[WIP] Priest subclasses revised

[Lamppost in Winter]

Working on a mod to overhaul the Priest subclasses to be more interesting. I know there's already Stardusk's Dynamic Priests mod, which is very cool, but I wanted to make something less extensive that preserved more of the vanilla balance.

The goals for this are a) provide some active gameplay bonus from the Priest subclass, b) allow for some multiclass synergies and c) use the underused Priest keywords more.

I've developed a proof of concept with the Magran subclass, using the Wizard subclass model of keyword Power Level bonuses, a unique passive effect and a recovery penalty for opposing schools.

Priest of Magran now provides:
Bonuses:

• +1 Fire and Punishment Power Levels
• +3 Armour Rating and Concentration for 10 seconds on scoring Hit or Crit with a Punishment or Fire attack (still toying with this duration)

Penalty:

• +15% Recovery with Restoration and Frost abilities

(dunno why the Fire/Punishment condition isn't showing on this, but it does work in gameplay)

This, hopefully, encourages Magranic priests to get up in the action and cast spells in melee and allows some multiclass synergies with melee classes, other casters or classes with Fire attacks, like Paladins.

Attached the gamedatabundle if you want to play around with it.

Still thinking of ideas for the other deities, ideas and feedback welcome!

magran proof of concept.gamedatabundle

Edited July 1, 2019 by Lamppost in Winter

[Lamppost in Winter]

Went a bit wackier for Berath and Wael, might change Magran's as well since the plain +% recovery malus isn't too exciting.

Wael:

Bonuses: +1 to Inspiration, Deception and Illusions Power Levels. On scoring a Hit or Crit against a target with a Mind Affliction, Deception or Illusions Effects, gain +5 seconds to all beneficial effects.
Penalty: Become Shaken and Confused when under the effect of a Perception Inspiration.

 

 

This one needs either multiclassing with Cipher or Wizard or using my extended keywords mod to work, so I may end up just rolling this mod into a larger one. Not married to the malus either but I thought it was appropriate.

Berath:

Bonuses: +1 to Decay and Condemnation Power Levels. On ally death or scoring a kill, +3 to Decay and Condemnation Power Levels for 10 seconds.
Penalty: -20% healing done for 10 seconds on scoring a kill.

Not too sure about this malus either, but other ideas didn't really pan out. Ally death conditional also doesn't show up properly on the ability sheet.

Edited July 4, 2019 by Lamppost in Winter

[Lamppost in Winter]

Eothas:

+1 Power Level to Restoration and Protection.

While under a Protection effect, party members benefit from increased healing and resistance to Resolve Afflictions. This is temporarily suspended (10 seconds) when the Priest of Eothas hits with a Punishment/Condemnation attack.

Skaen:

+1 Power Level to Punishment and Condemnation.

Hitting from Stealth or with a Punishment/Condemnation attack adds a stacking +5% to Action Speed and damage vs targets that are Flanked, have Afflictions or Punishment/Condemnation effects (stacks up to 5 times). This bonus is removed upon killing an enemy or using a Restoration/Inspiration ability.

At the same time, the Priest of Skaen also takes a stacking (up to 5 stacks) -2 to Deflection and -5% to healing received.

Berath:

+1 Power Level to Decay and Condemnation.

Reworked Berath to giving +10 seconds to hostile effects on enemies when scoring a kill on a target with a Decay/Condemnation effect. Allies receive +5 seconds duration to hostile effects when a party member is downed.

Berath may be a little too weak; wanted the Decay/Condemnation conditional so there would be reason to use those keywords but it seems it may be too fiddly. Could change it so any ally kill can trigger it, though somewhat more annoying to implement.

Gaun:

+1 Power Level to Restoration and Inspiration.

Made into a mirror version of Berath. On scoring a kill (with the Priest of Gaun), allies receive +10 seconds to beneficial durations. On a party member being downed, enemies receive +10 seconds to beneficial durations.

Woedica:

+1 Power Level to Punishment and Condemnation.

