PureQuestion, XLambda, AlexMidle, and myself all concurred that this game could use a necromantic melee class in Pure's Doombringer topic. So, instead of derailing his vim-based class idea, I've decided to start this topic to discuss necromantic melee ideas.
The biggest problem I see with a necromantic melee class is that all the actual necromancy in the necromancer class is fueled by souls, rather than mana. A melee class that can summon undead minions sounds cool and all, but honestly it feels too close to the necromancer class as it exists today. So, instead of that, I suggest that we use souls gathered to fuel special abilities. Since dedicated mage necromancers have a max of only 10 souls, and considering how hard souls are to come by (comparatively, at least), I think the right idea would be to have most abilities cost 1 soul, with the occasional REALLY powerful ones costing 2. Additionally, sustains could reduce the max number of souls you have to work with, or keep you from gaining new souls, or maybe even be free to sustain, but do nothing unless a soul is gathered, at which point they take it and activate a bonus instantly.
That last idea sounds nicest to me. Imagine a melee class that get's magical power bonuses whenever it kills something, like an aura of damage, of fear, massive HP regen, clearing status effects, a bone shield, global speed increase. Maybe the results could be based on the power of the creature slain. Maybe not, that may be too complicated, not sure. Some of this sounds a little to close to the Cursed and their hate-based power, but I still think it's worth exploring on it's own.
Additionally, I'm thinking it would be nice as an undead-only class, both to bring more attraction to the undead classes (who's xp penalty currently seems to deter a lot of players) and to make up for the ban on undead wilders (which makes sense, but it hurts the races a little). This idea would also open up a whole slew of undead-specific aspects.
Another thing to question is whether such a class should be reliant on mana at all. For the necromancer, the necrotic aura is magic-based (I think requiring mana to sustain, but I'm not sure and too tired to check at the moment). If this class is undead only, could we get away with it being free, and bypassing mana? Class talents would still scale with magic and spellpower, but I think we could skip will.
Some ideas:
Dedicated sustain talent tree, featuring auras that grant bonuses whenever you gain a soul, but cost you that soul to give the bonus.
-Talent 1 grants physical power and spellpower bonus.
-Talent 2 grants defense, armor, and HP regen bonus.
-Talent 3 grants an aura of darkness or arcane damage and a chance to inflict a random fear on any target.
-Talent 4 grants a bone shield, capable of fully absorbing 1-3 blows (only 1 can be active at a time).
All except the boneshield would be temporary.
Dedicated necromantic tree.
-Talent 1 is the necromantic aura, maybe with something like the Gloom effect, too, but weakened.
-Talent 2 is a powerful melee attack that consumes a soul. It has a chance to instakill (or deal 3x/2x critical for higher ranks) or will deal 200-400% damage if not.
-Talent 3 is a melee AoE attack, damaging all foes in radius 1-2 and maybe stunning or knocking them back.
-Talent 4 is a sustain that grants all attacks a life-draining ability, but reduces the max number of souls by 2-5 or so.
Dedicated magical attack tree featuring fire damage (hellfires). Necromancers get ice, but more has been associated with death than just the cold.
Two-hander trees
Survival, just because everyone gets it these days.
Any other ideas?
Oh, and a name. Deathknight is obvious, but I'm open to suggestions.
Necromantic Melee Class
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Re: Necromantic Melee Class
So... ways to use souls...
- I like the mutually exclusive soul-consumption sustains, though I'm not sure I agree with having them all in the same tree. I might be more inclined to have them in separate trees, in the same location (either last, as the Cursed, or perhaps first)
- For a different kind of rampaging tower of power feel... instead of sustains, make them activatable buffs. Each buff in the tree costs a soul or two, and goes for some duration (5 turns, maybe), but casting another buff in the tree actually extends the duration. So, for example, if you have the first two skills in the tree, and both have base duration of 5, you cast one, wait two rounds (leaving you with duration 3) and cast the other, you now have both running, both at duration 5. Make them not cost a turn to cast, and power up based on the souls you gain. It gives an interesting choice. Lets say that the first three in the tree are cost 1, and the fourth is cost 2. You're in a pretty vicious fight, and you happen to have a large stack of souls on hand. You could fire off all your buffs at once... at which point you have a lot of potential power for five turns. Alternately, you crank up a couple of them, get in a few kills, crank in another one as you're about to run out, and see if you need the last one at the end. That'll last you 10 or 15 rounds, with more time to accumulate kills (and thus power up those buffs, especially the ones you grabbed first). On the flip side, the time you most need power is generally at the beginning of the fight, so....
- Alternate dynamic: A tree with a passive starter. Whenever you gain a soul, you don't get access to it immediately. Instead it floats around you for a while, doing something mildly helpful (temporary buff). Acquiring more souls refreshes the duration as well as increasing the number. Once the group subsides, you get the floaters as souls you can cast with. More points in the skill keep each soul floating for longer, and increase the effectiveness of the buff (by letting you take advantage of more souls. Just because you have 10 floating souls doesn't mean that they're any help to you). level 2 and 3 give you other beneficial effects from having floating souls. level 4 does two things. First, it causes any floating souls that you can't hold to fire off as reasonably effective attacks at anyone nearby. Second, it's a fairly high-cooldown active power that first fires off all of your currently floating souls, and then sets your current held souls to floating.
- Alternate dynamic: a frenzy-tree-like effect: a powerful short-duration temporary buff power, that becomes more powerful as you take further skills in the tree, that costs a soul (or two, or three) to fire off, and consumes your soul income to increase its own duration.
I'd personally avoid fire with deathknights. Fire has a death feel, but it really doesn't have a necromancy feel. Stick with physical, cold, darkness, and blight (and their descendent damage types) in some combination.
We're running this guy on two-handed weapons, and his theme seems to be pretty strongly one of "I grow in power (temporarily) as I kill, so there seem to be some fairly strong berserker influences here. How about Deathrager as a name?
There should be at least one power that would let you consume a soul in order to regain a significant block of health (and possibly domp some negative effects).
I'll note that with some of these ideas there's a good reason to stick with the undead-only requirement. In addition to everyone else, it prevents yeeks (who get extra base speed) and Shaloren(who can increase beneficial durations), and lets us push the "high-powered, short-duration buffs" idea a lot further without letting them completely cheese it.
