Well, I know very little about modding this game, but I have made a few mods for another game (Evil Genius) and I would like to make some mods for this game as well. I have been brainstorming ideas for some time now, and the one that is pretty well developed at this point is the idea of a skill that makes the player a psyker from the Warhammer 40k universe. Essentially, it would have powers taken directly from the games it is sourced from, which vary from shooting lightning to increasing one's strength to the point that they can rip through the strongest of metals with his own bear hands. The catch is that, also taken from the games, contact from the warp is very dangerous, and using psyker powers can backfire horribly, potentially even killing the user, and exposure to the warp also frequently leads to the user going insane. Now, this seemed like it would be pretty fun in dredmor, obviously I would not make it possible to die instantly from using it, but having considerably powerful spells with a small chance of going horribly wrong, with plenty of opportunity for flavor text with the whole going insane thing and background of the powers coming from an alternate dimension. In technical terms, instead of having a spell that consistently does one effect, it would have multiple outcomes, being the spell either works, fails completely, or the player suffers a perils of the warp attack. There would be a roughly 83% chance of it going successful and a 5% chance of it backfiring (values taken from the tabletop game itself). Also because being touched back by the warp can manifest in several ways, from psychic power surging from the user and lashing out at the minds of those nearby to a rift in time in space being centered around him, pulling him into the warp for all eternity, I thought that I could have the perils of the warp also have multiple outcomes (again, things that occur in instant death being omitted.) Because a few of the abilities I thought I might use enhance melee ability, and also because of the damage you may take from using the attacks, the skill itself would probably be most useful on a warrior/mage hybrid so they can capitalize on the close range damage boost and have extra health to survive the backlash from the warp. In addition, there could also be some items from the game that have to do with psykers, like a psychic hood which reduces the chances of a perils of the warp attack seriously harming the user (I figured I could have warp damage be aethereal and give the pyschic hood resistance accordingly, for instance), or psychic staves which amplify psychic powers. I would like to make this mod myself, but I had mostly 2 main questions here. The first was just to gather opinions on whether this sounded like a fun/good idea for a skill, and secondly, whether this skill sounds too complicated for someone with no skill with modding THIS game to correctly script these effects. I would appreciate any input, and I apologize if I should have done more research on modding before saying anything about this.
Well, we've already got Psionics for the psychic abilities angle, and Necronomiconomics is centered around the idea of "power at a price"; you take health loss and other nasty effects after casting any Necro spell. Could be an interesting mod for the fans of the series though. Also, please use carriage returns.
Damn! I just hurt my head on that wall of text. tl;dr: let's take Warhammer 30K and bring psykers to Dredmor! response: Hell yeah! Do it, d00d!
Yeah, sorry about the wall, I kinda meant to clean it up a bit after I wrote everything, but it seems that I had simply forgotten. Anyways, it should be a bit better now. I kinda needed a bit of text to explain some of it, although I hope 2 minutes of your time wasn't too much. I never really used the necronomiconomics, but I had thought it was mostly just debuffs. What this would more so be is not so much penalizing you for using the spells, but having a slight risk in using them. It also wouldn't be a debuff, it would either be a violent reaction, or direct damage to the player. In regard to similarities to psionics, there are none. Psionics is using your mind as a weapon. Psykers don't actually have mind powers, they just use their minds as a conduit through which they draw energy from an alternate dimension, the warp. Also, none of the abilities in the psionics tree are similar to anything I would implement. Also, I meant to ask whether I am getting ahead of myself. I haven't actually beaten the game yet, I've only ever reached around floor 9 before (I have RotDG). Therefore, I may not be able to balance it quite properly, at least in later levels.
...Well, the problem with having a low risk on every cast for catastrophic effects to happen is that, eventually, it's guaranteed to happen. It's the same problem that melee builds have with counter-crit-crit; you're going to be using the spells enough times over the course of a run that eventually they're going to kill you.
They don't have to be catastrophic, definitely not instant death, though. Some of them may not even end up harming the player at all. The risk is there though, you can avoid having it killing you by either building up resistances to it, or just avoiding using them when it's possible for them to kill you (ie low health.) One would probably want to take a more stable mage skill for that very purpose. Ultimately though, the only way it would kill you, if you weren't already in a situation in which it could, is with a string of really bad luck, which I was under the impression could result in your death regardless of the situation. Of course, I can't really argue this at all, since I haven't even dabbled in either code or balance for it, but I would, hopefully, assure that all of these potential issues would be worked out through the course of actually making the mod.
Someone's never Rift-nuked a monster zoo with only three castings... More on topic: The idea of a caster who has a small chance of getting burned by his own spells is interesting, but given the extreme level of difficulty in the game, I'm not sure the risk of a wasted turn in the middle of zoo clearing is really worth it unless the spell is crazy good. Worse, the negative side effects would have to get progressively worse from skill to skill for it to make sense, I'd probably never want to use higher level stuff except against lone wandering mobs. Alternatively, the skill might be unbalanced. I'm not saying its impossible. But you'll need to be careful.
