b29: Cursed/Doomed: Rework Fateful - Aura

[Canderel]

Ok, I played with it, and I think it is AMAZINGLY flavourful, but in practice it's not fun. The fact is, you have to flood points in here, to get some decent equipment.

So, here's my philosophical change that I want to suggest for the tree: Currently it's spend points here to not get crappy equipment, which I suggest we change to spend points here to get very flavourful, and awesome cursed items.

Proposed Cursed Touch should read:
Your cursed touch permeates everything around you. Any non-unique equipment you find has a [10% * level] chance of receiving 1 curse, and a [5% * level] chance of having 2 curses and a [2% * level] chance of having 3 curses.
For each curse an item gains it gains 0.5 extra weight and Dark Gifts, Vengeful Blessings and Grim Chant's chances of gaining benefits are additively increased by 10%*level.

Right, so continue to Dark Gifts/Vengeful Blessings/Grim Chant (at lets say lvl 4 as is currently):
Your curses can also bring dark gifts. All cursed items have a 46% chance of gaining 1 beneficial effect, 13% chance to gain 2 beneficial effects, or a 6% chance to gain 3 beneficial effects.

Now lets say the item gained 2 curses, then it would effectively become:
Your curses can also bring dark gifts. All cursed items have a 46%+50% = 96% chance of gaining 1 beneficial effect, 13%+50% chance to gain 2 beneficial effects, or a 6%+0% chance to gain 3 beneficial effects.

Right, so at least if there are 2 curses, you are almost certain of 1 beneficial effect, and fairly certain (or much more) of 2, but chances a 3rd beneficial effect are not affected.

This is at the expense of 9 generic talent points... much more fair (and therefore fun I hope) than the current system?

[lukep]

I haven't found the detrimental curses to be very bad. -5% resist arcane/light/fire? - 2 to a stat, or -5 to a save? IMO that's a fair tradeoff for the huge gains such as +0.20 to a talent mastery, +10 or so damage on hit, or 40% (physical, darkness, or mind) resist penetration. It only took me until about level 6 (with one point invested in each of the first two skills) before I started seeing items better than base.

[bricks]

Yes, this would be a good move. Makes the tree much more interesting, not to mention optional.

[hamrkveldulfr]

I think it looks alot scarier than it really is, while -7% fire resistance is not good, it is not game breaking. Cursed have a difficult start... but have you played through the undead dungeon without being able to find a shield rune?
I have not met anyone who did not have trouble starting as the hollow-boned little yeek,
I like the flavor and challenge that this brings, and i believe it fits well with the class.
If any change needs to be made i think you should get to choose between unnatural body and fatefull aura

[Miruko]

i wish that tree was deactivated at birth, so only i can choose if i want to start that, with the first point in it everyone is obliged to spend point to make that tree not a malus.

[Flare]

I haven't played the class much (barely long enough to kill 3 characters), but I noticed that you don't really need to pour a lot of generics into it. You just need one point in each talent, and you can make up for the points you don't spend by farming adventurers and farportals for more items. Eventually, you will find that awesome equipment.

Farming for an hour should not completely make up for not having a talent. Perhaps instead, cursed items could be generated with their good effects, and the talents could enhance those effects? And not having the right talent would disable that effect completely.

[Canderel]

I haven't found the detrimental curses to be very bad. -5% resist arcane/light/fire? - 2 to a stat, or -5 to a save? IMO that's a fair tradeoff for the huge gains such as +0.20 to a talent mastery, +10 or so damage on hit, or 40% (physical, darkness, or mind) resist penetration. It only took me until about level 6 (with one point invested in each of the first two skills) before I started seeing items better than base.

I never saw bonuses that great admittedly (not on lvl 6 for sure), most were stuff like +1 max hate (pretty cool), +1-2 to a stat, some damage on to hit. Admittedly I probably pumped more into it than I should've (4 into Dark Gifts).

In terms of the philosophy though, this tree cannot currently be skipped. Maybe 3 points (since you start with 1) is sufficient, but I must admit, I am feeling like I want to quit playing my cursed lvl 8 char, because it's just too tedious.

[TheRani]

I thought the Doomed already had it rough enough with low amounts of hate giving them penalties, and having a huge healing penalty on top of that. They didn't need this. At least on the bright side, they weren't one of the more equipment-dependent classes to begin with.

[lukep]

I haven't found the detrimental curses to be very bad. -5% resist arcane/light/fire? - 2 to a stat, or -5 to a save? IMO that's a fair tradeoff for the huge gains such as +0.20 to a talent mastery, +10 or so damage on hit, or 40% (physical, darkness, or mind) resist penetration. It only took me until about level 6 (with one point invested in each of the first two skills) before I started seeing items better than base.

