New Class Idea: Plague Bearer

[overgoat]

Admittedly, the loss of infusions stings a bit, but even so, to me, this list does not scream out "oh no, he's so fragile, how will he survive?"

Touche Yeah, definitely not a delicate butterfly. I do still think unlike most other caster classes this class is encouraged to be in melee range and needs more help than those. Arguably solipsists and oozemancers have compariable defensive abilities to this class, but can safely nuke from range. I kind of see the plague bearer as the defilers direct answer to those admittedly a bit over powered classes. But with all that said, I would certainly agree to toning talents down if they are shown to synergize too well.

I understand the lore of it, but it seems somehow weird and sad to have a disease-based class that can't be played by ghouls.

Yeah, when I originally thought of this I really wanted to have a ghoul plague bearer too. It just didn't seem to make sense to have the class open to undead as they aren't really easily infected by diseases. Maybe have the restriction just apply to skeletons as ghouls are disease spreaders? I worry ghouls additional diseases/retching might make a powerful class too strong... thoughts?

The only tree they're likely to have access to is the Elemental Harmony tree (since every other easy source comes through the Zig one way or the other) and that has a passive that might have some builds going 1/5/0/0 for it. I just figure that if you're messed up enough that infusions don't work, you should be messed up enough that wild-gifts don't work either.

I agree that Harmony should restricted as well. This class should be the antithesis of all that is nature.

[Sirrocco]

Seems a little odd, but by the races, neither skeleton nor ghoul has any particular disease resistance. Admittedly, ghoul would synergize with this class pretty well - much of the attack power of the class is passive, minimizing the effect of the global speed penalty. Also, you're essentially sellign your ability to use infusions twice. Also, the fat that much of your effectiveness is passive makes the ghoul racials (which take turns, unlike other racials) into better deals. Also, there's the disease synergy, and the fact that one of the ghoul racial skills gives con (and you don't care about the strength a whole lot, but you can go heavy armor, and use it for gear qualification, so it's not wasted). Skeleton is actually potentially worse, if only for the "oh, look - *more* defenses" aspect.

Actually, I think you could make a case for this being ghoul-*only*, if you wanted to run with that. I'm not saying that you should, but it would be a viable option, with the idea that the disease has altered you into a ghoul in addition to the other effects.

[overgoat]

That is weird. I could have sworn undead had some disease resistance. Was that changed at some point? Regardless, other than the arbitrary lore I came up with I don't see why undead couldn't be included.

[Sirrocco]

thought of a way to make Sympathetic Disease work better. Give it a static limit as well as a fractional limit. Let the fractional limit scale up to 50%, but have that be a full max - adding more diseased enemies won't increase it. Then also have a (spellpower-dependent) max damage split per diseased enemy per hit - maybe half as much as the same level of Antimagic Shield, for starters. If enemies are hitting you with little hits, and you have anyoen diseased, it'll strip off 50% (when maxxed), spread evenly among the diseased in radius. If enemies are hitting you with big hits, then it'll strip off n per diseased foe.

Ossification seems a bit overpowered, especially for someone who will be using teleport runes for his getaways. possibly 20% slower move for the first skill, and then another 5% for each of the remaining?

I do still want this guy to have some inherent blight absorb - possibly even some ability that would give him buffs if he's eer hit with a disease. You could toss that into Diseased instead of the stun/poison resist, and throw those elsewhere? Possibly make it a passive hanging off of Absorb Disease? Something. Giving him a specific boost to blight resist would also seem appropriate.

Worth noting that the 100% disease resist on first skill point is going to make life notably more difficult for certain builds of Corrupter and Reaver in the game of Rare Foe Roulette. Not saying that that's necessarily a terrible thing, but it is a thing.

[overgoat]

thought of a way to make Sympathetic Disease work better. Give it a static limit as well as a fractional limit. Let the fractional limit scale up to 50%, but have that be a full max - adding more diseased enemies won't increase it. Then also have a (spellpower-dependent) max damage split per diseased enemy per hit - maybe half as much as the same level of Antimagic Shield, for starters. If enemies are hitting you with little hits, and you have anyoen diseased, it'll strip off 50% (when maxxed), spread evenly among the diseased in radius. If enemies are hitting you with big hits, then it'll strip off n per diseased foe.

I really like this change and comparison to Anti magic shield. This lowers the power considerably, while still providing excellent damage mitigation for all but the largest attacks and also providing consistent, but capped damage to enemies which fits with the theme of an attrition combat style.

Ossification seems a bit overpowered, especially for someone who will be using teleport runes for his getaways. possibly 20% slower move for the first skill, and then another 5% for each of the remaining?

This is pretty valid as this character will also have easy access to Thick Skin as it is Con based and could easily get to 35% resist all. Moving to a -20/25/30/35/40 movement speed is a reasonable trade off, if somewhat painful. I am thinking of moving the Stun/Poison resist from Diseased to Ossification which should should sweeten the deal a bit more to make up for the movement speed and fits into the theme of turning into stone. Since the movement speed could hurt more at early levels I think I will also switch the order on the disease tree and have Hemophilia first and Ossification 2nd. Maybe 3rd after Brain Tumors?

I do still want this guy to have some inherent blight absorb - possibly even some ability that would give him buffs if he's eer hit with a disease. You could toss that into Diseased instead of the stun/poison resist, and throw those elsewhere? Possibly make it a passive hanging off of Absorb Disease? Something. Giving him a specific boost to blight resist would also seem appropriate.