On being hit, receive a stacking (up to 4) +1 bonus to Punishment and Condemnation Power Levels, as well as a stacking -1 penalty to Inspiration and Protection Power Levels. These effects are cleared when hitting with a Punishment/Condemnation attack.

Magran:

+1 Power Level to Fire and Punishment.

Reworked Magran as well. On scoring a weapon Hit or Crit, receive +3 Armour Rating and Concentration. On scoring a hit with a Fire or Punishment ability, receive a stacking (up to 5) +5% weapon damage bonus.

Using a Restoration, Frost or Water ability removes these benefits and prevents the Priest from gaining them for 10 seconds.

Wael:

+1 Power Level to Inspiration, Deception and Illusions.

Same as before, just changed it so Grazes also trigger the bonus.

 

Just have Rymrgand left to do now. Feel like these will need an additional balance pass. Magran and Eothas, for example, came out with penalties that simply removed their bonus rather than giving more severe disadvantage, but their bonuses are also comparatively less powerful I feel.

May want to redo some of the Keywords as well; Punishment and Condemnation are getting a lot of play, while Inspiration and Restoration not so much (partly due to modding limitations; I haven't been able to set a conditional for "on healed" or "on hitting with a Restoration ability").

Also wanted more cross-class keywords. Don't want to bloat the bonuses too much though, and not all have keywords that naturally slot into the active bonuses.

Could add the Priest keywords to Paladin abilities, which would fit pretty naturally, but not sure they would fit well in other classes. Maybe Chanters since their abilities have enough flavour behind them to work.

[Guest ----]

Some ideas for the effects, just in case:

Berath: Bonus to Restoration spells when an ally is downed (Acceptance of inevitability; and cycles, since you will be reviving them), and graze to hit, hit to crit when the enemy is near death (inevitability) -1PL to Protection

Skaen: The Woedica effect is perfect for Skaen (Building resentment)

Woedica: Hitting with condemnation and punishment gives bonus to PL. Missing with condemnation and punishment gives penalty to PL(Reinforcement of the right of the autority)

Magran: Penetration instead of AR, and action speed instead of weapon damage (consumption, war, firearms)

Edited July 9, 2019 by ----

[Lamppost in Winter]

3 hours ago, Tacano said:

Some ideas for the effects, just in case:

Berath: Bonus to Restoration spells when an ally is downed (Acceptance of inevitability; and cycles, since you will be reviving them), and graze to hit, hit to crit when the enemy is near death (inevitability) -1PL to Protection

Skaen: The Woedica effect is perfect for Skaen (Building resentment)

Woedica: Hitting with condemnation and punishment gives bonus to PL. Missing with condemnation and punishment gives penalty to PL(Reinforcement of the right of the autority)

Magran: Penetration instead of AR, and action speed instead of weapon damage (consumption, war, firearms)

I like the ideas for Berath. Might make the hit to crit conversion specific to Decay/Condemnation effects, or figure out some other way to tie those in. Changing Skaen's effect to Woedica's I might consider too since I'm not too married to Woedica's right now (the idea was to tie into her domains of justice and vengeance), but I like Skaen being a sneak attacker. Still thinking of what else to do wtih Woedica, maybe something to do with Engagement (based on Magistrate's Cudgel)?

 

[Lamppost in Winter]

woedica 2: electric woedaloo

Decided to lean into the idea of authority and loyalty. While under an Inspiration effect, party members benefit from +10 Accuracy vs Punished/Condemned targets and +20 defense against Intellect afflictions. When the Priest of Woedica is knocked out, party members are Interrupted and Confused for 10 seconds (accuracy vs Will).

The bonus could probably use something extra since there's a lot of conditionals there; maybe some kind of retribution effect. Would have used Resistance to Intellect Afflictions but that seemed too powerful considering vanilla abilities that provide it tend to be higher level. I may also see if Eothas' bonus needs a buff and if I can change one of the other subclasses (maybe Wael) to have a similar effect, so there are more classes that emphasise buffing.

The malus was based around the idea of the party members being lost without the Priest's leadership. Not too sure about it; haven't thought of something else yet.

