Right then, I had the idea for an addon race, specifically individuals mutated and scarred by exposure to the void and horrors. This process shatters their mind as well as distorts their body, leaving them with few memories, deep scars, and terrific appearance. Of course it's largely just fatal, but if it turns out the way it does for these individuals, they survive the process. More or less.
I'm working with Norphi on this as I'm largely just helping brainstorm and properly bring out the concept while he does the proper work.
Initial idea for stats and abilities are as follows.
+2 Str, +4 Con
-2 Dex, -2 Wil
Life Rating: ??? (Above average, slightly?)
EXP Penalty: X%
The four talents, in no particular order, are mostly just concept.
Void Claws
-Low cooldown, thinking 6 - (1 * talent level), minimum 1
-Deals unarmed strike damage with bonus power and %damage bonus at half the improvement rate of proper weapon mastery, though in exchange it pierces an increasing amount of armor, physical resistance, and maybe partially through damage shields. Thinking Armor pierce, then armor and phys res pierce, then all three at ranks 1, 3, and 5 respectively.
Scarred Mind
Passive
Reduced Mental save in exchange for resistance to confusion and immunity.
Black Carapace
Passive
Bonus Armor, Hardness, and maybe physical resistance.
Fearful Presence
Sustain
Reduce nearby enemies Defense and Mental save. Less effective when more injured
Malukrum, the Void-Scarred
Moderator: Moderator
Re: Malukrum, the Void-Scarred
Nice to continue that little discussion from the ingame chat. I like the idea of having something like the corrupted/horrors from the deep bellow as playable race. I started programming racial talents for something similar a while back but never got around to finish this.
Let's start with the appearance. The void-scarred clearly should look humanoid, otherwise it would not make much sense why they should be able to use the same equipment as the other races. Thus, the carapace reference (talent) seems a bit odd to me. I had them imagined as pale sleek humanoids, covered in scars with terrible claws instead of fingers. Unnatural strength and dexterity but a quite battered mind, thus very low initial mindpower and mind resistance. Your suggestions seem to opt for the more physical, yet still horrendous mole-man. Strong, slow but a bulwark on it's own (metaphorical sense, not the class). This is nice, too. Could be based on void touched Dwarves. For now we should settle on one and maybe do the other later (having a race and then only one subrace is always bugging me somehow).
As mentioned before in the chat, the claws as prime feature are somewhat an invitation to give the race a natural bonus on unarmed damage. The dagger-like nature of these claws could also be used to allow the unarmed use of dagger-based talents. This however would make programming the addon a lot more complicated. Still, I like this idea. We should focus a little more on this and less on the 'mentally out of whack' part (also the mentally deranged think is kinda the yeeks act... creepy little furries).
Btw. about the name. I suspected and a quick look into the game files confirmed: The elementals names are based on Sindarin/Quenya/Endarin (Tolkien's Elven languages) although I could not nail it down to a specific one. Creating name by mingling some Sindarin words/syllables might feel more consistent. The fact the google hints at a Moscow pizza store when googling Malacrum still cracks me up...
For the starting stats: The gain seems quite low, compared to other races, but I certainly would not want them to go the Yeek way and have an extremely low EXP penality. Either their confusion resistance and and some other things are innate, or the stats need to be way stronger than for other races (makes balancing them quite hard).
Let's start with the appearance. The void-scarred clearly should look humanoid, otherwise it would not make much sense why they should be able to use the same equipment as the other races. Thus, the carapace reference (talent) seems a bit odd to me. I had them imagined as pale sleek humanoids, covered in scars with terrible claws instead of fingers. Unnatural strength and dexterity but a quite battered mind, thus very low initial mindpower and mind resistance. Your suggestions seem to opt for the more physical, yet still horrendous mole-man. Strong, slow but a bulwark on it's own (metaphorical sense, not the class). This is nice, too. Could be based on void touched Dwarves. For now we should settle on one and maybe do the other later (having a race and then only one subrace is always bugging me somehow).
As mentioned before in the chat, the claws as prime feature are somewhat an invitation to give the race a natural bonus on unarmed damage. The dagger-like nature of these claws could also be used to allow the unarmed use of dagger-based talents. This however would make programming the addon a lot more complicated. Still, I like this idea. We should focus a little more on this and less on the 'mentally out of whack' part (also the mentally deranged think is kinda the yeeks act... creepy little furries).
Btw. about the name. I suspected and a quick look into the game files confirmed: The elementals names are based on Sindarin/Quenya/Endarin (Tolkien's Elven languages) although I could not nail it down to a specific one. Creating name by mingling some Sindarin words/syllables might feel more consistent. The fact the google hints at a Moscow pizza store when googling Malacrum still cracks me up...
For the starting stats: The gain seems quite low, compared to other races, but I certainly would not want them to go the Yeek way and have an extremely low EXP penality. Either their confusion resistance and and some other things are innate, or the stats need to be way stronger than for other races (makes balancing them quite hard).
