Beta 6: Berserkers have no talents!!!

[PowerWyrm]

So where the hell are you supposed to put the points? Everything is a skill except the two-handed sections...

Your choice:
- Berserker: utterly pointless; decreases your armor/defense without anything in counterpart except a negligible attack bonus; 1 point for prerequisite
- Death Dance: I would max this, since it helps when surrounded; 5 points
- Warshout: pointless; you don't want your enemies confused since you can't kill them from afar; 1 point for prerequisite
- Death Blow: maxed; you need that if you want to survive; 5 points
- Stunning Blow: maxed; extra damage and stunning... perfect to kill things fast; 5 points
- Sunder Armour, Sunder Arms, Crush: utterly pointless; can't match Stunning Blow in usefulness; 0 points

This needs some improvement. Either put the Combat techniques as a talent or make the two-handed talents more useful...

[darkgod]

yes I am currently considering the way of the warriors, they dont have enough talents.

Now that does not mean I agree with your judgement of the talents, just that they only have 2 lines of talents to work through.

As for the talents:
- Berserker: it provides a good boost later on and your armor should be enough to compensate by then. But it should probably not be the first talent of the line, death dance sounds better in this role
- Warshout: wait until you are surrounded by nasties, this gives your breathing room to heal, run away, get in a tight tunnel, ...
- Sunders/Crush: Stunning blow is indeed your bread and butter but those talents for more for big nasties that refuse to die fast. Also they provide a damage boost for when other things are on cooldown.

Now more talents are needed, the best would be 2 more talent lines for 2h weapons, weapon & shields and dual wield.
Ideas welcome!

[SerPounce]

Another angle would be to change the skills so that they're all useful. Some suggestiongs:

1. Berserk: get rid of the Armor penalty (but keep, and perhaps increase, the defense penalty). This would seem to both make sense (you get hit more, but it doesn't inexplicably degrade your armor) and make the skill more attractive.

2. Make the sunder skills sustains rather than activated. It's not really worth the trouble to activate a power just to sunder, but I might throw points into it if I could turn it on and degrade weapons/armor as I use other skills.

3. I'm not sure what needs to be done with crush, but certainly the fourth power in a group needs to be better than the first!

4. OTOH I think stunning blow could go for a nerf with starting damage being lower than 100%. Maybe 80%, 100%, 120%, 140%, 160%? Death dance could be dealt with the same way.

[darkgod]

Ah I like your sustains idea!

I agree with Berserk, armour penalty makes not much sense anyway.

[Taxorgian]

Two-handed weapons - Advanced Tactics

- Parry blows (Activated, short duration, medium cooldown): By adjusting the grip on your weapon you gain an temporary extra () defense against physical attacks. While active some special attacks are not possible (Requirement Level 10, DEX 15)

- Entrancing Weapon (Activated, one turn, short cooldown) - You spin your weapon around in a blur, causing confusion to all monsters that can see you. Higher levels and higher DEX can make even quite intelligent creatures dizzy (Level 12, DEX 24)

- Singing Sword (Sustained) - By swaying your sword slightly the sound it produces drowns out mental attacks at the cost of being easy for enemies to find (Level 16, DEX 30, Sword Mastery 3)

- Magic Bat (Sustained) - At this advanced level of control you have a % chance of deflecting magical bolt attacks by the blurring motion of your weapon; reduces to-hit and some to-dam in the process. At level 5 a deflected attack may ricochet to hit a random enemy in visual range. This effect increases with DEX and WIL (or MAG?) (Level 20, DEX 40, WIL 25)

[SerPounce]

Those are certainly creative Taxorgian . Though I'm not sure I'd find myself investing in them..

How about instead of crush (you already have two disabling abilities):

Blood Frenzy (100 Stamina, Sustained): While active you receive a +(X*skill level) [X=3 off the top of my head for 3/6/9/12/15] cumulative bonus to damage for every monster killed, but this bonus decreases by 1 every turn (to a minimum of +0). This skill drains Stamina while active.

