Thematic changes to Wildewood/Wyrdenwood skills

edited April 2016 in Ideas
So, I don't know if the general consensus is that the Wildewood attacks are wonderful... but I find them really difficult to reconcile with what I think of as the feel of Serenwilde/Hartstone lore.

The highest possible bashing attack is very little more than squirrels throwing nuts, which may be funny to some but which kind of makes me a bit embarrassed to be using too frequently. I don't even know why I need to wield a garland to get squirrels to throw nuts? Similarly, Treehug feels a bit weird to be using - I get that its a joke skill, but I certainly don't want to be hugging some of the dangerous beasts I'm supposed to be hunting.

Anyway, no point in complaining if you can't offer something better, so I thought I'd take a stab at an alternative flavour to the current Garland bashing attack!

For reference, the current skill is:

WILDEWOOD - GARLAND

       Syntax: TREELIMB GARLAND
               TREELIMB SPRAY <target> [<direction>]
        Power: 10 (Moonhart Mother) (to create)
       Outlay: wood 50 bluebell 100 hornedlily 100 moontear 100
  Damage Type: 50% blunt 50% magic
Can Target Denizens (in room only)

A decorative garland can be tied around some of your branches to create
a devastating weapon, allowing you to attack a nearby or distant foe
with a spray of acorns.

1st person - Elryn turns a baleful gaze upon you, his eaves beginning to rustle with activity. Loud chittering announces a family of squirrels moments before they begin to pick nuts from the neighboring branches to chuck at you. As each one makes contact they break apart into shimmering energy, scourging the area of contact.

2nd person - You turn your baleful gaze on a coruscating wind zephyr, contemplating his transgressions against Nature. Chittering loudly, the family of squirrels dwelling in your eaves take to the branches, pelting a coruscating wind zephyr with your own nuts.

I'd like to suggest the following addition to the skill - leaving the current one in place in case anyone really enjoys using it. Note this would be identical mechanics-wise, just an alternate syntax:

WILDEWOOD WHISPERS <target> <direction>

1st person - You turn a baleful gaze upon Vorjel as an eerie wind rustles your foliage. You start to whisper in the ancient language of trees, invoking the enduring power of memory and stripping away all defences from the painful truths of the past. Vorjel visibly crumples, then violently strikes himself repeatedly in the forehead, leaving terrible bruising. 

2nd person - Elryn turns a baleful gaze upon you as an eerie wind rustles his foliage. You catch fragments of indecipherable whispering at the edge of your hearing before a deep shame wells up inside you, vivid memories of your past regrets overwhelming you and driving you to violently strike yourself in the forehead until they fade. 

3rd person - Elryn turns a baleful gaze upon Vorjel as an eerie wind rustles his foliage. You catch fragments of indecipherable whispering at the edge of your hearing before Vorjel visibly crumples, then violently strikes himself repeatedly in the forehead, leaving terrible bruising.

1st person distance - You turn a baleful gaze to the north as an eerie wind rustles your foliage. You start to whisper in the ancient language of trees, invoking the enduring power of memory and stripping away all defences from the painful truths of the past. A flurry of faeblossom petals and moonhart leaves dislodge from your garland and carry your words on a chill breeze heading towards Vorjel. 

2nd person distance - A flurry of faeblossom petals and moonhart leaves blows in from the south on a chill breeze, carrying fragments of indecipherable whispering at the edge of your hearing. A deep shame wells up inside you, vivid memories of your past regrets overwhelming you and driving you to violently strike yourself in the forehead until they fade.

Could even expand it into a flavour group TELL alternative, if your target is standing in an environment with tree elevation, ie:
WILDEWOOD WHISPER <target> [<target 2> <etc>] WITH <text>

2nd person - An eerie wind rustles the nearby foliage, as the trees whisper to you with the voice of Elryn saying, "Be ready, everyone."

3rd person - An eerie wind rustles the nearby foliage, carrying fragments of indecipherable whispering at the edge of your hearing.

I know it's a bit long, and could be improved upon, but I'd feel so much better using something that felt like a penultimate attack of the Serenwilde itself. Magical, enchanting, hinting at secrets of the past and dangerous - all of which I don't get from a family of squirrels throwing nuts!

