Evil Librarians: Potential Idea and Probable String of Modding Questions

I have never, ever coded in my entire life. I have no idea where to start or what to do. On that note, I have a mod idea and I figure I might as well add coding to the list of things I can pass at. Throughout this thread I'm going to be working on this, I don't care if anyone steals this idea and I'm probably going to be attaching my files to this main post step by step as I inch ever closer to completion.

However, what is completion? Well, it is me finishing this singular skillset, balancing it properly, and having it not only be fun to use but interesting to play. I honestly don't know enough about scaling in this game to balance things properly so I'm going to be relying on you all to tell me where I screw up, because I'm also not honestly that good at DoD and GR/PD is way out of my league. So I want the skill to be balanced, and I'm going need your help to juggle numbers even if I don't run into at least 50 code errors and five or twenty five rage quits as I know what I mean but the computer will not.

Anyway: Evil Librarians...why? Well, it seems like something fun to do. Everyone knows Librarians are evil and secretly belong to some kind of cult, they can strike people stunned with stare, find infinite knowledge, lose themselves among shelves that exist in N-Dimensions, and generally wear dangerously horn rimmed glasses. My idea is to build a mod around being one such librarian, and adding the above Glasses as the starting item for this skill.

Vaguely Projected and Completely Changeable At Any Time Planned Skills:

Level 1: Card Carrying Librarian
Largely you file paper work and fetch people coffee, but the job has a few perks...and you always liked books. Even if you found libraries a little stuffy
Grants you 1 and the Skill: Junior Librarian: which is a stance that gives you 2 and an on-hit proc of some sorts

Level 2: Feast of Knowledge
You haven't been out of the library in a long time, but that is ok! You've been taught to feed off books! Their power and knowledge feeds you and you can't stop reading. You drag a book with you everywhere, even into the dungeon.
Grants you the spell: Feast of Knowledge: Which is a 20 turn buff that gives you - a few , and some health and mana a turn.

Now, this is where this gets tricky because I'm not sure what I want to do is possible. I want this skill to do different things depending on which Stance you are in. If you are Junior Librarian, I want it to have a 99% chance on hit to proc "Interrupted" and a 1% on hit to proc "Indignant Wrath" instead. If you are a Senior Librarian I want it to be a 75/25 split. If you have the "Master Librarian" stance active it is a 25/75 split. If you're not a Librarian it's a 100% chance of Interrupted

I want this skill to be an early heal, and then to later on be used as a way to proc "Indignant Wrath" for combat effectiveness. As by the name it will be a nice set of buffs. However, I'm not sure it's possible to create a timed buff that causes you to take effects on hit, and that has different percentages at different stances.

Level 3: Got it Memorized?
You do actually, you have quite a few books memorized and you can remember one of them at a time. Unfortunately you don't really remember the whole book, just a segment at a time. A little bit more of the book will come back to you later, you're sure...
Grants the spell: Ordered Quotations: This is a permanent buff, however instead of costing mana or lasting until "Xed," it lasts for one attack and then cycles to the next buff of the cycle. So it is a buff that lasts for one hit, but by consuming the buff it triggers the next buff of the cycle. In fact, it cycles through the various books of the game. However, having all available at first is certainly not fair. So, I'd like to divi-up how long the cyle lasts based on stance, with only the 1-2 damage books availalbe at first, then upgrading to the next tier which includes the 1-6 damage books, and then to the final tier of 1-10 damage books.

I am not sure this is entirely possible. In fact, it probably isn't. In which case, I'll have to get inventive and replace this skill entirely. However, I like the idea behind it, as it gives you spikes of damage and the random effects of the books but it will take you eight hits or so to cycle to the one you want...and that makes it fair since you don't have the full cycle till level 8 at best and that means you have sacrificed everything else to get to that point.


Level 4: Senior Librarian
You've finally clawed your way through the bureaucratic ladder to Senior Librarian, hopefully this means a pension, more dark secrets, and greater access to the restricted book section.
Grants you another and the Stance: Senior Librarian: Which grants you 4, a better on-hit proc, and something else

replacing Junior Librarain so it really only gives you two necro damage and whatever else I stick on the stance.

Level 5: Evil Glare
Finally, they've taught you how to do that stare, it's been forever. This is what you signed up for, striking fools dead with a look. Well, scared anyway. It's pretty fun actually, apparently though you can burn your eyes out with it or something, that was probably them trying to scare you into line though.
Grants 1 and the spell: Evil Glare: Which hits a target for a flat damage and that scales to Caddishness because thematics. Evil Glare has a 1% chance to charm, a 4% chance to paralyze, a 10% chance to root, a 15% chance to fear, a 20% chance to root, a 25% chance to stun, and a 25% chance to daze. Also has a 50% chance of lighting you on fire for casting it.

