Class Idea: Soul Reaper

[Graziel]

Soul Reaper
"Practicioners of dark arts, known as collectors of souls, grim reapers, soul eaters and many others. These unholy abominations that know most fearfull of all arts - entrapment of souls. They gain power by collecting souls of poor victims and use them to wreck havoc in domain of living while trying to fill its neverending hunger for more."

mostly melee class but its hard to tell if tearing soul is melee ; )

main resource - soul power(normal mob 10; elite 15; boss 25) - gained by Soul Harvest
most important stat - Willpower

• Soulessness:
• Soul Harvest - you deal x damage if target dies collect poor soul (no resource cost just cd) at lvl 1 it takes only 30% of soul power at lvl 5 - about 60% at lvl 4 it becomes partialy passive - you gain X% from each kill and rest if killed by this skill
• Soul burn - Only at melee range - You ignite the very soul of entity doing massive damage but paralyzing yourself in the process
• Call spirit - summon ghost to be your ally for Y turns, each enemy killed while its summoned extends it by Z turns - melee, blight damage
• Soul storm - target soul with critical health explodes in voilent manner causing resonance of pain in nearby souls
• Soul split - You voilently reap enemy soul from its body stunning it for Y turns and doing X blight damage while soul is separated from its body it haunts you giving -Z% blight resistance

• Haunt:
• Eternal torment - blight DoT
• Body return - you can return to your body while possesing enemy/spirit walking.
• Possesion - you can take control of targets body (depending on willpower) for Y turns while leaving your body.
• Spirit walk - You are able to walk out of your body to scout ahead(gives +100% speed, cant activate traps, and you move just as spirit body stays in place)

• Teachings of the Netherworld:
• Netherworld enlightment - +Willpower -Strenght / After years of training your mind finaly reached enlightment but strict training has taken its toll on your body
• Create soul prison - You build special prison that stores part of soul power(20% to 40%) - it could be special title that could be placed anywhere but the longer distance its power gain/bonus could be smaller
• Soul link - You link your pain with soul prison and thus reducing damage by X%, each point takes away C soul power when prison reaches 0 soul power it breaks and souls it contained attack you doing V damage for Y turns
• Blessing of the Netherworld - sacrifice all soul power for full healing(can be only used when > A soul power and should have long cd)

• Manipulation:
• Attract - pulls target toward caster(target lose turn).
• Temptation - You tempt target by reading its deepest desires and showing them to him thus confusing him for Y turns.
• Punishment - each damage you recieve is multipiled by V (V < 1) factor and given back as blight damage.
• Damnation - Target monster is considered as hostile by other monsters.

Im not much into LUA coding but I hope at least some of ideas will be used, happy soul harvesting!

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

Class Idea: Soul Reaper

I'd suggest a different name. "Soul Reaper" is already taken.

[Patryn]

@Frrnf: The term "Soul Reaper" is not exactly unique anyway. It's an translation from the very common japanese term "Shinigami" (lit. "Death God"). Actually many subs of eg. Soul Eater or Death Note had the (IMHO) bad idea to translate this term to "Soul Reaper".
In addition its more of a descriptive name for "The Death"-like types (black cloak & scythe) aka. "The Reaper" and not a "creative" name, thus reusing it shouldn't be a problem.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

Yeah, it's not really so specific to Bleach that reusing it would be completely out of the question... but I'm guessing a lot of people would probably think of Bleach's Soul Reapers first when they see the name. I know I did; when I saw the topic I was a bit confused and thought someone was suggesting that a game based in Middle-Earth should have a Bleach character class (until I actually read the post...)

The problem is that the term "Soul Reaper" has become really closely associated with Bleach and isn't really used much anywhere else (not officially anyway; in fansubs and such maybe but not in the official translations), so there's a good chance that people who see "Soul Reaper" on a class list will think "black kimonos and Zanpakuto" before anything else.
It'd be kind of like calling a robot a "Terminator" or a "Droid"--both are really pretty general names for types of robots if you think about it, but for most people who hear those used as the names for robots in some other series, the ones with the same names from the Terminator and Star Wars movies will automatically come to mind.

I think that just plain "Reaper" would probably work better. "The reaper" tends to lead more toward the vague "Grim Reaper dude with a black robe and scythe" image rather than any specific depiction from another series, so it's more of a general term than "Soul Reaper" would be. Plus, short and fairly simple class titles (Fighter, Rogue, Mage, etc...) usually just seem to work better than longer, multiple-word ones.

[Graziel]

I agree with Patryn, "Soul Reaper" sounds lame : P

As for FnrrfYgmSchnish in some beta there will be necromancers usually people imagine them as bad guys and in Diablo 2 they were more to to Light side ->Diablo 2 necro<- and as for Heroes of Might and Magic V they were more into neutral ->H5 Necro<- same goes for mages "most of" imagine them as old wiseman where in "Starlight and Shadows" ( Elaine Cunningham ) - Liriel was talented she-mage and also a Drow etc. etc. Its just a name like many others. You should concentrate your energy on discussing skills instead of just class name : )

[Patryn]

Actually I didn't say that Soul Reaper sounds lame, its just a bad translation from "Shinigami". At least when it is used for the Shinigamis in Soul Eater and Death Note. I have to admit it fits the beachlike-shinigamis better than the term "Death God", cause the bleach shinigami are more of a Reaper (with zanpaktu instead of scythes and a bit more skin and flesh ). My only point was, that just because the term is used in Bleach it doesn't mean it can't be used here. But you're right, thats kinda offtopic.

