1 round duration would be better than 1 hit, otherwise if you're surrounded by three dudes and getting hit by the third is what'll kill you, it won't work, even if you can predict it.
As I said elsewhere, I found this line in the spellDB.xml of the beta DLC. <!-- modders are insane; see above - dgb --> We all know who that was and that he is right. Modders are all insane.
Ha -- I thought he was talking about me, but that's in reference to Ruigi's Alchemical Gas Canister. Here's the comment I got for my madness: What, you mean it's not appropriate to spend 520+ lines of code and 53 separate spells to create one level's skill? Why not?
The more insanity the better. I like crazy modders with even crazier mods. DoD has an abundance of insane skills/spells now. And I anticipate even more craziness in the future. I look forward to it. But to be honest, Archmage confounds me at the best of times. And the new DLC is like slapping "Official" on the side of the short bus to the crazy farm.
Archmage is specifically designed to confound, so that's cool. I'll get around to writing up the extraordinary complex design document in a month or so, and it'll become at least usable.
You mean I won't have to spend two hours bumbling around with Mathemagic and each level of Archmage to figure out how everything works? Why take all the fun out of the skill?
Just choose not to read it and keep having "fun", in that case - I think I speak for the other group of players when I say that I'll probably not squeeze Archmage or Warlockery into a build until I understand them. (even if Archmage sounds pretty nifty)
Well, Warlockery is easy. It's easy enough that it made it into the DLC, at least. The only complication to Warlockery is the whole 'all your spells get better when you have Essence of Battle active' thing. The rest of it pretty much just does what it says on the tin.
Hey, I don't suppose you'll be continuing to work on these for YHTNTEP? I loved the 'Watched by the Bolt Council' thing, for instance. It'd be nice.
There will definitely be a new Skills Rebalance "soon", but that may mean a couple of weeks depending on how a couple of Other Secret Things work out.
Yeah, this is clearly on hold until the end of my vacation -- and honestly, I'm impressed enough with the GLG guys' work that I don't know how much rebalancing there will need to be -- but I promise I will get on this after my triumphant return home in September.
I found the ability in skills.db under the first skill of crossbows. Supposedly there was supposed to be a chance to trigger it by shooting bolts, but that text is in remarks. I assume it's unfininished, so I'm not gonna change it.
It was finished and active in the original Core Skills Rebalance, but the devs decided it was out-of-flavor for the core game, so they commented it out.
Well, then, get in there and un-comment it. It provides a rare but substantial drop of bolts all around you. IIRC, it also drops a vending machine on your head when it does so, but the vending machine then explodes leaving a pile of rubble in your square.
1. Is the rubble traversable or does it block you way? 2. I don't like to edit the vanilla game when I mod, I'd much rather use mods that ADD to the game.
Look at it this way -- the entire Core Skills Rebalance was a modification to the core game, not a mod. So you can either wait for a core-game change that I put together, or you can simply re-activate something that was in the LAST core-game change that I put together. Philosophically, it's the same damn thing except you're the one deleting the <!-- ... -->. Also, the rubble, IIRC, is purely graphical.