Help Me Design This Kit!
semiticgoddess
Member Posts: 14,903
I have begun creating a new kit mod, but I'm not sure what to name it and what all the features should be, so I've decided to ask around for suggestions. The basic idea behind this kit is that it's a fighter that attacks MANY times per round, but does not deal as much damage per hit.
The fighter has constant effect Improved Haste from level 1, is immune to slow, and gains an extra half attack per round every 5 levels, but gets no extra attacks per round from proficiencies or levels 7 and 13 (like a normal fighter would). Thus, at level 10, the fighter will have 6 attacks per round with a sword, 8 attacks per round when dual-wielding, or 10 attacks per round when using darts.
In addition, the fight can create and use a set of kit-exclusive weapons (scimitars, katanas, short swords, daggers, staffs, darts, and shortbows) which deal lingering damage, imitating the effects of an extra attack per round--allowing us to sort of bypass the APR cap of 10. Every 4 levels, the weapons created get stronger, and at levels 12, 16, and 20, the lingering damage is extended. For example, at level 16, a kit-created scimitar will deal 1d8+4 base damage, then 1d6+3 on-hit damage after one second, then 1d4 damage after two seconds, and finally 1d3 damage after three seconds. The fighter at level 16 is basically attacking 28 times per round, but most of those strikes are low-damage and get no bonuses from Strength and so forth.
However, the fighter deals 75% less physical damage no matter what weapons it's using, and also cannot wear armor. Even with 18/80 STR and GM in scimitars while dual-wielding, the fighter deals less than 50 damage per round at level 16, while an unkitted fighter at the same level might deal 132 damage when dual-wielding under a party mage's Improved Haste spell. Think of the kit like a quadruple-wielding Archer/Kensai that deals less damage than a normal fighter, but imposes a lot of hitstun because it hits so often.
What do I call this kind of kit, and what else should I add, remove, or tweak to make the kit more balanced or more fun?
The fighter has constant effect Improved Haste from level 1, is immune to slow, and gains an extra half attack per round every 5 levels, but gets no extra attacks per round from proficiencies or levels 7 and 13 (like a normal fighter would). Thus, at level 10, the fighter will have 6 attacks per round with a sword, 8 attacks per round when dual-wielding, or 10 attacks per round when using darts.
In addition, the fight can create and use a set of kit-exclusive weapons (scimitars, katanas, short swords, daggers, staffs, darts, and shortbows) which deal lingering damage, imitating the effects of an extra attack per round--allowing us to sort of bypass the APR cap of 10. Every 4 levels, the weapons created get stronger, and at levels 12, 16, and 20, the lingering damage is extended. For example, at level 16, a kit-created scimitar will deal 1d8+4 base damage, then 1d6+3 on-hit damage after one second, then 1d4 damage after two seconds, and finally 1d3 damage after three seconds. The fighter at level 16 is basically attacking 28 times per round, but most of those strikes are low-damage and get no bonuses from Strength and so forth.
However, the fighter deals 75% less physical damage no matter what weapons it's using, and also cannot wear armor. Even with 18/80 STR and GM in scimitars while dual-wielding, the fighter deals less than 50 damage per round at level 16, while an unkitted fighter at the same level might deal 132 damage when dual-wielding under a party mage's Improved Haste spell. Think of the kit like a quadruple-wielding Archer/Kensai that deals less damage than a normal fighter, but imposes a lot of hitstun because it hits so often.
What do I call this kind of kit, and what else should I add, remove, or tweak to make the kit more balanced or more fun?
2
Comments
Sounds like a Fencer to me.
especially for the fact that it doesn't wear armor, so if you don't go with fencer for the kit name, perhaps musketeer?
I don't have the patience to do the dice roll maths,
I would suggest a THAC0 penalty active as well, since logically, if you're hitting that fast, you are definitely going to miss some. In fact, you can make the extra APR-imitating lingering damage as a percentage chance (not a definite one) which improves with level. Also, the THAC0 penalty would decrease with level, so it would scale up appropriately. Maybe make a focused strike innate (where you attack with normal THAC0 and normal physical damage, but decreased APR, in case you need it).
