Hello everyone, I've just made my first mod set, I was wondering what you thought? There's a slight problem in that leveling the skill doesn't give any pips in any of the Warrior/Rogue/Wizard fields but otherwise everything seems to be somewhat working. Too good? Too weak? :O If people think it's worth finishing I'll do some pics and polish it off. Skill 1: 2 2 2 Skill 2: 1 Active: 3 + ( x 0.33 ) with 1 and -3 and -5 over 4 turns (20 cool down) Skill 3: 4 Active: 3 restored and debuffs purged (120 cool down) Skill 4: 1 Active: 1 + standard Acid Burn and Weak Acid Pool spells (67 cool down) Skill 5: 2 2 2 2 2 Code: <skillDB> <skill name="Reptilian" skillName="kilkakonskill0" type="warrior" description="Sure, the other kids might have picked on you, but they changed their minds after a faceful of acidic poison."> <art icon="sprites/skills/cynthia/cynthia0.png"/> </skill> <ability startSkill="1" name="Reptilian" icon="sprites/skills/cynthia/cynthia0.png" skillName="kilkakonskill0" > <description text="What's happened to you? One day you woke up and felt a little different inside..."/> </ability> <ability name="Snake Blood" icon="sprites/skills/cynthia/cynthia1.png" skillName="kilkakonskill0" level="0"> <description text="Through your veins pumps the blood of reptiles, not that of mortal man. Your strange biology grants you some resistances."/> <secondarybuff id="13" amount="2"/> <!-- hp regen --> <resistbuff acidic="2" toxic="2"/> </ability> <ability name="Poison Spit" icon="sprites/skills/cynthia/cynthia2.png" skillName="kilkakonskill0" level="1"> <description text="Unleash a powerful poisonous spit from your maw, covering an enemy with it and damaging them for several turns. Great at parties! Damage scales to your Caddishness."/> <spell name="Poison Spit"/> <damagebuff toxic="1"/> </ability> <ability name="Reptilean Regeneration" icon="sprites/skills/cynthia/cynthia3.png" skillName="kilkakonskill0" level="2"> <description text="Your curious anatomy shrugs off poisons and diseases that would floor normal men. You can also purge all debuffs from your body every now and then."/> <spell name="Reptilean Regeneration"/> <secondarybuff id="13" amount="4"/> <!-- hp regen--> </ability> <ability name="Acid Spit" icon="sprites/skills/cynthia/cynthia4.png" skillName="kilkakonskill0" level="3"> <description text="Your stomach acids burn with strange potency. Enemies will scatter when you open your maw, fearing both bad jokes and burning acids alike. Damage scales to your Caddishness."/> <spell name="Acid Spit" /> <damagebuff acidic="1"/> </ability> <ability name="Beyond Human" icon="sprites/skills/cynthia/cynthia5.png" skillName="kilkakonskill0" level="4"> <description text="Once you were human, but those days are long gone. Now you've accepted and adapted completely to your new form."/> <secondarybuff id="10" amount="2"/> <!-- armour --> <damagebuff acidic="2" toxic="2"/> <resistbuff existential="2" transmutative="2"/> </ability> </skillDB> Code: <spellDB> <spell name="Poison Spit 2" type="target" icon="sprites/skills/spells/cynthia2.png"> <effect type="damage" toxic="1" /> </spell> <spell name="Poison Spit" type="target" icon="sprites/skills/spells/cynthia2.png" downtime="20"> <description text="Unleash a sticky poisonous spit from your maw, coating an enemy with it and damaging them for several turns. Great at parties! Damage scales to your Caddishness." /> <effect type="damage" toxic="3" primaryScale="3" toxicF="0.3" /> <effect type="dot" spell="Poison Spit 2" amount="4"/> <buff useTimer="1" time="4" allowstacking="0" self="0" icon="sprites/skills/cynthia/cynthia2.png" smallicon="sprites/skills/spells/cynthia2.png" bad="1" > <primarybuff id="0" amount="-3"/> <!-- Burliness --> <secondarybuff id="2" amount="-5"/> <!-- melee power --> </buff> </spell> <spell name="Reptilean Regeneration" type="self" icon="sprites/skills/spells/cynthia3.png" downtime="120"> <description text="Your curious anatomy shrugs off poisons and diseases that would floor normal men. You can also purge all debuffs from your body every now and then." /> <effect type="uncurse"/> <effect type="heal" amount="3"/> </spell> <spell name="Acid Spit" type="target" icon="sprites/skills/spells/cynthia4.png" downtime="67"> <description text="Your stomach acids burn with strange potency. Enemies will scatter when you open your maw, fearing both bad jokes and burning acids alike. Damage scales to your Caddishness." /> <effect type="damage" acidic="1" primaryScale="0" toxicF="0.25" /> <effect type="dot" spell="Acid Burn" amount="5"/> <effect type="dot" spell="Weak Acid Pool" amount="12"/> </spell> </spellDB>
The startskill and skillname skills should be the same; the startskill is the skill that you see to the left when you look at the skilltrees by pressing 'k' ingame. skill='0' is the skill you'll initially get. It should be something considerably small, not 2 to hp regen (the most crucial stat in the game).
