I've been looking through most of the finished mods and I noticed that there weren't many skills based around generating and using buffs to fuel skills(aka generating energy) so I'm thinking of making one. This one is based on Natsu from Fairy Tail who eats fire to power up. Fire Dragon Scales of the Fire Dragon: You gain 2 ,2 , 2 , 2 and 2 resistance. Revised: You gain 1 and 1 .Dragon's Flames: Passive: Your hits have a 25% chance to generate one Dragon's Flame buff. Dragon Flame buff: Grants 1 and 1 . This buff can stack up to 6 times.Revised: Grants1 .Flame Cuisine: Consumes 1 Dragon's Flame buff to restore your fighting spirit. Heals 5+(.1x) Revised: Heals 2+(.25x ) Burning Fist: Consumes 1 Dragon's Flame buff to deal 2 and 2 . Crimson Fist deals additional (.1x ) damage.Revised: (.1x) damage.Fire Dragon's Descent: Consumes 3 Dragon's Flames buffs to teleport within sight and deal 4 and 4 damage. Crimson Pheonix also heals 10+(.2x) .Revised: Crimson version deals knockback upon landing.Dragon Swipe: Consumes 4 Dragon's Flames buffs to deal 8 and 8 damage. Crimson Talon also ignores armor to deal true damage.Revised: Crimson version also procs bleed.Crimson Form: Consumes 6 Dragon's Flames buffs to cloak yourself in the Crimson Flames of the Fire Dragon. This grants the Crimson Flames Buff. Crimson Flames Buff: Doubles the effectiveness of Dragon's Flames and augments your other abilities. This lasts for 10 turns. Please help me sort out what numbers to get and balance the effects.
What do you want this to scale with, if anything? And will it be Wizard, Rogue, or Warrior skills? cannot ignore armor. It is hardcoded as a basic damage type that will always be effected by . You could switch it to , but many things have resistance to that.
This will scale with melee power. And it'll be a warrior skill. I'm thinking of applying a debuff to a monster before the slash damage takes place and removing 8 AA. Could someone take a look at this and see what the problems are? There's a lot of checkbuffs and stuff because this was the only way I could guarantee that the spells would work only if the Dragon's Flames buffs are properly removed.
This is missing a closetag (Token1"/>). I'd suggest looking up the XML Validator in the Visual Spell Templates stickied thread, then post the validated version for us to check through.
A negative value on a resistance causes attacks of that sort to do extra damage. (For example, lot of the undead have -3 , so if you hit them with a weapon that does 1 , they actually take 4 .) I'm not certain that negative armor does the same thing as a negative resist, but it's possible. It's also possibly it may be even more potent, since positive deducts from , , and , it's theoretically possible that a single point of negative could actually add multiple points of damage if the attack were scoring multiple damage types. Probably worth someone's time to do some testing to figure out exactly how - works. is lower across the board than you might expect, I know it surprised me when I did my big analysis a few weeks back. IIRC, just about every floor has at least one monster with 0 , even down to the deepest floors of the dungeon. Floor 13 has nothing but creatures with 0 (at least, pre-DLC, haven't checked the current RC). So if negative armor does work like resistances in that regards, it won't just make your slashing get past their armor, it'll make your attacks do bonus damage against more than half the monsters in the game. That's definitely something to keep in mind when balancing a power that debuffs armor.
