Would this skill set be cool? Inspired in part by Clockwork Knights, Viktor the Machine Herald, and Tycho's whining here on the forums. I'd like to assess interest before coding it, as my first project clearly didn't capture the public's imagination. (Though I did have fun and it was a good learning project.) Not content to simply be a "stereotypically crazy wizard", you have chosen to be the type of crazy wizard who rips off her own body parts, and replaces them with powerful machinery. Steel Robot Hand Pimp robot hand giveth... but mostly pimp robot hand taketh away hit points Robo-punch - melee attack adjacent target, and deal voltaic damage in a line Stats: plus melee power / minus nimbleness Brass Robot Eyebrows Big obtrusive metal eyebrows reduce your vision, but help identify targets Stats: -2 perception / +1 trap sight & sense, plus some EDR/crit Ruby Robot Bellybutton Gives you a Death Ray beam with radiant, fire, and voltaic damage Stats: minus hp regen / plus toxic/putrefying/asphyx resist Aluminum Robot Foot You are capable of frequent, hydraulic bursts of speed, but occasionally your gears seize up causing you to go nowhere You can teleport 2 squares frequently, but every round you have a 10% chance to be immobilized (this is the closest possible thing to slower movement speed) Stats: minus sneakiness, plus dodge Quartz Robot Brain By the power of thought, you channel all your hatred of the flesh into one malevolent surge. A blast of energy escapes your body, also zapping anyone who happens to be nearby "Hate Surge" deals strong existential and voltaic damage to one target, as well as anyone adjacent to you. Snuggle up next to someone for massive damage, or poke safely from range for reasonably strong damage. You become a bit less perceptive sagely and wise, but possess the cunning brutality of a “mind like a steel trap”. You may be overall less aware, but what you can see is clearer Stats: -5 sag +10 savvy. -1 sight, +1 trap sense Should I make this?
All right, my personal (and personal only) thoughts. Important note: I don't know if you know this, but as of now, negative sight radius from skills will not reduce your vision below 0. It will stop gains, but will not draw in your sight radius. I'm going to be treating this from the perspective of a warrior skill, since the stat modifiers seem to be aimed to that. *Steel Robot Hand: -For a level one skill, might need a bit of balancing. Similar warrior skills like Thibault's Trompement and Ragna's Meteor typically are level four; balancing this for early-game use and making sure it's still useful later might be tricky. *Brass Robot Eyebrows: -Seems all right to me. *Ruby Robot bellybutton: -Negative HP regen definitely makes this rather unappealing. 1HP/turn is hard enough to get on GR, and will definitely stay away. -Also, if this is not considered as an attack, warriors tend to have very low mPow due to equipment and skills--it'll probably suffer from poor damage. *Aluminium Robot Foot: -Hmm. Teleportation seems okay, but the random nature of the rooting will probably make me personally stay away from it. Too low of a cooldown, and it becomes overpowered, too much of a cooldown and people start saving it for when they need it--and end up never using it. *Quartz Robot Brain: -Suffers from same problem as RRB from a warrior perspective--if it's not defined as an attack, it won't scale with melee power. Poking from range also goes against warrior needs--throwing, which scales with melee power, and crossbows, which have their own intristic damage, appear to be better options. Also, savvy is not a good option for a warrior--much of their equipment is -sneak, and haywire doesn't do anything for them.
And by the way, you can't give negative in a skill, it won't work correctly at all. Also the aluminum robot foot is impossible as a passive effect like that at the moment. You could make it randomly root for a few turns after using the teleport as an additional cost to using it. And haywire is quite definitely beneficial to warriors. Considering equipment barely lowers it, it still remains as high, compared to magic power which is decreased into the ground. It essentially gives an increase of damage to all the spells they don't have magic power for, including procs I believe (at least parts of them). Given the death ray and aoe energy blast moves this will improve them even if they aren't attacks.
This is one of those "melee mage" skillsets, like Inquisitor, with 3 strong nukes and some defense/utility instead of a skill tree made of nukes. If that's not magey enough, I can add a Bomberman-style delayed AoE damage effect, or a "tazer trap" mine to go with the skills' propensity for Voltaic Damage. It could be added, at a lower power level, to the Aluminum Foot skill level, or added as a "post-capstone" utility option after QRB. Thanks for the heads-up regarding sight radius, that's a bummer to hear about. Would it work properly if I changed it into a non-stacking debuff spell that triggers on attack or spell use? Steel Hand will be weak early and strong late (for a mage, at least). Low base damage, medium spell cost, but good damage scaling and cost reduction scaling with Savvy and Sagacity. At early levels, it will add a little bit of voltaic damage to a basic melee attack. At higher levels, it will be a strongish short line nuke to use in situations where Death Ray is too expensive or overkilly. Bellybutton gives you a pretty powerful win button (or at least win-enabling button) with drawbacks. It will have good base damage, great scaling damage, and probably some resistance debuffs, but mana cost will have a poor Savvy multiplier to keep the spell expensive. The loss of your biological human belly button, while not preventing you from eating food, will impair your natural regen some. Great fix for the robot foot problem, I can just make it a very long-duration debuff triggered by the teleport. If people don't want to deal with it, they can walk normally without their robot feets or use teleports from other skillsets. Hopefully the fact that this is a wizard skillset (and works well for wizards who want melee/defensive options), and the fact that haywire affects proc skills (for half-warriors who take this with some proc skills and maybe something like Astrology or Viking Wizardry) addresses your other questions. Still not sure I should move forward with it, but the concept in my head is getting pretty complete at this point. Thanks for the feedback!
As friend of oldie movies, rubber/brass/steel balls would be nice addition, small dmg resistance & enemy crit decrease or similar which would go up by the material quality ?