My 2 cents Level 1 : I like as it emulates the regeneration of the reptiles. I don't see many skills that give a permanent 2 life regen on level one though. I personally don't consider it too overpowered, unles maybe combined with vampirism? Level 2 : Seems fine, a kind of hit and run tactics as you wear out the debuff Level 3 : Maybe some scaling to the healing? I get the debuff removal is the key, but heal 3 is really low in my opinion. Level 4 and 5 too me need some flavor or buff, specially the capstone. Here go some ideas - Some reptiles can let their tail behind to scape while regenerating a new one. Maybe a skill where you take a small damage initially, create a decoy (the tail), evades backwards and regenerate some HP back (may end up to like the Ninjutsu decoy, so maybe beef up the regen since it will be a higher level) - Maybe add some dot or some venom related ability, after all snakes are reptiles as well. Even some asfixiative, lock up skill to emulate what Boa Constrictors do is a nice adition
It is not level 1. It is level friggen 0; this means you get 2 regen from only choosing the skilltree.
I'm generally considered a person who produces just slightly overpowered stuff. When I reworked all the weapons skill, I gave the zeroth level of Unarmed a starting stance that granted 2 -- but keep in mind that that was a stance, so at some point you have to choose between that and some other set of abilities that you don't get to both have at the same time. 2 , full time, no restrictions is actually more than 0th level anything is worth on it's own. Adding some useful resists on top of that is overkill. Also, your uncurse should have 'amount="1"' on it, or it will remove ALL debuffs, which is just way too powerful when you can be playing a Necro/Bankster/Communist/Vegan -- all of those skills rely on debuffs to balance their power level, and wiping all of them clean at once would make a hugely OP character. Other than that, this is a pretty damn solid first mod. Good work!
This is actually fairly balanced, maybe some of the early numbers are a tiny bit off, but nothing huge.
Absolutely; it's quite possibly one of the best 'first mods' around here since Lujo86 did his awesome IBIAM-room mod.
Well thanks for all the feedback everyone! Glad you like the work so far, and the lovely comments too! 1. Would taking down the first regen from 2 to 1 make that fair? Done 2. I'm not quite sure what you meant Alistaire, about the skill=0 thing? I like the name Snake Blood for the first skill. 3. Would somebody please hint at what's breaking this skill? It's meant to be putting ranks into warrior on level up but it's not putting them anywhere. Fixed 4. I'll happily apply Essence's suggestion as far as making the uncurse only remove one layer of debuffs, as well as a small amount of scaling to the level 3 and 4 skills. Perhaps a cross shape or a 3x3 shape for the acid spit? I'm reasonably happy about the level 5 though. Will have to draw some icons and add animations soon.
The not adding Warrior archetype levels is almost certainly because of a malformation of the initial <skill> tags in the skillDB. I think having both <name> and <skillName> arguments in the tag might be the problem. Look carefully at what the core game skills look like and mimic that very closely and see if it helps.
Ah that'd be my issue, I wasn't looking at the originals, but a tutorial, to get the syntax. I've switched it for numbers rather than names and that problem is resolved. Thanks.
Alright, done. Only 3 more points of interest left to resolve! It was at dredmod's wiki, from memory. They said something along the lines of "You don't have to deal with the id numbers if you don't want, you can use skillName as an alternative".
I'm pretty sure that skillName= is just plain broken. I used it on my Drama Queen mod, and even with the rest of the syntax correct, it still wouldn't grant wizard/warrior/rogue levels until I changed over to using an ID # instead. You can find a list of ID#s that have already been taken here: http://dredmod.com/wiki/Skill_ID's and here: http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/completed-mods-index.1951/
Thanks to everybody who's responded, and the list of skill ids bluehinter. It helps having the extra melee power from being a warrior skill (felt a bit weak before)! I've since made some changes based off your suggestions so I'll post the whole tree again: 1. Snake Blood. 1 2 2. 2. Poison Spit. 1 1. Spell: 3 + ( 0.3 x ) with 1 and -3 and -5 over four turns (20 turn recharge) 3. Reptilean Regeneration. 2. Spell: 1 uncurse, 5 for seven turns. (120 turn recharge) 4. Acid Spit. 1 1. Spell: 1 + ( 0.35 x ) with Acid Burn on target and a + shape of 3 acid pools. 5. Beyond Human. 2 2 2 2 2 2 I must admit I've been having trouble getting sounds and animations going.