 

Overall, I'm happier with the less powerful bonuses that encourage a certain playstyle and use of keywords, with relatively simple penalties (e.g., Magran, Eothas), more than I am with the more drastic changes. Ideally I'd like all of them to follow as similar model where the bonuses and penalties are more consistent and easier to understand (think of the Helwalker or Streetfighter effects - bonuses that have a fairly logical trade-off).

Edited July 10, 2019 by Lamppost in Winter

[Ophiuchus]

I like. Since these are passives attached to the class, they should work with Deadfire Priest Tweaks (which affect abilities), eh?

[Lamppost in Winter]

1 hour ago, Ophiuchus said:

I like. Since these are passives attached to the class, they should work with Deadfire Priest Tweaks (which affect abilities), eh?

Don't think I've seen that mod, but as long as they don't modify the class passive, should be fine!

[Lamppost in Winter]

Completely reworked Berath.

Berath

Bonus: 
Party wide effect: Heal +30 Health on scoring a kill.

Priest of Berath: When any party member scores a kill, the Priest gains a +50% heal bonus on the next healing ability used.

Penalty:

Party wide effect: -25% healing received when Blooded or Near Death. Can be removed by scoring a kill or healing back up past 50% health.

 

Decided to make Berath all about healing on kills, inspired a bit by the DND Grave Cleric and due to Berathian Priests gaining Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon in PoE1.

So far this is the happiest I've been with this subclass; I think healing on killing fits nicely into the cycle theme. Party members also all gain a bonus, which might be a model I'll try to apply to the rest of the subclasses as well. Concerned the heal on kill might be a touch too strong, especially since it scales with the Priest's Might (Triumph of the Crusaders is +80 per kill, for comparison, while the strongest Pet effect that gives healing per kill is +20).

I can see the penalty being annoying since being on low health is when you want healing to happen, but it's also not too hard to get rid of (either heal up to past 50% or score a kill). Thinking of replacing it with enemies healing on killing a party member.

The healing bonus is also supposed to turn off after using a healing ability, but that conditional isn't actually supported by the game (that I know of), so I  had to use a workaround for that where the bonus turns off ~2.5 seconds after using a Restoration or Rejuvenation ability. Would mean I'd have to add Restoration keywords to other healing abilities (Lay on Hands, Heal Companion, etc.), which I've already done Chanter abilities for a different mod. 

This also doesn't interact with any Keywords, which was a goal with this project, but I may have to drop that, at least for this subclass. Making effects that make sense in theming and gameplay is probably more important than potentially shoehorning Keywords into effects, which I felt I was doing. I could make it so that the heal on kill only applies to targets affected by Decay/Condemnation, but that might feel too finicky.

This also needs a lot of in-text explanation since the procedurally-generated descriptions don't give nearly enough information.

Edited July 14, 2019 by Lamppost in Winter

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

This is a really great idea and I like the idea of building around using specific keywords for Priests who seem to be the most boring of the caster classes. Here's some suggestions 

Wael: A flat increase to all duration would be fitting the theme and less open to abuse than +5 sec beneficial duration on hit, because that seems to be able to completely erase the usefulness of Salvation of Time if you've got consistent ways of causing Mind Afflictions. And I think weakness to perception would be a better malus because it's not a repeat of Tactical Dilemma for a Tactician/Priest of Wael.

Skaen: I think bonus damage and accuracy against sneak attack and wounded targets fits Skaen's lore, maybe increase duration from condemnation under these circumstances as well. For a malus you could reduce the range of spells, emphasizing the need to hit from stealth and targets close to you, which I think also fits Skaen's lore.

Magran: I like your idea for Magran, but I think it'd be interesting to have effects that encouraged alternating weapons and spells, like weapon hits/crits give accuracy and damage with Fire/Punishment/Cleansing spells while spell hits/crits grant penetration with weapons, both can clear on successful hit with relevant attack. Restoration spells can clear this bonus, or even provide a malus to weapons and spells for a short time.

Eothas: Your idea fits very well, but maybe swap Inspiration for Protection and change the malus to reduced accuracy or duration for Punisment and Condemnation.

