Usurper (Rogue Skill Tree) The Dungeon of Dredmor will be yours! Mimic the dark lord himself to gain the upper hand in your quest to conquer the dungeon. Installation Notes: Usurper is listed as skill number 556. Since you were a child, you have always dreamed of owning your own dungeon. Since you've been dealt the task of eliminating Lord Dredmor, this seems like the perfect opportunity to seize control. Level One: Dungeon Enthusiast Thanks to a long history of scouring the listings at dungeon realtors, you've picked up a thing or two about owning your own lair. You're accustomed to watching for traps and picking your way carefully through hostile territory. +1 , +1 , +1 Level Two: Hand of Doomishness After carefully studying Lord Dredmor's novella 'The Dark Arts of War,' you've learned some of his tricks. You have adapted his patented 'Corrupt Equipment' spell into three general all-purpose curses that you may deliver through melee combat. Passive +1 On-hit 20% chance to inflict Hand of Weakness, Hand of Silence, or Hand of Disorientation. Each have a 10 round duration. Hand of Weakness: -2 , -2 , plus on-trigger damage of 3 + (0.3 x ) Hand of Silence: Silence, plus on-trigger damage of 3 + (0.3 x ) Hand of Disorientation: -4 , -4 , plus on-trigger damage of 3 + (0.3 x ) Note: If the 12% is rolled successfully, it then rolls to determine which of the curses is applied. It is not three 12% chances, for a total of 36%, but a 4% chance of each. Also, for some reason, if a monster is inflicted with one curse, any additional triggers of Hand of Doomishness will refresh that duration automatically instead of attempting to apply either of the other two. Level Three: Shroud of Darkness-Synonyms Discretion is the better part of valour. While your studies have indicated the usefulness of blinding the opposition to hinder your adversaries, Lord Dredmor is not facing a dungeon populated by creatures that wish to make him a meal. This adaptation allows a quick side-step followed by a short-lived invisibility spell. +1 Teleport one square, then invisibility for two turns. 15 turn cool-down. Level Four: Lich's Form When killing a necromancer and stealing his home, it seems the natural progression to learn something about necromancy yourself. By translating some of the runes in the pictures kept within Lord Dredmor's autobiography, 'A Dungeon Life,' you have learned an incantation to temporarily infuse your body with magic to more closely resemble your prey. 24 base, 8 minimum 1 upkeep per six turns While active, 2 , 2 , 2 , 2 , 2 , 2 Level Five: Reshape the Domain If you're going to own a dungeon, you have to learn how to shape it to your liking. This spell, taken directly from an interview in 'The Dreadful Post,' allows you to construct your own custom choke-point. Creates walls in an array around the character for 30 turns. 50 turn cool-down Passive +1 Level Six: Mutiny! Your powers grow as hours pass. Apparently, this means you have become more charismatic. Some of Lord Dredmor's minions may bend to your will, at least for a short duration. Charm monster for 15 turns, with 75 turn cool-down Congratulations! You can now claim your rightful place as Lord Dredmor II! As always, feedback is appreciated. Considering dropping Reshape the Domain or Mutiny! for another curse-like thing; I'll play around with the skill more and see how I feel. Maybe reading through Dredmor's stats and attacks some more will spark something. Changelog: 1.0.3: Changed Reshape the Domain to create choke-point instead of simply digging. 1.0.2: Reduced cooldown timers on Reshape the Domain and Mutiny! Also, fixed Mutiny! so it isn't always resisted. 1.0.1: Added on-trigger damage to Curse of Doomishness, removed Spine-Chillingly Misunderstood, added +1 Blasting to Reshape the Domain, increased duration of Mutiny!, increased upkeep duration of Lich's Form.
As it ends with mana-less digging and charming, I wanted to ere on the side of caution. I figured the reaction would be better if it was underpowered and scaled up than overpowered and scaled down. I'll address the balance after work tomorrow.