I agree, but couldn't think of where to put it initially. As I said on the previous reply I think moving the stun/poison resist to ossification makes sense and then having Diseased give a +10/15/20/25/30 blight resist and absorb instead. Maybe that is too high for the absorb?

Another idea: We could could remove disease immunity entirely and instead have their character healed by diseases passively like Waters of Life, but you would have to make sure they couldn't target themselves with diseases. Thoughts?

Worth noting that the 100% disease resist on first skill point is going to make life notably more difficult for certain builds of Corrupter and Reaver in the game of Rare Foe Roulette. Not saying that that's necessarily a terrible thing, but it is a thing.

They would still be able to be hit by Epidemic as that ignores disease immunity, but yeah this would not be a fun enemy for blight based characters. Would have to handle it similar to fighting a Worm that Walks probably. Reavers might be okay if they are able to close and melee. Corrupters would likely need to lean heavily on Curse of Death and Hexes.

[Sirrocco]

"healed by disease" is a fun idea, but the practical effects are kind of poor. For everyone except other Plague bearers, it punishes enemies (enemies who would generally be thought of as reasonably savvy, no less) even more for making already poor tactical decisions. For other plague bearers, it complicates what is already a fairly drawn out "You are immune to my powers? Ha! I am immune to *your* powers!" fight with randomly healing each other as a passive. This seems unfortunate.

I could see moving the stun/poison over if you gave both it and the stun/poison boost the same scaling nerf that almost everything got with 1.05.

[erinye2000]

I really like the whole idea.
I will permit myself a little comment about hemophilia. The 20% chance to instant cast seems like a dangerous lottery to me. Perhaps it could be implemented as a 20% chance that your next spell is insta-cast. Give a lots more room to tactical decisions.

[Sirrocco]

What's a dangerous lottery about it? Just never assume that it will be there. If you get a free turn, then great. If not, then it is as you expected.

[Faeryan]

What's a dangerous lottery about it? Just never assume that it will be there. If you get a free turn, then great. If not, then it is as you expected.

You just said it. The part of not knowing it if it is or not.

[Sirrocco]

Again, I'm missing something here. How is this thing dangerous? You can't depend on it. That's true - so don't. Treat it like a 20% chance to crit. It's cool when it happens, but you don't expect it. How is this dangerous? There isn't any situation where having that aspect of the skill is going to hork you over, unless I'm really missing something.

[erinye2000]

You re right, if you assume it never happens, it s not dangerous. But knowing in advance would, I think, let you add some depth to the class tactical play.

[Sirrocco]

Knowing in advance would be a significant buff of the power to people with the playstyle to exploit it. It would require more work to do (instead of a pretty standard "on cast, 20% chance to gain 1000 energy" which uses readily available existing code). It would also be kind of out of theme for the power - the idea here is that you have crazy voices in your head that sometimes help you out. They're *not* predictable. That's part of the deal, you see.

[erinye2000]

Of course it s a significant buff. But this 1000 energy on spellcast is also a little off as you can manage to gain time with it if you area able to get some speed buff. The whole brain tumors system rely a lot on possibility so you cant readily count on it, as powerful as it is. Some people will like it, some other a little less. Perhaps would it be better to change it, if you dont want to alter it, from passive to sustain, as it is a pre requisite to the next talent. And to suffer a big draw back for a talent you dont want to invest in is a little sad, if you would really want to invest in the cataracts one. And thematically, those are diseases, dont need to have one to contract another? But then again It will be a considerable buff to the talent (or the tree if you would apply this reasonning to the whole tree). I really like the tree ans his thematic idea but right now it s either 5/5/5/5 or 0/0/0/0.

[overgoat]

Knowing in advance would be a significant buff of the power to people with the playstyle to exploit it. It would require more work to do (instead of a pretty standard "on cast, 20% chance to gain 1000 energy" which uses readily available existing code). It would also be kind of out of theme for the power - the idea here is that you have crazy voices in your head that sometimes help you out. They're *not* predictable. That's part of the deal, you see.

I think Sirrocco, is right on here and this was my original intent with the class. This power was intended as a random benefit due to mental instability. I think allowing it to be a buff that you can plan for would change the play style quite a bit and also make it much more powerful.

I really like the tree ans his thematic idea but right now it s either 5/5/5/5 or 0/0/0/0.

You aren't wrong here. Some players will not like certain debuffs given by different diseases and may not want to go too deep into the tree. This could also certainly lead to ignoring the tree completely or to 5/0/0/0, 5/5/0/0, or 5/5/5/0 builds as well. I tried to order the different diseases in a way where the diseases that had the biggest impact on play style would be ordered last. I think the order I am going to go with now is Hemophilia, Brain Tumors, Ossification, and lastly Cataracts. As I think the movement penalty and blindness are likely to impact them the most so will be last an allow player to dip into the tree for only a couple passives if they want. For thematic purposes I didn't want to go with sustains on these as these diseases represent the character becoming more and more deformed the more they join with the plague. On the balance side I thought they were important to even out the considerable power its synergies give the class.

[overgoat]

I've updated the first post in this thread with updates to this class based on feedback here. Please let me know what you think and if you have more ideas or thoughts.

Thanks!