Gaun: Sort of a hybrid between Eothas and Berath, but making healing more effective near death (and less effective above 50%) to emphasize the rebirth aspect of Gaun and dropping bonus the healing from Eothas.

Rymrgand:  Hits with Condemnation spells increase the duration of hostile effects on foes, like an anti-salvation of time. Restoration spells do the same thing to allies, so you get punished for going against entropy.

[Lamppost in Winter]

3 hours ago, KaineParker said:

 

Rymrgand:  Hits with Condemnation spells increase the duration of hostile effects on foes, like an anti-salvation of time. 

Actually exactly what I did for Rym. "On being hit with a Restoration effect" doesn't appear to be supported, though, still seeing if there's a way I can do that.

Rymrgand:

Bonus: Scoring Hits or Crits with Decay, Frost or Condemnation spells reduces beneficial effects by 5 seconds.
When any party member scores a kill, enemies around the victim receive +10 seconds to hostile effects.

Penalty: Bonuses are suspended for 10 seconds when using a Restoration, Protection or Fire ability.
When an ally is downed, nearby allies receive +10 seconds to hostile effects.

Gaun:

Made Gaun follow the same sort of model as the other gods that deal in death (Berath, Rym)

Bonus: Party members gain +10 seconds to beneficial effects on scoring a kill. 
When any party member scores a kill, the next Plant, Protection or Inspiration effect the Priest of Gaun uses gains +3 Power Level.

Penalty: On downing an ally, enemies gain +10 seconds to beneficial effects.

Can't really think of another penalty for Gaun (at least one that wouldn't be super annoying to implement or play with), so I might see if the current bonuses need to be tuned at all and leave it at that.

Also reworked Berath's bonus from +50% healing done on a party member scoring a kill to healing nearby party members when scoring a Hit or Crit with a Decay or Condemnation spell. 

Also reworked Magran a bit so that party members also gain benefits (ended up a little similar to what you had suggested, @KaineParker )

Magran:

Bonus: On scoring a Hit or Crit with a Fire or Punishment attack, all allies gain bonus Accuracy (+15), Penetration (+2) and Damage (+20%) on their next weapon attack.
On scoring a Hit or Crit with a weapon attack, the Priest of Magran gains +3 Amour Rating and Concentration.

Penalty: Using a Restoration, Frost or Water ability clears these bonuses.
Bonuses are considered Fire effects, so they can be extinguished by Water or Frost attacks.

3 hours ago, KaineParker said:

This is a really great idea and I like the idea of building around using specific keywords for Priests who seem to be the most boring of the caster classes. Here's some suggestions 

Wael: A flat increase to all duration would be fitting the theme and less open to abuse than +5 sec beneficial duration on hit, because that seems to be able to completely erase the usefulness of Salvation of Time if you've got consistent ways of causing Mind Afflictions. And I think weakness to perception would be a better malus because it's not a repeat of Tactical Dilemma for a Tactician/Priest of Wael.

Skaen: I think bonus damage and accuracy against sneak attack and wounded targets fits Skaen's lore, maybe increase duration from condemnation under these circumstances as well. For a malus you could reduce the range of spells, emphasizing the need to hit from stealth and targets close to you, which I think also fits Skaen's lore.

Eothas: Your idea fits very well, but maybe swap Inspiration for Protection and change the malus to reduced accuracy or duration for Punisment and Condemnation.

 

Good point about Wael's malus. I did consider their bonus to be a bit too powerful as well; think I'll completely rework Wael so that there's a party benefit, too.

For Skaen I had planned a bonus for using Condemnation/Punishment spells against Sneak Attack targets and maybe a conditional party-wide Sneak Attack bonus, but haven't got around to doing it yet.

Probably right about Eothas; it could use a real capital-P Penalty, but thinking if the bonus needs to be buffed as well (so far it's the most passive one). I don't want to penalise using Punishment/Condemnation too much for Eothas, though, since a lot of its subclass abilities in the Community Patch use those keywords (which I'm basing this mod on, since the keyword placement in the vanilla game isn't consistent enough to build around).

