[1.0] A RimWorld of Magic

Started by Torann, November 24, 2017, 11:17:05 PM

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Torann

#630
I've updated the mod to v1.9.7:


  • New Class: Bard (magic) - the bard utilizes a variety of social interaction and abilities to improve the morale and efficiency of other colonists. The bard is naturally skilled at social activities to include diplomacy, trade, and negotiations.
    Abilities:
    *Entertain - uses charm, wit, and humor to improve the mood of other colonists. This is a new social interaction (like chit chat or deep talk) that is always active (once learned) and is unique to the bard class. In addition, the bard may activate the 'entertain' ability to identify other colonists that are reaching their breaking points and attempt to improve their mood.
    *Inspire - another ability of the bard that works in the background (once learned) and will attempt to inspire nearby colonists.
    *Lullaby - the bard plays an enchanting lullaby that washes away consciousness of any pawns in the affected area.
    *Battle Hymn (master) - plays an exhilarating battle song that increases the fighting spirit of any nearby pawns. The effects of Battle Hymn build over time.

  • Three new stand-alone spells:
    *Cauterize Wounds (fire mage) - instantly cleans and tends any wounds on the target, but has a chance to cause burn scars.
    *Spell Mending (any mage) - Combines arcane power of the mage and physical energy of the target to repair the equipment worn by the target.
    *Fertile Lands (druid) - blesses a large area of land with the power of the druids that increases the growth rate of any plants within the area by 200%. This spell is maintained by the druid, and reduces mana regeneration by 40%.

  • As part of the Bard update, 6 new inspirations have been added: Learning (introspection), Social (outgoing), Farming, Mining, and two special inspirations unique to mage and fighter classes.

  • Mages that share a positive social standing can now exchange arcane knowledge as part of a Mentor/Student interaction. This allows less experienced mages to learn from those more experienced in the magical arts.

Prince Kasta

Quote from: Torann on April 01, 2018, 12:05:50 PM
I've updated the mod to v1.9.7:


  • New Class: Bard (magic) - the bard utilizes a variety of social interaction and abilities to improve the morale and efficiency of other colonists. The bard is naturally skilled at social activities to include diplomacy, trade, and negotiations.
    Abilities:
    *Entertain - uses charm, wit, and humor to improve the mood of other colonists. This is a new social interaction (like chit chat or deep talk) that is always active (once learned) and is unique to the bard class. In addition, the bard may activate the 'entertain' ability to identify other colonists that are reaching their breaking points and attempt to improve their mood.
    *Inspire - another ability of the bard that works in the background (once learned) and will attempt to inspire nearby colonists.
    *Lullaby - the bard plays an enchanting lullaby that washes away consciousness of any pawns in the affected area.
    *Battle Hymn (master) - plays an exhilarating battle song that increases the fighting spirit of any nearby pawns. The effects of Battle Hymn build over time.

  • Three new stand-alone spells:
    *Cauterize Wounds (fire mage) - instantly cleans and tends any wounds on the target, but has a chance to cause burn scars.
    *Spell Mending (any mage) - Combines arcane power of the mage and physical energy of the target to repair the equipment worn by the target.
    *Fertile Lands (druid) - blesses a large area of land with the power of the druids that increases the growth rate of any plants within the area by 200%. This spell is maintained by the druid, and reduces mana regeneration by 40%.

  • As part of the Bard update, 6 new inspirations have been added: Learning (introspection), Social (outgoing), Farming, Mining, and two special inspirations unique to mage and fighter classes.

  • Mages that share a positive social standing can now exchange arcane knowledge as part of a Mentor/Student interaction. This allows less experienced mages to learn from those more experienced in the magical arts.
*Inspire - another ability of the bard that works in the background (once learned) and will attempt to inspire nearby colonists.

Is there a way to disable certain Inspire event warnings?
Because I really want to disable those for "go" or "work" inspires who are just passive unlike say the trader one.

*Lullaby - the bard plays an enchanting lullaby that washes away consciousness of any pawns in the affected area.

