New Class Idea: Plague Bearer

[Sirrocco]

It's a bit of a kibitz, but it seems like "cannot use infusions or wild-gifts" (like undead are currently) is a cleaner restriction than "cannot use infusions or gain the Harmony Tree"

Also, interesting idea for an apotheosis quest - dig a bit into the way that ghouls work and how they're made (and this is lore that would need to be written) and at the end, you get a unique passive that adds "ghoul rot" to your list of valid diseases at a reasonably high priority. Something like...
- quest starts from something pretty low-key that will tend to happen anyway - killing a ghoul, perhaps.
- Do something that takes a bit of grinding in the world at large - killing bunches of ghouls for the ghoul flesh. Possibly have the quest suggest that you encourage ghoul kings to summon other ghouls, so as to accumulate more.
- Help out the Grand Corrupter ("Gain the assistance of a powerful corrupter.") - on finishing the Zig, he tells you about a necromancer that he was working with on the side to develop more virulent diseases. This reveals a dungeon.
- Fight your way through a short dungeon populated with undead, necromantic, and corruption-themed enemies, including a decent number of rare ghouls, and a new monster-type or two with Plague Bearer skills. Possibly a horror, if that makes any sense (I don't know of any other Defiler horrors, so it might not). Rares weighted towards necromancer, reaver, and plague bearer.
- At the bottom of the dungeon, you meet the necromancer in question. You can decide to kill him, in which case he drops some sort of nifty carryable item that probably boosts blight damage or something, or work with him, in which case he does a ritual to infuse you with Ghoul Rot, and harmonize it to your system

Alternate idea - if you don't like the concept of the apotheosis quest, "do interesting stuff with Ghoul Rot and the ghouls that come of it" seems like it could be a cool unlockable tree.

Also, you might want to think about giving them the corruption/hexes tree (locked). It's a bit out-of-theme for them, admittedly, but it seems like a cool little commonality across the Defiler meta-class that helping out the Grand Corrupter unlocks or buffs you tree for you, instead of just giving it to you locked. There's this idea that Hexes are just so fundamental to being a Defiler that at least some inkling of the tree is available to anyone who uses Vim.

[overgoat]

I had some ideas for a apotheosis quest, but had not really settled on any details yet. I like your idea about exploring more about ghouls and their lore, but I'm not sure it makes sense to hunt ghouls as they are also plague spreaders as well. Maybe this would make sense for a 'good' plague bearers? I was also not sure of how closely the Grand Corrupter would be with a plague bearer as they could bring about the risk of another backlash again magic users. Not sure about the lore and how bad a dude the Grand Corrupter is.

I was thinking about a quest line where at the end the character would have to decide on whether to use their powers indiscriminately by spreading plague against innocents or only against bad guys and getting a different reward based on the choice. Maybe a quest line where they take out Zigur and the Grand Corrupter?

Some possible quest rewards I was thinking of are unlocking the ghouls racial generic tree for the character or adding a chance to bring back slain enemies as ghouls. I do like your idea of adding additional disease variety too.

[Sirrocco]

So, I figure that they've made a dark bargain, not so much with some great Entity Of Disease so much as with the diseases that are infesting their bodies - it's more of a symbiosis relationship than one of master/servant, and the diseases infesting their bodies, while they do wish to be spread, don't really care about other diseases spread by other creatures. I figured it would involve a bunch of killing ghouls to get the diseased flesh to analyze/absorb/concentrate/experiment. That actually gives you a fair degree of freedom - all the disease wants is to survive and spread, which you're going to do anyway. Of course, you're channeling Vim, which basically means that you *are* getting power from horrible Entity - but by my reading, those entities were inhuman enough that they couldn't really understand things at the level of "if you like disease, don't kill ghouls" and more just saw the potential in your character, plugged him into the powersource, and let him go, figuring that the results would be good (evil). After all, if you had no control, Plague Bearer would target friendlies, too.

The Grand Corrupter is a pretty bad dude. He actually writes a mocking letter to his dad saying "Guess what? I'm going evil! Sucks to be you!" He's a bit of a scenery-chewer. I really can't see him looking at anyone and saying "this person is entirely too much of an icon of evil arcane power for me to work with them."

Giving them Ghoul Rot on their disease list would actually lead to bringing back slain enemies as ghouls. That's one of the very cool things about ghoul rot.

Oooh. What about one of the quest rewards (the one for working with the guy/embracing evil) is that you both gain ghoul rot on your list of transferrable diseases and have your race changed to ghoul? Not sure how far to go on the race change - might work better as a racial overlay a la Lich (though not nearly as cool because it doesn't cost skill points).

Worth noting that anything that gives you ghoul rot is going to turn you into a *serious* pet class, given both the rot and the rats. That's cool. It just means that the other answer needs to go in some other direction.

Actually, you could split the two. Option A just adds Ghoul Rot to the rotation - which means that you're likely to be spawning ghouls semiregularly as you go about your day, making you more of a pet class. Option B turns you into a ghoul, which has a number of useful abilities that will tend to make you more comfortable in up close and personal melee (and give you much more limited access to ghoul rot via bite).

