Change how lichform talent works: necrotic-dependent rez

[DarthImbreedous]

As it is it's an one-shot perk which provides some stat changes, some benefittial buffs, and some not-so-benefitial ones (infusions)

So I was thinking, as a way to boost it's usefulness: How about after you use it the first time (to lichify) you CAN keep using it, but make each subsequent resurrection consume a number of necrotic points? (and if you're out of necrotic, you're out of luck!). Therefore it would keep being an useful talent, but wouldn't be gamebreaking (as running out of necrotic would mean that the next death would be "for realz", and it runs in a somewhat scarce and vital resource for necros).

In this way it would resemble somewhat that paladin talent in which a light shield absorbs damage equal to your whole health (or somesuch)

[Sirrocco]

Do necros really need more survivability?

For the moment, it seems like it's a rez+passive. Passive skills aren't wasted.

[Planetus]

I could see lichform being useful for reconstructing a lich, something like the skeleton's reassemble, but over time instead of instant (maybe like regeneration infusions rather than healing infusions). When a living character becomes a lich, he looses access to all reliable forms of healing, especially if he was a caster character to begin with (no life drain from minions). Vampiric Gift isn't just unreliable, it's also pretty expensive to maintain.

Of course, lichform is a sustain, not a single-use. Maybe you could make lichform a sustain that grants significant healing on certain conditions, like a hit that takes X% of your max HP, but it also drains a soul or two to do so. Liches feeding on souls seems reasonable to me.

[SageAcrin]

Skeletons and Ghouls make very good Necromancers that can heal themselves(and in the case of Ghouls, others.).

I'd rather not see their unique niche for that class get dropped in power by granting Liches a universal form of healing. Being unable to do anything with Lichform is already a hit for both-making Lichform essentially grant its own Reassemble would kill Skeletons for the class, relatively. People already don't play those two enough because of the draw of uniqueness that Lichform has.

(Of course, if someone wanted to give poor Skeletons and Ghouls something to do with Lichform, too, I would have less objections...)

[DarthImbreedous]

I'd rather not see their unique niche for that class get dropped in power by granting Liches a universal form of healing. Being unable to do anything with Lichform is already a hit for both-making Lichform essentially grant its own Reassemble would kill Skeletons for the class, relatively

You have a point in that it's not too unique in that regard, but pretty much a Skellie reassemble revisited.

Still, IMO lichform as it is feels kind of weak-ish. Particularily if you lack a racial healing tree and/or Healing//light. As it is it's an one-shot gimmick that grants maluses as well as bonuses, and ends up being somewhat underwhelming, particularily considering the effort it begs. I'd like it better if lichform provided some new tree or skill to use. Respawnity seemed a good thematic choice (because what kind of lame lich lacks a soul jar equivalent?).

As for the balance issues of the necromancer class, eeh, I think that is a separate discussion from the relative weakness of lichform. (I do agree that their standard powers do seem a bit on the OP side :p

[Parcae2]

I don't know, it's a pretty strong skill, but you're right that it seems underpowered compared to how thematically powerful it is. I mean, the promise of immortality is probably why most necromancers become necromancers.

Perhaps, instead of resurrection, blows that would otherwise kill you (and are not fire or light) consume/have a chance to consume X souls, possibly modified by points invested in the summoning trees (so that summoner necros aren't disadvantaged compared to caster ones)? When this happens, there should definitely be flavor text that says "Foo says 'Mwahahaha! I am IMMORTAL!" or (if it fails) "Foo's phylactery is torn from his/her neck!"

EDIT: Also, there should be some way to get the skill in the Infinite Dungeon. I'm on an ID Necro binge right now and it sucks that their signature skill isn't available :/

[Sirrocco]

So... just to clarify, it sounds like you're saying that the problem is that the skill is underpowered but the class is not? What, specifically is the problem you see with this?

I'm seeing a few possibilities.