I like the theme. I had a similar idea although it was more in the line of 'Lord Dredmor's #1 Fan'. Here's some feedback: Not all skills need to be 7 levels deep. Magic skills are only that long because mages typically pick a 'primary' magic type that they max out. Hand of Doomishness Underpowered and won't scale well. That said, an on-hit Silence effect seems very useful. Another idea would be to 'corrupt the body of the enemy', giving them a big weakness to a random damage type. This would have a neat scaling effect as most players pick up damage types as they progress. Spine-Chillingly Misunderstood I've never liked on-hit DOTs. When I'm hitting someone it's because I want them dead now, not in 5 turns time. Reshape the Domain Digging isn't as amazing as it's made out to be. As the skill seems to primarily focus on melee combat - I'd replace the 'digging' spell with a 'create chokepoint' spell. Basically you'd just dig out a 3 x 3 area and then create walls along the edges. Mutiny! Remember that spells can be resisted - deeper in the dungeon an 80 turn cooldown charm will be useless when monsters have a 30-40% resist chance. You can fix this by adding the 'resistable="0"' attribute to the charm effect. Only 10 turns? Maybe for a template spell that hits the 4 enemies adjacent to you...
I didn't intend for this to be a seven-skill line, but I felt I had a lot of ground to cover from a flavour stand-point. I looked at Lord Dredmor's stats and attacks and tried to find a way to work some of them in, with digging and Mutiny there for the "claiming it for your own" angle at the end. Hand of Doomishness I'll re-address the curses. I was thinking of just adding an on-trigger damage bonus to them. If I raise it to a 20% trigger with three bonus damage, it will be near Liechtenauer's Overhau. Spine-Chillingly Misunderstood I'm not a huge fan of DOTs for melee characters, but I wanted to work it in more to see if I just judged it too quickly when I was learning the game. That said, if Hand of Doomishness adds enough of the cursing flavour, I suppose this could be dropped entirely to make it a six skill line. Reshape the Domain Personally, I think digging is an incredible tool. It allows one to engage enemies in a one-square wide hallway instead of a three-square wide doorway. This alone can cut down on risks severely. Also, I'm not sure if there's a template suitable for two three-by-one lines of wall with an empty centre line. Not at my home computer, so I can't check. Mutiny! I didn't know about the resistance property; thanks for the tip! I'll test it with a variety of templates and cooldowns.
That's fascinating. I wonder why that happens. Regardless, without having tested it, my knee-jerk reaction: Why two separate on-hit procs? Why no ranged damage (Dredmor's speciality?) Level 3 isn't going to do much with Invisibility all jacked up. And level 5 is weak sauce. There should be some offense that comes with that defense.
@Procs and Melee: Personally, I like on-hit Procs. My first character that I beat DoD with was "Load up on melee procs and teleport effects." That said, Spine-Chillingly Misunderstood will probably be dropped in favour of a six-skill line, as it offers the least flavour, besides sharing a damage type with Dredmor. As for lack of range, I guess I had to pick and choose which elements of Dredmor to emulate. For the offensive skills, I went with his corruption and one of the effects he can apply (Arctic Vortex). @Invisibility: In my experiences, being at least one square away make invisibility work fine, as long as you're not moving adjacent. Hence, it has one square of teleportation followed by invisibility for a quick potion or to reassess your position. @Lich's Form: I was using Mark of the Black Eyeliner as a baseline here, and I didn't want to exceed its power level.
Updated to 1.0.2. From further testing, setting resistable to the same setting as effects such as Fairywodger sets it so monsters always resist it, while setting it to 1 seems to gain the desirable results. Also, Lich's Form had the wrong icon on the "current status effects" location.
Ok, so I just played with this a little bit for the first time, and I have to say that 60 turn cooldown on Reshape the Dungeon is insanity. Werediggles get it with a 3-turn cooldown; the most you need to do to make up for the fact that it's not polymorph-dependent is double that -- if you even need to do that. I'd honestly drop it to 3 or 4 turns; 60 is just silly. Also, please zip your folders directly into the .ZIP file without an intervening "Usurper" folder in between. That makes it so much more of a pain in the butt to run your mods when you do that.