I'll see if I can come up with an alternative for Treehug too. Maybe something about encasing a target in strangling roots, which then shatters, potentially breaking bones.

Comments

  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    I can look at passing these suggestions up official channels for review, I'm not actually sure what the best way to do that is, so I'll ask. 

    In general, I think most (if not all) of the Hartstone agree that the Wildewood messages - almost all of them- are on the goofy side, there was a thread on it when they came out. If we got a reasonable concensus among active users, it'd go a long way towards making a case for change. 
  • http://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/816/wildewood/p1
    Found it. I don't think anything was ever done about it?
  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    Nothing was, no. The thread was tied up in other issues that bogged it down, and there certainly wasn't any kind of guild/skill-user consensus on the ideas for new messages! A lot has  changed since then, including (imo) design and envoying philosophy. So it's worth picking the idea back up now!
  • Okay, I'm all for other suggestions too - I'm sure others could come up with some amazing flavour skills! I really love the spore messages, it's only the direct attacks that feel a little... weird to me.

    Anyway - an alternative proposal for Treehug (again, identical mechanically to the existing skill, with the exception of being able to choose whether to spend a resource for limb breakage against players):

    STRANGLEROOT <target> [LIMBS]
    Note: the LIMBS variant has a chance to break your victims bones, but will require a faeblossom to be consumed each time. This means it can actually be used for bashing, yay!

    1st person - You give a flowering garland a quick shake, and a single petal drifts lazily towards Vorjel's feet. Verdant strangling roots snake from the ground where it lands, creeping up his body in the beginnings of a crushing living carapace. With a wrenching effort he breaks free, splintering wood.

    2nd person - Elryn gives a flowering garland a quick shake, a single petal drifting lazing towards your feet. Verdant strangling roots snake from the ground where it lands, creeping up your body in the beginnings of a crushing living carapace. With a wrenching effort you break free, splintering wood.

    1st person break variant - You give a flowering garland a quick shake, and a faeblossom flower drifts lazily towards Vorjel's feet. Verdant strangling roots burst from the ground where it lands, grasping and painfully twisting his right arm in the beginnings of a crushing living carapace. With a wrenching effort he breaks free, splintering wood and bone.

    2nd person break variant - Elryn gives a flowering garland a quick shake, a faeblossom flower drifting lazily towards your feet. Verdant strangling roots burst from the ground where it lands, grasping and twisting your right arm in the beginnings of a crushing living carapace. With a wrenching effort you break free, splintering wood and bone.
  • edited April 2016
    Other things I'd suggest for Wildewood/Wyrdenwood, knowing nothing about the combat implications or current strategies:
    • Use the fact they are their own tree elevation to create synergies with other druids or their passives. For example, TREELIFT <target> [<branchtype>]/TREEKNOCK <target> [<branchtype>], which would shift someone up/down from tree elevation (simultaneously shifting perspective accordingly) optionally using one of their enhanced branches to do so, giving a chance to afflict.
    • Give a penalty if they're in an indoors room - they should be very uncomfortable without a sky to stretch their branches! Ideally they couldn't create their own tree elevation, use the treelift/treeknock skills, plus maybe an ongoing minor health/mana/ego drain.
    • Give them the ability to DEEPROOT, acting like a sentient sapling that prevents their type of druid environment (only) from being altered/melded until they are felled.
    • Change sap to a stacked affliction that causes increasing chance of APPLY commands failing, and also causes escalating balance loss/damage from entering/leaving tree elevation. With enough stacks (lots), let a druid CRYSTALLIZE the sap into amber if in the trees, either locking them in place temporarily and causing damage, or killing them. Also let a W*wood subtract a stack by turning it into enchanted/cursed sap, that has a chance to multiply and spread to any other personal enemies in the room, including back onto the original target.
    • For a noteable power cost, let them open a connection to the Ethereal plane within their canopy as long as they are outdoors (given they are part of the forest which is reflected there), which allows skills by other players to have costs reduced in line with being on the Ethereal plane (eg. Wicca summons), and every 30 seconds or so to shower their location in Ethereal energy, which will have a 20% of laying down druid etherforest/etherwyrd terrain if the location is unmelded and has no illusion/sapling preventing the change, or a 20% chance to grow a random leaf/flower on any W*wood in the room.
  • SiamSiam Whispered Voice
    The first bullet can be accomplished by bonding with the monkey spirit, though it has to be cast from tree elevation. I could see these versions usable from ground->tree elevation though.
    Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"

    #bringShikariback 


  • @Siam - I kind of meant that it would be useable from either elevation depending on where the target was, but the more unique part is being able to trigger one of the passive branch effects at the same time.