A - It's a useless skill, so no one uses it, and buffing it up to be reasonably competitive would give more flexibility without necessarily increasing overall class power a whole lot
B - It's a trap skill. People think it will be awesome, and wind up spending points on it, but they're wrong, and would be better off without it. It should be made more awesome so that people aren't put in the position of wasting skill points by making what seems to be a good choice
C - It's a useless skill that people feel compelled to use for fluff reasons, and it should be buffed up because a necromancer lichform ability should be awesome
D - It's not useless - it's just that a significant chunk of the usefulness is in the one free life, and having a skill for which that is the case is somewhat offensive to you from a game design standpoint.
E - It's not useless, it's just boring, and boring skills are somewhat offensive to you from a game design standpoint.

Given that the necro doesn't need any buffing overall, and that there should be a place for initially-undead necros, who can't use this skill, any attempt to balance is going to be tricky. As such, I'd ask that you clarify your complaint from the list above, so that we aren't arguing against things that you're not saying, and we can better look for answers to your actual concerns that won't make things worse.

[Parcae2]

My own objections would be the last three, with an emphasis on C - it's not useless, certainly, but it's not as powerful as the fluff suggests.

One alternative to my suggestion above would be that the other skills in the Lichform tree are half as effective if you're not undead. Nice, simple and effective.

EDIT: And I would also object that, roleplay-wise, the idea of a necromancer who has the opportunity to become a lich but deliberately delays it is just weird.

[Parcae2]

OK, sorry for spamming this thread, but here's a list of all the changes I would like to see:

1. Lichform no longer requires a quest in the Arena and ID.
2. Blurred Mortality is half as effective if you're alive.
3. Lichform still turns you undead, but with only half the normal poison immunity (you're suspended between life and death rather than being a true, 100% undead like a skeleton or ghoul).
4. Lichform still provides a bonus to HP per level that is not retroactive (this is to give people an incentive to do Celia early, since that provides an interesting dilemma - do I do the quest as early as possible or wait until I have more survivability?) This is compensated by reducing Necro life rating by 1 per level UNLESS you are an undead race.
5. The meat and potatoes: Being a lich provides you with a passive ability that, if a blow would otherwise kill you, instead makes you invincible for that round but consumes X souls to do so. The number of souls consumed is partly random, but decreases with points invested in Lichform. Each point invested in either of the minions trees also decreases the consumption of souls slightly (in order not to give an unfair advantage to caster necros, who would only be using souls for one thing). The idea would be that a full charge of 10 souls would buy you around 3 rounds of invincibility once Lichform is maxed, or 4-5ish if you max out both summoning trees (because, if you're in dire straights as a summoner, you probably don't have a full charge of souls anyway).
6. Cold and darkness damage consume fewer souls. Fire and light damage bypass the effect altogether.
7. There would be flavor text as described above.
8. Your sprite changes, but not to a full-on skeleton, and the text about your flesh rotting away from your bones is removed; also people no longer refer to you as undead (this is to prevent the incongruity of an undead-hating world openly accepting an undead player character). Instead, there is flavor text whenever you access a merchant about the merchant hemming and hawing but finally being intimidated into letting you access his wares.

[bricks]

Not that it has to be perfectly thematic, but I don't see the connection between self-resurrection and consuming collected souls, unless you are going the simplistic "consume souls for energy" route, which seems anticlimactic given the long series of events needed to become a lich. Really, do we want resurrection in a roguelike to feel so cheap? Here's what I'd rather see:

1) Make it a quest only, not a talent. Anyone who wants to be a lich can already scrounge up five talent points anyway; it only serves to punish those who are in an extremely narrow level range or who simply forget to invest in it. The lich-form talent could be replaced with something to fill the role of healing; maybe consume all souls and gain X health for each. Potentially powerful, hard to spam, seems appropriate for the class.

