It falls into the same trap. It is a timeout skill that you spam repeatedly on a cooldown, with little reason ever not to cast it. Annoying, but if you don't do it you don't get to empty all the vending machines/amass lots of wealth.
but it's not nearly as "free" as lucky picks was, there's debuffs involved in the casting that can possibly cause you to lose money. and they have further application with the next skill in the tree as well. how would you automate a process that can potentially cripple a starting character?
removable indefinite buff, after turns of minor zorkmid income, you get major zorkmid income and a random chance for debuffs to happen ever turn
It doesn't strike you as a bad idea for the starting skill of a tree to randomly debuff you every turn?
I love the bankster tree - mostly for the interaction between the first two skills. Toxic Assets is a HUGE single-target spell in the early game. I can cast it twice as fast as High-interest loan, but I don't really want to risk my money like that. I also love that I don't want to hit high-interest loan unless there is an animal (or pet!) nearby to potentially dump on.
I'd probably implement it as a flippable mode thing, so like, it periodically triggers (probably through recursively triggering itself if you have a buff up), with all the drawbacks every time it triggers. But if you turn off the "Taking out loans" buff it stops retriggering. Or something like that. I'm not as sure how to make something like that work thematically though, and I haven't played Bankster so idk whether I'd even think it needs to be changed, but yeah I wouldn't make it be a passive with drawbacks without a way to disable it.
You guys really struggle with the debuffs? Like, at all? I don't find them to have any real consideration as to when you should use the ability, and I play GR. (the stat parts of the debuffs is neglible and over the long run the gain from casting the skill outweighs the amount you lose to the debuffs, at least if you buy Dump Toxic Assets).