That sounds interesting, depending on how fast this is you can neutralize pyros or mental break easily.

For Cauterize Wounds, why take that rather than the Heal spell?
Because unless it is way stronger risking another wound seems unnecessary.

Small request/question, can you make Enchantments put a tag on their clothes like deadman's [D]?
It just that I can't figure out a way how to see which clothes are enchanted by looking at the gear tab, you have to strip and look at each piece.
In a 40 pawns colony you forget who wears what fast.

SihvMan

Quote from: Torann on April 01, 2018, 12:05:50 PM
Mages that share a positive social standing can now exchange arcane knowledge as part of a Mentor/Student interaction. This allows less experienced mages to learn from those more experienced in the magical arts.

What does this involve? Do they gain spells? Experience?

Torann

Quote from: SihvMan on April 01, 2018, 10:44:35 PM
Quote from: Torann on April 01, 2018, 12:05:50 PM
Mages that share a positive social standing can now exchange arcane knowledge as part of a Mentor/Student interaction. This allows less experienced mages to learn from those more experienced in the magical arts.

What does this involve? Do they gain spells? Experience?
Experience points as a mage.

SihvMan

Quote from: Torann on April 01, 2018, 10:52:46 PM
Quote from: SihvMan on April 01, 2018, 10:44:35 PM
Quote from: Torann on April 01, 2018, 12:05:50 PM
Mages that share a positive social standing can now exchange arcane knowledge as part of a Mentor/Student interaction. This allows less experienced mages to learn from those more experienced in the magical arts.

What does this involve? Do they gain spells? Experience?
Experience points as a mage.

Nice!

BTW, would you be interested in me whipping up a new way for the Druid's Regrow Limb spell to function? I've got an idea to bypass the surgery phase and regrow limbs and organs directly onto the target pawn.

Torann

Quote from: SihvMan on April 01, 2018, 11:53:43 PM
BTW, would you be interested in me whipping up a new way for the Druid's Regrow Limb spell to function? I've got an idea to bypass the surgery phase and regrow limbs and organs directly onto the target pawn.
Sure, I'd love to see what you come up with. I retained the surgery/bill platform when using the regrowth since it allows the player to specify which limb to regrow and reserves the jobs for both pawns.  I also wanted to incorporate the additional "mana" cost by adding in the two mana potions along with the seed of regrowth. A few other things I like about the surgery is that it forces the patient to be in a bed or medical spot and applies anesthetic.  I think those are bonuses inherent that make the process feel more significant. Like the resurrection process, it should be a straining process on both the patient and the druid.

It would be quite a bit easier, from an implementation standpoint, to simply cast spell -> BAM missing limb is back, but that doesn't really retain the 'feel' of a magic regrowth ability.  I was planning on removing the mana potion requirement and bumping up the mana cost slightly, along with some other tweaks as part of the global rebalance patch, but if you've got some idea's to improve on regrowth, then I'll leave this one to you!

SihvMan

Quote from: Torann on April 02, 2018, 01:20:38 PM
Quote from: SihvMan on April 01, 2018, 11:53:43 PM
BTW, would you be interested in me whipping up a new way for the Druid's Regrow Limb spell to function? I've got an idea to bypass the surgery phase and regrow limbs and organs directly onto the target pawn.
Sure, I'd love to see what you come up with. I retained the surgery/bill platform when using the regrowth since it allows the player to specify which limb to regrow and reserves the jobs for both pawns.  I also wanted to incorporate the additional "mana" cost by adding in the two mana potions along with the seed of regrowth. A few other things I like about the surgery is that it forces the patient to be in a bed or medical spot and applies anesthetic.  I think those are bonuses inherent that make the process feel more significant. Like the resurrection process, it should be a straining process on both the patient and the druid.

It would be quite a bit easier, from an implementation standpoint, to simply cast spell -> BAM missing limb is back, but that doesn't really retain the 'feel' of a magic regrowth ability.  I was planning on removing the mana potion requirement and bumping up the mana cost slightly, along with some other tweaks as part of the global rebalance patch, but if you've got some idea's to improve on regrowth, then I'll leave this one to you!