However, I do like this concept of "feeding" from others to "recharge". Actually I thought of something like this in a vampiric context, just with blood instead of soul as resource. Actually many of your talents would work there too - especially if you consider to take "blood as the currency of the soul" you can do a lot of soul-manipulation in a vampiric bloodbased concept too.

Just some random thoughts on your talens (take it as brainstorming):

• Soulessness:
• Soul Harvest - you deal x damage if target dies collect poor soul (no resource cost just cd) at lvl 1 it takes only 30% of soul power at lvl 5 - about 60% at lvl 4 it becomes partialy passive - you gain X% from each kill and rest if killed by this skill
• Soul burn - Only at melee range - You ignite the very soul of entity doing massive damage but paralyzing yourself in the process
• Call spirit - summon ghost to be your ally for Y turns, each enemy killed while its summoned extends it by Z turns - melee, blight damage
• Soul storm - target soul with critical health explodes in voilent manner causing resonance of pain in nearby souls
• Soul split - You voilently reap enemy soul from its body stunning it for Y turns and doing X blight damage while soul is separated from its body it haunts you giving -Z% blight resistance

Soul Harvest: looks pretty nice and give a good flow in gameplay. However, before reaching rank4 refilling soul can be quite a mess because you have to punch the opponent below X hp (with X == dmg done by SHarvest) without killing him. But okay, Reapers are a tough starting class. Thats fine for an unlock since you can consider player to be relatively experienced at the point you unlock them.
Call Spirit: Nice concepts and keeps you pushing forward without rest!
Soul storm: What is the threshold of "critical health"? That would determine if useful or useless. Again the problem with bringing a target below X hp without killing... And does the AoE resonance hurt you or your called spirit too?
Soul split: A utility spell with dot. The blightresi penalty shouldn't hurt too much.

• Haunt:
• Eternal torment - blight DoT
• Body return - you can return to your body while possesing enemy/spirit walking.
• Possesion - you can take control of targets body (depending on willpower) for Y turns while leaving your body.
• Spirit walk - You are able to walk out of your body to scout ahead(gives +100% speed, cant activate traps, and you move just as spirit body stays in place)

Eternal torment: If only melee, usually not worth using the turn for. Might become interesting if a) AoE, b) ranged or c) sustained as "weapon enchant" (==applied on hit). If c) Low dmg but since you hit a target often it will stack up. Think that would be an interesting concept.
Body return: Would there be any argument for spending more than 1 point into it? Is there even a point in making this a seperate talent? It should be included automatically in the talents posession or spirit walk (press talent again when in spirit form / possesion triggers "body return").
Possesion: Could be fun.
Spirit Walk: Might be nice to lure some monsters, but a final talent of the tree? But probably I just don't see the point.

• Teachings of the Netherworld:
• Netherworld enlightment - +Willpower -Strenght / After years of training your mind finaly reached enlightment but strict training has taken its toll on your body
• Create soul prison - You build special prison that stores part of soul power(20% to 40%) - it could be special title that could be placed anywhere but the longer distance its power gain/bonus could be smaller
• Soul link - You link your pain with soul prison and thus reducing damage by X%, each point takes away C soul power when prison reaches 0 soul power it breaks and souls it contained attack you doing V damage for Y turns
• Blessing of the Netherworld - sacrifice all soul power for full healing(can be only used when > A soul power and should have long cd)

Netherworld enlightment: Passive, activated or sustained? However I'm not very sure about the strenght penalty...
Soul Prison: I don't get it. What does it do exactly?
Soul Link: Hmm... Kind of a prepared shield in combination with Soul Prison (however the mechanic of that is supposed to be). To use effectively it would need a lot of preparation and talent points. Might not be worth it... especially because it doesn't reall absorb but hurts you later. Probably enable soul linking with your summoned spirit without the final punch?
Blessing of the Netherworld: That sounds useful as "oh shit"-button, but might have the same problem as "Heal" with the mage. However, this has the advantage of *full healing* but in many cases simply quaffing a potion might be a better decision because it doesn't empty your resource. What are higher ranks of this skill supposed to change?

• Manipulation:
• Attract - pulls target toward caster(target lose turn).
• Temptation - You tempt target by reading its deepest desires and showing them to him thus confusing him for Y turns.
• Punishment - each damage you recieve is multipiled by V (V < 1) factor and given back as blight damage.
• Damnation - Target monster is considered as hostile by other monsters.

Hah, I like those! Just make sure Damnation can be resisted by bosses with a decent chance. Might get cheesy otherwise.