[1.0] A RimWorld of Magic

[Torann]

Some minor updates this week for 1.8.4

• The order of events has been changed when using abilities.  When an ability is used; experience gain, side effects on the casting pawn, and mana/stamina consumption all occur following the cast timer rather than before.  This also prevents spell stacking.
  
  
• Abilities used when the target is out of range, or if the target is not visible to the caster, will generate an error message and abort using the ability; mana/stamina will no longer be consumed in these cases.

Let me know if you find any bugs related to this change, I haven't had a chance to test all abilities yet.

[Harry_Dicks]

A minor update with some great quality of life improvements.

[henk]

With the latest patch, none of my pawns can cast any targeted spell. Rainmaker still works, but anything with a target (either ground or a pawn) gives the error
"Exception in SetupToils [...] System.MissingFieldException : Field 'AbilityUser.VerbProperties Ability.canCastInMelee' not found."

This message appears whether or not the spell is cast at melee range.

Never mind. The error fixed itself once I updated JecsTools. Thank you Herr Colonel.

[HerrColonel]

With the latest patch, none of my pawns can cast any targeted spell. Rainmaker still works, but anything with a target (either ground or a pawn) gives the error
"Exception in SetupToils [...] System.MissingFieldException : Field 'AbilityUser.VerbProperties Ability.canCastInMelee' not found."

This message appears whether or not the spell is cast at melee range.

It's weird because I tested today too and I was able to cast spells like blink, invoke, magic missiles, consume corpses, etc. Those all target pawns and I had no error (the spell worked). I didn't test any spell targeting the ground like dry.

Maybe you could upload the full logs?

Edit: You're welcome henk!

[Prince Kasta]

A few things I noticed when playing and some suggestions:

1. When an undead dies it causes your Colonists Killed stat in the History tab to increase, it isn't gameplay impacting but it is kinda annoying as they die very quickly and should be expandable.
Also it causes the Psychology mod to give them funerals which is amusing but not really relevant to this mod.

2. Outpost attack 101 - An Arcanist teleport himself and a high level Summoner, the Summoner kills the entire outpost by himself because he is that strong then the Arcanist teleport both of them and any wanted items back.
The only problem I saw with that is a possibly of turrets which can be dealt with by destroying their power source after everyone is dead.

3. The Priest's resurrection ability is just too overpowered, what if in order to use it he need to be in "Mana high"?
Or maybe give him the ability to use the Mana potion to go above 100% mana and have the mana requirement be 120% (and only a priest with max focus and efficiency can reduce it to below 100%).
Above 100% the Priest's mana will rapidly decrease until it will reach 100%, so he have to potion up before he resurrects.

4. The summon ability of the Arcanist is amazing, it's such a free out of jail card.

5. They are too many world quests giving one to twenty mana potions as a reward, they aren't worth the effort at all.

6. The tool-tip of the summon and blink abilities are wrong for level 0, they say 1s cast time so it looks like leveling them up makes them worse (level 1 is 8s IIRC).

7. I feel the Necromancer is pretty bad, only raise undead is useful and the rest of his abilities are situational and two of them require an ingredient.
The fog of torment is useful for delaying an upcoming enemy horde but isn't really viable as an attack as far as I can see.
He needs a buff power - as an example 'Ghost': The Necromancer raises an ancient ghost to possess and aid the target raising sight, hearing and pain tolerance but also raises the Mental break threshold and decreases his blood pumping.
Something passive that he can use without an ingredient or as an attack.

8. The Summoner lacks a master spell, what about 'Duplication': The Summoner uses an item as an anchor for a portal to an otherworldly plane that spews identical item to the anchor every week. If the anchor is moved or used the portal will explode.
The Summoner will need to maintain the portal.
Can't be used on artifacts and foods or textiles will give a 75 stack.

The Paladin's master spell can be a 'Nullification field': The Paladin calls a holy force around himself that cause any magic effects to stop.
Undead around him will die, summons will flee to their home plane, the Paladin and friendlies close to him will be immune to all targeted magic spells like Death Mark or Summon and will nullify hostile magic shields.
To be honest I want that ability used by raiders, will spice things up. 

[HerrColonel]

7. I feel the Necromancer is pretty bad, only raise undead is useful and the rest of his abilities are situational and two of them require an ingredient.
The fog of torment is useful for delaying an upcoming enemy horde but isn't really viable as an attack as far as I can see.
He needs a buff power - as an example 'Ghost': The Necromancer raises an ancient ghost to possess and aid the target raising sight, hearing and pain tolerance but also raises the Mental break threshold and decreases his blood pumping.
Something passive that he can use without an ingredient or as an attack.

In my opinion, both the cloud and corpse explosion can be useful attacks.
I still agree this class is weak compared to others. I never used corpse explosion in combat, and I never *successfully* used death mark against ennemies. I don't know if a buff ability would make it that much more useful because there's tons of mages buffs already. Ice mage, lightning mage, fire mage, arcane mage. I'd like it better if death mark was reworked maybe to increase any damage on the target? So that would be a very useful spell to get rid of strong pawns like mechanoids or thrumbos faster when you're shooting them with all you got.
Alternatively, that spell could be changed to a direct attack, maybe a low damage low range low cooldown shadow attack. That would give the necro more defense potential by himself, without being as OP as the magic missiles for example (necro doesnt need something as strong because most of the necro dmg are dealt by the zombies I think).