I'm planning on it being a 90% mana cost ability, that replaces missing limbs/organs with a 'dummy' part that starts off at low efficiency, and recovers over time (5 days?), kinda like an inverse infection.

This method would regrow all missing components (it's a single target cast), but balance wise it seems to be in line with resurrection spell. If need be, I could probably work a negative hediff into the regrowing process, if you feel more balance is needed.

Canute

Thats the same idea i got too.
I hope you can get this running ! :-)

Since the regrowth spell still got some level to develop. Level 1-2 you can't target missing part, just a random missing part get regrow.
At level 3 you can select what part you want regrow.
Level 1 just arm,hand,leg,feet.
Level 2 all outer parts, eye,jaw,ear,nose.
Lelvel 3 anything missing even organs.


henk

I like the idea of regrowth being detached from the medical skill, and being able to cast regrowth on the druid would be nice.

And as a more general comment, I'd like healing skills having redundancy; more than one skill that can remove scars (Purify, Regrowth, maybe Regeneration, and perhaps some physical skill to allow scar regeneration), more than one skill that can help with disease (for example, Purify could add +5 disease immunity or -5 disease progress, some of the buff skills help with diseases, and maybe give paladins access to Cure Disease). This way, if you have a limited number of mages, you can still take care of long-term injuries.

Torann

A bit surprised to hear you say that, henk.  You're usually the one making the argument for more drawbacks to powerful spells, and limiting application for healing abilities is one of the best ways to do that for the heal type abilities. I don't think I'd lean towards the cross-over's either, because then it becomes 3 classes with the same functions but different names.

That being said, I think there's probably some room for one of the ability skills to add some small bonuses (like the +5 immunity gain idea) at high skill level, as long as it's controlled.

The global re-balance will add more restrictions/penalties in traits, to help differentiate classes both in and out of combat. What that means is that your colony might not be able to support 6/6 colonists being mages since you might be giving up too many mundane functions
in return for the class combat/utilities - so there will be trade-offs (think priest and lich, but more nuanced). I think it should be the same way with abilities.

WitchLyfe

#640
Problem I see with some restrictions is that enemy raids won't be affected by a lot of them (Day to day stuff that won't hurt during a raid).  If your colony can't support more than a certain amount of mages, you could be overwhelmed in high level raids if the mage spawn chance is high or you get unlucky.  Tribal can already be pretty dangerous with base spawn chance. 

For example: If the enemy is capable of spawning/bringing a Lich along to raid you (I hope they can in the future, if it's balanced for it anyways), they'd receive none of the penalties of it, they'd just be OP as fuck in a fight and that's all that would matter for them.  You with a Lich are stuck with somebody who can only research outside combat (And who had to abandon most the skills they built).  Stack a bunch of penalties like that on all your mages vs their easy peezy combat only mages and you're at an extreme disadvantage.  We already have to deal with the chance of a raid at the end of a mana drain event and such.

This is one of the reasons I'm really not fond of the Lich restrictions.  I'd rather they be weaker and not be so incredibly specialized.  Priest's inability to fight and the social penalties of Necro before that are fine.  Most mages are still OP of course, I'm just worried about them becoming Lich-like.  Most the restrictions make sense so far, but if mages are just going to become that useless outside their few tricks, that'd suck.  Lich feels like getting a pawn that can only do 2-3 jobs in vanilla.  Just not worth the trouble, even if they do them really well.

I'd rather damage balance, aoe range, and mana cost tweaking before going into crazy restrictions like that.  I actually prefer small mage teams btw, just worried about how combat is going to be balanced around raids.

