Add-on race: Ghost

[Faeryan]

Have you ever seen a ghost? I haven't, but would love an add-on for them.
I'm not a coder so to implement this I'd have to learn it. If the idea strikes you fancy and you know ToME coding then by all means hijack this.

I'm writing up my thoughts so the skill descriptions and numbers are lacking for now. Feel free to throw in your ideas to shape ghosts a balanced and interesting race choice.

A ghost is an undead race, like skeleton or a ghoul. It's magical in nature and thus doesn't breathe and can't use infusions. Ghosts gain very little HP on level up, less than Yeeks methinks.

Ghost racial tree:

Tier 1: Ghost form: (Passive) (A ghost starts with 1 generic point in this)
Ghosts have no physical body so Constitution does them little good. Their life-force is governed by Willpower.
This passive skill would work like Solipsism talent, decreasing the amount of HP gained from Con. Due to their incorporeal body they take less damage than normal so the damage reduction would be justified. Strong Willpower means strong life-force, so Mana would be the Psi equivalent resource here.
Solipsism threshold thingie is out of place here so it won't do anything.
HP from Con, damage reduction % and mana lost when taking damage amounts would be affected by skill level in this talent.

Tier 2: Incorporeal Body: (Active)
Ghost can travel through diggable terrain. This skill is instant cast and requires mana to use as it's straining activity.
While the skill is in effect the ghost takes X% damage each turn he stays inside a terrain. This damage can't kill. While this skill is active the ghost does Y% less damage. If the skill ends while inside a terrain the ghost continues taking damage and can be killed. (Does a Skeleton suffocate in sand tunnels? Suffocation damage would fit in here if undeads while not having to breathe can still suffocate)
The damage the ghost takes and the damage penalty would get smaller with more points in the skill. The cooldown and duration would get bigger.

Tier 3: Ghost sense: (Sustain)
Ghost can detect the life-force of the living in a radius of X. At level 3 the ghost can also detect the other undeads by sensing their aura. At level 5 the demonic taint can also be detected. Telepathy in radius that grows with skill level. Maybe added fear aura as well?

Tier 4: Spook: (Active)
While Incorporeal Body is active the ghost can use this skill to teleport next to an enemy. Works on both seen and detected by telepathy enemies. Dazes the target for X turns. Using this skill is instant and doesn't take a turn.
Cooldown and duration of the daze will grow with talent investment.
Using this skill will grant an evasion chance of Y% for X turns.
Evasion chance will grow with Willpower.

EDIT: The addon is now official on site. Grab it!

[Forger101]

I like the idea of this, so much so that I volunteer myself as the coder

Some quick thoughts;
Do you want this race to mesh nicely with the existing banshees or not?
In my opinion a ghost shouldn't be hurt by passing through walls, but if we can find a good reason for it that would be fine.
This is an undead race without a healing racial, do you want this?

This looks like a great race, can't wait to hear what other people think of it.

[grayswandir]

How about reducing movement speed through walls?
I agree that taking damage while moving through walls doesn't make much sense - but draining mana makes a lot more sense, and if I understand the first talent correctly, this would be largely the same in the end.

Spook would be really fun if it inflicted a weaker daze that checked fear immunity instead of stun immunity.

Points in another talent (maybe spook?) could make Incorporeal Body try to inflict some sort of fear on everybody in range 3 when you deactivate it. (You suddenly appear and scare everything.)

[Zaive]

Skeletons can't suffocate in the sandworm tunnels. They do take the damage from being crushed, but they can stay there and not be bothered.

It's a neat idea, anyway. What resistance are they gonna have? I would think bleed and poison definitely, and maybe disease, stun (50%), and fear too.

[Faeryan]

In my opinion a ghost shouldn't be hurt by passing through walls, but if we can find a good reason for it that would be fine.
This is an undead race without a healing racial, do you want this?

Good point Forger, I totally forgot about healing. Hurt when moving through walls I thought about as balancing factor, else they could just stay inside a wall all day and stuff. Like grayswandir mentioned, with the first talent it's more of a mana drain thing, though just draining mana instead of life would work the same as a balancing thing.
There are manasurge runes through, so we could make it so that regenerating mana would also restore HP by some amount. Still would need some kind of heal stuff, better sooner than later, so tier 1 or 2 should be it. Would it be possible to make a Willpower scaling heal with no talent points investment, something that would be gained as extra skill when investing on the first talent, much like Mindslayers get teleslot and the skills for it when opening the Absorption tree? The skill would grow in power with talent points investment in the first skill, making the ghost more adept at channeling life-force with their Will alone.

