Overall Summons Rework [Outdated!]

[lordsterling]

Just checking before I invest the wrong feats

[Aromatic Treebark]

Is anyone else kind of bummed that the Companion Wolf is now the same as the Totem Wolf? It just seems like it takes away from the uniqueness of the Totem. I'd like to see the Wolf reverted back to the default sprite, or changed to something alternate. A lion perhaps!

[DaTexican]

It'd be cool if say the totem druid's summons/companion got the white wolf spirit and the "wolf companion" for everyone else was the grey would. I think that would be Ideal and keep the wolf totem unique. Thoughts?

[Yellena]

Hmm the token wolf was the white?
I added the white one thinking the token was grayish.

I am packing up some balances and such for the summon rework to send Mith in some weeks. If the white wolf is already in the token version, I will change it pack. After all, the idea behind it was in fact add variety.

What about the bear? The token is brown right?

[Aromatic Treebark]

Yep! The Token Wolf is the White Wolf, so it would be really nice to change the summon back to the grey. Or like I said, maybe something exotic like a Lion X) Altho a totem lion would be shweet too.. hm.

The Totem Bear is the Brown Bear, yes.

[Yellena]

Sadly there is no Lion Mufasa style. Only jaguar style that looks like a colored panther.

[DaTexican]

Yes the totem wolf is white. Perhaps a recomendation would be to leave the totem white, and make the summons it has (companion and summon monster) White, and then make the regular summon for all other druids the grey wolf? Would make them very distinct and keep the variety . As for the Totem Bear, yes it is brown bear. Perhaps try blackbear?

[The Prophet Of Light and Dark]

The Summons for the Totem Wolf are already white, yes, as is the shape for the Druid herself. It would be good to simply see the Summon Wolf either reverted back to the Grey (Which I acutally prefer, it is a very proud looking animal). Black Bear would be fun to replace the Brown Bear as a normal, non-totem summon as well.

[DaTexican]

I play a totem druid (wolf). My animal companion is (wolf oviously) is grey, along with all my summons... I was saying if you made totem druids (wolf) summons/animal companions be white and leave the regular wolf companion for druids a grey wolf it would make some sense.

[The Prophet Of Light and Dark]

Yes the totem wolf is white.

________________

I play a totem druid (wolf). My animal companion is (wolf oviously) is grey, along with all my summons...

You're really confusing me now. I thought the Wolf Totem for Druids was always white? Or is that how it used to be? In any case, I would like to see the Totem Wolf with its summons as White & the creature summon reverted back to Grey.

[Preacher]

I believe.... (don't quote me on it) Your color is based on your face model. Model 1 = wolf 1, model 2 = wolf 2..... if you go beond the number of wolf models then you just get the last one (which is probably the most common one i would guess)

[DaTexican]

[quote=] You're really confusing me now. I thought the Wolf Totem for Druids was always white? Or is that how it used to be? In any case, I would like to see the Totem Wolf with its summons as White & the creature summon reverted back to Grey.[/quote]

Yes this is what I was saying. Sorry for confusing.

[Mayonnaise]

It would be nice to have an option for either model; I personally prefer the grey.

[The Prophet Of Light and Dark]

All right then! So thanks for clearing that up ^^ So, I think we agree that the Totem Wolf should be white as with their summons, & the standard will summon be reverted back to the grey with the additional strengths & so forth!

[Roketter]

This is what Mithreas said was the plan for undead, in the old forums.

OK, here's the plan for undead. Anything here may change during implementation...

- All spells and class abilities (Animate Dead, Create Undead, Create Greater Undead, Summon Undead, Summon Greater Undead) will create the same creatures.
- Undead summons will have three streams - 'zombie stream', 'ghoul stream' and 'bloodwraith stream'
- Each stream's summons improve with level - so the basic creature at first, then the second tier at level 11, the third tier at level 16, and the 4th tier once you've taken the Mummy Dust epic spell.
- The Zombie stream contains Zombies, Skeletons, Mummies and Doom Knights. They are balanced warriors, with a solid damage output and solid defense.
- The Ghoul stream contains Ghouls, Ghasts, Ghoul Ravagers and Vampires. They are attack-focused creatures, that can cause a lot of damage but die easily.
- The Ghost stream contains Spectres, Wraiths, Banshees and Liches. They are defense-focused creatures with strong defensive powers and drain/spell based attacks.
- You default to Zombie stream. Performing a ritual in certain locations at midnight will allow you to select a different stream, which you will use until you change it by ritual again.
- You will still be able to summon multiple undead, however, the mechanics for doing so change a bit.
-- Your number of summons is still capped by the number of Necromancy spell focuses you have (but now goes to a max of 3 with Epic Spell Focus). The first summon will take your Summon slot (displacing Summon X spells, elementals etc). The second and third will take henchman slots.
-- You will only be able to have one summon cast by each spell. So if you have Animate Dead, you will only be able to summon one undead, even with greater spell focus. But if you have Animate Dead and Create Undead, you will be able to summon two. The Pale Master's Animate Dead ability should stack with the spell Animate Dead for this purpose, so Pale Masters will have the easiest time getting multiples.

I think that's all the relevant stuff. I repeat - all subject to change during implementation. But that's what we're looking at right now.

And this is from the old forums. Not that i'm a creep who's been queeping a database on everything said on the undead summon reworks since forever... nuhu...

[Yellena]

Thank you Roketter for posting this.
Just as an update.
The Undeads's rework moved from "Soon (tm)" to "Very Soon (tm)". Just need to finish the Bloodwraith line and test them (AI, DCs, behavior and such).

I will possible send them to Mith with a patch to fix some of the current summon's bugs and unbalances.