TLDR kinda:  Lich just doesn't feel good to use to me, even if technically their bonuses/penalties are balanced (I didn't play them enough to find out exactly how OP they are).  I think adding a lot of restrictions like that could easily cause more balance issues rather than fixing them.  Seems like Lich is too strong/weak.  I don't want more stuff that can one shot enemy raids or my whole team basically.  Of course abandoning skills feels really crappy too.  I hope future stuff won't be that extreme.  Pretty sad I don't want to use Necro's ultimate.

henk

Restrictions... Yes, I dislike that many spells seem to be powerful with no drawback. I do, however, hate scars. And missing body parts. And, often, you can't pick what mages you get. Sure, late game, you can get several mages, with each discipline covered, but for most of the game, you're lucky to have any mage at all.

Healing spells also seem to be the least overpowered spells right now. If penalties are needed to make scars and missing noses go away, then sure, that's fine. I just like having all pawns at perfect health.

WitchLyfe

#642
Quote from: henk on April 03, 2018, 12:04:25 AM
Restrictions... Yes, I dislike that many spells seem to be powerful with no drawback. I do, however, hate scars. And missing body parts. And, often, you can't pick what mages you get. Sure, late game, you can get several mages, with each discipline covered, but for most of the game, you're lucky to have any mage at all.

Healing spells also seem to be the least overpowered spells right now. If penalties are needed to make scars and missing noses go away, then sure, that's fine. I just like having all pawns at perfect health.

I like Fire Mage's balance.  Their basic attack will pretty much always miss moving targets, Fire Claw is RNG in whether in lands, and Fireball is pretty slow and needs to be aimed well, though it is their most reliable spell with its large radius.  Of course burning gear and bodies can also hurt.  Their damage of course gets crazy at high levels, but most the mages are like that atm.  Turning a Thrumbo to ashes with Fire Claw is pretty silly/funny.

Yeah, hard for me to play without a Priest to fix scars.  Scars are so prevalent (Especially eyes) and completely cripple your team quickly if you're not the type to use a killbox or use a horde of animal to tank enemies for you.  Missing limbs are less likely, but I use EPOE for that, even though I'd rather they just have their original body parts repaired than become all powerful cyborgs, lol.  So I getcha there.  I'm looking forward to Druid's Regrow Limbs possibly being reworked.  If it is changed, I'll pretty much always want a Druid and Priest in my teams though...That could be an issue. 

I just use Prepare Carefully with this mod, so I can't really talk about the rough start up anyways.  My starting pawns are usually balanced though (I remove points and such to make the mage start weaker).

At least we can now craft a lot of the mage spells and even force a non magic user to become a mage.  That helps with that, though I've yet to play a colony long enough to be able to afford any of that.  Desert really hurts magic crafting advancements as I mentioned earlier.

Hmm, not sure if I'm up to testing out Bard just yet.  Might wait another patch or two first.

Torann

Well don't get too worked up, the priest and especially lich, are more of the extreme cases. To put it into perspective, most of the earlier class traits give bonuses to move speed, learning, etc and that doesn't really make sense.  So, for example, the ice mage being more cold, calculating might have +20% to learning but would have a slight offset to work speed (-10%) and less comfortable in warm temperatures.  While the fire mage might be more aggressive and move faster, but would lose a bit of ranged accuracy and have more of an abrasive personality.

The Lich has a bunch of little combat contributors (like self mending wounds, moderate damage mitigation) plus the new abilities.  But even with all that, the lich is probably less powerful (currently) than some of the heavy hitters like arcanist and fire mage and that's because he was designed more balanced to begin with and has some pretty significant restrictions (work type and move speed). With the lich, you also have to keep in mind that his ability to control undead indirectly gives the lich access to every work type except medicine/caring and social - but it's definitely a 'niche' class and that's by design.

One thing I'd like to do is release a 'test' version of the rebalance to give the core contributors here a chance to test and give feedback on the changes.  Each change makes a ripple and there's going to be a ton of ripples and those could combine into waves and I'd like to catch those before updating to the majority of players. For those interested, I'll be looking to push that test version out around Friday/Saturday.

SihvMan

#644
I don't mind some restrictions (like less speed or accuracy), just don't have too many outright restrictions on which worktypes a pawn can do. Powerful magic means nothing if the pawn can't do important things like craft or doctor.

Edit: I'm down for a test version, if you'd like.