Racial Rework - Specific Mechanics

[Doctornull]

There's already a thread for theme stuff, this thread is for mechanics.

So, doctornull and I worked on the halfling design in irc:

• T1 Duck and Dodge: Move up to 3 spaces. You can move through enemies, and this will not break wild speed.
• T2 Indomitable: Unchanged.
• T3 Evasive Maneuvers: Whenever an enemy attacks you, gain an 6% - 12% evasion rate for 3 - 5 turns. This can stack up to 2 - 6 times, with no more than one stack per enemy.
• T4 Fleet of Foot: Whenever you take 14% - 10% of your max life in a single hit, gain a Wild Speed effect (+200% - 500% movement speed) for 1 turn. Any non movement action will break this effect.

The important thing here is that Evasive Maneuvers and Fleet of Foot can trigger at most once per turn, and that Evasive Maneuvers can trigger only once per creature ever.

We'll put a mark in the creature's table to ensure it won't re-trigger. If you're attacked by multiple creatures serially, the bonus duration will refresh, but a single creature alone is only worth 3-5 turns over its entire life.

So ideally you'll get a bonus for fighting a bunch of creatures, but against a boss you'll only get a brief window of one-shot avoidance.

Also we worked on highers, but didn't get as far. As a rough summary:
Bloom is fairly iconic, and should stay. Any other resource effects are too finicky or are overshadowed by bloom, so that can't be the theme.
Remaining available themes are vision, healing, and magic.

I really like vision, but don't think it'll work as an overall theme. So I say just give highers an innate +1 vision and then don't do anything else with it.

Healing ideas:

• Current T1.
• Passive Healmod.
• Flat armor equal to 10% of current regen effect.

Magic ideas:

• Current arcane resist.
• Current +15% damage bonus.
• When you're hit with a spell, reduce the cooldown of a random higher racial or spell talent by 1-5.
• When you cast a spell, extend the duration your regeneration effect if present by 1-3.

Some of those Higher items aren't what I thought we were Discussing. Here's what I had in mind:

• t1 - Instant Regeneration, scales with max(Will,Con)
• t2 - passive blind resist
  - when you gain Regeneration, you also get flat damage reduction equal to 10% of the regeneration
  - when you cast a spell which deals damage, you gain +15% damage of that type for 5 turns (with a 20 turn cooldown)
• t3 - passive arcane damage resistance
  - when you make a saving throw against a spell, you have a 20-50% chance to reduce the cooldown of one spell or racial talent (this can succeed only once per turn)
  - when you cast a spell, you have a 20-50% chance to extend the duration of one ongoing Regeneration effect (this can succeed only once per turn)
• t4 - Highborn Bloom

The idea here is that you've intertwined your life force with magic, so casting spells buffs your Regeneration, and Regeneration is an even more integral part of you than usual for a living being.

The other part is magical respiration: you breathe in magic (spell saves benefit you), you breathe out magic (retain aura of +% damage).

We also had an idea for increasing healing_factor but I'm not sure where we could fit that in.

[stinkstink]

Here are the rough notes for racial buffs I made a while back:

Yeek - Quickened increases cooldown speed of non-fixed_cooldown talents by % of current global speed (with 100% efficiency, talents would cool down twice as fast at 200% global speed, tweak efficiency based on balance tests,) show stats on Wayist
Higher - 17+(mag/3) heal mod when Gift of the Highborn is active, make Hidden Resources subtype other and fixed_cooldown so Shalore don't do their gimmick better
Ghoul - Ghoul damage reduction works by turn rather than by hit as per StarKeep's addon, Gnaw has auto_melee_hit, Gnaw/Ghoul Rot damage heals and Ghoul Rot has a chance each turn to spreads across adjacent enemies
Skeleton - Skeleton grants chance to reduce duration of a debuff on crit, Bone Armor adds additional reduce_detrimental_status_effects_time while active
Thalore - show stats on Nature's Pride, something for Unshackled to make it more appealing to people who hate saves. Pin resistance?
Halfling - (luck-30)/2.5 crit mod on Luck of the Little Folk (10 base/26 with Lucky Day,) (luck-20)/10 cancel_damage_chance on Duck and Dodge (3.5% base/7.5% with Lucky Day)
Dwarf - 25+con*2 die_at on Resilience of the Dwarves, flat damage armor based on % of highest save on Power is Money
Doomelf - Pitiless checks highest power instead of spellpower

[Atarlost]

There's already a thread for theme stuff, this thread is for mechanics.