    For example, TREELIFT ELRYN WITH MOSSY BRANCHES to bring him to the treetops with a chance of triggering the mossy effect (paralysis). Or TREEKNOCK ELRYN WITH TANGLED BRANCHES to push out of the trees with a chance of entanglement.
  • SiamSiam Whispered Voice
    Ah, this idea is interesting, yes.
    Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"

    #bringShikariback 


  • edited April 2016
    One more flavour change I'd make is around Wildecall, which admittedly isn't *that* bad.

    To give context, I personally really, really dislike the 'neutral forest' description that Serenwilde currently has. I've always felt that organisations do better when they have positive roleplay concepts to build on (eg. the Wyrd, the Light, Art & Science, Freedom & Mysticism, the Taint) as opposed to being defined by what they aren't (Nature that isn't Taint/Wyrd). I'd like to see Serenwilde as the Enchanted Forest - a forestal realm of spirits and magic, dream-like bewitchments and ancient powers. Where Glomdoring is severe, dark and future-focused, Serenwilde is its counterpoint being dreamy, beautiful and past-focused. If anyone has seen the Mists of Avalon, I kind of think that island is a good analogy - a mystical place of collected wisdom and legend, but that deliberately isolates itself from the "real" world, sometimes to the point of being inflexible, slow to react and detrimental to its own survival.

    So anyway, while little critters are nice and all, it doesn't really speak to me of Serenwilde, it seems a lot more like generic (neutral, ugh) nature. How about changing the messages so that the Wildewood is joined by the Music of the Forest, an aura of the song of trees that provides magical effects as it washes over the area? I'd also be inclined to change the mechanics a bit so they are more reactive than random (eg. being struck with poison damage begins to shift the cadence of the music so that the current sapling effect occurs after a given period of time, being hit with mana/ego drain begins to shift the cadence so that the current fawn effect occurs after a period of time, etc).
  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    Kind of a long winded way of saying that I agree and echoing my earlier post about working with ideas incoming. After the context, a little bit of feedback about specific things posted. 

    So, druids and by extension -woods are up for a pretty big overhaul/series of reports to dramatically change the way druids work - primarily to erase the current effect of sap. It's a really complicated situation for a lot of reasons. An idea kind of like the one you've posited for sap has been suggested before, and is one of several ideas that we're going to present to admins preparatory to further development and eventual submitting. A few of your other mechanical suggestions have been previously suggested (like treehug changing the target's elevation or using a variable branch effect), and some of the problems you point out mechanically have been (or will be - once the relevant reports are coded) addressed. There is a general consensus among envoys that woodchems in general need some pretty substantial reworks - mostly buffs, but ones that go along with paring back the unfair and gimmicky mechanics that dominate woodchem design right now. 

    With the upcoming guild overhaul, leaders and long time players in Serenwilde have been talking with each other and admins about the direction of Serenwilde's roleplay, past and future. I very much agree with your sentiments about vague and generic 'nature' focus, with abundant treehuggery. That aspect of Serenwilde isn't something that is going to go away, but I do think that reemphasizing it is the way to go. There have long been drafts of new Hartstone-specific (and blacktalon-specific) druidry cudgels and other such interesting flavour changes floating around, left unimplemented because it didn't make sense from an administrative perspective to change the descriptions without an accompanying mechanical or lore change. The combination of the Guild Overhaul and the very probable Druid rework (if not full overhaul) gives us a really fantastic excuse to meddle with messages and thematics in one fell swoop! 



    Wildewoods aren't functionally their own trees elevation -  a Wildewood out of a tree'd environment can't shift perspective up and people can't climb them. Making them their own tree environment (counting as a wiccan dryad, basically) was considered, but a eventually put aside as causing too many issues. 