Quick Preview:
General Properties:
-Undeads Immunities
-Cold Resist 5/- and 10/- at Tier 4
-Negative Damage Immunity (makes sense...)
-Divine and Positive Damage Vulnerability (+100%)

Zombie Stream: Zombie>Skeleton>Mummy>Mummy Lord
-Slow (can't run), good physical resistance (lower than earth elemental tought), elemental damage vulnerability (fire). Medium Damage.

Ghoul Stream: Ghoul>Ghast>Wight>Vampire
-Fast and Very Fast at later tiers. Low defenses. Very high damage and Vampiric Regeneration.

Bloodwraith Steam: Wraith>Spectre>Ghost>Banshee
-Fast. High elemental defenses and agility. Very high DR against non magical weapons. Very low physical damage. Casters and "cripplers". Later tiers uses heavy necromancy magic (*coughs* wail *coughs*).


Will also ask Mith to try some of his magic and make a random roll on the appearances, as we have many versions of the undeads. =D

[Winter83]

Wow. How about shadow dancer shadows? They'd be alike the bloodwraith summons or completely different?

[Yellena]

They will be done for last, after undeads are done.
They will be completely different.
SD, Death Domain and Shadow Conjuration Spells would share the same summons. However, SD's summon will greatly improve at epic levels (Epic Shadowlord Feat), making a pure SD a unique class in that regard.

As a preliminary setup, "Shadow Plane Avatars" (Outsiders) will have very high deffenses, concealment, dodge ability and very low physical damage (incorporeal). They will have dangerous crippling touches and uber stealth skills, along with HiPS (consider they can aways be in the SD's own shadow or be the shadow itself!).

Will still brainstorm with Mith, but will ask about the possibility of making the SD swap places with the shadow if it's in his line of sight. Keep in mind, this is MY idea and still needs Mith's approval so don't put hopes up.

[Mofference]

It may be worth not giving them negative immunity, as that will definitely need testing - the undead race or skin or something converts it to healing instead, but if they're immune they may not actually take the 'damage' to convert to healing.

[Valo65]

It may be worth not giving them negative immunity, as that will definitely need testing - the undead race or skin or something converts it to healing instead, but if they're immune they may not actually take the 'damage' to convert to healing.

No, negative damage immunity is very important. When they are healed by negative energy damage immunity is not (I believe) taken into account. It could use some testing. I'll try it out in an offline game really quick (cast neg energy protection then try "healing" an undead)

Undead being damaged by negative energy damage weapons is one of the strangest things ever, though.

Edit: After testing it out, casting negative energy protection (which gives 100% immunity to negative energy damage) and then casting inflict light wounds on a zombie which had taken 5pts of damage healed it of that damage without issue.

[Rattus_norvegicus99]

I will ask again. Will golems get a change?

[Hunter548]

Is that a big enough problem that it's worth jeopardizing the ability to heal undead, and one of their main benefits?

As a side note: They probably shouldn't have divine/positive vulnerabilities for balance reasons: Positive, I believe, makes any Heal effect on these undead an insta-kill with only a touch attack. People with UMD could then blow a mass heal scroll to kill all three of a necromancer''s summons with minimal effort.

Divine damage is already one of the best damage types to be dealing (Via Divine MIght or an essence) and it doesn't make sense for all divine energy to be anaethma to the undead given that there are undead-friendly deities.

[Valo65]

jeopardizing the ability to heal undead

There's no risk at all. I just tested it.

As for the divine/positive damage thing, I can kind of agree with you. 100% at least seems a tad high, as most abilities that use divine/positive damage are already geared to deal extra damage against undead. Though having the vulnerability there is nice, perhaps bringing it down to 20 to 25%. That's just my opinion, though.

Perhaps Negative Energy Protection could be changed to include Positive Energy and Divine as well? 100% immunity to Positive energy and 100% vulnerability to it would cancel out to 0%, meaning normal damage, and allowing well connected or supplied necromancers to somewhat cancel out one of their big weaknesses.

[Yellena]

Guys, relax.
Lets go by parts but first, keep in mind that the new undeads won't be as weak as the ones we have arround, and have a LOT of immunities and new powers tied to them.

1) About Golems:
The project is about reworking all base NWN summons, that gives a LOT of work to do. Golems are an add on of the server and is way easier to upgrade. And not my department right now.
Once I finish working ALL base NWN summons, I may extend the project if the Devs approves.


2) Regarding the negative Immunity:
It won't mess with the "undead healing". I am not doing things without knowing how they work.
What happens when we heal them with Inflict wounds is because the spell's scripts checks if the target is undead or not before healing/damaging. Such "booms" to undeads are usually scripted to do so.
The immunity was added to avoid funky cases of undeads being damaged by negative damage from other sources (like weapons, breaths and others).


3) The vulnerabilities are less impactful than it seems.
- Spells that deals "extra damage" (actually they don't... they are spells designed to be used on them, having very crappy damage for it's Spell Circle if not) to undeads are messy up regarding their damage type (Sunburst deals magical damage and Sunbean deals divine. Healing spells deals Positive and Lay on Hands Divine) and the undeads will have way more HP than they do now.
- Heal was aways the anathema of undeads, as were Harm for the living. These changes won't change this and Healing undeads aways were and will still be preffered over a spell that damages them. But not all classes have these!

Such damage increase against undeads would help more meleers and lowbies than people with higher circle spells.

It's futile to worry about the extra damage from a few sources when it's way easier to use alternative resources to deal with undeads by the classes that can usually cast these damaging spells anyway:
-Turn Undead
-Undead to Death
-Heal and Mass Heal
-Control Undead
-Dispells
-Dismissal
-Banishment

And if someone planned ahead and prepared for the rare sitution of facing a necromancer with undead damaging spells (over dispells for example), he deserves the advantage.

[DaTexican]

Agree with Yellena here.