Different question... What does this guy do when he's not burning souls? Making him deal with a life that consists of "burn souls, bump attack, and maybe the occasional passive" seems overly harsh
Part of me wants to suggest a passive (possibly one that cranks your healing mod and/or health per turn based on the number of souls you have on hand) where at level 5, if you die with max soul, you are immediately resurrected with 0 soul. I don't know how terrible of an idea that would be, though.
- I like the mutually exclusive soul-consumption sustains, though I'm not sure I agree with having them all in the same tree. I might be more inclined to have them in separate trees, in the same location (either last, as the Cursed, or perhaps first)
- For a different kind of rampaging tower of power feel... instead of sustains, make them activatable buffs. Each buff in the tree costs a soul or two, and goes for some duration (5 turns, maybe), but casting another buff in the tree actually extends the duration. So, for example, if you have the first two skills in the tree, and both have base duration of 5, you cast one, wait two rounds (leaving you with duration 3) and cast the other, you now have both running, both at duration 5. Make them not cost a turn to cast, and power up based on the souls you gain. It gives an interesting choice. Lets say that the first three in the tree are cost 1, and the fourth is cost 2. You're in a pretty vicious fight, and you happen to have a large stack of souls on hand. You could fire off all your buffs at once... at which point you have a lot of potential power for five turns. Alternately, you crank up a couple of them, get in a few kills, crank in another one as you're about to run out, and see if you need the last one at the end. That'll last you 10 or 15 rounds, with more time to accumulate kills (and thus power up those buffs, especially the ones you grabbed first). On the flip side, the time you most need power is generally at the beginning of the fight, so....
- Alternate dynamic: A tree with a passive starter. Whenever you gain a soul, you don't get access to it immediately. Instead it floats around you for a while, doing something mildly helpful (temporary buff). Acquiring more souls refreshes the duration as well as increasing the number. Once the group subsides, you get the floaters as souls you can cast with. More points in the skill keep each soul floating for longer, and increase the effectiveness of the buff (by letting you take advantage of more souls. Just because you have 10 floating souls doesn't mean that they're any help to you). level 2 and 3 give you other beneficial effects from having floating souls. level 4 does two things. First, it causes any floating souls that you can't hold to fire off as reasonably effective attacks at anyone nearby. Second, it's a fairly high-cooldown active power that first fires off all of your currently floating souls, and then sets your current held souls to floating.
- Alternate dynamic: a frenzy-tree-like effect: a powerful short-duration temporary buff power, that becomes more powerful as you take further skills in the tree, that costs a soul (or two, or three) to fire off, and consumes your soul income to increase its own duration.
I'd personally avoid fire with deathknights. Fire has a death feel, but it really doesn't have a necromancy feel. Stick with physical, cold, darkness, and blight (and their descendent damage types) in some combination.
We're running this guy on two-handed weapons, and his theme seems to be pretty strongly one of "I grow in power (temporarily) as I kill, so there seem to be some fairly strong berserker influences here. How about Deathrager as a name?
There should be at least one power that would let you consume a soul in order to regain a significant block of health (and possibly domp some negative effects).
I'll note that with some of these ideas there's a good reason to stick with the undead-only requirement. In addition to everyone else, it prevents yeeks (who get extra base speed) and Shaloren(who can increase beneficial durations), and lets us push the "high-powered, short-duration buffs" idea a lot further without letting them completely cheese it.
Different question... What does this guy do when he's not burning souls? Making him deal with a life that consists of "burn souls, bump attack, and maybe the occasional passive" seems overly harsh
Part of me wants to suggest a passive (possibly one that cranks your healing mod and/or health per turn based on the number of souls you have on hand) where at level 5, if you die with max soul, you are immediately resurrected with 0 soul. I don't know how terrible of an idea that would be, though.
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grayswandir
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Re: Necromantic Melee Class
Here's an idea for a mechanic: Have a lot of sustains that drain your own life, but having souls prevents that (say it consumes a soul to give you a 3 to 5 turn buff that negates that damage). Give them a fairly large cooldown so there's actually a penalty for turning them off. That way, if you want to stay at full power, you need to keep killing things or deal with constant damage.
You could do with other ill effects also. Say a damage increase buff that decreases your resist all by an equal amount if you don't have souls. I like the life loss better though.
There needs to be at least one attack named 'Soul Rip' with a chance to instant kill that tests against mental save.
You could do with other ill effects also. Say a damage increase buff that decreases your resist all by an equal amount if you don't have souls. I like the life loss better though.
There needs to be at least one attack named 'Soul Rip' with a chance to instant kill that tests against mental save.
At which point you immediately lose the 5th point in that skill, maybe?Sirrocco wrote:Part of me wants to suggest a passive (possibly one that cranks your healing mod and/or health per turn based on the number of souls you have on hand) where at level 5, if you die with max soul, you are immediately resurrected with 0 soul.
Addons: Arcane Blade Tweaks, Fallen Race, Monk Class, Weapons Pack
Currently working on Elementals. It's a big project, so any help would be appreciated.
Currently working on Elementals. It's a big project, so any help would be appreciated.
Re: Necromantic Melee Class
At which point you immediately lose the 5th point in that skill, maybe?[/quote]Sirrocco wrote:Part of me wants to suggest a passive (possibly one that cranks your healing mod and/or health per turn based on the number of souls you have on hand) where at level 5, if you die with max soul, you are immediately resurrected with 0 soul.
Not in my original thought. Part of the point here is that it's not terribly likely. In order for this to go off, you have to have maxxed out your souls, and then stopped using souls while walking into a situation that killed you. In return, you're slapped back into the same situation, and our life is refilled, but now you can't cast anything until you manage to kill a few of the enemy. Technically, it's a reusable resurrection, but practically speaking, you'd almost certainly have a better chance of getting out of whatever you were in by spending those souls than by having your life refilled. The real time that it comes in handy actually fits in with one fo the themes of the class. If you're killing the foe faster than you can spend their souls, then it suddenly becomes potentially useful.
