Thursday, 16th June 2016, 13:35 by DracheReborn
I've had the chance to play a few Pakellas characters, and I want to give some feedback.
First, a few thoughts about the design. My vision of Pak is someone who supports the evocation playstyle, meaning that one can play meaningfully with significant investment in Evo skill (even possibly as the highest trained skill). This is a rather narrow vision of a god, comparable to Trog or Vehumet, I think. I would also sidestep for now the (IMO legitimate) question of whether we need the whole evocations system at all, since evocations is basically magic but with a different set of rules. Let's just say I enjoy playing with evokables and would rather see them reformed than removed.
One thing to note is that current evokables vary hugely in quality, from some which are useful for every character to others which are basically early game junk, viz.
Big 3 wands - every character would want and use these, not Evo skill dependent
Digging/disint - great utility that every character would use, not Evo skill dependent
Elemental evokers - at one point so strong that most characters would train up 10-15 Evo and carry multiple copies (but nerfed now I think?)
Rods - with bad rods removed, I think a lot of characters would find it worth training some Evo for these
Evokable Invis/Rage/Blink/Flight - Invis and Rage are strong, but success rate usually doesn't matter so not much Evo skill needed
Box of Beasts/Sack of Spiders/Phantom Mirror - good items, but limited number of uses means not many characters would train Evo just for these
Hex wands - some are useful for specific enemies (spoilery!) enslave/para/confuse/slow are all great effects though, but again limited by number of uses
Damage wands - basically used in early game only, usually for specific enemies like hydras
In my vision of Pak, the god should focus mostly on improving the last 3 items. Specifically, he should let a character use these items more frequently than before, but not necessarily infinite times. And IMO he should do very little, if anything, to improve the other item categories, which are already good as is.
Current evokables have at least 2 big problems that are often cited, which in turn become flaws in Pak. One is that the interface for wands is pretty bad. It's not as bad for other evokables because they stack, but wands don't. If wands are allowed to stack, then they'll become as easy to macro as spells. Since Pak followers would be expected to use wands a lot, this would be a huge quality of life improvement.
The second common criticism is that all evokables are tied to a single skill (Evo) so training just a single skill allows a player access to at least 3 different classes of effects. My proposal is to make all evokables "dual school", i.e. damage items become (Evo/Conj), hex items become (Evo/Hex), summon items become (Evo/Summon). As a side effect, this change would give regular spellcasters a reason to use wands of the same type as their main discipline (e.g. when they run low in MP), which normally doesn't happen now. This is a (small) buff for spellcasters, and a nerf for non-casters who use evokables, but I think the first category could use a buff and the second category could use a nerf anyway. (EDIT: in as far as usage of evokables is concerned)
Ok, finally I'm going to criticize Pak's design itself. On the surface, the god is pretty close to my vision of what he should do. There are certain things though that I would do differently.
1. No MP regen conduct. Mostly what this does is it makes Pak a niche god for heavy armour melee types who don't cast a lot of spells, i.e. the EXACT character type who already benefits greatly from evocables. The potions of magic make some spellcasting still viable, but not very attractive. This just makes an already narrow god even narrower. Just get rid of this aspect IMO.
2. Quick charge - strategic wand charging on DD doesn't work great and it doesn't work great on this god either. I propose that Pak should just gift more wands (effectively, more charges). IMO part of the artificer playstyle is adapting to the consumables you find, and not just infinitely recharging your best items. This change preserves that. If quick charge were to remain, it should only be to tactically recharge a rod.
3. Device surge - as others have pointed out, giving enhancer effect just encourages players to train less Evo than usual. Really, really strange for the Evo god. One idea I really like (sorry forgot by who) is for Surge to fire multiple charges in the same round. This gives higher effect (more damage/summons, more chances to hex) but at higher cost.
4. Evokable gifting - works great IMO if !magic is removed. Should be weighted more towards damage wands (least useful, but can encourage player to spam). Frequency can be tweaked of course.
5. Supercharge - as a one-off I think this is fine. If anything, it can probably be made stronger. EDIT: big 3 wands probably shouldn't be allowed to supercharge
Just my thoughts.
- For this message the author DracheReborn has received thanks: 2
- Sandman25, ydeve