How about reducing movement speed through walls?
I agree that taking damage while moving through walls doesn't make much sense - but draining mana makes a lot more sense, and if I understand the first talent correctly, this would be largely the same in the end.

Movement speed reduction inside wall I think might be a bit harsh as I thought the skill as an escape, so hampering the escape method would make it a bit less escapy, often creating dangerous situations.

Spook would be really fun if it inflicted a weaker daze that checked fear immunity instead of stun immunity.

Might be. My thought was that this skill should be a rather reliable thing to lock one enemy from the fight for a while, still making it so that it can act after getting attacked so that the skill wouldn't be a one hit wonder with which you just render a lone enemy unable to act while you pound it to death. Mages and other ranged actors most likely won't use this skill much as it requires melee range, so I thought it should be a reliable proc to make it more appealing for them too, not just melee fighters.

What resistance are they gonna have? I would think bleed and poison definitely, and maybe disease, stun (50%), and fear too.

Most likely those would fit in the theme. Stun I think is a bit so-so, since we don't want them to get just about every immunity ever. 25%-50% might be doable methinks. I also thought about Darkness resistance and Light weakness, but that might make them seem more of a gloomy dark creatures, that undeads kinda are, but I see ghosts as not necessarily evil and malevolent, but more like neutral, much affected by what they were in past life before becoming a ghost. Maybe a Wandering Spirit or something would describe the race better.

[Forger101]

For the healing bit we could give them the Aegis tree at a reduced mastery, I think it would work because the ghost is reliant on mana bar for reducing damage and using Aegis would force a trade off between sustainable damage reduction or burst damage mitigation.

For the immunities they must have 100% disease, poison, and bleed so as to be in line with banshee immunities

[wildwolfofdark]

Well, them being corporeal might make it hard for them to equip certain items. So would you have some sort of tiered skill for items they can equip? Example: Level 1 they can use rings, necklaces, mindstars, gems, knives and robes. Level 2 would be light armors, boots, gauntlets, light helms, one handed weapons, bows, and slings. Level 3 would be shields, two handed weapons. Level 4 would be`heavy armors. Level 5 would be massive armors.

Also healing could possibly work as when you kill an enemy, you passively absorb its 'soul' from living creatures. Perhaps a +1% regen bonus of previously killed enemy (or enemies if you want it to stack) up to +5% of slain enemies max hp per turn for X amount of turns.

Example:
You kill a snake with 50 hp. (0.5) x 5 turns
You kill a bear with 100 hp (1.0). x 5 turns

Every level could get a +1% regen and +1% max and +1 turn. Or you could say screw it and go based on enemy size or type, such as rares.

[Faeryan]

Sheesh guys, those are some really sweet ideas. We'd need to make it a class or give them several racial trees to accommodate all these wonderful things.

[wildwolfofdark]

You could always go for a melee drain life attack that as it levels up becomes ranged. I'd assume a skill for physical resistance would be in order, that would also raise your light and fire resistance from -50% (as you are an undead ghost) to 0% or 10% at max level.

[Forger101]

I just had a good idea, crazy but good.

We could have it so that the first point invested in a ghost racial would unlock a tree at 0.8 mastery or buff it if it already exists.

Like for Example;
Ghost Form would give Aegis
Incorporeal Body would give Cursed Form
Ghost Sense would give Gloom
Spook would give Fears

By the way I can start coding a prototype for this whenever you want.

[grayswandir]

I like the idea of it giving you those trees, but I think they'd have to be locked or it would be giving you half of a class right there.

[Forger101]

Yeah now that I think of it, it would definitely be better for the trees to be locked. Could give Aegis unlocked though so they have a healing mechanism.

[Faeryan]

Do your magic Forger, like you wish.
This is all theory until we get something solid out of it (solid ghosts, right).

Aegis sounds really powerful. HP mod on ghost has to be really really low to offset that.

[Planetus]

I love the idea of giving them HP regen on manasurge runes. Maybe just make their HP regen automatically tied to their MP regen, so the manasurge rune boosts both (effectively)?

On the side, I'm assuming you're planning to make this race have an automatic manapool and mana regen rate? Normally that's limited to the Mage metaclass, but it makes sense for this race.

I'd also be rather careful with damage resistance penalties. They can be massively killer even if it's only rather small. Maybe instead make it just a penalty to the max resistance in that element? That would forever keep the ghost vulnerable to fire and light, but would also prevent them from being insta-killed by the first skeleton mage they come across.

[Forger101]

Got most of this programmed. I will probably make another post tomorrow with the addon file, I won't register it on the tome site quite yet until we make some balancing changes. Also note I'm quite lazy with graphics so just expect the character to look like Kor's Fury.