Oh, and since souls are such pains to come across, we can throw around attacks that are both expensive and impressive. Personally, I want to see one (possibly costing 3-5 souls) that does severe damage to an enemy at range. If it kills the enemy, you teleport to that space, and deal area effect damage to everyone around you as your hapless foe's body explodes messily, displaced by your jump. If it doesn't, you get an uncontrolled phase door effect... or possibly a semicontrolled phase door effect that will set you down no more than 3 or so from your target.
Re: Necromantic Melee Class
Relying entirely on kills to use talents sounds bad; protracted boss fights would be miserable. Cursed more or less used to work this way, and it was really unpleasant. So far this class sounds like a bump-attack specialist, with little to no tactical thought required. If you balanced this class to be viable against bosses, you'd probably find that the rest of the game could be steamrolled. I'm a little curious as to why you are eschewing the undead minions concept but kept the "necromancer" theme, since I'd think that would be the whole purpose of a necromantic melee class.
I'm not sure that your reasoning behind undead-only is correct. Skeleton and ghoul are very powerful races, and ghouls have less of an experience penalty in the next version (not that it was really that much of a problem anyway).
I think all necromancy in ToME is magic-based; the only exception I know of is an effect from cursed equipment.
I'm not sure that your reasoning behind undead-only is correct. Skeleton and ghoul are very powerful races, and ghouls have less of an experience penalty in the next version (not that it was really that much of a problem anyway).
I think all necromancy in ToME is magic-based; the only exception I know of is an effect from cursed equipment.
Sorry about all the parentheses (sometimes I like to clarify things).
Re: Necromantic Melee Class
I'd rather see melee necro class have something unique to differentiate it from it's magical counterpart.
Re: Necromantic Melee Class
Sirrocco, dividing up the mutually exclusive sustains is the other way to go. Themeing talent trees off each sustain and then making that the start/culmination of the tree would work, but I'm not sure it's better or worse. If the sustain is the start of the tree, the rest of the tree should synergize with it. If not, not as necessary.
The activatable buffs idea is also interesting, but it brings in the problem of cycling. If I can sustain all my buffs by just using one every 4 tuns, and they last long enough that my first buff cools off, then I can sustain all of then infinitely (as long as I have souls). If they're powerful enough to be worth it, maxing out that talent tree would be a no-brainer, and probably OP. If they're weak enough for it not to be OP, they're probably not worth investing that many points into. Of course, the other option is to give each buff a long cooldown. Minimum of 17 turns, so that you can't chain them infinitely.
I like the floating souls dynamic. Maybe make it a sustain, and if you deactivate it, you suddenly get all the souls, but loose all the buffs. Or maybe you only get half the souls, while the other half fly off (maybe damaging nearby targets).
I like the idea of a passive that lets you revive if you have max souls. You're right that it wouldn't be too OP, but would bring the potential of a life-saver in a boss battle with minions. That's a fairly specialized situation, and a troublesome one to begin with, so I don't think it would be OP. Combining it with passive boosts that increase the more souls you have may make it OP, though. Suddenly you may have a viable class build that runs max souls (especially with the floating souls nearby) AND it can auto-revive if killed. That WOULD be OP.
Bricks, part of my idea for this class, and part of making it undead only, is that you're not so much necromancy by magical training as you are death-linked by magical nature. Bringing the fires of hell back from the grave with you just sounds so cool. If we do make it mana-based as well, though, then I'd suggest adding whichever unlocked magic talent fits the element we go with (wildfire or ice).
Another part of my idea of the class is that it would be decent in normal combat, but not too great, while having a fallback of 5-10 VERY powerful attacks that you can use before you run out of souls. In non-boss fights, you could afford to use one per kill, so they shouldn't be TOO powerful, but you'll probably want max souls going into any serious fight. I think it may end up playing a lot like the vim-based classes do now, with a fuel supply that doesn't decay, but doesn't replenish either, and can only be refilled by kills. The vim-classes also get drain to replenish vim, and I don't see anything like that happening here.
As for minions with a melee character, that brings up a lot of problems. In a lot of battles, only one of you would be able to melee the enemy at a time. Additionally, any archer types would hit you instead of the enemy. Mage types would HAVE to have only party-friendly spells, or else it's all over FAST. It could work, but I'd prefer another option.
The activatable buffs idea is also interesting, but it brings in the problem of cycling. If I can sustain all my buffs by just using one every 4 tuns, and they last long enough that my first buff cools off, then I can sustain all of then infinitely (as long as I have souls). If they're powerful enough to be worth it, maxing out that talent tree would be a no-brainer, and probably OP. If they're weak enough for it not to be OP, they're probably not worth investing that many points into. Of course, the other option is to give each buff a long cooldown. Minimum of 17 turns, so that you can't chain them infinitely.
I like the floating souls dynamic. Maybe make it a sustain, and if you deactivate it, you suddenly get all the souls, but loose all the buffs. Or maybe you only get half the souls, while the other half fly off (maybe damaging nearby targets).
I like the idea of a passive that lets you revive if you have max souls. You're right that it wouldn't be too OP, but would bring the potential of a life-saver in a boss battle with minions. That's a fairly specialized situation, and a troublesome one to begin with, so I don't think it would be OP. Combining it with passive boosts that increase the more souls you have may make it OP, though. Suddenly you may have a viable class build that runs max souls (especially with the floating souls nearby) AND it can auto-revive if killed. That WOULD be OP.
Bricks, part of my idea for this class, and part of making it undead only, is that you're not so much necromancy by magical training as you are death-linked by magical nature. Bringing the fires of hell back from the grave with you just sounds so cool. If we do make it mana-based as well, though, then I'd suggest adding whichever unlocked magic talent fits the element we go with (wildfire or ice).
Another part of my idea of the class is that it would be decent in normal combat, but not too great, while having a fallback of 5-10 VERY powerful attacks that you can use before you run out of souls. In non-boss fights, you could afford to use one per kill, so they shouldn't be TOO powerful, but you'll probably want max souls going into any serious fight. I think it may end up playing a lot like the vim-based classes do now, with a fuel supply that doesn't decay, but doesn't replenish either, and can only be refilled by kills. The vim-classes also get drain to replenish vim, and I don't see anything like that happening here.