You can't separate them. Theme dictates which talents and mechanics what they do. Trying to separate the discussion is counterproductive unless you mean that this is the thread for discussing purely mechanical tweaks to the existing talents, which you obviously don't based on bringing up a halfling talent set with an altered theme.

[Doctornull]

Yeek - Quickened increases cooldown speed of non-fixed_cooldown talents by % of current global speed (with 100% efficiency, talents would cool down twice as fast at 200% global speed, tweak efficiency based on balance tests,) show stats on Wayist

Reducing cooldowns by the global speed bonus of Quickened itself would be great. Not by global speed of Quickened + anything else, though, in my opinion that could be heavily abused.

Higher - 17+(mag/3) heal mod when Gift of the Highborn is active, make Hidden Resources subtype other and fixed_cooldown so Shalore don't do their gimmick better

Yeah some Prodigies are being excluded from Shalore Timeless.

Ghoul - Ghoul damage reduction works by turn rather than by hit as per StarKeep's addon, Gnaw has auto_melee_hit, Gnaw/Ghoul Rot damage heals and Ghoul Rot has a chance each turn to spreads across adjacent enemies

Now that per-turn thing is a great idea.

Skeleton - Skeleton grants chance to reduce duration of a debuff on crit, Bone Armor adds additional reduce_detrimental_status_effects_time while active

Interesting. Unfortunately that seems to make Bathe In Light even more important, since it extends damage shields.

Thalore - show stats on Nature's Pride, something for Unshackled to make it more appealing to people who hate saves. Pin resistance?

Thalore are half-tree, and trees are immobile, so they should be pinned all the time. Maybe some kind of bonus to durability when pinned or immobile?

Halfling - (luck-30)/2.5 crit mod on Luck of the Little Folk (10 base/26 with Lucky Day,) (luck-20)/10 cancel_damage_chance on Duck and Dodge (3.5% base/7.5% with Lucky Day)

IMHO increasing the crit chance is not so great unless you give something else which works when crit chance exceeds 100%, as it often will late-game.

Dwarf - 25+con*2 die_at on Resilience of the Dwarves, flat damage armor based on % of highest save on Power is Money

Flat damage seems to be appearing more and more. I like it, and I think it would fit for a Dwarf, but I wonder if we're over-using it.

Doomelf - Pitiless checks highest power instead of spellpower

Yeah, that's an obviously good idea.

Trying to separate the discussion is counterproductive unless you mean that this is the thread for discussing purely mechanical tweaks to the existing talents, which you obviously don't based on bringing up a halfling talent set with an altered theme.

Nope, not like that at all.

Maybe I should say: This thread is for concrete proposals rather than abstract blue-sky navel-gazing.

Do you think that is sufficiently specific to separate it from the other thread? I'm here because I found the other thread to be counter-productive.

[stinkstink]

Yeek - Quickened increases cooldown speed of non-fixed_cooldown talents by % of current global speed (with 100% efficiency, talents would cool down twice as fast at 200% global speed, tweak efficiency based on balance tests,) show stats on Wayist

Reducing cooldowns by the global speed bonus of Quickened itself would be great. Not by global speed of Quickened + anything else, though, in my opinion that could be heavily abused.

My idea with that was to make Yeeks better in cooldown-gated classes, appealing for classes with speed buffs similarly to how Skeletons like Aegis, as well as giving them a gentle nudge toward Harmony/Psiblades/Antimagic by making Windtouched Speed an attractive prodigy for them. It could probably stand to have a cap (hard or soft) at 2x cooldown speed, but I feel like resource costs/artifact cooldown might dampen the worst buff abuse.

Skeleton - Skeleton grants chance to reduce duration of a debuff on crit, Bone Armor adds additional reduce_detrimental_status_effects_time while active

Interesting. Unfortunately that seems to make Bathe In Light even more important, since it extends damage shields.

Good point, might be better as a rider effect. I generally like the idea of Skeletons being resistant to temporary effects and Ghouls against raw HP damage.

Halfling - (luck-30)/2.5 crit mod on Luck of the Little Folk (10 base/26 with Lucky Day,) (luck-20)/10 cancel_damage_chance on Duck and Dodge (3.5% base/7.5% with Lucky Day)

IMHO increasing the crit chance is not so great unless you give something else which works when crit chance exceeds 100%, as it often will late-game.

I meant crit damage mod here, my bad. It was specifically meant to make LotLF more useful when base crit rate is already high.

