Cursed/Redemption (Looking for Benli)

[AlexMdle]

Ok, right now I found that Cursed doesn't really gain anything when choosing the option to play without the curses tree, so I had an idea about a class tree for Cursed that went in opposite direction, gained if the player chooses to suppress their affliction:

Cursed/Redemption (Class)

Penance (Sustained)

Attempt to battle your fate and suppress your hate, effectively decreasing your maximal hate by 20/25/30/35/40, making it easier to reach your maximal effectiveness quicker.
Every time you spend hate, you feel relieved, restoring 100/106/112/118/124% of the hate used as hp.

---

Scream out (Active)
Cost: 30 hate

You find solace for a single moment by letting your pain loose in a feral scream. Enemies in range of 2 lose 15/18.75/22.5/26.25/30 accuracy,
while you gain the same amount of accuracy and damage. The effect persists for 4 turns, over which you recover all hate spent.
The effects diminish at the same rate your hate returns.

Damage bonus/reduction increase with mindpower.

---

Salvation (Passive)

Your mental struggle begins to afflict your surroundings, dealing 16/18/20/22/24 mind damage split between all enemies in range of 3 each turn. 33% of the damage dealt is absorbed as hp.

Damage increases with mindpower.

---

Fervor (Sustained)
Cooldown: <Shitload of cooldown goes here>

Attacks with righteous fervor, building up to a final strike. Each attack deals extra 1/1/2/2/3 light damage and increases hate by 1. Each further attack stacks the light damage dealt and hate gained. An attack that brings hate to 100% automaticly deactivates this talent and deals 300% of the bonus light damage.

Deactivating this skill drops hate to 0.

Damage increases with mindpower.

Deactivating this talent confuses you for 3 turns.

Damage increases with mindpower.

[hamrkveldulfr]

I love the idea of an attempt at redemption!
The hate trade off is a nice penalty, but salvation as passive seems overpowered at best, game breaking at worst.
But besides that, everything looks great! I would love to play a repentant cursed sometime

[DarthImbreedous]

How about some magic tree for curse-shunners? Wouldn't actually be linked to the magic stat, but it might be cool to have some mana-based abilities, as a result of "partially suppressing the curse". Maybe a non-self-regenerating mana-pool, akin to arcane blade's?

[Sirrocco]

You are incorrect. Cursed totally gain something for not choosing the curses tree. They get 2 points of will and they aren't harassed by whatever random penalty it was that they were going to get from their weapon. Note that in order for the cursed gear tree to have any benefit, it requires a notable investment of character points (both to open up additional gear slots and to actually gain benefits from the curses) and then you have to make gear choices that will wind up with mutually supporting curses rather than the entry level suck across everything. It may be that in the long run the cursed gear tree is worth it, but I'd say that that's at least debatable, and at the time you'd get it, the cursed is starved enough for skill points that it's a straight disadvantage

If you want to have a "repressing the curse" tree, that's fine. Just make it a locked tree. Personally, I skip the gear-cursing tree every time, and I'd rather not have to deal with a "repress your curse" tree because of it.

[AlexMdle]

There is still the merit of multiple powerful bonuses, stat boosts and 2 additional skills aquired over the long run, which makes 2 willpower completelly pale in comparison.

[Sirrocco]

those powerful bonuses, "additional" skills and stat boosts are coming at the cost of skill points, and imposing some limitations on your gear selection. You have to invest somewhat heavily in the tree in order to get much of anything of value out of it. Really, there are three choices to consider.

- 1: Avoid the tree entirely. Save 2 will, and you aren't harassed by the curse of the day.

- 2: Accept the tree and do nothing with it. This is the lose plan (as far as I'm aware) as it gains nothing.

- 3: Accept the tree and invest heavily enough in it to reap the benefits. This costs you in little random curses (almost certainly more than one) and skill points invested in the tree, but can give you some notable benefits. It also bears a development cost, as going with this plan essentially requires you to go with plan #2 until you free up enough points to do a decent amount of the aforementioned investing.

Assuming I'm right about 2, and there's nothing along the way that suddenly makes it awesome, the question is whether the benefits you gain from investing heavily in the tree are with the skill points, the various costs, and the associated hassle of having to pick your gear partially based on what curses are on it. Personally, my cursed are hungry enough for skill points already, and tend to have a hard time starting out.

[AlexMdle]

The "needs to be invested in heavily" argument is irrelevant. Early game from my experience is very easy, it allows you to stack multiple curse debuffs without them having any effect. By the time you begin to wander in tier 2 dungeons, you are already around level 18 and have dark gifts at level 5, but even that's not the point.

