ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

1. When enemies die within my aura, no souls are claimed. How do I fix this?

	-- Increases necrotic aura count
	if src and src.resolveSource and src:resolveSource().isTalentActive and src:resolveSource():isTalentActive(src.T_NECROTIC_AURA) and not self.necrotic_minion and not self.no_necrotic_soul then
		local rsrc = src:resolveSource()
		local p = rsrc:isTalentActive(src.T_NECROTIC_AURA)
		if self.x and self.y and src.x and src.y and core.fov.distance(self.x, self.y, rsrc.x, rsrc.y) <= rsrc.necrotic_aura_radius then
			rsrc:incSoul(1)
			if rsrc:attr("extra_soul_chance") and rng.percent(rsrc:attr("extra_soul_chance")) then
				rsrc:incSoul(1)
				game.logPlayer(rsrc, "%s rips more animus from its victim. (+1 more soul)", rsrc.name:capitalize())
			end
			rsrc.changed = true
		end
	end

jpw1991 wrote:


Vampires suck: They're weak and never seem to do any good in a fight. They seem only good as meat shields. I'll have to rework them or replace them.

Isotope-X wrote:I see what you did there.

Frumple wrote:Ah... insofar as the name goes, I do believe "Dread Necromancer" is a title you could cheerfully rip off from some pen and paper franchise or another that sounds pretty nice.

Could also mine the lore files a bit to find out if there's any notable names or concepts you could riff on. Can't think of anything in particular, but maybe there's something in there.

Frumple wrote:As for the aura, I'd kinda' say you might want to stick with it, just decouple the soul/minion bits thing from it, getting rid of the nuisance aspects. It's a mechanic not many other classes (sun paladins and gloom users, mostly) have, and could be put to fairly interesting effect. I could see tying it into stuff like the will o' wisps or various minion buffing talents, both as something of a balance measure and bit of thematic design, emphasizing the whole necromancer in the center of a horde thing that's fairly common in depictions of 'em as well as the somewhat shorter optimum range they're rocking in the base design. Could maybe even work it into something like the chant/hymn system, where you have to choose somewhat as to what your aura actually does.

Frumple wrote:And yeah... vampires would probably need some reworking. As enemies, they've got fairly consistent and relatively effective roles (debuffs via banes, smattering of necromancer talents, one of the potentially most annoying summoners in the game), but most of what they do works poorly (friendly fire issues) or not at all (the summoning) as minions. Only thing that comes to mind off the top of my head would be mixing up a sort of debuff-via-summoning, but with summons unique to the minion vampires. Bats, rats, wolves (giving a clear talent level progression)... probably specifically as swarms/packs, with some kind of negative effect to enemies they hit/are near. Short duration, relatively low cooldown/cost, probably very flimsy but highly evasive. Could also forgo actually summoning things and just theme some talents (aoe/debuff stuff, probably) around the concept.

Frumple wrote:E: Also, looking at the talents you've got... can I just say a number of them look like they'd work really well as something like the TW's temporal hounds? A sustain that generates up to the number allowed by the talent, putting a new one up if there's room every few turns. Throw in some kind of targeting talent (something that changes your minions target and gives them a movement speed buff?) and you'd be pretty golden, and it'd differentiate this class from the vanilla necros even further.