oh thanks for the link essence. apparently i just missed that closetag. that one stupid closetag. @r_B_bergstrom: hmm, that sounds messy to balance. i might just do some other effect. what do you think about the numbers on the other spells? huh, just keeping the 6 stacks up is ridiculously useful. how do i change this so it successfully removes 1 buff and heals? Code: <spell icon="skills/dragon3_32.png" type="self" name="Flame Cuisine"> <description text="Consume a Dragon's Flames to restore your fighting spirit."/> <effect type="trigger" spell="Check Flame Cuisine"/> </spell> <spell type="self" name="Check Flame Cuisine"> <effect type="trigger" name="Remove and Heal" requirebuffontriggername="Dragon's Flames" requirebuffontrigger="1"/> </spell> <spell type="self" name="Remove and Heal"> <effect type="removebuffbyname" name="Dragon's Flames" amount="1"/> <effect type="heal" amount="5" amountF=".1" secondaryScale="2"/> </spell>
I don't really have time right now to do an in-depth comparison to similar levels of main-game skills, which is the best way to judge such things. My gut reactions are: The first level gives a lot more resistances than any main-game starting level skill. I suspect you're providing complete protection to a number of first-floor traps for zero investment. Having 2 , 2 and 2 is functionally different from just 2 in only a handful of situations, but when it is relevant it's probably too much damage prevention for a first level ability. 1 1 1 would be more than enough for a first-level skill. Second level seems better than it needs to be, as well. You can't tweak the proc rate or stacking, since other levels rely on it. I'd look at stripping it down to just (no ). Compare to other second-level buffs, and I think you'll find that none of them can stack up to +12 damage per attack. Certainly not for a zero mana investment. Making the second level weaker will actually make the later effects better, as you won't be sacrificing as much when you give up a buff. Third level does too much up-front healing on floor 1, and not enough in the late game. Maybe try "Heals 2+(.25x) ." Or, better yet, find something else for this level to do, and restrict yourself to just one healing spell. This is a warrior tree, after all, not a wizard skill. Fourth level isn't enough damage to ever use up a buff for. You're trading 2 repeatable long term damage for just 2 extra on a single attack. That +2 one turn earlier is rarely going to make a difference. It improves a bit if the second level is cut back to 1 damage, but even then it probably needs a little more oomph. The spell as summarized is unclear. Is it a melee damage boost, or a ranged attack? If it's an attack all it's own (doesn't use your weapons or stats), it probably needs a lot more damage. Again, go look at similar-level spells in the main game to get your start. The crimson fist line confuses me. There's nothing else in your mod called Crimson fist, so I'm unsure if it's a second buff or what. Even if I knew what Crimson Fist was, I'm left wondering why would being a dragon cause in DoD? is the result of purity, nobility, beauty, and/or lutefiskity, which are four traits that DoD's tiny little dragons don't have. If you're going to do at all with this skill, I'd have it be only on an attack that uses several of the buffs with the idea being purification through intense fire. Righteous is the best damage type in the game. If I'm not mistaken, Fire-damage is almost always done in multiple waves in DoD, with any given fire effect (especially low-level ones) being built up from multiple little stabs of and so that monster with even a little bit of can laugh it off, and those with a weakness to get double the bonus damage. So your later levels that do larger amounts of fire damage should probably likewise be broken up into mutliple smaller blasts to preserve that dynamic. Again, the best place to start is by comparing to main-game skills. Teleport and large healing on-demand are MAJOR powers to be putting in a warrior tree. So, you're on the right track making teleports or heals require consuming multiple buffs to trigger. Your warrior skill is sounding awfully wizardy to me, though that is a common theme amongst modders. I'd suggest figuring out what your skill "does" and focus on it more, instead of trying to be a generalist. The phoenix healing seems a little out of place, given that the theme is dragon not just "firey critters of myth". Currently, you've got a lot of different effects going on in the game. Buffs, direct damage(?), teleport, healing, armor, etc. The game gives a player access to 7 skills, after all. No single skill has to do everything.
Thanks for the feedback. Thematically, it's supposed to be turning yourself into a dragon by using magic to cloak your body in its flames. Functionally, maybe it should be a wizard tree skill. Although it would be different from other wizard skills because it would depend on hitting your enemies as opposed to blasting them from a range all the time. I think I'll nix the high level heal and change the low level heal to your suggestions. For the first level I think I'll bump it down to 1 1 since AA covers all forms of physical damage. Thematically, I want the crimson form to basically cloak yourself all over with high-powered flames which alters your abilities slightly. Burning Fist becomes Crimson Fist. For the buffed version, I was going for a purified, ritual flame sorta thing being knocked into someone. if you think that is too strong, I think it'd be perfectly acceptable to reduce its scaling.Fire Dragon's Descent becomes Crimson Descent. For the buffed version, I think I'll have it add knockback to show that Crimson Descent lands very hard.Dragon Swipe becomes Crimson Talon. For the buffed version, I think I want it to deal as the enhanced version is sharper(?)I want the buffed versions to be more interesting than adding more conflagratory damage so that using Crimson Form would have interesting choices be available. I think I'll have the heal and righteous damage ride off magic power because I think I want this skill to be part of a fighter/wizard hybrid where you want to have high melee power so you deal damage while you're obtaining buffs and using them, and also high magic power to strengthen your abilities. With this change, I think I might add magic scaling to the other offensive abilities. Also, I'll try to make burning fist a worthwhile choice to take. Todo list: Rebalance, get skills to use up buffs properly, add animations to spells..