Level 6: Requisition Order
Oh my, you've finally been given permission to requisition whatever you're looking for from the great catalogues. Someone warned you about a Ct..a....cathulu... apparently he is pretty crabby and doesn't like people over taxing him with work orders.
Grants you the Spell: Requisition Shelving: which summons a bookshelf with a 10% chance of nailing yourself with what amounts to a bolt of squid. I feel like this needs more on it.

Level 7: Walk the Shelves In Wonder
You never knew, just how beautiful the ordered rows of the library were, how magnificent, and how interconnected. Looking at them now, with the proper eyes, it is a wonder you ever stood ignorant to their majesty. So much...power!
Grants you the skill Shelfwalk: Which I hope will allow you to randomly teleport between Bookshelf locations on the map. Since you can drop these with the level 6 but there are others this is fair, especially with the CD I plan on placing on this. I feel like this needs more on it.

Level 8: Master Librarian
The Library is your domain, and none shall defile it. You understand the way it all connects together, you understand now...you understand everything, the power...so much power! hahahaha...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Grants you the Stance: Master Librarian: which gives you 6, a devastating on-hit proc, something else, but it's main bonus comes from the expanded abilities on it's first two skills.




Ok, so basically, this should show you just how little idea of what I'm doing and I would love you to pick me apart on what is possible, and what this skill needs. Obviously, this is still a concept in my head. So not only can everything change but ultimately I want to learn how to mod and I want to make something that is fun to use and make, that is also balanced. So any held you can give me would be welcome.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pass out now. Night.

 

This is all very feasible. When I get a chance I'll comment more.

Not sure about 6 and 7, but chronomancy does something similar.

 

You can't summon a functional bookshelf. The best you can do is create a spell that learns you a random recipe and summons a wall that has the graphics of a bookshelf.

And I'm fairly certain there's no way to leave bookshelves sitting around and then teleport to a random one. J-Factor had to really hentai the hell out of the code to make Grandfather Clock Paradox work, and expanding that to randomly going to one of many potential GFC-like targets is going to be nigh unto impossible.

 

I figured that might be the case, not that I understood the technical jargon in your post but I do understand how many things are simply impossible or very hard to code. If Grandfather clock paradox was hard to code then mine would be a nightmare far beyond my currently non-existent abilities. However, this is why this thread exists. I'm looking to quash any idea or hope before I find out it is impossible and get myself so committed to making this I don't just drop it.

Thank you for the feedback Essence, you always make constructive posts.

 

Stances are pretty easy, you shouldn't need too much help here

In order to do this, you'll need to use
<effect type="trigger" requirebuffontrigger="1" requirebuffontriggername="STANCE_A" spell="A_EFFECTS"/>

So, what you'll do, is provide a base spell, that based on what buff you have, triggers a spell with an X% chance to do Y and a Z% chance to do... (Z+1).

This is very possible.
You'll need to use heavily nested If statements,as demonstrated in the link below, but it'll be fairly manageable, if tedious.
http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/sneaky-modding-tricks.3389/#post-38825

What you'll want to do is something like make a spell trigger every turn that cycles the buffs if and only if the buff has been consumed by attacking.

Easy, as per 1.

You can use removebuffbyname="blah" to get rid of other stances.

Easy to implement.

As Essence said, very hacky, you give yourself a recipe and can create a placeholder. This feels like the weakest skill, so I'd do something else here.

You can do something very similar to chronomancy: Create a bookshelf looking summon, make it immune to everything and waste time each turn, having a onkill for taxa="my_mod_bookshelf" that teleports you to the bookshelf. When you activate the teleport, it'll kill the bookshelf and teleport you to the tile - you can then resurrect the bookshelf by script if you wish. You can make it randomly select a bookshelf using massive amounts of dummy buffs if you wish.

Once again, easy to handle .
[/quote]

 

'Easy' to make and 'Fun' to test, I'm sure, but possible to hentai the code into a workable state.

edit: pseudocode mockup:

<!-- various unimportant essential workings of the spell are done -->

find_bookshelf
add_buff_stack_if_finds_bookshelf
while(buff_stack > 0)
find_bookshelf_30pc_chance_to_kill // if this spell kills the random bookshelf, remove all stacks.

 

There are...problems with that idea.