Also, it should be restricted to light weapons only. Swinging a two-handed weapon so fast would again be impractical. Maybe you can allow the use of the weapon, but not let the increased APR work in that case.
The decreased physical damage is okay, though if you implement the THAC0 penalty which I suggest, you might want to decrease the physical damage penalty with levels.
No armour is also fair, though I think adding some innates where you get a decent AC bonus for a limited time (to simulate Dodging) would be nice. Since the guy can hit fast and wears no armour, he should be able to avoid some attacks as well.
I have more thoughts, but I'll have to cease my writing here for lack of time. (If you're interested, maybe we can talk later on Discord?)
The name? Nibbler! Cause he nibbles (small but rapid bites) constantly on the enemy like a hyperactive hamster!
The kit's advantages grows smaller as other fighters use speed weapons, dual-wielding, and haste effects to boost their damage output. Take two level 10 fighters with GM in scimitars and 18/95 STR. With a regular scimitar +2, the regular fighter deals about 41 damage and the kit deals 24, a 66% bonus over the kit. If you switch to Belm, however, the regular fighter's advantage grows, dealing about 58 damage to the kit's 33, a 75% bonus over the kit.
Even for Crom Faeyr, an item with extremely high per-hit damage output (which synergizes better with high APR), deals substantially less damage in the hands of the kit. You have to be level 25 and have GM in hammers in order to outpace an unhasted regular fighter.
Most of the power in this kit comes from hitstun, which can really screw with enemies, robbing them of not just spells, but even attacks.
Katanas have the highest damage output, but impose a -1 AC penalty, which increases with every upgrade (the +2 version at level 10 imposes -3 AC).
Scimitars currently have no special effects.
Short swords currently have no special effects.
Daggers give a +1 bonus to off-hand attacks.
Bows fire repeating projectiles, which makes them remove Stoneskins faster than the melee weapons.
Darts fire repeating projectiles, which makes them remove Stoneskins faster faster than the melee weapons.
What are appropriate ways to make these weapons more interesting?
"Wild, exotic, and as dangerous as her whirling blades, the dervish epitomizes speed, quickness, and abandon. Her motions appear to be as random as they are graceful, but the steps of her lethal dance play out according to their own rhythm."
Other weird kit names I could think of that might fit; Cyclone, Tornado, Twister, Dynamo.
About the kit itself, I think using ie Bala's axe on mages can be quite interesting. Or really any weapon with on-hit effects, ie CF in BG2 with it's stun. I don't really see why the kit should produce it's own weapons though, is that a functional based reason or more of a RP flavour? Dual welding any weapon with on-hit damage effect, ie FoA or similar could produce quite interesting results though I assume the lingering damage from the kit-produced weapons outperform other weapons (except perhaps poison/bleeding).
For BG1, just imagine for a second this kit with Stupifier and the Dagger of Venom.
For BG2, Celestial Fury and Neb's Nasty Cutter.
Let's keep in mind that all of those effects bypasses Stoneskin/Ironskin (that wouldn't last against this kit anyway).
Now picture this with a friendly mage casting Greater Malison or a friendly cleric casting Doom on the kit's target. Or both.
That makes this kit really powerful.
Adjatha the Drinker +2 -> HP on hit, so many hits = many HP which isn't based on the damage you do.
Jhor the bleeder -> Bleeding, combined with a poison weapon (ie Neb's) I guess it could quite effectively shut down mages.
Apparently @semiticgod likes to do that. Look at what he did with the Seducer kit!
If I may suggest: create a NPC and pack this kit on it.
Good points about Celestial Fury and Jhor the Bleeder. At level 15, the kit could dual-wield both for a total of 9 APR, while a regular fighter could only hit 8 APR with Improved Haste active. That's a major advantage when the unkitted fighter is not hasted, but the kit only has a slight advantage when the unkitted fighter has access to Improved Haste, and most parties do have at least one mage in it. Again, the kit does get +0.5 APR every 5 levels, but it also doesn't get the extra 0.5 APR from specialization (available at level 1), level 7, grandmastery (available at level 9), and level 13.
Or take the Flail of Ages, available at (say) level 10. With Belm in the off hand, the kit would have 8 APR with the Flail of Ages, while a regular fighter would have 4 APR with haste active. Earlier in the game, when the party only has access to Haste instead of Improved Haste, the kit's advantage is larger than it is later in the game.