    I love the idea of -woods being able to sacrifice movement entirely or in part to provide some kind of room or self-defensive buff. Making rooms unbreakable is the wrong way to go, but a "roots" concept is certainly something that should be pursued. This is where some kind of ticking heal room passive would go! 

    Wildecall is complicated, in that the design demands are pretty specific. Whatever the effect, it needs to come in the form of a hour long defense (That can do offensive things potentially) that scales down in strength some how over the course of that hour. Wildecall currently achieves this by increasing the time that it takes for a new animal to come to the side of the Wildewood. The issue I kind of hinted at earlier comes up here - Wildewoods are a pretty scattered mess, without a central strategy. That makes it hard to get a fix on what direction to go! 


    Later tonight, I'm going to look closer at your suggested messages and polish them up a little for reposting. You're also more than welcome to join the Hartstone combat/ooc channel for more idea mongering and discussion if you'd like. We used to have a wiki for that, but wikispaces changed their policies.


  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    To reiterate, I really like your ideas, particularly the whisper message/concept. Lusternia in general needs more thematic minor mechanical details like that, imo. 

    One of my backpocket ideas for Wildewoods has always been for them to eschew regular armor/robes in favor of barkarmour. Basically, super barkskin with mechanics to replace armor enhancements, allowing for the Wildewood to choose between a few options, transmology style. 
  • edited April 2016
    As a reskin of Wildecall, what about the following:

    Syntax: WILDEWOOD WILDESONG
    Outlay: bluebell 10 hornedlily 10 moontear 10 faeblossom 10
     Power: 5 (Moonhart Mother)

    By releasing a reverberating Wilde call through the forests of the First World, you can become a living manifestation of the Music of the Forest. While exuding this music, you will periodically draw wisps of ethereal energy about your arboreal form that provides a revitalising aura to allies nearby or in your branches, and that also may cause your enemies to falter in their efforts. Note you can only draw at most five wisps about yourself, and all will scatter back to the forest should you make any sudden movement. Wisps will be more quickly drawn to you at the start of your song, taking longer to arrive as the music fades.

    Mechanics-wise, this would be an hour long buff that causes you to accumulate wisp charges every x seconds (with x modified so that it extends by the end of the hour), up to a maximum of five. If you move locations - except for changing tree elevation - all wisps would scatter and you would have to wait for more to accumulate again.

    For each wisp you have, you and allies in your location or in the tree elevation would get a periodic health/mana/ego heal tick, increasing in size based on how many you have. There would also be a chance for a wisp charge to be consumed to cause an enemy movement command to fail (or maybe if that's too strong, a heal command, or something else).

    Essentially, a buff that is useful only if the Wildewood anchors themselves somewhere - becoming useless in mobile combat, but providing a strong support option for rooting in a particular room.

    Messages could be something like:

    Start buff:
    You exhale a deep, melodic note that reverberates in the air, an unearthly music building with an answering cadence from all around.

    +1 wisp:
    Drawn to the ethereal music, a glowing wisp of emerald light drifts towards you and begins to circle your trunk, casting your surroundings in a soft luminescence.

    Heal tick for allies:
    The wisps encircling Elryn's trunk pulse gently, and you are bathed in the revitalising energy of the deep forest.

    Fail tick for enemies:
    As you start to leave, one of the emerald wisps encircling Elryn suddenly breaks away with a flash of kaleidoscopic colour, and you feel compelled to follow. After a few steps the wisp disappears and you somehow find yourself back at the same place you were before, feeling dizzy and disoriented.


    Edit: Alternatively, if 'wisp' is too common a word given the wiccan wisps, they could also be those adorable clicking kodama spirits, as seen in Princess Mononoke. Man, they were cute!
  • Please please please can we have wisps, as described above?  [-O<

    Also, what about an ability that allows Wildewoods and Wyrdenwoods to influence great trees of their respective communes, similar to how Ecologists can influence animals? 

    For example:

    AB WILDEWOOD TREESPEECH
    You now have the ability to communicate directly with the soul of the forest, conversing with your fellow sentient trees to rouse them from their slumber. This allows you to use your Charity or Paranoia influence abilities on any great tree or totem aligned to your commune, with the difficulty of the attempt increasing based on the age of the tree. 