As for minions with a melee character, that brings up a lot of problems. In a lot of battles, only one of you would be able to melee the enemy at a time. Additionally, any archer types would hit you instead of the enemy. Mage types would HAVE to have only party-friendly spells, or else it's all over FAST. It could work, but I'd prefer another option.
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PureQuestion
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Re: Necromantic Melee Class
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=33742
Probably the best conceptualization of this idea so far.
Probably the best conceptualization of this idea so far.
Re: Necromantic Melee Class
The reason I go for dividing up the mutually exclusive sustains is that I don't like putting people in the position fo buying useless skills when I can avoid it. "Tree full of mutually exclusive sustains" really has "buys useless skills" written all over it, particularly (as in this case) where the sustains are costly enough that you aren't necessarily running them all the time, and you almost certainly aren't swapping between them based on the situation.
Personally, my answer to the buff cycling issue would be to either not have them start cooling down until the buff expires or not let you use a buff that you already have running.
I was suggesting having the floating souls as a passive partially because there is a drawback there - if the souls are floating around you, you can't cast with them. The choice of whether or not to invest significantly in the tree becomes interesting. On the other hand, I can see why it would make sense to make it a sustain for that reason.
I think that a viable class build that runs max souls would be a mistake in general, since it basically means that you're not using actives for your class-defining trait. Sure, you could maybe have one or two passives that might get a bit better as your soul stash goes up, but it shouldn't be enough to be build-defining. In particular, whichever tree it is that has the "you come back if you die at max souls" should have all sorts of juicy things to spend souls on at the earlier tiers. Also note that it requires you to not be using any soul-costing sustains.
I think that adding the wildfire/ice trees would be a mistake. The character is meat to be melee. As soon as you hand him one of those, he starts being viable at range (and, indeed, potentially more interesting there than in melee). Honestly, I'd be more interested in seeing him with something like the Ice Dragon tree out of the wyrmics. I don't really expect it - wilder doesn't fit the fluff that you're building here at *all* - but I think the powers might fit pretty well. On the other side, I think you could get some interesting stuff out of an equilibrium/souls class ("Scavenger", perhaps? "Corpse-eater"? "Carrion Lord"? It's not like it's entirely unreasonable for wilders to throw around disease-based powers)
I do think, though, that you want to have some power source other than souls. Otherwise, fights against things that are too weak to be worth spending a soul on get really boring really quickly. Soul expenditures should be for when you pull out the really flashy stuff - and having two pools will let you make more of these things cost two, three, four, or more souls, to let you really get some kick out of it. If you do make it soul-only, then in order to make the character fun to play, you'd have to have some outside way to recover souls, and that just starts being all sorts of odd (and also taking away from the things that make souls nifty as a resource).
Alternate version of the lifesaver power: it's a sustain. Takes a round to activate, requires that you be at max souls, 10 soul sustain, possibly deals a decent block of damage to you when you activate the thing. Unsustains instantly, and gives you full health when it does, reducing you to 0 souls. Automatically unsustains and heals you rather than letting you die if you hit 0 HP. It's not as cool, and it doesn't feel quite as thematic, but it does continue to not be broken in games where the character has significant non-soul powers and/or soul-based passive boosts.
I'm not quite sure what to toss out as the preferred resource, though. Let's go through them.
- Psi/souls could be a *very* interesting combo (Soul-Eater?), and I think it would be cool to see that one go... but it's not this combo.
- Mana/souls we have one of already, and we're not exactly short on mana hybrid classes.
- Equilibrium/souls I've talked about already - another potentially very intriguing combo that's not quite called for here.
- Stamina/souls just seems a bit too pat. "He uses a sword - let's run him off stamina". I dunno. I don't like it.
- Light/souls is just all wrong here (though I suppose you might put together some sort of valkyrie-like chooser of the slain "Redeemer" class that could do something with it. That could be cool)
- Vim/Souls just seems a bit too much of a "Powered By Death! and also... Death!" to me. I suppose it might be workable, but...
- Darkness/Souls works for me, and we've not yet had a Darkness-but-not-light class. Also, with the way that Darkness (and light) work, you could limit their access to resource enough that they'd have to dip both sides if they wanted things to work well.
- Hatred/Souls also works. Feels a bit cleaner than Vim somehow... not quite sure why. Also, you have that nifty thing where you run along largely on hatred, pushing your limits, doing dangerous things in the name of keeping the hate up... and when everything goes all to heck because you pushed yourself too far, you have a bunch of souls in your back pocket that you can pull out to save yourself.
- Paradox/Souls is just odd. It is, quite possibly, the oddest combo currently available in the game. Regardless, not what your'e looking for, I think.
...so, what do you think about Hatred and/or Darkness as options?
Personally, my answer to the buff cycling issue would be to either not have them start cooling down until the buff expires or not let you use a buff that you already have running.
I was suggesting having the floating souls as a passive partially because there is a drawback there - if the souls are floating around you, you can't cast with them. The choice of whether or not to invest significantly in the tree becomes interesting. On the other hand, I can see why it would make sense to make it a sustain for that reason.
I think that a viable class build that runs max souls would be a mistake in general, since it basically means that you're not using actives for your class-defining trait. Sure, you could maybe have one or two passives that might get a bit better as your soul stash goes up, but it shouldn't be enough to be build-defining. In particular, whichever tree it is that has the "you come back if you die at max souls" should have all sorts of juicy things to spend souls on at the earlier tiers. Also note that it requires you to not be using any soul-costing sustains.
I think that adding the wildfire/ice trees would be a mistake. The character is meat to be melee. As soon as you hand him one of those, he starts being viable at range (and, indeed, potentially more interesting there than in melee). Honestly, I'd be more interested in seeing him with something like the Ice Dragon tree out of the wyrmics. I don't really expect it - wilder doesn't fit the fluff that you're building here at *all* - but I think the powers might fit pretty well. On the other side, I think you could get some interesting stuff out of an equilibrium/souls class ("Scavenger", perhaps? "Corpse-eater"? "Carrion Lord"? It's not like it's entirely unreasonable for wilders to throw around disease-based powers)
I do think, though, that you want to have some power source other than souls. Otherwise, fights against things that are too weak to be worth spending a soul on get really boring really quickly. Soul expenditures should be for when you pull out the really flashy stuff - and having two pools will let you make more of these things cost two, three, four, or more souls, to let you really get some kick out of it. If you do make it soul-only, then in order to make the character fun to play, you'd have to have some outside way to recover souls, and that just starts being all sorts of odd (and also taking away from the things that make souls nifty as a resource).
