I'm just throwing this out here. Anyone can feel free to use it, adapt it, rewrite it, use a piece of it or whatever you want in a mod. Even if you don't want to make it into a mod, let me know what you think! Plague Victim During your youth you made some poor life choices and ended up with an incurable plague. But you're not going to let the other kids calling you Abby-something-or-other stop you! Use your infection. Fight fire with fire! That doctor said inflammable, right? Iocane Immunity After lots of positive thought and a few years of conditioning, the plague affects you much less than those around you! You'll have to think of a way to use this in a contest of wits. However... you seem to have become more flammable. +1 +1 -2 Debilitating Fog It wasn't me! Honest! You release a cloud of plague fog that deals putrefying damage and has a chance to stun and infect enemies. This also sometimes happens when you're hit, you can't help it. Cooldown 24 Lays a 3x3 cloud around the caster dealing 2 + (0.3 x magic power) per turn for 5 turns (Affects Caster). Enemies in this cloud have -1 . Has a 33% chance of stunning an enemy in the cloud for 1 turn and putting a damage over time effect that does an additional 1 + (0.2 x magic power) per turn for 3 turns. Has a 15% chance of spawning a Debilitating Fog cloud when hit. (Internal 24 second cooldown – separate from active ability). Leaking Your body has begun producing a lot of viscous green fluid that tends to spill all over when you're hurt or when you are involved any activity that is too vigorous, like smashing a face. But despite being a lot more moist you seem to be even more flammable. +1 +2 -3 When hit, there is a 25% chance it places a pool within a 3x3 grid randomly around the caster that lasts for 8 turns and deals 4 + (0.65 x magic power) per turn to enemies and players on that space. When the player melees it has a 12% chance of laying a pool under the target that lasts for 4 turns and deals 3 per turn. Corpse Armor Flavor text to come. Consumes a corpse and gives you a buff which provides +3 , +1 , +1 and a penalty of -1 for 5 hits; Stacks up to 3 times. Infectious Humor With the plague it turns out black bile really does cause melancholy. And if you time it right you can get yours all over someone else and their friends. Affected enemies can't help but stop and consider their poor lot in dungeon and can rarely work up the desire to counter, crit, dodge or block. Cooldown 6 Targets a 3x2 section centering on the 2nd and 3rd space in front of the player. Causes enemies -10 , , and for 6 seconds. Has a 25% chance of inflicting the player with -5 , , and for 6 seconds. Plagued Abomination You've become plague incarnate. Not only have you been gifted with near immunity to plague and it's affiliated entities, you have also become a walking epidemic. After you finish this you're off to your blind friend's for soup. In addition to making your previous plague symptoms worse, your attacks cause the very flesh to rot off of your enemies. Regrettably, it seems even a magnifying glass could light you on fire now. +2 +5 -8 +3 Debilitating Fog causes an additional 2 + (0.2 magic power) Both effects of Leaking's spawn chance are increased by 10% Infectious humor reduces , , and by an additional 5 on enemies. Infectious humor reduces , , and by an additional 2 on yourself.
The goal was to give you something worthwhile but at the same time make you truly fear a damage type. Fire just fit because of the whole 'zombies are afraid of fire' thing. I don't want to make certain enemies impossible though. What do you think would be a fair tradeoff for what you get? Oh and to anyone: please feel free to tell me if you hate it It won't hurt my feelings (though I would prefer hearing what you hate about it instead).
Massive resistance penalties have to take into account the monster composition of each floor. Demonology's penalty is viable because only one type of monster deals and they only appear once every few floors. on the other hand has an entire floor dedicated to it. 14 extra damage per hit from (almost) every monster on a floor is untenable for melee. A simple fix would be toning down the penalty. A more 'fun' fix would be something the player could do to avoid the penalty. Like, say, use corpses to get a brittle // buff (you're combining the corpse with your plague-ridden flesh to armour yourself or something).
I do not hate it. Nor do I find the susceptibility too offensive. It just seems the entire skillset is trading one resistance for another and a few damage skills/spells. I will have to get back about what it needs if anything. *Edit* J-Factor beat me to it. And he said it better too. Listen to him.
Hail Nurgle! ;D cool idea EDIT: Yeah but also the fire floor... that would pretty much end you... very fast. Unless a Demonology+Plague build... which means hail nurgle again.
J-factor, I really love that idea. Do you mind if I work it into the skillset? I honestly wasn't sure how much extra damage was done by mobs on the fire level. TBH I think that, for example, blood mages -, often has no real impact on a play through. I don't want the negative to feel pointless, like "who cares about that, I'll just ignore it." But at the same time I wouldn't want it to make the game unplayable or unmanageable. Since the majority of the is on the last ability I would need to be sure people would take it for it's bonuses as well. So even if it would be good without the reduced , people might just avoid it and take the other skills. Also I'm not sure 'leaking's premise is possible with dredmor's code. Thanks for the comments Razarus! I'm glad you thought it was interesting too. Fax would that be that feeding food to mobs infects them?
"Braaaaains..." ability consume a corpse to restore health and mana scales with monster level, works only on things that presumably have brains passive bite chance to restore small amounts of health and mana, and paralyze brain-possessing enemies large passive penalty to , on taking skill edit: "Quicker Ichor Flicker" skill ranged projectile on 20 turn cooldown, does damage based on character level, causes confusion, paralysis or fear on hit, costs per throw. Also adds passive bonus to all ranged attacks. (remember the Zombies from Quake? The ones who chucked their guts at you? Yeah, those.)