The Paladin's master spell can be a 'Nullification field': The Paladin calls a holy force around himself that cause any magic effects to stop.
Undead around him will die, summons will flee to their home plane, the Paladin and friendlies close to him will be immune to all targeted magic spells like Death Mark or Summon and will nullify hostile magic shields.
To be honest I want that ability used by raiders, will spice things up.

OMG absolutely this!

[Harry_Dicks]

I feel like Paladins and Necromancer's should get into fisticuffs a lot more often if you have both as colonists. I think I saw in the thoughtdefs that a lot of people don't like necros as it is, but this could be some even more added flavor

In fact, an entire DnD alignment system could be fun, maybe for some other mod.

Torann do you plan to add more interactions among the different classes? Also, what do you think about "combo spells?" Something like a druid could get a tornado going, and a fire or lightning mage supe it up, and now you've got a fiery tornado or a tornado that shoots out bolts of lightning. Anyone ever play ChronoTrigger will remember all of the awesome double and triple skill/spell combos. Could also have a cross "fighter/magic" skills/spells. Maybe have the mage's buff up their non-magical brethren with active or passive timed buffs. Like a fire mage could make X% of a fighter's melee attacks also cause additional splash fire damage in Y radius of their target for Z time.

[mmance]

So if you cast Torment and a zombie from the zombie mod walks into it,  the map goes black unless your paused, then its fine.  I had to find the offending zombie and kill it to fix the game.  Not sure if I should be posting this here or in ZombieLand. 

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
at RimWorld.JobDriver_Vomit/<MakeNewToils>c__Iterator0.<>m__1 () <0x000c2>
at (wrapper dynamic-method) Verse.AI.JobDriver.DriverTick_Patch1 (object) <0x00369>
at Verse.AI.Pawn_JobTracker.JobTrackerTick () <0x00305>
at ZombieLand.Zombie.CustomTick () <0x000b2>
at ZombieLand.TickManager.ZombieTicking () <0x0015e>
at ZombieLand.Patches/Verse_TickManager_TickManagerUpdate_Patch.ZombieTick () <0x00054>
at (wrapper dynamic-method) Verse.TickManager.TickManagerUpdate_Patch0 (object) <0x00187>
at Verse.Game.UpdatePlay () <0x00029>
at Verse.Root_Play.Update () <0x00073>

[HerrColonel]

Mhhh I don't know if I want a bigger social penality between the classes =X not like those social fights are too much a problem, but if the mechanic becomes more punishing, there's no way you'll want a necromancer at all (you'll always prefer druids, paladins and priests). Or maybe as a mod option: social penalities difficulty between ennemy classes (should apply to zombies too). So we get the choice to get rid of it completely, or make it super hard for them to coexist.

[henk]

I also think necromancers need a rework... Summon zombie and Fog of Torment are fine, but Death Mark and Consume Corpse are not.

Death mark is just too random, and having it used by an enemy on your pawn is akin to having a tornado spawn on top of your base : you lose stuff, and there's nothing you could have done to stop it. Instead, why not have a "horrify" spell which downs an enemy for its duration?

Consume corpse is just... weird. Weird and icky.

Any time you want to use it, you generally don't have a corpse nearby. Also, who could possibly consume an entire corpse in one sitting?

Why not instead give the necromancer a new kind of resource that can be used for higher power spell? A Drain Soul spell, which gives the necromancer some resource and rots the corpse would perhaps be more useful, and could be used outside of battle. Necromancers don't mind rotten corpses anyway. You could make most of their abilities consume resources, have a master-level spell that summons a great ethereal undead for lots of resources, or have the option to enhance spells with resources with a spell menu (like selecting the material for furniture).

The paladin is also in kind of a weird place. I feel like he should be using melee weapons to make full use of his abilities, but he doesn't really feel buff enough to go in melee. Perhaps the paladin could be made into a physical class? Divine magic usually doesn't require arcane knowledge anyway.

As always, love your mod!

[HerrColonel]

The paladin is also in kind of a weird place. I feel like he should be using melee weapons to make full use of his abilities, but he doesn't really feel buff enough to go in melee. Perhaps the paladin could be made into a physical class? Divine magic usually doesn't require arcane knowledge anyway.

As always, love your mod!

Personally I use the paladin as a melee fighter. (I love the paladin since I know about this mod and I think he's a bit OP) Shield will mitigate a lot of damage, and he has two AOE if you count jump and overwhelm. That + hitting like a truck with his greatsword, he's able to get rid of a lot of ennemies if they're packed, with very low damage taken if any. His heal also has a low range too, so I think his place is in the melee where he'll be able to heal other melee fighters.
So I think he's perfectly fit for the melee role already

[Harry_Dicks]

Mhhh I don't know if I want a bigger social penality between the classes =X not like those social fights are too much a problem, but if the mechanic becomes more punishing, there's no way you'll want a necromancer at all (you'll always prefer druids, paladins and priests). Or maybe as a mod option: social penalities difficulty between ennemy classes (should apply to zombies too). So we get the choice to get rid of it completely, or make it super hard for them to coexist.

Speak for yourself. Right now I've got my residual colony jerk, and I love him. He makes things that much more interesting. I'm at the point now where I don't want just straight "content", but more nuanced stuff, like more mental breaks, events, fluff stuff, ya'know

[HerrColonel]

Yeah that's why it would be nice to have it as a mod option to accommodate different kind of players

[henk]

Incidentally, the mod option to turn off explosion on death doesn't work. Explosions generally kill everyone standing near them, too. Not fun.

[Canute]

Then try not to stay close to mages when they die.
Thats one reason why mages get an extra icon, you see the danger, try to avoid it.
And there is at last one other race that explode on death.