Alternate version of the lifesaver power: it's a sustain. Takes a round to activate, requires that you be at max souls, 10 soul sustain, possibly deals a decent block of damage to you when you activate the thing. Unsustains instantly, and gives you full health when it does, reducing you to 0 souls. Automatically unsustains and heals you rather than letting you die if you hit 0 HP. It's not as cool, and it doesn't feel quite as thematic, but it does continue to not be broken in games where the character has significant non-soul powers and/or soul-based passive boosts.
I'm not quite sure what to toss out as the preferred resource, though. Let's go through them.
- Psi/souls could be a *very* interesting combo (Soul-Eater?), and I think it would be cool to see that one go... but it's not this combo.
- Mana/souls we have one of already, and we're not exactly short on mana hybrid classes.
- Equilibrium/souls I've talked about already - another potentially very intriguing combo that's not quite called for here.
- Stamina/souls just seems a bit too pat. "He uses a sword - let's run him off stamina". I dunno. I don't like it.
- Light/souls is just all wrong here (though I suppose you might put together some sort of valkyrie-like chooser of the slain "Redeemer" class that could do something with it. That could be cool)
- Vim/Souls just seems a bit too much of a "Powered By Death! and also... Death!" to me. I suppose it might be workable, but...
- Darkness/Souls works for me, and we've not yet had a Darkness-but-not-light class. Also, with the way that Darkness (and light) work, you could limit their access to resource enough that they'd have to dip both sides if they wanted things to work well.
- Hatred/Souls also works. Feels a bit cleaner than Vim somehow... not quite sure why. Also, you have that nifty thing where you run along largely on hatred, pushing your limits, doing dangerous things in the name of keeping the hate up... and when everything goes all to heck because you pushed yourself too far, you have a bunch of souls in your back pocket that you can pull out to save yourself.
- Paradox/Souls is just odd. It is, quite possibly, the oddest combo currently available in the game. Regardless, not what your'e looking for, I think.
...so, what do you think about Hatred and/or Darkness as options?
Re: Necromantic Melee Class
I see your point about the wildfire/ice trees. I think this class should have some elemental ranged skills, but not enough to base a class build, just enough to occasionally open up on an enemy at range before closing, or to finish off an enemy that keeps running.
If we use a power source other than souls to deal with mobs, then it should probably be AoE focused. But, on the other hand, any soul-based large AoE would probably more than pay for itself if used on mobs, unless the necrotic aura is too small to contain the mob. Should necrotic aura be smaller than it is for necromancers?
Darkness power makes the most sense for this class, but where does the darkness power come from? If we have skills that feed it instead of using it, then what's the point? Maybe we could mix feeding and using, like the Sun Paladin does with light, but that still sounds iffy to me when we have another power source as well. Maybe the souls could somehow feed your dark energy, but then how? If it's the souls you hold, then it adds to a maxing souls build. If it's the souls that orbit, then it basically requires that we use that talent (which otherwise I think was optional). Maybe as a product of the grave you generate darkness energy naturally, but then isn't it just renaming mana? I like the middle option best, but I still don't think it's great.
For the lifesaver power, since it dumps you back into the situation that just killed you, but this time without any souls, I'd say letting it run at reduced max souls works, but deactivate it when you die and have the cooldown something like 50 turns or more. Yes, the enemies you damaged would still be damaged, the talents they used would still be used, and the effects you hit them with would still be on, while you're suddenly at max HP, probably with all other abilities off cooldown, but without souls (and probably without negative energy if that's what we choose), you're basically a melee class with limited melee abilities. I don't think it would be OP to let it happen a little more easily. Many situations could still end up with you dieing. I'd also suggest combining this with this class' version of Blurred Mortality, so you could go below 0 HP until it possibly saves your life, and then you can only go to 0.
I thought up an idea I like for a class tree: Boneyard. It's like the Bone talent tree for Corruptors and Reavers, but more melee focused. I'm thinking one talent to give you bone spikes, physical retaliation damage; one skill like bone grasp; one skill to give you bone shields (but maybe focused to only block attacks from one enemy); and finally a sustain of bone shards storming around you, doing physical damage and bleed to any target every turn. Maybe some of the ideas could be replaced, but I like the general feel of it.
PureQuestion, what you linked is an interesting idea, but I don't like making this class minion-based. Fewer more powerful minions would be nice, but I'd like the necromancer to get it rather than this class. Also, since I'd like this class to be undead only, the undead transformation talents are out. Still, those or something like them would be nice if the class isn't limited to undead.
If we use a power source other than souls to deal with mobs, then it should probably be AoE focused. But, on the other hand, any soul-based large AoE would probably more than pay for itself if used on mobs, unless the necrotic aura is too small to contain the mob. Should necrotic aura be smaller than it is for necromancers?
Darkness power makes the most sense for this class, but where does the darkness power come from? If we have skills that feed it instead of using it, then what's the point? Maybe we could mix feeding and using, like the Sun Paladin does with light, but that still sounds iffy to me when we have another power source as well. Maybe the souls could somehow feed your dark energy, but then how? If it's the souls you hold, then it adds to a maxing souls build. If it's the souls that orbit, then it basically requires that we use that talent (which otherwise I think was optional). Maybe as a product of the grave you generate darkness energy naturally, but then isn't it just renaming mana? I like the middle option best, but I still don't think it's great.
For the lifesaver power, since it dumps you back into the situation that just killed you, but this time without any souls, I'd say letting it run at reduced max souls works, but deactivate it when you die and have the cooldown something like 50 turns or more. Yes, the enemies you damaged would still be damaged, the talents they used would still be used, and the effects you hit them with would still be on, while you're suddenly at max HP, probably with all other abilities off cooldown, but without souls (and probably without negative energy if that's what we choose), you're basically a melee class with limited melee abilities. I don't think it would be OP to let it happen a little more easily. Many situations could still end up with you dieing. I'd also suggest combining this with this class' version of Blurred Mortality, so you could go below 0 HP until it possibly saves your life, and then you can only go to 0.