I'm glad you're interested in the idea Tycho! I was going for a less traditional zombie feel, more about 'infecting' than eating brains. the main post has been edited with a few changes. I've added some piercing damage resistance because if your flesh is rotting anyways, you probably care a little bit less about 'holes' being poked in your body. I reduced the penalty of Infectious Humor because I felt the loss of so many avoidance stats was going to be seriously detrimental to you. I also separated out the 'increased' effect from plague abomination to only add -5 to enemies and -2 to the player. I've added in a corpse armor skill with flavor text to come. It increases your fire resistance (because those corpses aren't as flammable as you are), crushing resistance (it's extra padding!) and life regen, because it's replacement flesh I guess. On the downside, it is bulky and makes it slightly more difficult to dodge things.
I would like to see a persistent DoT come from this. At current, every DoT eventually fails and goes away. I would like to see a virulent plague that starts off pretty weak, but spreads easily and readily to anything including the player. And if possible, every time it infects another, it should be a stronger permutation of the same. A player with your skill should have good resistance, but should still not be immune, as they have to be infected to spread it. For example, let us say you made ten variants of plague. Each has ten levels they can be. If you infect something with "Red Death" level one, it may only do 1 every turn. But once it spreads to something, it is level two and does 2 every turn. In a zoo, this would be more lethal than Thaumites. But this is balanced by the fact that some monsters can teleport and would instantly infect you with whatever they have. (Say it spreads via an invisible cloud that persists for a turn, and is remade at the infected creatures location every turn.) Depending on how damage is calculated, this could be massively OP, but it still has its drawbacks.
I like that concept a lot Omni. I think it would fit in well with the mod. I wanted it to be a kind of 'you hit things with a plague but you suffer the damage too, just reduced'. I'll play around with the idea some. Off the top of my head the first two things I like are a plague that spreads to any adjacent square, and to all those that it spreads it is 'one level higher'. But it would only last some short amount of turns. This would make it a powerful aoe in the short term if you can group up mobs and keep them together. The other option would be that it has a much longer duration (if it was permanent, you would eventually be stuck with a level 10 on you and from that point on it would be just about coping with it, not about dealing with it strategically or trying to avoid it); say something like 30 turns. However once it infects someone they gain an 'inoculated' debuff that lasts for 30 turns preventing them from being reinfected with another level of the plague. However when anything is in an adjacent square, it will be infected with the next level plague. So if you cast it on one mob, then the next turn anything standing next to it would get level 2 plague, but it could not be infected with level 2 itself. This would make it very much less effective versus small groups but very powerful versus large to huge groups. EDIT: The inoculation debuff would have to be enemies only however, otherwise it would be too easy to just contract the level one version of the dot to become immune. What do you think of those two ideas? I do want to make it clear, however, that right now I don't have the coding expertise to make something like this live myself. And in addition I don't have the time to gain that understanding working through it... so it's all an idea and having it made would be up to someone else. If no one picks it up then maybe someday when I have a bit more time I'll try to slog through it and get it working.
Ideas are the most contagious thing ever. I like the ideas a lot personally. I favor the longer lasting, but initially weaker version. But to make it more viable, let us say that it starts at the damage equal to your number of skill points in the skill itself and gains the greater of 1 or .05 * on upgrading when it spreads. (Rounding upwards.) So if you have 40 and five skill points in the Plague skill, you would initially do a flat 5 damage of the type associated with the skill you use. Then every time it spreads it would gain 4 more damage up to a maximum of an astounding 10 damage every turn. Damage types would include , , and . With a possible capstone of "Holy Plague" skill using the obvious damage. Ignore the above about using Magic power. I did the math and it does not work out any better than 1 per skill and/or level. I think thirty turns is too low. Instead, make it last much much longer. Like 50 or even 70 turns but give the character using the skill a low skill ability that clears all Plagues currently afflicting them, and gives them a short immunity to being afflicted again. (Say thirty turns of immunity?) Another possible capstone skill could be Healing Plague. Meaning it heals you double the damage inflicted by any Plague you get while it is in effect, and as it ends, it inoculates you and cures you of any current Plagues. As you can tell, I like discussing these things. But I too lack the knowledge required to make a good mod. One of these days I will quit saying that and just make some. They I will probably be struck deaf and blind to prevent getting any work done.
I like the idea..Strangely enough though, I would want to use this with the Promethean skill tree, perhaps a throwable/ casted spell/ ability that lowered enemy / (and other stats, perhaps with a persistent low damage field that explodes dealing mid / / on contact with / ?) based on , but also lowered your own stats on casting (and your own / )? Call me crazy, but I just really like risky builds, and I would gladly trade my immunity to my own fire spells for more damage with them! ^^
Hey guys, sorry about the slow response time. I had a terribly busy week / weekend. I'm really glad you both like the idea. I do like the idea of synergizing with Promethean through reducing enemy while still making you weaker to it's damaging effects, but I don't think I'd branch off into new damage types being included in the spells. Maybe doing something like an exclusive damage type for a choking plague or something, but in general I see a weakness of diversity as a positive for the idea. So it doesn't work on X creatures or X floor, that just means you have to play around that weakness which IMO makes the gameplay more involved and rewarding. I'm still thinking about the idea, I just haven't had the time to sit down with it for a while.
I actually have a plague mage type on the drawing board(name not yet decided). With spreading plague effects being one of the schticks. So I was a little bit dismayed to see this topic. Not sure I like it either, for reasons others have already expounded upon.
Instead of negative fire resistance, I think it would be funnier to self-inflict a burning state when hit. You catch on fire frequently, which is thematic, but it isn't tied to a damage type. I also don't really care for spreading out the across several levels. It would be nicer to just get +10 at the first level, and then get maybe +5 at a later level, when you figure out how to stop breathing.
