Unique Proposal - Belial

[Tiber]

This is a unique propane servitor that appears late in the game. His weapon is usually a demon weapon, and it always has a brand that Zin hates.

"Once a favored angel of Zin, he grew so prideful that he began to see himself as greater than even Zin, and was cast down as a result. Driven by his hatred, he now lives to destroy everything his creator stands for."

Spells:
Blashemy: Functionally identical to recite, but with different speech.
Enervate: Lowers satiation and can drain stats.
Polymorph Other
Desecrate: The anti-sanctuary. If the player enters this field, he/she can't escape until it expires (it doesn't decay like sanctuary does though). Even teleports only move you somewhere else within the field. It also spawns blood (though this is mostly for flavor unless you have the ignite blood mutation). Sanctuary and descrate cancel each other out. As a slight mercy, there's a cooldown between uses. I was also considering that instead of starting at full size, it starts at radius 1 and increases.

Mostly I think Profane Servitors are enemies that hint at an interesting background, yet little is done with them. Unless you're a Yred worshiper, you pretty much never see them outside the abyss.

[Davion Fuxa]

The thing about Profane Servitors is that they are corrupted angels that now serve the God of Death; this sort of says that Yredelemnul sort of influenced their corruption. I like the idea of having a 'Lucifer' type of Angel in game, but your not really suggesting attributes that fit with Yredelmunul or any of the Evil or Chaotic Gods. I would think this idea would work better if you branched out and made more of a 'Fallen Angel' archetype character. You might even make a religion out of him so that characters can both of the options of killing the Rogue Angel or following his example and gain abilities similar to his and being neutral to him and any other followers of his.

If your stuck on making a Profane Servitor Unique then I would try to tailor a unique that at least somewhat thematically fits within the realm of the God of Death; but I think this would be difficult because he has enough worshipers in game already.

[Tiber]

There's enough enemies and uniques that use straight-up necromancy or other things that are resisted by rN that I didn't want to go that route. Note that I never said that *this* profane servitor actually follows Yred, and even if he did I'd see it more as an arrangement of convenience due to their mutual hatred of Zin than out of any respect for Yred (he considers himself better than gods, remember). And making a god is an entirely different matter than making a monster. His abilities aren't modeled after any evil gods because he's explicitly made to be equal-yet-opposite to a Zin worshiper. I'm not sure I could possibly make him any MORE of a fallen angel to Zin, because his entire ability set is based off what Zin hates.

You're free to not like the proposal, of course, but the design goals behind it do not include making it a Yred-themed unique. And one criticism I was deliberately aiming to avoid is that it's too similar to any existing enemy.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Hnmm, interesting idea. Would Blasphemy have opposite effectiveness as opposed to Recite? Recite is awesome against Chaotic stuff and weakest against ordinary atheists, so perhaps Blasphemy could be the reverse (although perhaps harming Zin followers the most). Could be interesting if, in turn, Recite was more effective than normal on him and using Recite while he was using Blasphemy (or vice versa) would cancel each other out or something.

[nicolae]

An anti-Zin flavored unique would be cool. Are there many uniques who have more than one unique spell/ability, though?

[KoboldLord]

I don't see any major problem with the flavor of the idea; the fact that typical profane servitors are servants of Yredelemnul doesn't mean every such monster must also be. Probably there's somebody who would want to reserve the name for the Lord of a fifth Hell branch to rotate along with the existing four, but such a person should probably code it themselves if they want to see such a thing at any point in the future.

Blasphemy as a reverse-Recite would probably need to be scaled back quite a bit. It's really nasty to monsters, and such an ability used on the player wouldn't be very much fun. Unlike most monster debuffs, you wouldn't be able to equip the right item or block line-of-effect.

Desecrate is the most interesting ability currently in the proposal, but unfortunately it shares too much with the Mesmerize ability of mermaids and siren.

[Tiber]

Hnmm, interesting idea. Would Blasphemy have opposite effectiveness as opposed to Recite? Recite is awesome against Chaotic stuff and weakest against ordinary atheists, so perhaps Blasphemy could be the reverse (although perhaps harming Zin followers the most). Could be interesting if, in turn, Recite was more effective than normal on him and using Recite while he was using Blasphemy (or vice versa) would cancel each other out or something.

I kind of like this actually. I was contemplating undead/demonspawn and/or worshipers of evil gods being more resistant, due to not having virgin ears.

I don't see any major problem with the flavor of the idea; the fact that typical profane servitors are servants of Yredelemnul doesn't mean every such monster must also be. Probably there's somebody who would want to reserve the name for the Lord of a fifth Hell branch to rotate along with the existing four, but such a person should probably code it themselves if they want to see such a thing at any point in the future.

Blasphemy as a reverse-Recite would probably need to be scaled back quite a bit. It's really nasty to monsters, and such an ability used on the player wouldn't be very much fun. Unlike most monster debuffs, you wouldn't be able to equip the right item or block line-of-effect.

Desecrate is the most interesting ability currently in the proposal, but unfortunately it shares too much with the Mesmerize ability of mermaids and siren.

I just liked the name because I was looking for a fallen angel name associated with pride, and this one fit the bill. With blasphemy, I was mostly thinking that A) it's late game, B) it takes three turns and has a breath cooldown, and C) it's blocked by silence. That's not to say it still wouldn't need some nerfing even with all that.

With desecrate, I was having some trouble thinking of the opposite of a place where you can't attack, so the most interesting I could think of is a place where you can't escape. The differences between it and mesmerize are A) it's centered on a certain tile rather than a monster, B) you can move in any direction you like as long as still within the radius of the effect, C) teleporting away won't work, though it may buy you time until desecrate wears off, and D) MR does nothing. Hmm, maybe holy word/cleansing flame could have a chance to break it as well? If you just don't like the current proposed implementation, here are some other possible effects: Everything in the field deals and takes increased damage; all defensive stats are set to 0; randomly generating clouds.

[TwilightPhoenix]

What if Desecrate stayed at the full distance the entire duration and, instead of trapping the player, used a screen, maybe even level, wide effect that's fairly nasty on everything outside of its range?

To give a general idea of what I mean, think of a Scroll of Immolation that damages everything not caught in the explosion.

[roctavian]

As an aside: desecrate seems like a good ability for a slow or immobile enemy at some point earlier in the game.

[njvack]

I like the idea of Desecrate quite a lot -- to make it a little more interesting, it might apply negative slaying and spell anti-enhancer to the player and allies in the field.