1. There's a chance -- significantly high if there are only 2-5 bookshelves -- that the spell will do nothing.
2. Depending on how the spell decides which squares to check first, there's going to be a consistently higher chance of teleporting to the bookshelf that is either farthest away, nearest, closest to x=0/y=0, or so on.
3. The area of spell needed to check for a bookshelf will necessarily be larger than the actual area of the dungeon level, which can cause crashing problems

And that's just off the top of my head.

 

Thank you for the feedback so far, this is going to be exceedingly helpful.

As I said, everything here is malleable. And I really want to make this a fun skillset...since I don't have all the details down yet I can't really exactly what I want it to do perfectly because even I don't know. I know the two biggest pitfalls for any modder are Balance and trying to do the impossible, so I'm trying to mitigate those.

I'm going to start into working on this Soon TM however I kind of want to explain what I want this set to do so I can get some positive feedback. Now DoD is a very...particular game and really a huge part of the feeling of the game comes from the skills you choose, so I want this skill to fit and to be fun to use. I want Evil Librarian to function for a few specific roles. For one, I want it to be a skill to give to mages that grants them a few helpful things like some early game damage and a regen spell, for Gishes or Warriors I want this to help you pump out the extra damage and effects, and for Crafting builds it *would have* been nice to spawn a bookshelf, however it is rather dull. I liked the idea of summoning a shelf that may or may not have books on it however it seems impossible, which is fine, I'll figure out something else. Now obviously, I do not want the skill to be a "must take" skill nor do I want it to be too useful, however I still want it to have a variety of uses. In addition, I really want this skill to be about the extra effects added to attacks

As for it's theme, I'm half caught between "Crazy Cult" and "Locked in a Library" however I think I can really make it work, I threw the original post together late last night and I hope that I can put my writing talent to work and make the skill tree really mesh.

The three stances that replace one another are simply progression, one after another to give you more power and more abilities. I want to tag some kind of debuff on the enemies, some extra magor stat to the thing as raw damage in and of itself is boring, and for Master I want to throw something extra special in; no clue yet.

I really like the idea of having a timed heal that can be punished early, but actually becomes useful as a sort of "gamble" to give you a buff later. Especially since the idea is either you are distracted and vulnerable, or you come down on them like the hammer of evil you are. It makes the skill very useful even later.

The idea of creating a set of "book buffs" that cycle was in my head ever since I learned that creating a skill based upon Books would be next to impossible, dividing the buff cycle up between the skills was only fair and I love the idea of timing which things you hit with which book to produce the desired effects. Plus the damage is not unfair as you have to cycle through it. It provides the skill with useful damage, buffs, however it is not reliable to make it fair.

The Stare is really just a nice little keep away spell designed to save your bacon just in case of someone bothering you. While you can trigger it, I would also like to make it a passive % chance of happening on hit. Thus you can cast it on demand whenever it's off CD, however it's not like you aren't looking at the monsters.

The crafting recipe is really the weakest skill if I can't spawn a functional bookshelf. I wanted to give the tree a teleport that was random ish in it's effect, however that had fixed drop locations. Now obviously it could drop you into a room full of monsters, or it could ferry you to safety. Being able to create one of the potential drop points was just edging your bets so to speak. Honestly, I've been thinking about this while at work and this was always a filler skill, though the ability to summon a shelving to wall things off was a nice idea...I'll have to give this some thought.

I'm honestly caught though at two things, 1: I want to give more stats but I'm not sure how far to go on each skill. Maybe it should give purely buffs and debuffs and some necro damage/resist but at the same time as a librarian you are Stubborn, Savvy, and quite the Sage. As a second problem, to decide upon which stats it should give I need to decide upon it's school. It's clearly not a warrior skillset...yet is it Rogue or Mage? Knowledge is both of their realm, but Caddishness is a rogue stat...hmmm...but Rogue doesn't really fit what the skill means...

Anyway, I'm sorry for going off on a tangent. When I have some actual code to present to you or stupid newbie modding questions I will post here again. Thanks for everyone's help and willingness to answer my dumb questions ^_^

 

hey, no problem.

Here's a couple of thoughts:

1) If you're willing to allow a form of cheating, you can TELL people that the skill is giving an ability that will teach them new recipes at random when they attack things with Tomes equipped. Granted, this will necessarily actually work just as well with shields and orbs, but they don't have to KNOW that.

2) "Teleport with random drop points" can still totally work as long as you create a half-dozen interesting templates and have the teleport skill randomly choose one of them. It'll just be preset in an "anchored from your current location" form rather than preset in a "we're teleporting you to one of X preset locations".

3) Make it a wizard skill, hands down.

 

Re: 1) False.