Edited July 18, 2019 by Lamppost in Winter

[Lamppost in Winter]

Took a long break from making this. As it turns out, making a unique bonuses for 8 subclasses is hard and I understand why they didn't do it!

Decided to go back to basics; focus on keywords and no penalties (often ended up feeling arbitrary).

Berath:

+3 PL on the next Restoration/Rejuvenation ability cast on scoring a hit with a Decay attack. 50% Hit to Crit on Decay attacks against Bloodied or Near Death enemies.

Eothas:

While under an Inspiration or Protection effect, party members benefit from a 25% healing bonus and Resistance to Resolve Afflictions.

Gaun:

+3 PL and 50% Action Speed on the next Protection ability cast on scoring a hit with a Plant attack. 50% Hit to Crit on Plant attacks against Bloodied or Near Death enemies.

Magran:

On scoring a weapon Hit, +10 Accuracy to the next Fire/Punishment attack made, +3 AR and Concentration for 20 seconds. On scoring a Hit with a Fire attack, the party gains +15 accuracy and +2 Penetration on their next weapon attack.

Rymrgand:

+5 seconds hostile effect duration when scoring a Hit with Frost/Decay attacks. Additional -1 AR and -25% Action Speed for 15 seconds if the target has a Constitution Affliction.

Skaen:

+10 Accuracy with Condemnation/Punishment attacks against Sneak Attack targets.

30% damage of Punishment attacks applied as Raw DoT against Sneak Attack targets.

Wael:

Deception/Illusions/Mind attacks Interrupt against Sneak Attack targets.

When missed by an enemy, gain +10 seconds to beneficial effects.

Woedica:

When scoring a Hit with Condemnation/Punishment attack, target is marked. On the next attack against them, marked targets suffer +25% damage and an Interrupt.

Nearby allies have Intellect afflictions cleared when hitting with a Condemnation/Punishment attack.

-

So far much happier with these, pending some tuning. Not too married to Skaen and Rymrgand's right now; might change Rymrgand's back to the design I had before, though it is slightly annoying to implement.

Also running into a strange problem where Rymrgand, Wael and Woedica's bonuses don't work when loading an existing save, or transitioning areas. Has nothing to do with the bonuses themselves; still happens if I just give them an existing effect like Sneak Attack. Will try with a clean override folder and possibly different saves, since I haven't run into this problem before when adding bonuses to them.

Edit: And just found out NPC Priests don't have the subclass passive like I had assumed. I would have to add it manually to the progression tables so that they would also benefit from the passive. Annoying, but also a blessing; I was avoiding doing anything that would require me to append progressiontables so I wouldn't have to do it for the NPC progressiontables, but now that I have to anyway, I might as well explore other options. 

 

Edited November 16, 2019 by Lamppost in Winter

[Constentin Lévine]

When do you think you share your mod ? i enjoy to read your work!

[Lamppost in Winter]

8 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

When do you think you share your mod ? i enjoy to read your work!

Thank you. Hopefully soon, though I will be quite busy in the coming weeks. The big thing left to do is add keywords to a bunch of abilities and status effects, which will take a while.

I've attached the work in progress if you're interested in checking it out. Recommend using the Community Patch Keywords mod. All of them should be working except for Eothas; I need to add keywords to all the statuseffects first for that one. Keep in mind the Rymrgand, Wael and Woedica mods don't like to work with existing characters; use fresh characters for those (or before you recruit Vatnir for the Rymrgand one). Enemy and NPC priests will also not have the bonuses right now.

WIP priest mod.zip

Edited November 16, 2019 by Lamppost in Winter

[Constentin Lévine]

Hello Lamppost, i give you back my opinion on the wael priest ; i really like the idea your deceptions and illusions spells disturb ennemies and coast them a layer of concentration, and cause your illusions buff when then miss you that extend your beneficials effects durations. That do a real influence from the deity for your priest, and a new way to play this one. 

