New Race: Undead/Vampire

[Planetus]

Add a racial-based resource mechanic? That'd be WAY too complex.

I kind of like the idea of the bats form being killable, but resurrecting you X tiles away in a random direction with low HP (5%, maybe). I'd suggest going back to the idea that bats 'attacking' an enemy displaces them. Something like the swap mechanic, but drain damage instead of confusion and on-hit activation.

[bricks]

You could use Vim as the Vampire resource, giving it some logical synergies with Defiler classes.

[Szragodesca]

My first thought on the bats was that they might be a bit overpowered as they were. You're getting a perfect targeted phase door off of the first point? Plus a bit of damage and potentially significant heal? Okay, the fact that it has to be LOS limits it a bit, but still. (Oh, and having it be one of multiple forms is a bit much here).

Suggestion: cut out the transform to wolf and transform to mist powers. They're excessive, and bats-as-teleport is strong enough as-is. Leave the minimal drain damage (perhaps make a bit more minimal, depending). Make the max distance of the teleport be dependent on skill points spent - starting range of 3 or 4, range increases by one per point.

Other than that, is starting to look reasonable.

I like your posts.

I am an idea person, and not above saying "nerf it and see if it needs a boost later" rather than "MY WAY!" and have it nerfed later anyhow.

You could use Vim as the Vampire resource, giving it some logical synergies with Defiler classes.

As I said before, I can't live long enough to unlock much. I've never had vim at my disposal, or any new races, and I think I've unlocked 2 classes so far. . . Maybe 3. However, your posts often seem intelligent and well-informed as well, so I'll happily nod and say "if it works, go for it."


I'm just offering ideas for people to spin off of and (hopefully) improve upon. My knowledge of the game is still pretty limited.

[Sirrocco]

On vim as a vampire resource...

Thematically, I like it. Practically speaking, I have some issues with it.

Primarily, Vim (to my recollection) is one of those resources that's constantly decaying, and, at least in its originating classes, takes some effort to keep hold of. The only way to get more vim is through skills - probably bite/feed, for appropriateness. The problem is that bite/feed is supposed to be a long-cooldown power... which basically means that any powers that you might have that would cost corruption are by default inaccessible to non-corrupted vampires. If you want to balance around that, that might work... except that it would mean making the powers very strong indeed (to balance the fact that you rarely get to use them, especially if you are a ranged fighter) which in turn would make corrupted vampires overpowered. I can buy in some synergy - but not that much.

Alternately, you could decide on something like giving vamps natural vim regen, but I suspect that that would be a bit overpowered in synergy as well. I guess you could do something interesting like say that vampire powers cost life unless you were corrupted, in which case they cost vim instead. That could work.

[Szragodesca]

That actually sounds almost perfect for the idea I'd suggested regarding the higher bloodlust the higher chance to lose control. The longer you go without using it, the more it decays, the less likelihood you have of losing control. It would, rather than making a corrupted vampire a powerhouse, make them manage a Vim balance between enough to use, and not so much as to lose control. Then if you need Vim, your vampire abilities don't require much (if any for Bite) but generate a bit that your class could then use.

So, rather than worrying about someone having an overwhelming supply, the player would have to worry about having too much. You could tie the loss of control to current Vim% if it's a resource that gains a higher cap (unlike Equilibrium, it seems).

The last thing you want to do if you're a caster is have your character go charging into melee against your will, right?

To balance the loss of control, one might want to give a boost like the bat "mini-bite on hit" as that's the whole reason the vampire is berserk. It's feeding.

[bricks]

However, your posts often seem intelligent and well-informed as well, so I'll happily nod and say "if it works, go for it."

Ha, well, I can only hope. Defilers (Corrupt[e/o]rs and Reavers) use a lot of blood magic, and the Vim resource is all about taking and using life energy (I think it was briefly called Blood, in fact). Vim doesn't regenerate, like Stamina, nor does it deplete like Positive/Negative. Both classes have to weigh the value of using a Vim-expensive ability against the time needed to recover that Vim, so while there would be synergies with the proposed Vim-using Vampire, you'd still need to consider the cost of using Vampire-related Vim abilities when you could use your class abilities instead. Non-Defiler Vampires would only need to mind the Vim resource for their Vampire-related abilities (and the Hex tree, if they happened to pick it up). Vim is also recovered through killing enemies (as a fraction of your Willpower, I think), which seems Vampire-ish and isn't as outright broken as something like innate life-steal.

[Szragodesca]

So would it work better to base them off negative energy since that depletes?

To clarify, I didn't think vampires should have a racial innate, so much as the debuff that causes you to lose control should have a very minor one to stay in the flavor (and maybe keep a vampire caster alive)

But, that's all providing they had the chance to go feral.

[Planetus]

I don't think binding the vampire's energy with any class energy makes sense unless it's necromancer's energy, and I don't think it would really work with souls or mana. With that in mind, if we really want a racial energy for vampires, I'd say thirst, which operates like a kind of reverse hate, slowly building up over time (but not on the world map, because that'd just be impossible). At 0 thirst, the vampire gains bonuses to HP/stamina regen, healing, physical/mental/spell power and saves, and maybe a lot of darkness resistance and a little general resistance. At 50 (or maybe 25) thirst, the bonuses drop to 0, with a little darkness resistance and a little light weakness. At 100 thirst (the max), the vampire takes penalties to all of the above, except resistances, which see noticeable light resistance penalty, but still a little darkness resistance. Furthermore, every time the character deals damage (melee only?), he has a chance to reduce his thirst a little (proportional to damage? creature level?). The above effects would be constant/level scaling and not dependent on any talents.

The first racial talent, then, would be Bite, or perhaps Blood Drinking, which would substantially reduce thirst (maybe automatically to 0). Alternatively, for balance with ranged characters, maybe Blood Drinking would be a free sustained or passive that allows damage dealt of any kind to reduce thirst, with higher investments improving the chance/amount of thirst reduced.

All in all, I prefer to think of vampires as immutable undeads, meaning they inherently and unavoidably have undead properties. Even if a vampire managed to 'master' his thirst, this means he wouldn't seem to be human to game mechanics. He still wouldn't need to breathe, he still would be vulnerable to the light, etc.

Loosing control if thirst get's too high is an interesting idea, but it would have to be done in a class-neutral way. How would a mage go berserk? Randomly cast spells at random targets until they ran out of mana? What about archers? And God forbid a paradox mage go berserk at high paradox. Any class should be able to go berserk without just sitting still and getting thrashed, or probably without burning up all of their energy. Maybe a berserking character get's a reduction in cost of abilities, so a berserking mage could cast a ton of random attack spells at random enemies and still have at least a little mana left over at the end.

Or, alternatively, what if a berserking vampire transforms into a monster-type vampire, with appropriate stats and skills to the level. Maybe one of the racials could decide what type of vampire you become, from fledgling through master. At the end of the berserk, thirst is reduced to whatever the neutral level is (25 or 50) and the character transforms back to themselves, keeping the % hp they had at the end of the berserk (so if a 100/200 hp vamp monster is reduced to a 100 max hp vampire, his actual hp is only 50).