How many base game skills are each of the three classes? I suspect this factored into the choice to make it a Wizard skill. (At least initially.)
I feel Vampirism is largely a classless skill. Or at least ought to be. Not that that's very possible. It might be more of a "warrior" or "rogue" skill, but the nature of it seems magical to me, so I'm fine with it being a Wizard skill. It's similar to Viking Wizardry, in that it's a wizard skill that goes well with fighters.
Well personally it's mostly a rogue skill considering it's not something that wants to stay in combat often, but to finish enemies with a bite and then not take damage to heal. That and the escapes and such make it mostly a rogue skill (it's annoying not being able to say roguelike to describe it). I don't think that that there should be health regen because it detracts from what the skill is by making it possible to get health without using up another resource or getting into combat. Using to scale the effects may be much more desirable. Otherwise I believe the effects should scale off of or or or something.
Yeah, but Null, Vampires have regeneration, you can't take away Regeneration from Vampires, even from a balance perspective it doesn't really work. A vampire without extremely fast regeneration/constitution is like a human being without a heart. It's a vital thing to a vampire, and honestly, the skill needs that kind of buff, to make it fit in with the lore, not to mention make it viable. Give them a righteous and fire weakness if you must, but make sure they can regenerate. Honestly, they should have immunity to toxic and putrefying but that would make them too unbalanced.
Balance-wise it's not necessary, lorewise who cares because it doesn't relate to the game. Generally having strengths and weaknesses that apply everywhere are better than you can drain health from animals but fish do more damage when smiting you. That's not really beneficial as a skill and feels like it's not something you want to use because it's harmful in a small number of cases and useful in a small number of cases. Neither of the two can you really build well around. That's why I feel that draining from everything or mostly everything (regardless of logic) and not being able to regen is the best course of action here, rather than just giving a weakness to try to balance it. They should only really get negative resists if they have positives to go with them, but it's not an appropriate negative to draining life.
I think that even if they are not to regenerate, the stat should remain untouched. It *IS* used by other skills. I cannot play a vampiric Druid because of this mess. And like others have said, it makes on items and from other skills worthless. Less than worthless if they are going to have a mega debuff to that. There are several mod skills that scale with . So even if you think they should not naturally regenerate, that stat should not be nuked. It breaks every skill using it.
I agree with OmniNegro there. And if anything, that would make changing Vampirism so that its draining attacks scaled with health regeneration possible. Which, in turn, would've made it easier to balance because that stat has no influence over game other than for healing (either natural via regeneration or, in this case if the changes were made, unnatural via vampiric drain) and there aren't any permanent bonuses to that stat that can be gotten from skills.
Okay. I think there may be a slight misunderstanding here. I was mostly saying that not allowing them a bonus to regeneration is a bad thing. Letting them leech from basically everything would be a minor improvement. They would still be weak, even if they could leech from everything. Mind you, it's been awhile since I played a vampire, but they need a buffing. I don't know what kind, but life regeneration is better than any life leech they can get without dual-wielding orbs of nothing. I'm simply saying, if life regeneration seems too powerful, give them a penalty to make up for it. I want to use a vampire again, and they're now so weak, that it would take forever to buff them.
I didn't misunderstand what you said I just disagree. Health regen isn't the way to go because it loses the character and most importantly the downsides of vampirism. Here is a skillDB and spellDB of vampirism with health regen scaling. I haven't done all that much with the numbers but I think it may be pretty good. Originally I had them draining every taxa but removed it in favor of a well-scaling self heal and with the other buffs especially to corpse drinking it wasn't as necessary. I also added a charm level but it's not working as intended because monsters can't get targetHitEffectBuff or playerHitEffectBuff's from buffs. I intended to exploit some weird stuff with monsters to heal the player when the monster attacked.
Initially? I'm not so sure. It might have been part of the decision to leave it there. IIRC, the three crafting skills were all originally rogue skills and the old Wandlore skill was a wizard skill, giving Warriors 10 base skills, Rogues 11 and Wizards a whopping 13. I think that's one of the reasons that RotDG added only one Wizard skill. Of course, Alchemy got shifted to Wizard and Smithing to Warrior, so we have two Warrior skills and three Rogue skills from Expansion One. So currently Rogue skills are actually the least numerous in the game...
I like this idea mostly, but instead of allowing vampires to make use of life regen why not take advantage of the regen effects utilized by knit flesh or fairywodgers. I don't see any reason why eating a corpse shouldn't grant 4-5 turns of 3 hp a turn regen. I love the 4 level ability. Would this be a mana costing spell or a CD ability? I suppose either way it'd be great. My only real gripe about the above suggestion is that we'd lose the psychic vampire ability. Why not keep that and make sure the missile spell is worth going 5 points deep into vampirism. Also, I think a bit of stats, resists, and negative resists could be scattered about a bit. Anyway, I second the call for an entire vamp revamp. There is no reason to ever take vamp over psionics, fungal arts, or flesh crafting.
To be fair, weakness doesn't make sense. A vampire isn't going to ever suffer an Existential crisis. That would be silly. How would that happen, you make it read Twilight? And honestly, they need a good buff, giving them any weakness besides fire and righteousness would be a really bad idea. They would also needs boosts to their resistances as well to make them better. I'm for a huge upheaval of how Vampires are in this game, but I'm not sure super changing all their abilities around is the best possible way to make them better. Better resistances, stats, and the ability to life drain much better from anything that could give health, and a way to restore from things that don't, would be the best idea.
You'd be surprised. This happens a lot in Vampire: The Masquerade. Being turned into a bloodsucking monster, an unliving corpse, forever detached from your loved ones, dead to them, yet still alive. If that doesn't cause an existential crisis... It'd also be for gameplay reasons; we don't have a skill tree that induces weakness to this damage type.
One game doesn't change my mind. But why would we have to add it in for the sake of gameplay reasons? A weakness to Existential damage is a bit extreme, for any skill tree. Plus, I don't see Dracula being depressed about being an unliving corpse. And when I think vampires, I think Dracula, not her.
Emomancy? Vegan? Both of those have at least temporary reductions. And besides, what about ? we don't have a tree that induces weaknesses to those.
I'm really just trying to justify the potential reasoning behind someone else's suggestion. - would probably make the most sense, but we have quite a few of those already, which is likely why it was suggested existential damage be the weakness. I'm personally against giving it the weakness debuff. I think buffing the vampire tree by giving it scaling on health regen is the sole buff it needs, and everyone seemed okay with that. We should do anything as drastic as reworking the whole thing unless the innate mechanics are problematic (and as far as I know, they aren't.)
Well I disagree as well but for the sake of this I was discussing it. I certainly don't think it needs any weaknesses.
I don't either, Null. But if there were weaknesses added, Righteousness and fire should be the only ones. Buffing the life leech would be the best idea.