I don't think Werediggle is a fair comparison. Werediggle as a whole requires a restrictive play-style that lacks synergy with numerous skill trees while it functions. It's also the sixth of eight skills in a tree, compared to the fifth of six. In addition, you only have thirty-three turns of kill mode, followed by seventeen turns of downtime, so spending those on digging means you aren't using your timer for all the other Werediggle benefits. In exchange for all of these strings attached, you get a fantastic cooldown timer so you can dig when you need it. I think a more accurate comparison would be to Golemancy's Digging Ray, which comes with a base of 60 . It drops to a minimum of 10, but a realistic estimation would probably be 25-35, depending on the build. Mana to timer translations aren't exact, so I wanted to play it safe and keep it higher, then address the timer at a later date if it felt too high after more thorough playtesting. I do feel that a timer of 3 or 4 would be excessively low. I could see dropping it down as low as the ten to twenty range after further testing. I'll reorganize my zip files for this and Cooliomancy and re-upload them.
The question you should have in your mind is how you intend the ability to be used. At 60 or even 20 turns cooldown, it's not a transportation spell anymore. It's "you can build yourself a nook from which to fight." Sure, Golemancy's ray requires 30-ish mana to cast, but it can be cast several times in rapid succession, making it actually useful for getting from one room to another. Werediggle's augur is the same way; you can drill through 11 squares in one episode of diggling. So ask yourself: is the ability to fight from a one-square nook once every six or seven rooms worth an entire skill level? Personally, I'm with J-Factor: the ability would be really cool if it had a custom template like this: Code: ##### ##### ..#.. ##### ..@.. That would give you a large dig that created a choke point and an area behind the chokepoint to retreat into as well as burning through 4 'layers' of dungeon. That's more along the lines of something you could call worth a 60-point cooldown.
Are custom templates working? I tried it and I got this weird random-flashing-between-templates problem.
No, unfortunately, you do still have to modify the game's base manTemplateDB.xml. I understand that's going to change in 1.0.10, though.
Alright, I found a template combination that will do for now until 1.0.10. It isn't perfect, but it does create a choke-point. Uploading now.
I like DoTs, they effectively scale with the more enemies you have around you to hit as long as you rotate your hits, so I wouldn't write them off yet for melee. It's just a matter of keeping yourself alive to apply the DoT. Maybe an self-centered AoE effect?
I like the concept of this mod a lot, though it's really under-powered Here's a few changes I'd suggest: Starting Item: Tome that provides: +1 +1 Add a 100-turn cooldown digging skill, I know having a digging skill at level 0 seems pretty OP, but on a 100-turn cooldown kinda balances it. I think. Remove: Some sort of "stealing" mechanism, like proccing to create something, mostly consumables, from melee attacks 10% chance maybe? Deals +2 Also, changes to the existing ones: Hand of *insert massage pun here*: Charms monster for 2 turns, no bonus damage Hand of Silence: Silence, plus on-trigger damage of 3 + (0.3 x ) (because hey, you just slapped the guy) Hand of Disorientation: -4 , -4 , -4, -4, Blink Monster chance of 50%, no bonus damage Passive: +5 , +2 (because you might be partially invisible, or not), +2 Passive: -1 (it's pretty dark wearing this magical cloak) Could remove the Increase teleport to 2 squares and invisibility to 3 turns OR 20% chance to turn invisible for 3 turns Remove the (because, Rogue) Add some more resistances, mostly just this Could be "flying" like the Bat form in Vampirism, but use a different model, not sure if possible Passive: +1 maybe? Passive: +1 Remove the passive Deals on spell target, scales with something like: 3 + (0.5 x ) Pretty cool skill, should add more effects though, like turning the tiles into lava or something, not sure if possible OR Add a "shove" effect with a template akin to Turn Demon Title: Lord Dredmor?! Not sure of what to put as flavor text Add a passive +1, -4 (because you're trying to convince others that you're the true dungeon master while still doubting yourself at times) Remake: add as an "upgrade" to Lich's form 100% chance to proc when you cast Lich's form The buff persists as long as Lich's form remains active 10% chance when struck to cast a 1-turn charm More resistances! Mostly this (because i like to make Necronomic, Assassin -- Demonologists!) Add +1 ,+1 (i don't know why yet)
