Remove all negative regen ego effects.

[Aquillion]

Per here.

There's several reasons why they should be removed.

First, and most importantly, they're not fun, and encourage players to play in an unfun fashion. They encourage you to constantly change your equipment; but for everything but weapons, the interface to do so is clunky, and having to remove or wear different sets of stuff constantly is a massive pain. At the same time, as long as you do switch gear whenever you want to rest, the penalty is significantly reduced, almost eliminated -- most people don't rely on natural health regen in combat anyway.

Second, anyone with any decent source of healing or regen can ignore negative regen anyway. When I'm recovering hundreds of HP every ten turns or so, the -5 hp that a -0.50 regen ego gives me over that time is totally meaningless. Regen bonuses are useful to some builds, because they can combine them with healing rate increases to translate them into serious recovery -- but those builds just won't use negative regen equipment. For everyone else, -0.5 regen is horribly annoying, but, at the same time, not actually a very meaningful disadvantage.

Equipment shouldn't be balanced around annoyance; so, because of this, no regular ego should grant negative regen.

Third, it steps on the toes of Cursed / Doomed characters. If I wanted to balance negatives and positives in my equipment, I'd be playing one of those. Regularly finding good equipment that's ruined by a negative regen ego that makes it too annoying to use is not fun for most classes.

[lukep]

It's too bad that the one class that benefits the most from insatiable weapons and other resource leech equipment (Cursed) is also the class hit hardest by negative life regen. IMO, a better mechanic to balance resource leech (if it is even necessary) would be fatigue, as the tradeoff would then be resource recovery for increased cost. I am unsure if negative life regen should be removed from items with Telepathy or not, it is a very powerful bonus, and it can be more than just an inconvenience for life drain.

Would putting a floor on life regen at 0 be a better solution? This would mean that items such as these could stop regeneration, but not actively drain life.

[edge2054]

Insatiable and Telepathy would both make more interesting artifact effects imo. The rarity could be kept in check more easily on Insatiable and it could be balanced around being on three or four rare items rather then on a common ego property.

A helm of greater telepathy sounds like the great start to an artifact. Give it telepathy all and maybe precognition on activate. Call it so and so's Third Eye or something. Add more abilities based on where the game most needs an artifact helm (i.e. mid game, late game?). For a mid or early game item I think the above is fine but end game might need a bit more kick to it.

Anyway I think you guys get the idea of where I stand on this.

[Miruko]

i don't get why the resource leech is connected with regen penalty, i mean, the resource leeched is not hp, is mana/vim, am i right? at least block the natural mana regen to make it go in a "vampiric" way...

[Grey]

The annoying thing in my opinion is that insatiable is a blue ego, when clearly it's a pretty worthless one (just not worth the hassle). The life_regen penalty should be changed to a healingmod penalty, or as Edge says the whole ego should be removed in favour of an interesting artifact (Gloves of Absorption or something).

[Canderel]

Yeah +1 from me here.

We may have introduced a whole set of egoes but i must say, the last 'good' lot was rage/quick group.

I am unsure more egoes are a good idea actually.

[eronarn]

Definitely drop the negative regen egos. Resource leech itself is pretty screwy, too.

For telepathy, I think that -50% (or even -75%) healmod could be a lot more interesting than -3 regen.

[Zonk]

I agree on removing the negative regen on insatiable or the like; As for telepathy, I gotta say I'm not a fan of the current penalty, either. Seems like a bit of a stretch, as if the penalty was there JUST for 'balance'.
What if it was a bit like Vimsense and there was a chance that the things you detected knew where you are? Of course, that might actually remove the whole point of the item...Although I don't think it would be too bad if it was a lowish chance rather than automatic, and only for some NPC(the smarter ones, or maybe demons, horrors, ones with psionic talents).

[lukep]

What if it was a bit like Vimsense and there was a chance that the things you detected knew where you are?

Now I want telepathic enemies, that can always be seen by the player, even through walls.

Back on topic, I think that - mental saves and confusion resistance would be better linked to telepathy, but I don't know if a malus is even needed with their rarity.

[Zonk]

Back on topic, I think that - mental saves and confusion resistance would be better linked to telepathy, but I don't know if a malus is even needed with their rarity.

I thought about mental saves but didn't suggest them because well...Taint of Telepathy already does that. Though it wouldn't be bad if egoes did that too instead of life regen...

[Sirrocco]

I'd actually be more interested in seeing the Taint with the negative life regen. That way, you wouldn't have the whole swapping thing to worry about. If you have telepathy gear on, it'll make you weaker to mental assault. If you use the energies of the tainted inscription, it'll cost you some HP.