"transitive damage" and summoners

[MalReynolds]

There are a lot of comments generally about how cheap playing summoners is--Lord Dimwit said it best long ago, when he said it's bu!!$#i+. You just call up some Great Wyrms of Law and let them do the work for you while @ watches the latest episode of Real Housewives of Derth around the corner.

Also, it is highly annoying when a monster does this to you. Shouldn't we fight like gentlemen, I implore, without all these ritches and skeletons?

One way to make it all more interesting is to have a skill which allows an attack on a summons to somehow "punch through" to the summoner. To pierce the incorporate veil, as it were. This, of course, would be very useful in getting at the things behind dream seeds, skellies, shadows, minotaurs.

This could be a talent ("transitivity"), or be based on equipment (some swords could have an ego or effect that ~10% of damage goes to summoner, if any), could happen on crits if you have some other skill or sufficiently high cunning, etc.

It possibly could be subdivided into two skills, working on magical and natural summons only, respectively. E.g. it could be a benefit that killing Urkis gives, to trace nature's threads back to the source. Even better, it could be the much discussed potential benefit that accrues only to those who stay neutral between magic and anti-magic, allying with neither El Gran Corruptero or the Zig-dogs. (Neutrality: no sides; see things objectively; go to the source.) It could be a prodigy; but think it should be a bit more widely distributed on npcs than that.

Maybe it would be nice to get a warning of this; something like 5-10-20-50% of damage goes to summoner over successive attacks on the targeted summons. When the skill is activated, it could apply to all summons; or the skill could just be targeted on a single summons, which would usually quickly die, making the effect less game-changey. If activating transitivity only applies to one attacking summoned creature, then @ and the monster would have some interesting strategic choices: choose a big summoned monster, so you can pass more damage to the summoner, but indirectly keeping that big dangerous summoned creature alive a bit longer; or just kill a small guy, with an indirect fringe benefit of hurting the summoner a bit. Sometimes it might actually make your summons last longer by sending damage elsewhere.

And maybe after you take damage from a summons, you then can hurt your own summons, and half the damage is passed to the initial damager, so it truly is transitive once the link back to the source is opened. All kinds of possibilities to make summoning less passive. On the rare cases when transitivity occurs, you find that projecting yourself has left yourself overexposed, and you must more actively join the battle just to protect yourself. There could be some otherwise-not-too-powerful monsters that are masters of transitivity (passing 100% of damage on to summoner!--not harming the summons at all), and it is actually more dangerous to summon against them than just to fight them yourself.

I think that would be a useful skill for @ to have; and thus nice for monsters to have; and would make a bit more of a link between master and slave. It would certainly make a summoner turn off the TV when he sees the damage coming in.

[SageAcrin]

Ultimately, though, it makes you less durable when you have summons out, not more. Since, an AoE attack can hit you and your summon at the same time.

Everything about that basically runs counter to Summoner's main advantage, which is defensive play.

Yes, it's probably too good, but I prefer the idea of lowering the range or giving enemies LoS to the Summoner, so that they can be crowded down-things that make sense, and lower the impact of that defensive play.

Making summons make you less durable-under any circumstances-means that Summoners are very vulnerable to oneshots on occasion. This isn't just theoretical, either, Vor Armory/Pride are full of enemies waiting to hit you and your six summons with Fireflash, and "Just not summon" is not an option for Summoners...

[Atarlost]

Ultimately, though, it makes you less durable when you have summons out, not more. Since, an AoE attack can hit you and your summon at the same time.

Everything about that basically runs counter to Summoner's main advantage, which is defensive play.

Yes, it's probably too good, but I prefer the idea of lowering the range or giving enemies LoS to the Summoner, so that they can be crowded down-things that make sense, and lower the impact of that defensive play.

Making summons make you less durable-under any circumstances-means that Summoners are very vulnerable to oneshots on occasion. This isn't just theoretical, either, Vor Armory/Pride are full of enemies waiting to hit you and your six summons with Fireflash, and "Just not summon" is not an option for Summoners...

Well, that's conceptually easy to fix: Make transitive damage not apply to environmental DoTs or if the summoner is in the attack's area of effect. It might require ticking a flag down from a place in the code where area of effect is calculated, but it shouldn't be impossible.

[Kaja Rainbow]

Hasn't there been a fix put out in the SVN where enemies aggro on you after they kill your summons? Maybe we should wait for that to pan out.