[Doctornull]

My idea with that was to make Yeeks better in cooldown-gated classes, appealing for classes with speed buffs similarly to how Skeletons like Aegis, as well as giving them a gentle nudge toward Harmony/Psiblades/Antimagic by making Windtouched Speed an attractive prodigy for them. It could probably stand to have a cap (hard or soft) at 2x cooldown speed, but I feel like resource costs/artifact cooldown might dampen the worst buff abuse.

Yeah, you could limit it in some other way. I just think it's important to not overpower stuff like Wildfire + Harmony + Temporal + Yeek since that kind of thing is already pretty amazing, and a Cornac can easily get over 200% global speed even without the Yeek perk.

Good point, might be better as a rider effect. I generally like the idea of Skeletons being resistant to temporary effects and Ghouls against raw HP damage.

Oh yeah, totally. Maybe something like:
- Skeleton: While you have an active Damage Shield, you have a % chance each turn to reduce the duration of one negative effect.

Your idea (or Starkeep's idea) for the Ghoul sounds absolutely perfect. Ghouls are supposed to get double-turned all the time, and as I understand it their racial is intended to prevent them from getting one-shot killed when that happens.

I meant crit damage mod here, my bad. It was specifically meant to make LotLF more useful when base crit rate is already high.

Cool. Yeah, mechanically that would work, but I don't like how much it then overlaps with the Shaloren passive.

Maybe give crit shrug-off and crit reduction instead? That is relevant at high levels / high difficulties, more so as the difficulty / level makes the Defensive bonus irrelevant.

[Atarlost]

Trying to separate the discussion is counterproductive unless you mean that this is the thread for discussing purely mechanical tweaks to the existing talents, which you obviously don't based on bringing up a halfling talent set with an altered theme.

Nope, not like that at all.

Maybe I should say: This thread is for concrete proposals rather than abstract blue-sky navel-gazing.

Do you think that is sufficiently specific to separate it from the other thread? I'm here because I found the other thread to be counter-productive.

As expressed it reads as an attempt to squelch critique on any grounds except mechanics. If it's not it should be worded differently.

For example, I hate your halfling on thematic grounds. It dilutes the Maj'Eyal militaristic halfling racial identity and they are just about the only halflings in any work of fiction that aren't lame as a race. If I'm not supposed to bring that up in response to it this thread is too narrow in scope. Superior or inferior thematics need to be able to be weighed against superior or inferior balance in the same thread.

[Doctornull]

As expressed it reads as an attempt to squelch critique on any grounds except mechanics. If it's not it should be worded differently.

If you see evidence of squelching, please let me know. I'll... actually I don't know if I can squelch squelching. But I'll do my best.

For example, I hate your halfling on thematic grounds. It dilutes the Maj'Eyal militaristic halfling racial identity and they are just about the only halflings in any work of fiction that aren't lame as a race. If I'm not supposed to bring that up in response to it this thread is too narrow in scope. Superior or inferior thematics need to be able to be weighed against superior or inferior balance in the same thread.

I'm 100% okay with hearing that exact thing from you. Thanks for posting.

The things Grayswandir and I were talking about, and why this thread exists, are primarily stuff like the fact that the mechanics for Halflings didn't work out at high level or at high difficulties. So we wanted to make a way for them to be good on Normal and still pretty darn good for advanced players.

From a military standpoint, I feel like tactical mobility is a solid package. We kept Indomitable, which is their best "solider on" talent.

Regarding the others, would it work better for you if the talent names and flavor text were more military?

E.g.: "Duck and Dodge" -> Flanking Maneuver or Tactical Reposition
"Fleet of Foot" -> Forced March or Battle Invigoration

I totally agree that Eyal's Halflings are an uncommonly good rendition of the Halfling racial tropes, and I do want to keep their flavor good, so I'm all about making the good flavor matched with actually good mechanics so they can get played more.

[Red]

This thread is for concrete proposals rather than abstract blue-sky navel-gazing.

That right there. You'd saying all non-mechanical aspects are not worth talking about. There's a difference between "This thread is for concrete proposals instead of themes and general ideas" and what you wrote.

[grayswandir]

I've made a quick version of the halfling here. It's not very well tested, etc.

[Doctornull]

I've made a quick version of the halfling here. It's not very well tested, etc.

You remain awesome.

Edit: bugs as I find them:
- Aborting targeting for the first talent ("Duck & Dodge") causes a Lua pop-up.