2) Make it automatic, not a sustained talent. Next time you die, you become a lich, regardless of difficulty. You chose to do the ritual, right? If this is undesired, then how the Eidolon interacts with resurrection should be reexamined; there are some times when I'd rather use a Blood of Life resurrection instead of wasting a trip to the Eidolon, so I think it would be a good addition to the game overall.

[Sirrocco]

Just want to throw another idea into the pot - why are we making lichform a rez power anyway? To me, turnign into a lich is something that you do as a ritual, where you walk in, start the ritual, sacrifice your mortality, and walk out as a lich asuuming nothign has gone wrong. Taking out the "and you get an extra life" aspect gives you a lot more space to add interesting and cool benefits without being overpowered, because "gets a free life" is no longer part of the cost.

As a second idea, if you go with the above, make it two things. One is a ritual that turns out undead (and not necessarily that impressive an undead) and the other is a skill that you take that only works if you are undead - so you can get the benefits of the skill even if you started out as a skeleton or ghoul.

Honestly, I haven't yet unlocked the necro yet (still missing last letter) so I don't knwo enough fo the details, but I think it would be cool (and reasonable) if the thign that mortals do to be awesome by turning themselves into liches would also have some benefit for skeletons and ghouls, who could somehow use the same powers and lore to strengthen their own undead nature. I'd rather see the undead races with a bit of an advantage as necros, rather than a disadvantage.

[SageAcrin]

Honestly, I think it'd be easy to make Lichform relevant as a skill.

Make it up Mana growth and/or Mana Regen, too.

Necromancers have serious Mana issues, and serious cooldown issues that keep them in check as well-having a skill that costs you infusions, in exchange for better Mana handling, is a fairly valid tradeoff, especially with the other bonuses.

The problem is, that's boring. My thoughts along those lines would be more in the neighborhood of opening up Class categories that Necromancer doesn't normally get. Liches are capable of using Negative abilities and Shadows.

Shadows don't fit that well...though it would be interesting to have the option of a fully support reliant summon(and it would be weird to have someone regenerate Hate naturally, though enemy Liches do it.). However, while I was thinking that Star Fury might not work, it turns out that isn't the category with the Positive->Negative conversion that I thought it was.

As such, having Liches unlock Star Fury and natural Negative regeneration *could* work as a unique and interesting, subjectively valued, bonus for Necromancers.

As to the undead, Skeletons not being able to become liches doesn't actually make a lot of sense objectively(Aren't they just exceptionally magical skeletons? Though, obviously, they'd gain less from the process too.), and Ghouls being able to become Ghoulkings with a +.2 to Ghoul skills instead of the category unlocks(Maybe with some free points in the Ghoul skills as well?), would make sense. It seems simple enough to me.

As to the ressurection stuff...I wouldn't mind seeing that element go. It's too metagamey to try to hold onto it as an emergency raise. (Not that I'm against it, either, though.)

[Planetus]

I like the idea of lichform being something that you do to yourself, rather than a free rez. In other world lores, turning into a lich is a magical ritual that seals the necromancer's soul into something non-living, usually called a phylactery, which can then possess a dead body and animate it. Sometimes the soul is re-bound directly to the necromancer's own body, not allowing it to body-hop if the necromancer's own body becomes too damaged. I don't quite know what the lore in this game tells us, but I'd much rather this be something you do to yourself rather than a reaction.

In the game-world, I like the idea of lich-dom unlocking a new tree of talents, which would be available to undead necromancers immediately (though maybe level-restricted), but that would add even more talents for a necromancer to choose between. Necros aren't exactly over-burdened with talents to choose from, but they don't have a great glut of free talent points, either. Maybe if it were a generic talent tree, since necros only have three class-based generic talent trees (ignoring racial generic trees).

[Sirrocco]

I'd actually be more interested in seeing the undead and living-to-lich gain the same tree at the same time, but give the undead side some other small-but-nifty benefit - possibly a somewhat better rate on the lich tree. +.200, maybe?