By enveloping it into a while, you prevent a failure like that.
Re: 2) Sure, that's a minor issue.
Re: 3) Yeah. That's the big problem, and minimizes the utility of this skill to an enormous degree :\.

 

On a more flavorful note:

I really like the idea of making a bookshelf wall. Like, that is cool.

 

Thought: create a "full bookshelf" wall square. Surround it with spellmines that activate <effect type="learnrecipe">, and then cover up the "full bookshelf" wall with an "empty bookshelf" wall. Call it something like "Assertive Bookshelf" or something.

 

The first mod I ever wanted to make involved exploding bookshelves. Apparently, making a Corpus Burst that works on furniture in the dungeon isn't possible.

 

Great concept, though I don't think you necessarily need to make it an Evil Librarian skill tree to include all of the powers you want. Certainly all librarians eventually learn the Evil Glare spell (it's too bad that mute only works on the player, otherwise you could come up with a great Shhhhhhh spell) and as we all know, some books are inherently evil, so you don't have to stick with the purely necromantic angle if you feel like branching out a bit.

Obviously, it's your mod and you can do whatever you want, but most starting skills (which actually begin with level 0) tend to be relatively lightweight, and just tweak a few stats or damage resistances. +2 damage may not seem like that much, but for the first few floors, it can greatly skew the difficulty of the game. (though not so much on later levels.)

Personally, I'd go with a +1 or +2 boost to sagacity, and maybe the 1 if you want to stick with the evil angle.

However, while Level 0 skills typically aren't that powerful, you can make things interesting by giving the player a custom loadout item called "Librarian ID Card."

<loadout type="armour" subtype="Librarian ID Card" always="1"/>

Then in your itemDB.xml file create a new item:

<item name="Librarian ID Card" iconFile="items/library_card.png" special="1" overrideClassName="Librarian ID Card">
<price amount="150"/>
<armour level="1" type="shield"/>
<primarybuff id="1" amount="1"/> <!-- Sagacity -->
<targetKillBuff percentage="2" name="Learn a Recipe" />
<description text="Back off, man. I'm a librarian."/>
</item>

This is how the game makes orbs, spellbooks, and other items that are wieldable, but don't count as a weapon.
Also, the special="1" means that it won't appear in stores or be dropped by enemies, so having the Librarian skill set would be the only way to get it. (well, except for my upcoming items mod, for which I've already created a Library Card item that does the same thing). Basically, the librarian card would suck as a weapon, but wielding it would have a low probability of triggering the following spell that causes you to occasionally learn recipes from killing things. (identical to the Alien Autopsy skill in the the third expansion pack.)


<spell name="Learn a Recipe" type="self" icon="skills/librarian_learnrecipe32.png">
<effect type="findrecipe" />
</spell>

Alternatively, if you wanted to make it an inherent skill, you could simply add it directly into your skillDB.xml as part of the ability.

<ability name="Card Carrying Librarian" icon="sprites/skills/librarian64.png" skill="666" level="1">
<description text="Largely you file paper work and fetch people coffee, but the job has a few perks...and you always liked books. Even if you found libraries a little stuffy."/>
<primarybuff id="1" amount="1"/> <!-- Sagacity -->
<targetKillBuff percentage="1" name="Learn a Recipe" />
</ability>

Or, you could do both. Doing so would give the player an amusing item to hold in their off hand until they find something better, and since the effect would be cumulative, they'd actually have a 3% chance of learning recipes while actively holding the card (as opposed to 1% for simply being issued one).

 

FYI it's actually multiplicative - so you'd have a 0.02% chance to get two recipes, and a 3.18% chance to get one recipe.

 

I'm not a modder, so please don't ask me for any coding advice, but I noticed this smallish thing you might not have noticed. What's stopping Junior Librarian, Senior Librarian and Master Librarian to be all used at the same time? If they can, it sounds to me like Feast of Knowledge would be pretty overpowered, especially if those stances don't run off mana. I think I've seen some mods preventing multiple stances from being used at the same time, were you planning on doing something like that?

 

He's stated replacement of stances.

 

In other words, Prof, each ability will have a <effect type="removebuffbyname" name="the other stances' buff's names here"/>.


Also: bluehinter, where'd you get the notion that mute only works on the player? Is that for real?

 

Whoops, missed that in the OP. Sorry!

 

I tried to use it in my Bowiemancy mod for the "Just You Shut Your Mouth" debuff, and as far as I can tell, it didn't do dick. Of course it was very hard to test, since most monster abilities are the targetHitEffectBuff variety and don't trigger 100% of the time. But I'm pretty damn sure that even when I had a Witch Doctor or Eel muted, they still managed to cause blindness or chuck fireballs at me.