Im talking very late levels there, where the lack of dedicated trees to put points into can become a problem for a cursed if they lack that specific tree. Im serious there, out of curiosity I skimmed through the character vault pages checking out specifically for lv50 Cursed. 9 out 10 maxed the first two skills of that tree. The initial curse penalities and the 2 willpower penality are nothing compared to the penality of not picking that tree up.

[omni]

The penalty of not picking that tree up?

How about being able to wear whatever artifact you like midgame instead of obsessing over cursed items itemization, and say, picking up:

1 point healing light
3 points barrier
1 point bathe in light,
3 points providence?

Sure, you gotta get an escorted anorithil, and spend off another cat point instead, but there's a sizeable opportunity cost.

Whilst I *like* the idea of a redemption tree, there's very *little* reason to shoehorn it in. One has to not only not be cursed/bad to redeem his/herself, one has to actively do something redeeming. Paraphrased, this should be quest lined in, most likely.

[Sirrocco]

Places to spend generics as a Cursed:
- Racial Tree (as a dwarf, 8 points - 1/1/5/1)
- Combat Training (At least 10 points (4 armor, 2 accuracy, 4 weapons mastery), arguably more)
- Cursed Form (will take 10 points and love every one, and 20 would not be a mistake)
- Antimagic (How many do you want? They're all good.)

So there, I'm counting 28 points minimum, before Antimagic, before the Heart, and before anything that comes off of escort quests. If it is still as I recall it, the game has less than 50 generic points available. I can easily spend that many and feel that they are all well spent. Sure, if I was playing a Cornac and opting out of Antimagic, I'd take the tree every time, but it's not like that's the only choice.

[omni]

As an aside: I'm not arguing at all against the idea. I love the idea of having a redemption avenue, and another generics tree for cursed sounds fantastic. Frankly I don't even see why this needs to be in opposition to cursed items- by their nature cursed are cursed. As a game balancer, I can see why it ought to be offered up though.

I'm arguing for choice though, forcing a player to choose between one generic tree and another is imho ultimately unfun and cruel. Arguably, the reason cursed items is offered as a choice at all is some found it unfun to be forced into the itemization mini-game.

Forcing the path though- that's removing choice altogether. I believe that ought not. By god though, brainstorm some awesome redemption stuff, please. Just don't force the questline/redemption, and think seriously about whether it should be positioned in opposition at all. Those things are choices I obsess about, which might just be a character flaw of my own

Please don't mistake my contrariness for saying "this is a bad idea!" I don't think it is. More is awesome, and better, for sure. Even if they have "enough" I'd prefer every class to stop just before "too much" in regards to class points and such.

[Sirrocco]

Honestly, that's my beef too. I don't want to be forced into a redemption tree just because I choose to eschew cursed items. I personally think that the cursed items tree is optional - I can see reasonable builds that would want it and reasonable builds that would ignore it entirely. I wouldn't want to be forced into the redemption tree either - especially since redemption trees by their nature tend to take away from some of the things I think are awesome about the cursed - the constant hunger, the feasting on the death of your foes, the bit where you charge ahead even though you aren't fully healed because you have the Hate within you *now* and you don't want to waste it - that sort of thing.

[SageAcrin]

I will also chime in that, just because a Cursed refuses to give in to his curse completely, doesn't mean he instantly seeks redemption either, from a plot logic standpoint. Maybe they're inbetween.

Someone having to actively seek out their redemption afterwards (By, say, unlocking the category, or possibly a secondary quest) does make sense.

[jenx]

I never take cursed items. Weapon mastery tree is better imho

[DarthImbreedous]

The penalty of not picking that tree up?

How about being able to wear whatever artifact you like midgame instead of obsessing over cursed items itemization, and say, picking up:

1 point healing light
3 points barrier
1 point bathe in light,
3 points providence?

Sure, you gotta get an escorted anorithil, and spend off another cat point instead

... and from where exactly do you intend to get the very many Magic statpoints needed for that tree?

Celestial/Light is a great tree for magic classes, IMO, as it gives them free shield, healing, and regeneration/cleansing spells. But Will based classes will have to stray from their core attributes in order to build it up.

[donkatsu]

... and from where exactly do you intend to get the very many Magic statpoints needed for that tree?

Stat-boosting items. My most recent winner could quite easily reach 60 Mag through items alone, without investing a single stat point into Magic. You only need 44 for 5/5 Providence. Granted, without decent spellpower, Light talents will be weaker, but the issue is definitely not stat requirements. It never is.