    By explaining the urgent need of the forest's inhabitants using your persuasions of charity, you will be able to beg a tree to produce more power for your commune's nexus upon the next weave. On the other hand, you may warn the trees of the forest's many dangerous enemies by communicating your paranoia, which for a short time will enrage them to the point that they will sap the vitality, will and confidence of any non-commune member who dares to enter their eaves.

    So if you win with Charity, a flag is set that generates an extra couple of power on the next weave, clearing again after that. If you win with Paranoia, the tree causes a very small (flavour?) drain to health/mana/ego on any non-citizen entering the ground/tree elevations.
  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    edited April 2016
    It's a bad idea to affect the power generation of totems any way but down (in exchange for concessions), but we've always been looking for a unique way for Wildewoods to interact with totems/sacred trees that isn't 100% secondary to just carving them like regular druids. 


    EDIT: If major druid changes aren't polished enough to take a real stab at by submission time in a few weeks, I'll report some general Wildewood stuff. Not sure what. 
  • That's cool - I was just trying to think of flavourful outcomes for influence that wouldn't be too significant but still contribute to the feeling of actually helping the forest. Mainly because the two skillsets don't seem to have much utility in them currently.

    If not extra power for the nation, perhaps charity influence could cause a tree to give one of it's seeds/sap, for the -wood to transmute into a single commodity in their trunk or hollow? Although that's not quite as good at giving the impression the -woods are working to empower the forest.
  • I think it's fair to say that all chemwoods need to be reworked. As it stands, outside of a few cheese strategies that might catch people off-guard once, chemwoods are not a threat alone. To me it looks like the design goal was an alternative to melds is was more effective against single targets but being much weaker against groups. The problem is that from what I have experienced and from what I have heard from others, a melder is still much more of a threat against single targets. This comes down to how the skillsets are designed.

    There are five types of skills in these skillsets. The first are general buffs, so we can ignore those for now. Second, each have four passive effects, ranging from damage to to afflictions. In general, these are weaker than what a melder can give. Third, we have reactionaries, which have a chance to proc when the chemwood is hit. The fact that these are so unreliable makes it virtually impossible to take advantage of these afflictions. Fourth, we have chembombs, none of which you should be using when you're alone. From my testing, you will generally be more effective just trying to damage people with the standard attack and keeping your passives up than to use the first three bombs as they pretty low damage for the 5 power + lost of some passives. The fourth bomb cost 10 power and all the passives and will scale in effect depending on the number of afflictions each enemy has from a list of affs that varies for each chemwood. At 0 affs, it does even less damage than the other bombs. At all 5 affs (at least for aerochem vacuum - I'm not sure how it works for ones like wildewood) it does comparable damage to a meldbomb with a significant stun. It's just... good luck sticking those affs on anyone in time for it to explode. Lastly you have the transcendent skills which range from actually being very strong in groups to being... not so good in any situation.

    I think one important thing to note is that while druids and mages both have an instakill (viable or otherwise) in both of their primaries, chemwoods do not have one in either of theirs. This severely limits the kill condition of chemwoods. It's basically... damage, but again, a melder will be more effective at that in most cases.
  • I know this is a fairly old thread, but I just wanted to add a couple more suggestions, in case there is any chance of some thematic changes in the near future. With some very nifty factions coming out this year, I'm a little more interested in coming back to try Wildewood again, particularly if there's hope for a less cringe-worthy bashing attack!

    AB W*WOOD WILDEAVES/WYRDENEAVES
    Syntax: WILDEWOOD CANOPY [WITHDRAW]/WYRDENWOOD CANOPY [WITHDRAW] 
    Requires: Mossy or tangled branches to be grown, 5 hornedlily.

    Using any mossy (tangled) branches you have grown, extend a sheltering canopy interwoven with your other protective boughs over the heads of nearby allies. Any attacks made against those within your verdant (shadowed) eaves also have a chance to dislodge one of your flowering, gossamer or knobbled (deadened, razor or thorn) branches, causing the attacker to be afflicted upon contact. Note you can only maintain your canopy while stationary, and your mossy (tangled) branch effects will only be triggered from attacks upon you and your canopy directly. You will need to withdraw your canopy before you will be able to move again, causing a short balance loss.

    Example: Sounding a deep note from within his arboreal form, Elryn stretches his branches which suddenly bud and blossom with sinuous new growth, forming a verdant canopy around you.