I thought up an idea I like for a class tree: Boneyard. It's like the Bone talent tree for Corruptors and Reavers, but more melee focused. I'm thinking one talent to give you bone spikes, physical retaliation damage; one skill like bone grasp; one skill to give you bone shields (but maybe focused to only block attacks from one enemy); and finally a sustain of bone shards storming around you, doing physical damage and bleed to any target every turn. Maybe some of the ideas could be replaced, but I like the general feel of it.
PureQuestion, what you linked is an interesting idea, but I don't like making this class minion-based. Fewer more powerful minions would be nice, but I'd like the necromancer to get it rather than this class. Also, since I'd like this class to be undead only, the undead transformation talents are out. Still, those or something like them would be nice if the class isn't limited to undead.
Re: Necromantic Melee Class
If you're going to let it function at reduced max souls, then it should also turn off any sustains you may have (releasing any floating souls without effect). As an interesting side/alternate way to handle it, perhaps it doesn't need to even be full. Instead, it just consumes all available souls, and then goes on long cooldown (50? 100? 200? I rather like the thematic feel of wanting to rest for a good *long* time after a fight in which you nearly died) and gives you back 10% of your life for each soul it was able to consume. Given that it's a passive effect, you could even make it a non-cancelable debuff rather than a cooldown... which would then let you do other things with that same debuff (like making the blurred mortality equivalent not work and so forth). Of course, you could have gotten a much better rate of return if you'd just chugged the souls for HP like a good undead abomination, but....
I like boneyard. I also keep thinking about some sort of a wacky tree based roughly around the "ride your golem" concept for alchemists from back in the day, that would essentially give you a follower/buff cross as a sort of undead power armor. I'm not quite sure what it would do, but the idea seems cool.
- It might have its own HP store, which would take damage instead of you. The only way to heal it would be spending souls with one or two reasonably long-cooldown powers, and possibly a bit of healing each time you collected a soul. If it took enough damage it would break off and fall away, and you wouldn't have the benefit of it anymore until you sat down for 10-20 actions, spent a bunch of souls, and built yourself a new one.
- It might add to physical power and/or add damage directly to your melee attacks
- It might autoattack things near you, possibly in interesting ways
- It might add armor and/or resists
- It might make your move speed a bit worse... or perhaps start with a -20% or so but have one fo the skills be able to turn that into a speed bonus
Essentially it's a tree that takes the form of a really awesome multipart sustain that you have to put effort into maintaining, and that your enemies can chop off of you. Possibly make it so that some of the skills have both sustain-side and active effects - the first skill just makes a suit with a block of HP, and gives you the "Forge Skeletal Frame" and "Repair Skeletal Frame" abilities, while another power might give you damage reflect from bone shards (yes, it would be stealing from your other tree) and the ability to throw bone shards at the enemy. Powers based on the suit would run off of suit HP (and would probably be con based).
Actually, you could even turn that around, and make the two resources for the class be Souls and Suit HP. I was originally thinking of the suit as a single tree, possibly locked, but you could totally make it core to the class. Might be a bit tricky to balance, though... a bunch of your powers and buffs simply vanish when your suit drops, but you still have a full pool of HP. On the flip side, if you build a character around keeping the suit up all the time, you basically don't care about standard heal effects. It's actually a decent reason to go undead... the fact that you can't use heal infusions or regen infusions basically wouldn't matter. On the flip side, it would be undead... which would make the ghoul retch ability quite nice (and possibly put something in to let skeletons use reassemble on the thing). It's not that you *have* to use undead, it's that they have strong natural advantages.
My thought on Darkness was be that you'd have both generators and consumers, but that you wouldn't necessarily have a whole lot of *good* generators. Certainly, your energy budget would be a lot worse off than that of a standard Anorithil. Optimally, you wouldn't have enough resource generators to maintain yourself steadily over time - instead, you'd generally go into battle empty, fire of a resource generator, and use the darkness that you got to power your other abilities. Perhaps your Darkness-generating powers would only work if you had someone to target... or possibly some of the ones that normally cost darkness would rebate you based on the number of people you caught in the blast template. Possibly you'd also have a passive ability that gave you more darkness to play with when you spent a soul on something else, to really accentuate that "the battles where I spend lots of souls are the battles where I am *awesome*" feel.
I like boneyard. I also keep thinking about some sort of a wacky tree based roughly around the "ride your golem" concept for alchemists from back in the day, that would essentially give you a follower/buff cross as a sort of undead power armor. I'm not quite sure what it would do, but the idea seems cool.
- It might have its own HP store, which would take damage instead of you. The only way to heal it would be spending souls with one or two reasonably long-cooldown powers, and possibly a bit of healing each time you collected a soul. If it took enough damage it would break off and fall away, and you wouldn't have the benefit of it anymore until you sat down for 10-20 actions, spent a bunch of souls, and built yourself a new one.
- It might add to physical power and/or add damage directly to your melee attacks
- It might autoattack things near you, possibly in interesting ways
- It might add armor and/or resists
- It might make your move speed a bit worse... or perhaps start with a -20% or so but have one fo the skills be able to turn that into a speed bonus
Essentially it's a tree that takes the form of a really awesome multipart sustain that you have to put effort into maintaining, and that your enemies can chop off of you. Possibly make it so that some of the skills have both sustain-side and active effects - the first skill just makes a suit with a block of HP, and gives you the "Forge Skeletal Frame" and "Repair Skeletal Frame" abilities, while another power might give you damage reflect from bone shards (yes, it would be stealing from your other tree) and the ability to throw bone shards at the enemy. Powers based on the suit would run off of suit HP (and would probably be con based).