Re: Malukrum, the Void-Scarred
I was leaning toward humanoid, of course. As for the carapace racial, it alludes to a form of natural armor, but it's nothing extreme or wide-spread enough to disallow armor beyond maybe just bigger armor (though ogres seem to have no trouble). The idea was the void-exposure warped most of the skin, leaving it as this dark-colored carapace and scaly hide; like scarring and scabbing turned up to 1000.
Yeah, we could definitely do a couple variants of these things. One more tall, pale, and sleek with slim dagger-like claws while the other more dark, brute strong, and durable with heavy, powerful claws with the distinction being the taller ones survived the void-fuckery by adapting with a more flexible form (Crit shrug bonus due to strange anatomy?) while still being scarred all to hell and back rather than the scarring getting so thick it becomes natural armor.
Using gauntlets as dagger weapons as a racial would be interesting and would open up a number of interesting interactions. I'd give that to the slimmer void-scarred and leave the heavier ones with the ability to up and sock people with those claws to punch through armor and such if their more conventional weapons aren't working.
How about making the Void Claws cooldown able to reach 0 and take 100% of a turn to use if you push it to mastery x1.10? That way if you really try you can make a competent unarmed attacker out of any class with this race/subrace while still being able to use normal weapons. I ultimately want to keep this simple while being some sort useful to anyone who isn't a pure mage (for stat reasons).
I'm re-thinking the Black Carapace passive as well, leaning toward just Armor and Defense and stating it on par with shields (not the block part, just the defense/armor bonus they give). Definitely no physical resistance; there're enough ways to get that. Maybe crit reduction instead.
Making the confusion resistance innate as a base means re-working the Scarred Mind passive.
Scarred Mind
Passive
The scars and trauma to your mind along with strange ways of thinking make you more resistant to outside influences upon it, granting (10 * Effective Talent Level)% Confusion resistance passively.
Additionally, this makes it more difficult to predict you and enemies who fail to deal damage to you have a (2 * Effective Talent Level)% chance to be confused.
How about a change to Fearful Presence, since we're at it?
Dreadful Aggression
Passive
When you turn your ire against others, it can be terrifying. Each time you deal at least (11 - (1 * Effective Talent Level))% of a creature's maximum HP in damage over a single turn, that creature must save vs mind power or be affected by a slowing Fear for 3 turns (flat). If a creature affected by a slowing Fear would be affected again, the slowing Fear is removed and they instead are affected by the Panic Fear (the one that makes creatures run away) for X turns.
I don't know how durations of these sorts of things are calculated. I can only assume there's a base duration modified by your Mind power vs target's mind save. Some how.
Re: Tolkien elven naming convention. Interesting, lemme come up with something...
Gawdel and Gawdorth for the heavy and slim void-scarred, respectively?
As for the base stats and the immunities, yeah, that would be better to have them innate. Also Yeeks didn't have a low EXP penalty, they have a negative EXP penalty, allowing them to level faster. I'd like to keep these guys in the 10-20% penalty range with their balance, so nothing crazy.
So,
+4 Str, +6 Con
-2 Dex, -2 Will
Life Rating: 12 (as dwarf)
30% Confusion Immunity (due to mental scarring ultimately making the mind harder to send astray after the void got at it)
100% Fear Immunity (due to earthly sources of fear simply not being strong enough after getting horror'd)
The other void-scarred can switch to +4 Str/Dex, -2 Will with 9 Life Rating, set them up as natural dagger-users in some way.
Yeah, we could definitely do a couple variants of these things. One more tall, pale, and sleek with slim dagger-like claws while the other more dark, brute strong, and durable with heavy, powerful claws with the distinction being the taller ones survived the void-fuckery by adapting with a more flexible form (Crit shrug bonus due to strange anatomy?) while still being scarred all to hell and back rather than the scarring getting so thick it becomes natural armor.
Using gauntlets as dagger weapons as a racial would be interesting and would open up a number of interesting interactions. I'd give that to the slimmer void-scarred and leave the heavier ones with the ability to up and sock people with those claws to punch through armor and such if their more conventional weapons aren't working.
How about making the Void Claws cooldown able to reach 0 and take 100% of a turn to use if you push it to mastery x1.10? That way if you really try you can make a competent unarmed attacker out of any class with this race/subrace while still being able to use normal weapons. I ultimately want to keep this simple while being some sort useful to anyone who isn't a pure mage (for stat reasons).
I'm re-thinking the Black Carapace passive as well, leaning toward just Armor and Defense and stating it on par with shields (not the block part, just the defense/armor bonus they give). Definitely no physical resistance; there're enough ways to get that. Maybe crit reduction instead.
Making the confusion resistance innate as a base means re-working the Scarred Mind passive.
Scarred Mind
Passive
The scars and trauma to your mind along with strange ways of thinking make you more resistant to outside influences upon it, granting (10 * Effective Talent Level)% Confusion resistance passively.
Additionally, this makes it more difficult to predict you and enemies who fail to deal damage to you have a (2 * Effective Talent Level)% chance to be confused.
How about a change to Fearful Presence, since we're at it?