    With a forlorn expression, Elryn draws his branches inwards again, raining leaves and greenish twigs as his canopy falls away.

    [Similar skills in the other chemantic skillsets could involve scattering droplets of sheen onto allies, or setting up smokefields/cloudbanks/fumetrails perhaps?]

    AB W*WOOD RECLAIMATION/EVOLUTION
    Syntax: WILDEWOOD RECLAIM <target>/WYRDENWOOD EVOLVE <target>
    Requires: At least 2 types of spores or leaves active, consumes all spores
    Power: 2

    By concentrating your spores (leaves) and forcing them inside your unfortunate victim, you can cause a spontaneous eruption of renewing life anew (eruption of wyrden potential), connecting them willing or otherwise to the ancient power of the Wilde (to the glorious transformative power of the Wyrd). This will cause a small amount of damage depending on how many types of spores (leaves) you have grown, and if your target is prone and in an area with soft earth, will bury them alive. While the eruption remains on the target, it will cause a small ongoing mental and spiritual drain to be siphoned to yourself, as well as a small health drain if the target is in the treetops or underground. Killing the eruption will end the effect.

    If you are able to grow the eruption to a size that covers most of the target's body, your next reclaimation (evolution) will end your victim's life, returning their essence to the wild woods (transforming their essence into superior wyrden life).

    [So this is a targetted attack that causes your next passive effect cycle to skip, and summons/improves an easily killable mob that follows your target. After 3 improvements, it becomes an instakill.]

    Example: His leaf-shaded eyes flashing with menace, Elryn shakes his boughs and you cough and snort as his pollinated spores drift into your lungs.

    <few seconds later>

    A sudden itching develops deep within your skin as sickly green tendrils snake along your veins. You scream as dozens of tiny leafy shoots bloodily burst out of your body, swelling into a cancerous eruption of plantlife sucking away your very life essence.
    A small eruption of wild plantlife drains away your life energy.

    <repeated application>

    You pale as dozens of new sickly green tendrils expand along your body to painful new areas, and the eruption of plantlife becomes more expansive as it tears open new wounds.
    A dangerous eruption of wild plantlife drains away your life energy.

    Note: there is no affliction (so hopefully won't interfere with the combat reworking in progress) - this is a physical object in the room that anyone can target and kill with a small amount of damage. Hopefully it's balanced out by the fact it disables your passive effects if you try to go for an active kill.

    Skills in the chemantic equivalents could be suspending passive effects to attach an elemental parasite of some kind, but I'm not familiar enough with other mage skills to know what should replace the drain/bury effects.

    Any thoughts?
  • Wilde/Wyrdenwood should take 100% increased damage from cutting-type attacks.
    Email:        el.ni93@hotmail.com
    Discord:    Rey#1460
  • Only if you can CHOP Player WITH AXE to make them lose limbs at random 
    The playa you love to hate
  • Drakius said:
    Only if you can CHOP Player WITH AXE to make them lose limbs at random 
    Approved.
    Email:        el.ni93@hotmail.com
    Discord:    Rey#1460
  • Change all bleed messages to "You ooze x sticky sap from your wounds."
  • Reylari said:
    Wilde/Wyrdenwood should take 100% increased damage from cutting-type attacks.
    They used to be weak to cutting but it was removed with the racial overhaul, if we do can trill and lucidians get their fire weakness back we can have some chicken and pretty statues.
  • Not that it really worries me either way, but I think I could do much more damage to a human with an axe in a short period of time than I could a tree. Seems like a sharp blade would be far more deadly against soft flesh and easily openable veins than solid wood and thousands of capillaries, to me at least.

    Fire, on the other hand... Now there's a weakness that should be readily exploitable. :P
  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    Actually.... trees win out on people with fire too. It's a lot easier to seriously damage something made of living flesh with fire than it is to seriously damage living wood with fire. 
  • Oh well, I'm fine with whatever weakness is deemed appropriate. :)

    Any chance there have been any thematic changes to the bashing abilities of Wildewoods yet? Is there still a pending report on major druid changes, or has that already happened?
  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    So, the thing with purely thematic changes that don't touch the underlying mechanics much (or at all) is that they're really hard to get past administration. Part of the reason is that some administrator wrote those lines and other administrators agreed with them and the general direction of the skillset, so if there isn't any compelling reason to change it... it won't get changed. In the past, verbal or posted requests (that didn't make it to envoy reports) to do things like change druid cudgels to more interesting Stag and Crow cudgels have been shot down for this reason, with the further indication that any pure flavor changes beyond very minor ones would need to be accompanied by an event of some kind to explain the change. For necessary or warranted balance changes this requirement is often waived unless a full rework is required. 

