ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

There are two topics with demand to "balance" undead races but... I don't think that undead should be stronger. Yet I want them to be more different to living races and thus interesting.

1) Undead only inscriptions (Ones that give passive benefits can be an interesting alternative to usual active ability slots. Also, those can be fun on NPC undead.)
2) Special quest available only for undead and gives some locked generic tree.
3) Alternative way to handle escort quest. ( I think it would be undeadish to give an option to kill escorts outright, getting some (different to escort rewards) benefit without risking escorting them to the portal. Necromancer class may get this option, too)
4) Undead only prodigies?
5) Alternative effects of existing prodigies (especially nature themed ones)?

If you code it, they will come

More seriously, while it's not an idea I would kick out of bed in the morning, but it does sound like something that would best be made into a very nice addon that was tweaked and tuned before being proposed for merging into the base game (or not, and just left a very nice addon, haha!).

Though with the escorts, I'd just recommend an option similar to the zigur choice where you notice the lost critter is in fact under a deception effect, letting you reveal them (changing their race to some sort of undead, and probably their class/talent list, too) and proceeding more or less normally from there. No one foolish enough to play without an enhanced escorts addon should be able to escape from their colossal stupidity :V

Alternately, you could make the portal run into an assassination mission or something. Same shtick with the reveal, but it also generates either a rare or randboss (or possibly something from a specifically built list of enemies) somewhere on the map and deletes the portal. Escorts would, of course, be no tougher and at least as stupid, beelining straight for said target just like they would a portal except perhaps with their enemy avoidance AI disabled. Like most things undead, existence must be comparative suffering

Interesting concepts! Personally, I am of the opinion that undead could be a little stronger, but these ideas could be pretty solid ways of doing that. Here are my thoughts on your thoughts:

- Undead-only inscriptions is kind of appealing, but on the other hand, there are all of three playable undead races, and one of them is DLC only. This could potentially seriously bog-down inscription drops for other races, which are many more than the undead, and I'm against that. Yes, this is already a thing, because of infusions on undead and runes on anti-magic and just general gear that is for other classes/builds, but it already irritates me enough and I'd like to not make it worse. Counter-suggestion: A small number of artifact inscriptions that are geared toward undead, but could still maybe be fit in for niche use on other builds. Perhaps something like a heroism rune tainted by blight and can go on undead, call it "villainy infusion", or runes that can be used while silenced. That's just a hastily-fashioned example though.

- Fully support this. I don't even really have anything to add.

- It always surprised me that this wasn't initially included with undead, just because it seems so appropriate to their theme. I must say though that escorts are pretty weak, and it would be no challenge to kill one even with a poor build. Enemies are also hostile to escorts, so you could usually just leave them be and they'd die on their own. It does make sense though that they would turn hostile to you if you didn't have the cloak buff active on entering the floor. A couple suggestions I have are just buff the escort for the purpose of the event, add more enemies (like the escort's friend who made the portal or allied kingdom forces), or add some kind of condition like killing the escort in 3-5 turns.
tl;dr Sounds fun! Execution sounds tricky though.

- I'm against undead-only prodigies for essentially the same reason I'm against inscriptions. They're just to small of a faction to warrant cluttering up the play of others, at least to me. If this is to be done, I would suggest allowing other races to get around it with gear that makes them undead temporarily. I'm in favor of maybe altering some existing prodigies though. Maybe blighted summoning gives you boons as if you were a necromancer's minion skeleton or ghoul, or maybe draconic body/will could give undead different effects, in light of the new undead drake tree on wyrmics, such as lifesteal or the ability to passively inflict people with banes. Again, just ideas.

Other random thoughts I've had about undead: Why can they use nature powered equipment? It's not a nerf they need, but it would be a lore-friendly one. Why do ghouls breathe? Breathing implies the heart is pumping oxygen from the lungs to the body, which is what living things do. They should probably not breathe or not suffer all the penalties of skeletons. Why can they use vim? Isnt that life energy? Don't they not have any of that by definition? Why are skeletons affected by fatigue? Best I can tell magic makes their bones move. Magic doesn't get tired right?

Vis a vis the undead only stuff, do remember that's not actually (or at least wouldn't have to be) locked to the undead races. Belts of unlife are a thing, and undead specific stuff would be a rather interesting way of getting more out of the treated-as-undead effect on top of making the undead races themselves more interesting. Probably even throw in new egos or a few new artifacts that riff on the unlife effect.

I would argue against inscriptions for undead but I would love a few added quests and gear.

Undead-only gear would be snazzy.

One thing I'd like to see is to finally introduce the Vampire race...

My theory is that they should have a really good heal mod and natural regen but negative light resistance.

I mentioned gear of undeath in my thoughts on prodigies, but left it out in regards to inscriptions because "is treated as undead" doesn't currently affect inscriptions as far as I know. I recently wore a lite with retch and undeath on my paladin for quite some time and was using my move infusions just fine. I'm not entirely against wearing gear like that to use undead inscriptions, but it seems logical that it would also lock you out of infusions, which is a pretty hard hit. The suggested inscriptions would have to be at least on par with infusions as well as have interesting syngeries with a few talents, because the living would need some motivation to keep at least one piece of undead gear on, which could otherwise be something fantastic like the girdle of preservation/calm waters, or umbraphage/wintertide phial.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, this is another one of those things I'm okay with in theory, but sounds hard to make efficient in practice.