@semiticgod Uh oh, I was actually wrongly thinking that -75% physical damage penalty as only 75% physical damage (or in other words, a -25% damage penalty).
So, for daggers, darts, katanas, scimitars, longswords, staffs, clubs, short bows, and short swords, the kit does an additional 1 damage after 1 second, then another point of damage at levels 4, 8, and 12. In terms of DPS, it's extremely unimpressive, but hitstun can be crippling when it's combined with lots and lots of hits.
Any names besides Fencer and Dervish? I'd like to have more options before I settle on a name.
I think I know how to do it but I need a little bit of time to be able to sit, write and test it.
This actually kind of reminds me of one of the Champion specializations Lord of the Rings Online. I think it was called "Martial Storm"? It was a dual wield build that gives you a lot of attacks per, uh, attack. Though it implemented the attacks in an interesting way. Rather than a lot of individual attacks, the class got aoe damage on melee attacks. So you could swing your weapon once and hit a radius around you, great for mobs. Not suggesting you do this, it just came to mind.
@ThacoBell: Sounds a bit like the Barbarian class from Pillars of Eternity, which did area-effect damage with melee weapons. That's the sort of thing that could easily be implemented in the Infinity Engine; you'd just have to take the same kind of code currently used in this kit from @subtledoctor and then assign a projectile to the right spell file.
Resource [*.spl] not found in KEY file
and
ERROR: Failure("resource [*.spl] not found for 'COPY'")
For reference, this is the code I'm using, which intends to find all .spl files that grant immunity (opcode 120) to magical weapons (parameters 0,1) and immunity to +3 weapons (parameters 3,0), and tack on two opcode 206 effects with USAPR13 and USAPR13D as the resource. The second half is for .itm files.
COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~*.spl~ ~override~ LPF CLONE_EFFECT INT_VAR silent = 1 multi_match = 1 match_opcode = 120 match_parameter1 = 3 match_parameter2 = 0 opcode = 206 STR_VAR resource = ~USAPR13~ END BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~*.spl~ ~override~ LPF CLONE_EFFECT INT_VAR silent = 1 multi_match = 1 match_opcode = 120 match_parameter1 = 3 match_parameter2 = 0 opcode = 206 STR_VAR resource = ~USAPR13D~ END BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~*.spl~ ~override~ LPF CLONE_EFFECT INT_VAR silent = 1 multi_match = 1 match_opcode = 120 match_parameter1 = 0 match_parameter2 = 1 opcode = 206 STR_VAR resource = ~USAPR13~ END BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~*.spl~ ~override~ LPF CLONE_EFFECT INT_VAR silent = 1 multi_match = 1 match_opcode = 120 match_parameter1 = 0 match_parameter2 = 1 opcode = 206 STR_VAR resource = ~USAPR13D~ END BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES //// COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~*.itm~ ~override~ LPF CLONE_EFFECT INT_VAR silent = 1 multi_match = 1 match_opcode = 120 match_parameter1 = 3 match_parameter2 = 0 opcode = 206 STR_VAR resource = ~USAPR13~ END BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~*.itm~ ~override~ LPF CLONE_EFFECT INT_VAR silent = 1 multi_match = 1 match_opcode = 120 match_parameter1 = 3 match_parameter2 = 0 opcode = 206 STR_VAR resource = ~USAPR13D~ END BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~*.itm~ ~override~ LPF CLONE_EFFECT INT_VAR silent = 1 multi_match = 1 match_opcode = 120 match_parameter1 = 0 match_parameter2 = 1 opcode = 206 STR_VAR resource = ~USAPR13~ END BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~*.itm~ ~override~ LPF CLONE_EFFECT INT_VAR silent = 1 multi_match = 1 match_opcode = 120 match_parameter1 = 0 match_parameter2 = 1 opcode = 206 STR_VAR resource = ~USAPR13D~ END BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGESI love when things get solved without me doing anything.
Immune3.itm
immune4.itm
immune10.itm (I don't think this one is used)
demilich.itm
(people say +3 enchantment isn't enough for ToB - lol)
And if Ascension is installed, check mel01.itm (can't check now).