I never saw bonuses that great admittedly (not on lvl 6 for sure), most were stuff like +1 max hate (pretty cool), +1-2 to a stat, some damage on to hit. Admittedly I probably pumped more into it than I should've (4 into Dark Gifts).

Ah, all of the best effects are weapon (split into staff, and all others) and armour (in this case body, head, cloak, boots, gloves etc...) specific from the later two talents. My current setup in that tree is 1/2/2/2, and I'm thinking I should have saved a point and made it 1/1/2/2. The bonuses from this tree can easily be more powerful than a greater ego on every item, essentially giving you a full set of randart power equipment instead of purples (or purple power from blue, or blue from green) if you grind and are lucky.

[darkgod]

I thought the Doomed already had it rough enough with low amounts of hate giving them penalties, and having a huge healing penalty on top of that. They didn't need this. At least on the bright side, they weren't one of the more equipment-dependent classes to begin with.

Well I will try to make the have an easier start (and Cursed too); no reason to punish them I agree
But the cursed equipments have really small penalties, it's more flavor than anything, and the big problem is being very weak at birth, not curses, IMO

[benli]

I don't think the detrimental curses are too harsh. They were added for flavor and I think they do exactly that. At most they add a small, easy-to-overcome penalty. They do make very early startup a little harder. I think Doomed is actually pretty easy to start up regardless (add a point in Willful Strike for knockback and go to melee-only dungeons). Cursed is harder and is probably hit by this penalty worse. Maybe a point in the armor talent and some better starting equipment would help a lot. Or just a bigger ax.


If the talents need some reworking I think its in the area of more interesting bonuses. The current bonuses were just quickly put together. I was thinking ego-style curses might be nice. In the description an item with several curses might say something like:

[cursed linen cloak]
-1 Strength, 5% resist darkness, etc.
Carries the curse of weakness, dark shroud and shadows.


As people have mentioned extra points in the talents don't have a lot of payoff. Increasing the power of benefitial bonuses with the talent level (and Willpower?) might be better than increasing the number of curses. Higher talent levels could also unlock the most powerful curses. A powerful curse might look like:

[curse of slaughter]
+0.1 -> 0.2 talent mastery [Slaughter]
+5% -> 20% physical resist penetration
+2 -> 5 physical power
-2 cooldown [Slash]
-2 cooldown [Frenzy]

Automatically granting a curse like this to the Cursed's starting battleax would be one way to overcome the difficult startup.

[bricks]

Yeah, I'll have to revise what I said earlier. The curses are really a pittance when compared to the bonuses, especially those on weapons and body armor. In fact, they are so minor (except, perhaps, the '4% chance to' curses on weapons) that I think Candarel's suggestion should go through to keep the equipment from getting too good. 1/1/2/2 really does seem like the best way to invest in this tree, as it stands.

One way to get around the fact that grinding can negate the skills above 1/5 is to only allow multiple curse effects (good or bad) for more points, i.e. 1/5 gets one effect, 3/5 now has a chance for two effects, 5/5 has a chance for three effects.

[TheRani]

It's not a horrible tree if you invest in it, certainly, but the fact that you Have to invest in it if you don't want to wear only garbage until you find nice artifacts, is a pain. It becomes a tree that you MUST invest in if you don't want to suffer. I'm playing an antimagic Doomed right now, and I have had to put generic points in that tree that could have otherwise gone into Antimagic, Health, Armor, etc.

[lukep]

IMO, the way to make investing in this tree worthwhile without requiring changes to the bonuses is to have triple (and double) bonuses start rarer, and scale faster. Currently, the chance of a triple bonus scales from 3.5% to 7.2% at talents 1 to 5. I think that a scale from 1% to 15% for triples, while leaving singles the same, and having doubles somewhere in the middle would work well. Not sure how detrimental effect chance should be handled, perhaps just the inverse, a 10% to 1% chance.

[Postman]

I tried Cursed and I have to say it's not fun to play any more, purely because of cursed items. I'm not saying it's difficult. In fact I think there was absolutely no need to boost weapon point. Rough start is ok IMHO. But cursed item make game no fun (at least for me). Penalty is not insignificant: -2 str is a lot for lvl 6 character and forcing player to farm for acceptable items. Which is no fun. Also make player to carry junk around. Cursed already strapped tight for generic points, and forcing him/her spend even more at the beginning of the game, only to compensate for built-in disadvantage is IMHO not a good design decision.