toe, and if you are on 5 hp fighting some ugly demon and backpedal onto a frost trap, well. you DESERVE that game over screen

This makes since. I was mostly concerned with non-melee attacks from melee range not triggering the ability.

And I guess I missed the melee attack line in your original post

[Elkan]

Five terms seems to long to me. My reasoning is that it would basically make boss fights to easy. You'd effectively have double your hit points for every boss fight.

You get 100% extra HP for five turns, so if you can't kill the boss in five turns (and they typically have very steep HP levels) You are out. mid-late game Bosses typically come laden with stuns, knockback freezes and other fancy toys, which will eat into your five turns in a very nasty fashion, not to mention if on turn four a level 0 yeek paraplegic wanders onscreen 8 tiles away you are pretty much screwed either way.

Admittedly a very cautious player could carefully hunt around the edges of the boss with lots of forethought and cunning and clear away all the other mobs before going in to abuse this bonus for its full effect. But then you are probably going to enjoy shadowblade or rogue Sooo much more. Berserkers should run in screaming ARGH! and not really thinking too much about what is going to happen next.

[SerPounce]

Hey got internet access in my holyday

I quite like the idea, maybe a tad hard to code up good but worth the try

BTW in next beta warriors get two new talent trees available: Warcries and Superiority with some fun stuff inside
Should make building them more fun as it gives more options

Cool, hopefully at least one of them is a "generic" tree as currently warriors only have combat training and the cunning based trapping skills as generics.

On a separate note I've had a lot of fun playing with blood frenzy, it requires a lot of talent point and willpower investment to really use properly, but once you get it going it's great fun! I've found Dunedains make great berserkers now as their regeneration ability allows you to keep the blood frenzy going without resting or burning through life potions. Unfortunately my last one died from some poor decision making on my part shortly after killing one of the bosses (avoiding spoilers) on CL22. I got my damage rating up to the high 300s several time times. Carn Dum seemed to be the best place for mass slaughter . Since there's more stuff coming I guess I'll wait for the next version to really give it a go again.

[edit] Oh, I still think the Berserker talent is a bad deal. For a Zerker with a good two handed weapon you're getting maybe a 15% increase in damage for a 75% decrease in armor and a total loss of defense(maxed skill). I still say remove the armor penalty (but leave defense), it doesn't make much sense anyway and will make the skill a more reasonable trade-off.

[Nevuk]

The problem with the beserker skill set to me is the lack of defensive utility. A beserker can't really charge into most rooms as they will get eaten alive by spells or archers (hill orc archers have cost me probably 6-7 beserkers from just one alone and a lack of awareness. Beserker's already have a lower AC than warriors due to 2 handed being the only way for them to access their strongest abilities, and then to have none of their abilities offer any real surivivability, and for their trademark skill to actually make them easier to kill, that can just cause playing them to be a chore and a lesson in LOS abuse.

I'm going to propose 2 different talents to allow them some survivability and then a suggestion of how to resolve the difficulties of programming the last stand type ability.

I always envision a Beserker as a form of the Unbeliever from tome 2, they sacrifice pretty much all magical prowess but in return make magic nearly useless against them.
They are granted a small hint of this in the spell resistance field, but I would enjoy seeing a passive (or sustained, probably sustained) talent that grants 10/20/30/40/50% spell failure in the aoe but has a low magic skill as a requirement (like <12) to learn it. By this I mean, their magic skill must be BELOW 12 to learn it.

In order to make this balanced and require some thought this would apply to ALL player actions besides autoattacks, movement, and stamina-related abilities. (So even quaffing potions could backfire or reading scrolls. I might want to allow potions but definitely not scrolls, they are entirely counter to the skill and make it an easy get out free card). In fact, I might make the penalty double to player abilities - so at max level the player is incapable of reading scrolls or using any magic or equilibrium based abilities. If this were to function, though, it would require a cooldown before it could be turned off, though. (Perhaps making it so it can only be turned off at >100/90/80/70% hp?)

Archers really make the Beserk skill totally unviable, if I turn it on and take two steps into a room I've already lost 400 hp to a single archer due to low armor and then the next 450 hp is going to be spent chewing through eternal bone golems and the like at melee range. If Beserk offered an AC/defense bonus vs ranged attacks but retained its penalty vs melee attacks it would function perfectly, I believe. (I mean only a really, REALLY high ranged AC bonus, like +40 and 20 to defense would possibly make me consider even touching the skill). To compensate I would remove all ranged weapon capabilitiy from Beserkers - it doesnt make sense for my beserker to be coddling his crossbow thematically anyways, if he/she is touching it at all it should be to shove it down someone's throat, not have to shoot darts at them and hide behind things.

I believe these changes would be very beneficial to the beserker class, especially if made so that only Beserkers are capable of learning them, leaving the default ones in place for warriors.

On the topic of the death skill, I believe you could make it simpler merely by changing the way it functions. Allow a Beserker to temporarily gain 200/300/400/500 max hp (numbers adjustable) which vanishes after 10 turns. The player hp will not drop below 0 upon loss. This would retain the spirit but remove some of the coding difficulty and also allow for some interesting play (I also have an idea for a skill which would synergize with this mechanic)

Make hp into the Berserker's resource pool - the impression I have always had of nordic beserkers was that hurting them made them more dangerous, rather than less. Allow them to gain Speed (or weapon power or attack) based upon the amount of lost hp. - for every 100 missing hp, they gain a 5/6/7/8/10% bonus to chosen attribute. If this were an entire tree of choices I would support it, have say a 30 stamina sustain penalty and have damage/attack/speed be the different choices in the tree. It should also function well with Blood frenzy, I always find it difficult to justify using blood frenzy when I lose the gain in a round and killing multiple things at once with death dance is really dangerous. This, however, would be the skillset I would think to only allow one to be unlocked every 10 levels, starting at level 20. I would say Dmg/Speed/Attack would be the proper order for the auras, as the endgame is when attack becomes important even though speed may be the most useful overall.

I think all of these ideas would function well with Beserkers, at least conceptually. The numbers probably need a lot of work, however.