Actually, you could even turn that around, and make the two resources for the class be Souls and Suit HP. I was originally thinking of the suit as a single tree, possibly locked, but you could totally make it core to the class. Might be a bit tricky to balance, though... a bunch of your powers and buffs simply vanish when your suit drops, but you still have a full pool of HP. On the flip side, if you build a character around keeping the suit up all the time, you basically don't care about standard heal effects. It's actually a decent reason to go undead... the fact that you can't use heal infusions or regen infusions basically wouldn't matter. On the flip side, it would be undead... which would make the ghoul retch ability quite nice (and possibly put something in to let skeletons use reassemble on the thing). It's not that you *have* to use undead, it's that they have strong natural advantages.
My thought on Darkness was be that you'd have both generators and consumers, but that you wouldn't necessarily have a whole lot of *good* generators. Certainly, your energy budget would be a lot worse off than that of a standard Anorithil. Optimally, you wouldn't have enough resource generators to maintain yourself steadily over time - instead, you'd generally go into battle empty, fire of a resource generator, and use the darkness that you got to power your other abilities. Perhaps your Darkness-generating powers would only work if you had someone to target... or possibly some of the ones that normally cost darkness would rebate you based on the number of people you caught in the blast template. Possibly you'd also have a passive ability that gave you more darkness to play with when you spent a soul on something else, to really accentuate that "the battles where I spend lots of souls are the battles where I am *awesome*" feel.
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PureQuestion
- Master Artificer
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Re: Necromantic Melee Class
Honestly I think making a melee necro class without summons feels as though one is missing why there's desire for one.
(Man everyone else is writing god damned essays and I'm here with my single lines.)
(Man everyone else is writing god damned essays and I'm here with my single lines.)
Re: Necromantic Melee Class
Okay... then let's think about what you'd need for summons for a melee character that would actually work and make sense and be fun to play.
- Your primary character is going to be melee. He's going to be something of a tank, and while he may not o as much damage himself as most melee characters, a well-built one should probably be dealing out some sizeable fraction of the overall damage of the build personally (or otherwise you find yourself useless when your summons go down).
- There are a fair number of tight corridors in the game, and you don't want the character to just suck in those. Thus, all or almost all of the summons should either be insubstantial or non-friendly-fire casters. Given that we're in the planning stage, we can make that a thematic aspect. Since it's somewhat hard to justify a thematic aspect of "melee character who summons casters" we instead go with "melee character who summons insubstantial allies". Call him Ghost Knight or something. Spiritspeaker? Something.
- Even spirits might get kind of annoying if you had to deal with too many of them. As such, I'd suggest that these spirits be basically one per skill. You'd have a spirit-summoning tree, and if you got a point or more in each skill, you could have a total of four summons out, each of which cost at least one soul to call forth (possibly significantly more). Since we want them to be interesting, and we don't want them doing most of the damage, and we don't need them to get between us and the enemy (which they're really bad at anyway), we'll have them deal only low-to-moderate damage, but have interesting and useful effects - weakening the enemy on attack, or having an aura that buffs all allies inside, or similar things. You could even have two different base trees, giving each of the four a base skill to summon them and establish their baseline stats, and another skill that would in some way make them that much more awesome.
Thoughts include...
- Howling Spirit: occasionally deals non-ally-harming damage in cone, and has a melee attack that causes various fear-themed debuffs. Advanced skill is an active ability that allows you to turn it into a pillar of frenzy. For three turns (say), all enemies within a certain distance will target it, and its defenses improve somewhat during that time. If it manages to survive to the end of the three turns, it explodes, dealing a fairly significant amount of enemy-targeting damage to everything around it.
- Hungry Spirit: Deals additional melee damage when injured, healing itself in the process. Also gives itself temporary buffs when it successfully deals damage, with the buffs being better if ti also healed. Additional ability is an active power that lets the main character steal HP from it.
- Wrathful Spirit: Actually deals a decent amount of damage in and of itself, though its defenses aren't great. Additional ability allows the Player to sic it on an enemy, sacrificing the spirit to do a significant block of damage to the foe.
- Cursing Spirit: Deal no damage directly - just casts curses. Switches targets if there are no more curses it can ladle on to the current target. Active power sacrifices spirit to increase current curses on enemies in both strength and duration and deal notable damage to all cursed enemies.
Huh. The upgrade powers seem to have all turned out to be some sort of sacrificial ability, and only the Cursing Spirit is not primarily melee. Would go into that, but tired now.
- Your primary character is going to be melee. He's going to be something of a tank, and while he may not o as much damage himself as most melee characters, a well-built one should probably be dealing out some sizeable fraction of the overall damage of the build personally (or otherwise you find yourself useless when your summons go down).
- There are a fair number of tight corridors in the game, and you don't want the character to just suck in those. Thus, all or almost all of the summons should either be insubstantial or non-friendly-fire casters. Given that we're in the planning stage, we can make that a thematic aspect. Since it's somewhat hard to justify a thematic aspect of "melee character who summons casters" we instead go with "melee character who summons insubstantial allies". Call him Ghost Knight or something. Spiritspeaker? Something.
- Even spirits might get kind of annoying if you had to deal with too many of them. As such, I'd suggest that these spirits be basically one per skill. You'd have a spirit-summoning tree, and if you got a point or more in each skill, you could have a total of four summons out, each of which cost at least one soul to call forth (possibly significantly more). Since we want them to be interesting, and we don't want them doing most of the damage, and we don't need them to get between us and the enemy (which they're really bad at anyway), we'll have them deal only low-to-moderate damage, but have interesting and useful effects - weakening the enemy on attack, or having an aura that buffs all allies inside, or similar things. You could even have two different base trees, giving each of the four a base skill to summon them and establish their baseline stats, and another skill that would in some way make them that much more awesome.
Thoughts include...
- Howling Spirit: occasionally deals non-ally-harming damage in cone, and has a melee attack that causes various fear-themed debuffs. Advanced skill is an active ability that allows you to turn it into a pillar of frenzy. For three turns (say), all enemies within a certain distance will target it, and its defenses improve somewhat during that time. If it manages to survive to the end of the three turns, it explodes, dealing a fairly significant amount of enemy-targeting damage to everything around it.
- Hungry Spirit: Deals additional melee damage when injured, healing itself in the process. Also gives itself temporary buffs when it successfully deals damage, with the buffs being better if ti also healed. Additional ability is an active power that lets the main character steal HP from it.