Perhaps the class unlock should be something like "inflict disease on an enemy N times" or "die from disease damage while suffering from X diseases" (or perhaps just "die from disease damage", if we don't want to make it *too* hard)

[Doctornull]

Perhaps the class unlock should be something like "inflict disease on an enemy N times" or "die from disease damage while suffering from X diseases" (or perhaps just "die from disease damage", if we don't want to make it *too* hard)

"Die while diseased" is a lot easier than "die from disease damage".

"Kill something with disease" is pretty easy, too, since Reaver is not a difficult unlock.

[Sirrocco]

yeah - but "die from diseases while infected with multiple diseases" is pretty tricky - too tricky, really, though otherwise awesomely appropriate. "Die while diseased" is both too easy and too faint. Even "die from disease damage" is like the reaver unlock - you'll hit it after not too long even if you're not trying for it. I'd want something in the middle - unusual enough that you're not likely to stumble into it by mistake, but achievable in relatively short order by a competent player who's grabbed the spoiler. Possibly... Kill the Grand Corrupter with disease?

[HousePet]

Kill yourself with disease.

[overgoat]

Kill yourself with disease.

Shhh! That was the secret easy way to get the unlock!

[Doctornull]

I'd want something in the middle - unusual enough that you're not likely to stumble into it by mistake, but achievable in relatively short order by a competent player who's grabbed the spoiler.

I guess it's a matter of taste.

Personally, I hate with a burning passion that so many things in this game require spoilers.

I'd much, much, much rather have things open up as happy surprises within normal play.

[overgoat]

I'd want something in the middle - unusual enough that you're not likely to stumble into it by mistake, but achievable in relatively short order by a competent player who's grabbed the spoiler.

I guess it's a matter of taste.

Personally, I hate with a burning passion that so many things in this game require spoilers.

I'd much, much, much rather have things open up as happy surprises within normal play.

I'm not quite in the hate (or burning passion) camp, but I agree mostly. That is one reason why I like the die from a (non self-inflicted ) disease to unlock. I've died in this way a couple of times in the past and it was especially painfully doing the sad math on the cool down of the disease vs. my health vs. the cooldown of my shields or heals and realizing that death is inevitable. That is where I came up with the theme of someone making a dark bargain to survive. When you are watching a beloved character about to die from a disease in a couple of turns and knowing there is nothing you can do might make some tough choices! It would have been very cool to have been rewarded with an unexpected class unlock from this the first time. To me, this is the kind of thing that makes new players all the more interested in exploring the game: Always wondering what other unexpected surprise you might find even in death.

[Doctornull]

That's a cool idea, and it's especially cool that the unlock kinda takes the edge off what is a fairly depressing way to die.

Since it'll tend to happen with enough play, there's no requirement for spoilers, so that would work well to dampen the fires of my burning hate.

Cheers!

[Sirrocco]

Huh. Okay. I'm convinced. "Die by disease" is actually pretty cool here.

[overgoat]

What do you guys think about Blighted Summoning and Plague Rats? Not sure what makes the most sense here. Giving the rats Bone Grab would likely be the very helpful, but doesn't really seem to make sense to give a bone power. Virulent Disease makes some sense, but would likely be overpowered, especially when a swarm is called. Maybe go outside of the corruption powers and give them Rush?

[erinye2000]

There is acid blood talent perhaps. To keep more in touch with defilers.

[overgoat]

There is acid blood talent perhaps. To keep more in touch with defilers.

I thought about that, but they already get a similar ability from the 2nd skill in the Plague Rat skill. It wouldn't be too bad, but I don't know if that relatively low damage would be worth investing into the prodigy for. The debuff provided would be handy though. Does DoT and debuff from acid blood stack?

[Sirrocco]

plague rats are constantly respawning. If you've invested heavily in them (and if you have blighted summoning, you better have) then you're spawning minimum 1/turn, and significantly more than that when you push it. This has implications.

- We don't want anything ranged. Making the little guys into turrets would be patently unfair.
- We don't want anything that causes disease. Honestly, we have enough of that already.
- We don't want anything that boosts their survivability too much. Again with the patently unfair.

I'd think a melee attack, really, preferably one with some sort of interesting side effect - and for maximum humor value, I'm going to propose Swallow. Sure, it's the wrongest possible power source in two different ways, but if you ignore that, it's basically a cross between a small damage boost, and something that clears out almost-dead enemies (including all of those annoying blurred mortality-like shenanigans). It's interesting, and useful in some circumstances, and not overpowered - and it's got some great imagery to it - which turns darkly (toilet) humorous if you also have ghoul rot going, so that the enemy gets swallowed, and then immediately spawns as a minion ghoul.

If you don't like the humor, consider Dark Surprise. It's a Reaver power, which feels right, it has a potential for significant damage spike (but in keeping with existing rat melee damage, so it won't get out of hand), and it can blind. Might be interesting tryign to get around the two weapon requirement, though.

Carrier is also an interesting one, though it definitely falls prey to the "More disease? *Really*?" factor.