ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The egos that give penalties as well as bonuses need to be looked at.

Fog gives -confusion immunity%. That is very, very bad. Daikara, Dreadfell and the Maze in early game have plenty of mobs with confusion attacks, and with rand elites about you can expect it almost everywhere. I can see using it on a yeek that has some confusion immunity on other gear so it goes over 100% but that is so situational that I believe this needs to be changed.

Then we have the one that gives -healing% (painweaver, was it). Obviously, cursed are not going to care as much about healing%, but if you're taking a huge penalty like 80% to your healing rate you should get something really good in return. Right now, it's just a junk ego.

Wrathroot's shield is pretty bad as artifacts of that tier go. It gives cold and nature resistance and a penalty to fire resistance. You might get some use out of cold resistance from that item on Daikara's boss but that's about it. There are much better early cold resist items - girdle of calm waters, frost treads, vargh redemption, snow giant wraps. Just finding a random item with 8-10% cold resistance and no dangerous penalties is not uncommon at that level. Running around with a fire resistance penalty is a pretty bad idea considering that you never know if there's a rand elite around the corner that does fire damage.

Confusion immunity is also not an issue for people who've really cranked their mental save.

-Healing% is not as much an issue for people who depend on shielding rather than health (archmages and the like)

My memory on wrathroot's shield was that it served basically the same purpose as bill's trunk - that it just had more baseline beef as a shield than you usually got at that level. On the other hand, I've never found it all that compelling myself, so...

Not arguing that you're wrong in general. The only ego with a negative I can think of that I've ever been interested in was bloodhexed mining picks, and that only to get enough str to qualify for something (generally armor skill) without actually investing in str. I think you may be right - just that the case is not quite as strong as you make it out to be.

In particular, I'd suggest that anything that comes with a healing penalty should also come with some sort fo alternate healing/health effect. Add drain damage or add overall HP or something.

I removed most of these penalties in the SVN recently. The only one I didn't mess with was (I think) Traitorous.

In my opinion, penalties should be reserved for artifacts were the drawbacks and bonuses can be handled more carefully. Egos with penalties tend to be garbage (and I mean that quite literally, I asked a lot of people for feedback on stuff like painweavers and if no one is using an ego then it shouldn't be on the drop table).

Sirrocco wrote:Confusion immunity is also not an issue for people who've really cranked their mental save.

-Healing% is not as much an issue for people who depend on shielding rather than health (archmages and the like)

It doesn't work that way for archmages. Arcane shielding gives you a damage shield proportionate to the amount you heal. So, you want to stack +healing%, not get minuses.

As for the mental save and confusion immunity, it's a different debate. My argument is that it's easier to stack confusion immunity than mental saves in the first half of the game.

edge2054 wrote:I removed most of these penalties in the SVN recently. The only one I didn't mess with was (I think) Traitorous.

In my opinion, penalties should be reserved for artifacts were the drawbacks and bonuses can be handled more carefully. Egos with penalties tend to be garbage (and I mean that quite literally, I asked a lot of people for feedback on stuff like painweavers and if no one is using an ego then it shouldn't be on the drop table).

Cool, thanks.

I didn't mess with Wrathroot's shield fyi.

For most people, it is easier early on to stack confusion immunity than mental saves. There are exceptions though - running a dwarven mindslayer, I had pretty much enough mental save to ignore anything that might be swinging at me by the time I actually got around to worrying about things like confusion resistance.

That having been said, it's a moot point, and probably for the good.

I also agree that negative penalties are a problem. Especially when this ego is multiplied in a randart.
I bought once a "special item" ring in Last Hope with -300% healing, probably derived from a painweaver ego. Not need to say that I throw it away immediately regardless of the other bonuses.