Dreadful Aggression
Passive
When you turn your ire against others, it can be terrifying. Each time you deal at least (11 - (1 * Effective Talent Level))% of a creature's maximum HP in damage over a single turn, that creature must save vs mind power or be affected by a slowing Fear for 3 turns (flat). If a creature affected by a slowing Fear would be affected again, the slowing Fear is removed and they instead are affected by the Panic Fear (the one that makes creatures run away) for X turns.
I don't know how durations of these sorts of things are calculated. I can only assume there's a base duration modified by your Mind power vs target's mind save. Some how.
Re: Tolkien elven naming convention. Interesting, lemme come up with something...
Gawdel and Gawdorth for the heavy and slim void-scarred, respectively?
As for the base stats and the immunities, yeah, that would be better to have them innate. Also Yeeks didn't have a low EXP penalty, they have a negative EXP penalty, allowing them to level faster. I'd like to keep these guys in the 10-20% penalty range with their balance, so nothing crazy.
So,
+4 Str, +6 Con
-2 Dex, -2 Will
Life Rating: 12 (as dwarf)
30% Confusion Immunity (due to mental scarring ultimately making the mind harder to send astray after the void got at it)
100% Fear Immunity (due to earthly sources of fear simply not being strong enough after getting horror'd)
The other void-scarred can switch to +4 Str/Dex, -2 Will with 9 Life Rating, set them up as natural dagger-users in some way.
Re: Malukrum, the Void-Scarred
Ok, update.
I started, then got side tracked with my Weirdling. They are similar, yet more new weird game mechanics involved. Kinda aims for involuntarily playing a possessor.
I'll finish those, then continue with the Void-scarred. The similarities allude to just copy and slightly re-balance the talents and exchange those that rely on weird body switching mechanics.
Regarding the shape of Void-scarred I just assumed something insect like after reading carapace. With this scenario the equipment/body form discrepancy would be too different to fit them but funny that you mentioned this one particular example. It's always bugging me, that the actor size and equipment size problem always gets ignored completely but to be fair, having equipment with different size/race requirements only works well in low magic worlds where you're happy if something magical drops at all (in Tome introducing these things would probably break the game, unusable equipment already is pandemic ).
Gauntlets as daggers or unarmed in general as daggers proved more complicated as I thought. There are no actual requirements for Daggers, to use the talents of rogues, they just start with dagger mastery, and the talents that actually require them to wield a weapon requires dual wield, not necessarily dual daggers. For the gauntlet stuff seems to be done somewhere else, such that the ACTUAL code just checks for the presence of the talent which doesn't do much except replacing the combat table on learn/unlearn and providing the function for the physical power bonus (which is such a trivial function that it just could have been done where it is needed, maybe it is and the function in the talent exists solely for the description. haven't checked). I assume that the boni provided by gauntlets are calculated by the script that calculates unarmed damage. I'd need to change some deeper game mechanics to make this work. Making "dagger" talents available on unarmed members of this race is tricky, too, as it would require me to change the on_pre_use attribute of all those talents. Both things would probably break a lot of other addons that fiddle with those things.
If you want you could write the starting text and try to create tiles by repainting one of the existing races's tiles.
I'd simply give them an already existing starting quest with a new greeting text.
I'll come back to the other points later. Kinda tired.
I started, then got side tracked with my Weirdling. They are similar, yet more new weird game mechanics involved. Kinda aims for involuntarily playing a possessor.
I'll finish those, then continue with the Void-scarred. The similarities allude to just copy and slightly re-balance the talents and exchange those that rely on weird body switching mechanics.
Regarding the shape of Void-scarred I just assumed something insect like after reading carapace. With this scenario the equipment/body form discrepancy would be too different to fit them but funny that you mentioned this one particular example. It's always bugging me, that the actor size and equipment size problem always gets ignored completely but to be fair, having equipment with different size/race requirements only works well in low magic worlds where you're happy if something magical drops at all (in Tome introducing these things would probably break the game, unusable equipment already is pandemic
).Gauntlets as daggers or unarmed in general as daggers proved more complicated as I thought. There are no actual requirements for Daggers, to use the talents of rogues, they just start with dagger mastery, and the talents that actually require them to wield a weapon requires dual wield, not necessarily dual daggers. For the gauntlet stuff seems to be done somewhere else, such that the ACTUAL code just checks for the presence of the talent which doesn't do much except replacing the combat table on learn/unlearn and providing the function for the physical power bonus (which is such a trivial function that it just could have been done where it is needed, maybe it is and the function in the talent exists solely for the description. haven't checked). I assume that the boni provided by gauntlets are calculated by the script that calculates unarmed damage. I'd need to change some deeper game mechanics to make this work. Making "dagger" talents available on unarmed members of this race is tricky, too, as it would require me to change the on_pre_use attribute of all those talents. Both things would probably break a lot of other addons that fiddle with those things.
If you want you could write the starting text and try to create tiles by repainting one of the existing races's tiles.
I'd simply give them an already existing starting quest with a new greeting text.
I'll come back to the other points later. Kinda tired.