[darkgod]

Oh I like that one SerPounce !

[Taxorgian]

Not a problem; if characters will be reaching much higher levels than they used to it seems like there should be some that only become possible at higher exp levels. So there would always be something you can acquire in your talent area.

[SerPounce]

Thanks darkgod! I definitely enjoy thinking about these things, like most ideas the majority are mediocre, but there’s always some gems.
Some other skill ideas that strike me as Zerker friendly (specific number would naturally need to be more carefully considered):

Brutal Kill(Activated, 20 stamina, 30 cooldown): You make a single attack at 100+(skill level * 10)% damage, if you kill the targeted monster all monster within [Skill level] tiles are stunned for [1/2 skill level rounded up] turns.

Rage of Agony(sustained, 50 Stamina, 30 cooldown): For every 50/skill level damage you receive you regain one point of stamina. Additionally if you every suffer more than 50% of your total life in damage from a singe attack [single turn?] you may reset the cooldown timer for [skill level] skills.

Fuel the rage(activated, 40 Stamina, 100 cooldown): You work yourself up into a frenzy for 10 - skill level rounds, while which you are stunned. After this your speed is increased by 15*skill level % for 3*skill level rounds.

[darkgod]

Hehe yeah

Mhh some nice ones, I like the cooldown reset on damage, sounds .. berserky

BTW, Blood Frenzy implemented!

[SerPounce]

Hehe yeah

Mhh some nice ones, I like the cooldown reset on damage, sounds .. berserky

BTW, Blood Frenzy implemented!

Cool!

Of course the bad part is that now I have to wait for the next version to start a new berserker

Ghoul or dwarf... hummm...

[darkgod]

Dwarf!

[Taxorgian]

Since DarkGod mentioned other fighter types, I thought about an advanced set for fighters:

Elemental weaponry Weapons and shields
- Dual Harmony (passive): Any damage type associated with the shield (e.g., icy, poisonous) is shared with the weapon and vice versa. (Level 12, DEX 36)
- Enchanted Shield (sustained): Your shield now protects you from magical bolts (1/5 acid, 2/5 poison, 3/5 mana, 4/5 fire, 5/5 cold) At level 4 there is a smaller chance of protection against field spells as well. (Level 16, DEX 42)
- Splash (activated): The elemental damage modifier for your shield or weapon is stronger (x(level+1)+DEX/5) and when activated it affects all monsters adjacent to you. At level 3 this goes to a radius of 2. (Level 20, DEX 45)
- Projected bolt (activated): Sends a bolt of each element on your weapon and shield at a single enemy. Damage increases from 500% to 800% (equivalent to that 5-8 hits of just the elemental damage) with increasing numbers of points. Becomes a radius 1 ball at level 5. (Level 24, DEX 50)

[darkgod]

That's quite not what I had in mind taxo, but I like it.
Although this cannot be a starting talent line, maybe something you can learn if you have such a weapon & shield when you meet somebody, mhh

[Taxorgian]

Thank you! I was also interested in talents that take advantage of the "other" stat. As an example:

Two-handed weapons (Barbarian specialist)

- Blood Heart (sustained?) - Attacks on you are more likely to cause you to bleed, but when you do, your blood rage increases your speed by () and your damage by () until bleeding stops (CON 15)
- Callous flesh (passive) - Battle scars on your body increase your armor by () but decrease your defense by 4. (CON 20)
- Stun rage (passive) - Attempts by monsters to stun you make you really angry, resulting in a ()% chance of a free, critical attack. (CON 26)
- Dragon tattoo (passive) - Successful attacks by enemies have a ()% chance of hitting your elaborate magical tattoo. This causes the ink to react, randomly causing ice breath, fire breath or sand breath attacks using CON as the stat instead of WIL. (CON 36)