Wizards do not always do ranged. A build with Viking Wizardry, Astrology, Necro and Blood Magic is very comfortable going toe-to-toe with the enemy. Okay, I may have misunderstood you then. That's not 100% clear from the initial post, it totally reads like you just changed the names of the levels somewhere along the way. I didn't get that the final level was a polymorph, I thought it was just a normal buff and you were being vague because you hadn't quite worked out the details. So basically, the crimson lines aren't available until you've maxed out the tree, and then only when you've got the final buff active? If that's the case, then having teleports and heals in a warrior line is lot less concerning. You have to really work to get that second heal, for example. One concern I have (now) is that if the last level uses up all your buffs, you won't have anything to fuel the powered-up versions of the skills. It'll take some serious RNG luck to get back up to the needed 4 buffs needed for Crimson Talon in just 10 turns. If it takes that much effort to get it, then the payoff has to be huge or the player feels ripped off, with a net result that balancing it is that much trickier. Here's a thought, then: Maybe roll the teleport into the final level, so you teleport to a spot, start a fire, transform for 10 turns and heal all in one. It'd be huge and splashy, but it takes some effort to set it up. Plus it helps compensate for the lack of buffs to spend during your ten turns in the Crimson Form. Heck, you could even have it give one such buff for free at that point to make it more likely the player can access the improved versions. There'd also be one fewer level, so there's less things to spend buffs on and you won't feel quite so pressured to save them for the bigger effects.
Note that Necronomiconomics is a wizard skill that is invaluable to melee users too. And Warlockery (From the DLC) is certainly the most warrior oriented wizard skill ever. Typically, if you use mana to keep people from spamming the skills it is more a wizard skill. If you use cooldowns it is more a rogue skill. If things are pretty passive and the boni applies automatically in combat then it is more a warrior skill. But these are in no way set in stone. Just because melee is how you deliver the damage, that in no way makes it a warrior skill. Take it whichever way you want. We just want to help. *Ecdit* R_B_Bergstrom beat me here...
Haha, I just forgot to explicitly link the names so I gave them new names that would make more sense. I think I'll have the knockback stay on the crimson descent, give a small heal to the crimson form and extend the duration of crimson form by a bit. I want this skill to encourage the player to alternate between attacks and spells and want to use the spells frequently (perhaps at the cost of lower damage) rather than giving them nukes. Otherwise, it just feels too much like playing something like Promethean magic. I definitely appreciate all the comments. thanks to you both. I'm kinda sorta new to DoD and this is my third day trying to learn how to make/balance mods so I need all the help I can get. Great Success! The removal of buffs partially works. And the healing spell now works as intended. Time to fix the teleport issue and the various other bugs.
I've pretty much hit a wall trying to figure out why the game crashes after the damage portion takes place. Can anyone figure this out? Code: <spell icon="skills/dragon4_32.png" type="template" templateID="30" name="Burning Fist"> <description text="Consume a Dragon's Flames to smack your enemy with a burning fist."/> <effect type="trigger" spell="Check Burning Fist"/> </spell> <spell type="self" name="Check Burning Fist"> <effect type="trigger" spell="Remove Burning Fist Token" requirebuffontriggername="Dragon's Flames" requirebuffontrigger="1"/> </spell> <spell type="self" name="Remove Burning Fist Token"> <effect type="removebuffbyname" name="Dragon's Flames" amount="1"/> <effect type="trigger" spell="Burning Fist" requirebuffonnottriggername="Crimson Form" requirebuffonnottrigger="1"/> <effect type="trigger" spell="Crimson Fist" requirebuffontriggername="Crimson Form" requirebuffontrigger="1"/> </spell> <spell type="target" name="Burning Fist" attack="1" anchored="1"> <effect type="damage" conflagratory="2" crushing="2"/> </spell> <spell type="target" name="Crimson Fist" attack="1" anchored="1"> <effect type="damage" conflagratory="2" crushing="2" righteousF=".1"/> </spell> I feel like I'm missing something rather obvious.
