Rak'Shor's Cunning... make the racial category 2.0 mastery

[Delmuir]

This is a poorly conceived prodigy that generally makes you worse off than before getting it, especially because you become a ghoul or skeleton randomly. The primary benefit is gaining a new racial tree to invest in. This is useful to almost no classes except those that are flush with extra generics AND don't suffer significantly by becoming an undead. As far as I can tell, that doesn't really apply to any classes at all. Thus I offer an added bonus:

1. Gain the racial tree of whichever undead you become at 2.0 mastery instead of 1.0

You wouldn't have any extra generics but the massive bonus to mastery would offset that to a significant degree. The talents wouldn't be doubled in power, given the logarithmic scaling, but it'd make it much, much easier to get comparable benefit from them at a reduced cost OR gain a beefed-up version of one or two talents.

[Zeyphor]

I'd much rather that the prodigy grant you some other passive bonus before and after dying than that it give you a huge mastery boost after you die

[Doctornull]

The primary benefit is gaining a new racial tree to invest in.

The primary benefit is negating death once.

The undead stuff -- including the random type, and the racial tree -- seems more like a penalty than a benefit.

[Strongpoint]

If you want to give improved racial tree mastery I would prefer to make it scale with cunning attribute instead of being flat 2.0.

I think this prodigy could be far more interesting if it gave something before you die.

Prodigy should do something cool and open new builds and not be - hey, take +1 life while changing your race to something you could start with.

If Necromancers will be reworked and get a thematic generic tree then giving that new tree for taking this prodigy could be a nice and interesting way to open new build.

Another way to make this prodigy noticeably stronger: Give a racial tree with (character level divided by 10)\5 in all skills instead of refunding for old racials.

[Doctornull]

I think this prodigy could be far more interesting if it gave something before you die.

That's a great point.

The simple (i.e. boring) solution might be to give some perks that overlap with what undead get: 50% Poison & Bleed immunity, extra Air capacity, stuff along those lines.

The more ambitious and interesting solution might be to pick one racial tree which is an inferior version of either Skeleton or Ghoul racials, and invest in it before death. Upon death, you get the real version instead of the inferior one.

[Phantomfrettchen]

Especially the Generic point loss feels a bit strange to me, just removing this would make this quite a bit better and less penalising for non-cornac. A locked/unlocked Vile life Category could be fun in addition to this stuff, too.
Still i think it's weird, especially when comparing it to Items that can net you an extra life... It just feels weak in comparison.

[anonymous000]

Or let's remove Rak'Shor's Cunning and replace it with something else. The problem with Rak'Shor's Cunning is that it is only valuable for one single time as you are dying, and you would be much better served with a prodigy that helps you avoid dying in the first place

[Jurriaan]

So make it give you the Cloak of Undead Appearance, just like the Cloak of Deception in reverse, with some significant gains when worn.

[Phantomfrettchen]

This prodigy would benefit quite a bit from a change of the liferating mechanic. We've talked a bit on the discord about it.

The current way is starting out with a base and then adding each level for: baselife+lvl1 life+lvl 2 life... +current lvl life. This results in the fact that once you die future level ups profit from the transformation, but you don't retroactively gain the benefit of your old levels instead gaining a full 12/14 life. Now let's imagine we had baselife+f(liferating, level). This would actually allow for temporary and permant transformations changing your total life upon racial change. It would even be relatively easy to put a random factor for each monster that would also manipulate health as a function of level to make monster health a little variable, if one wished to do so.
Also i feel like this prodigy should maybe allow you to transform into an undead upon each death, rather than only upon the last one. A little bit like parasite.

[richardhawk]

It is difficult to come up with improvements to this prodigy without encroaching on a defining feature of a class (Lichform). I wouldn't be sad to see it go.

[Delmuir]

I wouldn't be sad to see it go.

I agree. I didn't really have a good idea when I made this post. I was hoping that someone else would, and there were a few suggestions but I think it's basically a DOA prodigy. I mean, under what conditions would anyone take this? Ghouls are much improved but how many classes work just fine as either it or a skeleton? Paradox mage or archmage would tolerable but what else?

Here's my new idea:

What if, as a cunning-based ability, it cast a spell that could mimic life, thus allowing you to use infusions? Still hardly seems worth it, especially given how much improved runes are now.

Oh well...