However i found the salavation of time buff on miss too much, and had the impression i was cheating during my test. So i try with the wall of draining self buff statueeffect ID in place of salvation one, and with just one second of extension  on miss, that was very nice to play, just slowly the time when the effects expire. I try also with equip th Ooblit pet , and that was stagnate the timer when you are alone in the melee , so really buffed stuff but you have to keep your eye on the statue list. 

  So I wasnt the wael effigy half god and half priest, or like in vanilla case a cosmetic named priest, but a blessed priest with a real impact from this faith by this way, this is my experience from your mod. 

I didnt try other priest for the moment, but thank you for this great job 

 

[Lamppost in Winter]

7 hours ago, Constentin Lévine said:

Hello Lamppost, i give you back my opinion on the wael priest ; i really like the idea your deceptions and illusions spells disturb ennemies and coast them a layer of concentration, and cause your illusions buff when then miss you that extend your beneficials effects durations. That do a real influence from the deity for your priest, and a new way to play this one. 

However i found the salavation of time buff on miss too much, and had the impression i was cheating during my test. So i try with the wall of draining self buff statueeffect ID in place of salvation one, and with just one second of extension  on miss, that was very nice to play, just slowly the time when the effects expire. I try also with equip th Ooblit pet , and that was stagnate the timer when you are alone in the melee , so really buffed stuff but you have to keep your eye on the statue list. 

  So I wasnt the wael effigy half god and half priest, or like in vanilla case a cosmetic named priest, but a blessed priest with a real impact from this faith by this way, this is my experience from your mod. 

I didnt try other priest for the moment, but thank you for this great job 

 

Cheers! Haven't had a chance to do real balance testing myself, so good to know. I'll try out your suggestion. Might have to test how well it works in turn-based as well. Was also thinking of tuning it down to 5 seconds and having it be a % chance to proc.

Quick updates as well; found a workaround for the Wael, Rym and Woedica bonuses not applying properly, added the bonuses to NPC and enemy priests, and currently working on adding the proper keywords to everything.

Edited November 19, 2019 by Lamppost in Winter

[Lamppost in Winter]

Mod is very close to being release now; just need to do a proper balance pass, clean up the files a bit and try to add text to the new abilities.

Updates:

• Added Priest keywords (Protection, Restoration, Inspiration, Punishment, Condemnation) to Paladin and Chanter abilities. Keywords fit very naturally onto Paladin abilities, so that was a no-brainer. Punishment and Condemnation didn't fit quite as well to Chanters, but added them anyway as Inspiration and Protection fit nicely to them.
  For now, I'm not adding Priest keywords to Druids, Wizards and Ciphers as apart from a few exceptions, their abilities seem a bit too "neutral" for the morally-charged Priest keywords. 
   
• Nerfed Eothas a bit; reduced the aura to 5 meters (Chanter radii are 4 meters for comparison), and separated the heal bonus and the Resolve Affliction Resistance. The heal bonus is now dependent having a Protection effect, while the Resolve Affliction Resistance is dependent on having an Inspiration effect. Did this mainly because there's no way to distinguish the source of effects, and now that I've implemented those keywords for Paladins and Chanters, there'll be a lot of them flying around.
   
• Rymrgand's bonus will now also trigger on Poison attacks.
   
• Removed the Hit-to-Crit effect on Berath and Gaun. Their bonus will now also trigger when a character (whether friendly or hostile) is knocked out.
   
• Nerfed Wael's beneficial effects bonus to a 30% chance to add 5 seconds to beneficial effects on being missed.
   
• Gaun's speed + PL bonus now also applies to Inspiration, since this effect was under-represented in the bonuses.
   
• Buffed Skaen's bleed damage to 50% of damage dealt over 10 seconds.
   
• Removed Illusion keywords from Illusion-self buff attacks (still is on the abilitydata) so Wael doesn't interrupt themself when buffing up.
   
• Made a workaround on Woedica's effect so the debuff wouldn't be immediately triggered and removed when hitting with a spell that does damage.

Still open to feedback on these, but as it stands I'm pretty happy with them, bar some tinkering for balance. Also cheers to MaxQuest and Phenomenum for allowing me the use of the Community Patch keyword files/definitions.

Edited November 23, 2019 by Lamppost in Winter