- Wrathful Spirit: Actually deals a decent amount of damage in and of itself, though its defenses aren't great. Additional ability allows the Player to sic it on an enemy, sacrificing the spirit to do a significant block of damage to the foe.
- Cursing Spirit: Deal no damage directly - just casts curses. Switches targets if there are no more curses it can ladle on to the current target. Active power sacrifices spirit to increase current curses on enemies in both strength and duration and deal notable damage to all cursed enemies.
Huh. The upgrade powers seem to have all turned out to be some sort of sacrificial ability, and only the Cursing Spirit is not primarily melee. Would go into that, but tired now.
Re: Necromantic Melee Class
I think there's a niche for a class of this kind, however I think you'd need some care so it wouldn't overlap with existing classes. Ideas:Planetus wrote:
- Main stats: Strength/Magic. 2hander preferably.
- Resources: Stamina/Mana (There's already enough resource types in the game as it is, no need to create more)
- Theme: The souls/spirits theme is cool I think.
- Summons: One big concern here: Melee classes need movement skills and regular summoning has terrible synergy with movement. My twist to this would be to tie summoning to melee skills. Example:
Shred Soul - melee - 10 mana - cd 6 - Rips part of the target's soul for 150%(+) weapon damage as darkness and animates it as a wailing spirit with that much hp.
- Movement skills: Controlled Phase door is ok but more would probably be needed.
- Undead only skills: I like this idea, this is how I'd do it:
1 - Vampyrism quest - Have a class quest like Necromancer, except that the end point wouldn't be Lichform but Vampyrism (some undead traits, Str, Mag, Hp, negative life regen?, innate life steal).
Locked Undead only talent trees: It's possible to add verifications to Talents so they're only usable by Undead, so this would leave you with 3 options. Start as an Undead and unlock these talents as soon as level 10, do the Vampyrism quest or assemble the Eternal Night set.
So it would go like this:
Generic Trees:
Combat Training.
Survival
Spell - Conveyance
Spell - Phantasm
Class Trees:
Combat Techniques? (Rush, Blinding Speed)
2h weapons? (Death Dance, Berserk)
Spell - Ice (Has a couple nice pinning effects)
Spell - Grave (Change last talent for Vampyrism (Class quest))
Spell - Shades
New class tree - Soul Reaping - Melee attacks which create minions.
New class tree - Spirit ??? - Movement skills mostly, maybe a healing skill or Mana regen skill too.
New class tree - Locked - Undead only - Sustains / Melee attacks / Melee pumps. Chill of the Grave, Evergy Drain, Vampiric Touch.
New class tree - Locked - Undead only - Defensive / Movement skills?
Re: Necromantic Melee Class
Dervic, I don't really like saying this, but switching from a souls or foo/souls resource structure to strength/mana is a *terrible* idea. Souls (which are already used by the necromancer, so not a new resource type) are a big part of the flavor of the class. Also, there's nothing wrong with adding new resources to the game, especially not if they're resources (like souls are, and like the "armor HP" would be) that have no interaction with gear/skills/etc outside of the class itself. I know that we're at least going to see steam after this, as the tech resource, and I'd be a bit surprised if it stopped at that.
...and "overlapping with existing classes" becomes that much harder when you're running magic/stamina. Magic alone has three classes, stamina alone has what... six?, and the pairing has two. They're the two blandest resources in the game right now. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with using them, but they don't exactly bring a whole lot of interest to the table to begin with.
That having been said, the idea of a melee attack that spawns temporary minions (particularly insubstantial minions) is pretty shiny and I can see all sorts of uses for it - whether as the only form of critter-summoning you get, or as an additional form of critter-summoning on top of something that would get you more long-term summons.
If you want Death Knight - The Relatively Bland Version... well, I really do think there's a place for that. I think that stamina/souls is the obvious choice for resources, and the post that AlexMdle put together (kindly linked by PureQuestion) is a fantastic start. In the end, it'll give you a death-themed melee class with summons who has a kind of interesting way to go undead while also picking one of three mutually exclusive minion-upgrade trees. It would be totally playable, and I suspect that there are a number of people who are not me who would enjoy playing it... but that is the place to start for that class. This is the place to start for a different sort of class, that plays around with interesting forms of resource restriction and has unusual tempo choices to make, and sees significant changes in playstyle based on some of the talents they embrace (or do not embrace) - and it's one that I, personally, am a lot more interested in.
Mind you, there is *absolutely* nothing wrong with these two different classes stealing ideas from each other. It may be that only one will thrive, in which case the thefts back and forth will have improved the class that we do get, and it may be that they'll both come out the other end and they'll have a few trees in common... which will save a bit on the coding load, if nothing else.
...and "overlapping with existing classes" becomes that much harder when you're running magic/stamina. Magic alone has three classes, stamina alone has what... six?, and the pairing has two. They're the two blandest resources in the game right now. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with using them, but they don't exactly bring a whole lot of interest to the table to begin with.
That having been said, the idea of a melee attack that spawns temporary minions (particularly insubstantial minions) is pretty shiny and I can see all sorts of uses for it - whether as the only form of critter-summoning you get, or as an additional form of critter-summoning on top of something that would get you more long-term summons.
If you want Death Knight - The Relatively Bland Version... well, I really do think there's a place for that. I think that stamina/souls is the obvious choice for resources, and the post that AlexMdle put together (kindly linked by PureQuestion) is a fantastic start. In the end, it'll give you a death-themed melee class with summons who has a kind of interesting way to go undead while also picking one of three mutually exclusive minion-upgrade trees. It would be totally playable, and I suspect that there are a number of people who are not me who would enjoy playing it... but that is the place to start for that class. This is the place to start for a different sort of class, that plays around with interesting forms of resource restriction and has unusual tempo choices to make, and sees significant changes in playstyle based on some of the talents they embrace (or do not embrace) - and it's one that I, personally, am a lot more interested in.
Mind you, there is *absolutely* nothing wrong with these two different classes stealing ideas from each other. It may be that only one will thrive, in which case the thefts back and forth will have improved the class that we do get, and it may be that they'll both come out the other end and they'll have a few trees in common... which will save a bit on the coding load, if nothing else.