    That said, all of those pure text changes are noticed and kept track of, so if there IS a big skillset change or balance change to affected abilities they sometimes get tacked onto the request for balance changes. 

    Racial resistances and weaknesses were a kind of bad idea, made even worse for a skillset that had no choice of race and just got saddled with (really harsh, actually) racial abilities. They're gone, good riddance. For the most part, the only sources of vulnerabilities left are from user-choice effects (gain vulnerabilities in exchange for benefits) or afflictions that temporarily alter resistances. 


    I like your two ideas for -woods.

     I've always toyed with the idea of a -wood being able to "root" themselves in a room, slowing down their movement and giving them defensive strength by way of summon, damage, and even potentially affliction resistance. Your 'eaves' idea would clinch the choice: either focus the -wood themselves, who will soak up some of your attacks and generally be tough to drop OR suffer their passives if you focus someone else instead. 

  • Okay, another attempt at an alternative syntax for the garland attack. Just summarising the main things I don't like about the current version:
    • The best bashing attack a Wildewood has involves them doing absolutely nothing, while squirrels attack for them. There's not even the sense you ask the squirrels to attack someone. They just... throw nuts.
    • You have to wield your garland of flowers, in order for squirrels to throw nuts. Why? The garland isn't even mentioned in the attack message.
    • Squirrels throwing tiny nuts apparently does more damage than turning someone's skin to bark, or making parts of their flesh melt off into mulch (which is incredibly cool!). Sure, they're magic nuts, but, really?
    I really love so many things about Wildewood (hence all the suggestions!), it's just that I'd love to have a bashing attack message that resonates.

    Anyway, how about the following being added as a second choice for the garland attack (keeping the first one in case anyone really enjoys it):

    TREELIMB CURSE ELRYN
    1st person:
    Several blossoms dislodge from your garland as you whisper in the ancient language of trees. They spin wildly and blur into a floral portal, through which a ghostly [trio of squirrel spirits|pair of owl spirits|doe spirit] emerge and slam into Elryn with supernatural force.

    2nd person:
    Several blossoms dislodge from Elryn's garland as an eerie wind rustles his foliage. The petals spin wildly and blur into a floral portal, through which a ghostly [trio of squirrel spirits|pair of owl spirits|doe spirit] emerge and slam into you with supernatural force.

    3rd person:
    Several blossoms dislodge from Elryn's garland as an eerie wind rustles his foliage. The petals spin wildly and blur into a floral portal, through which a ghostly [trio of squirrel spirits|pair of owl spirits|doe spirit] emerge and slam into Vorjel with supernatural force.

    1st person distance attack:
    Several blossoms dislodge from your garland as you whisper in the ancient language of trees. You curse the name of Vorjel as your tree-spell carries them on a breeze to the south.

    2nd person distance attack:
    Carried on an eerie wind, several petals blow in from the north and begin to spin wildly in the air. They blur into a floral portal, through which a ghostly [trio of squirrel spirits|pair of owl spirits|doe spirit] emerge and slam into you with supernatural force.

    3rd person distance attack, standing with attacker:
    Several blossoms dislodge from Elryn's garland as an eerie wind rustles his foliage. You catch a whispered word at the edge of your hearing before a chill gust carries the petals southwards.

    3rd person distant attack with target:
    Carried on an eerie wind, several petals blow in from the north and begin to spin wildly in the air. They blur into a floral portal, through which a ghostly [trio of squirrel spirits|pair of owl spirits|doe spirit] emerge and slam into Elryn with supernatural force.

    Death message:
    The blow from the final spirit drives Elryn's body inwards, blood burgeoning from the mangled cavity. The unsullied ghost observes his passing sadly, slowly fading away into nothingness.

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