Skald spells feedback

[Scrotar]

Overall, good job. Quality design. They could use a tweak or two though.

Infusion- Seems fine. But I can't be sure without access to numbers (no wiki on it)
Shroud- Fine.
Regen- Fine.
Song of slaying- Only one suggestion. Make it last about twice as long or keep the accrued slaying bonuses when renewed. It should at least be able to last a mid to long duration battle- losing the bonus during a fight where it would otherwise fill it's niche effectively is lame and would not be unbalanced otherwise.
Spectral weapon- Seems fine. Do the weapon brands work for the summon? IE, freezing freezes, protection gives higher DV. It would be nice if the summon was created on the side of a corridor with enemies on it, rather than behind you (useless in corridors currently).
Song of shielding- Sorry to say but this needs to be reworked entirely. There is literally nothing right about this spell. Casting it is actually more harmful than helpful pretty much all of the time. A mid range monster will entirely deplete your mana in a handful of rounds and thus prevent you from casting the multiple other skald spells that are useful. Even in a very cornercase scenario of pure survival, regen is better to cast 90% of the time. Even in the .5% of the time where the spell would be useful, it is way overcosted. It would be fine as a random marginally useful cantrip, but as a level primary skald spell it's just ridiculously, ridiculously bad- don't even try to justify it.

Suggestion on a rework for song of shielding- Make it synergistic with Shroud and have it reduce by half damage from attacks with an increasing likelihood corresponding to the decreasing likelihood of Shroud and give the spell either a short duration, set charges (a la Slaying, flavor here) or have it reduce mana (skald is already extremely mana intensive for tough fights, though). Keep name as is if charges are used to fit the song/charge theme or change name to Golubria's x (mantle?) If used with duration to fit said theme, if mana depletion is used, perhaps Spirit armor?

[Siegurt]

Infusion does 2+spellpower/25 extra damage, max power 100 (So 6 damage max, about same average damage/hit as electricity brand)

Personally, I'd make it have a lower power cap, and a smaller divisor (So you get to max spell power a little sooner) 100 spell power for a level 1 spell is a long way to travel, particularly since it saps your mana every turn.

I also think the mana sap is a little hard to manage at very low level, Personally I'd give it a chance of sapping your mana commensurate with the actual damage (so at max damage 100%, if you only do 2 damage, maybe 33%) This would make it easier to use at low level without making it significantly more powerful.

[qoala]

Song of slaying- Only one suggestion. Make it last about twice as long or keep the accrued slaying bonuses when renewed. It should at least be able to last a mid to long duration battle- losing the bonus during a fight where it would otherwise fill it's niche effectively is lame and would not be unbalanced otherwise.
Spectral weapon- Seems fine. Do the weapon brands work for the summon? IE, freezing freezes, protection gives higher DV. It would be nice if the summon was created on the side of a corridor with enemies on it, rather than behind you (useless in corridors currently).

Well the duration of song of slaying is spell power dependent. When you first get it online, it won't last through a yak pak (at the rate you'll be killing yaks at the time), but it improves as you train more charms as well as just get better at killing things faster (because the fight lasts less time). We're trying to encourage actually training charms beyond the point where you have your desired spells castable. Having it reset on recast is intended, so that you can't simply extend a good bonus (otherwise, you'd want to recast it constantly to maintain a continuous large bonus). One of my early test characters (HOSk^Oka) was able to run through a big kobold pak, a yak pack, and a centaur pack all on the same song shortly after leaving lair, and I don't think we've touched its duration since then.

Spectral weapon does get the brand as if it were a monster, though it seems that tukima's dance and spectral weapon currently ignore protection (and probably evasion too, if only it were possible to get an evasion melee weapon). I suspect their custom stats code overwrites the weapon's benefit by accident. Otherwise brands should work normally. Speed-brand will still attack with you, so only gets its benefit indirectly, though it's still stuck at the monster speed cap of 30 (if you're attacking at or below 0.3 turns). I'll add fixing animated protection to my todo list.

Infusion does 2+spellpower/25 extra damage, max power 100 (So 6 damage max, about same average damage/hit as electricity brand)

Personally, I'd make it have a lower power cap, and a smaller divisor (So you get to max spell power a little sooner) 100 spell power for a level 1 spell is a long way to travel, particularly since it saps your mana every turn.

I also think the mana sap is a little hard to manage at very low level, Personally I'd give it a chance of sapping your mana commensurate with the actual damage (so at max damage 100%, if you only do 2 damage, maybe 33%) This would make it easier to use at low level without making it significantly more powerful.

It actually has a power cap of 50, so 4 damage max (Since it's not rolled, approximately equivalent to a +0,+8 ring at max power, or a +0,+4 ring at no power).

Given that the mana drain is the only indication that it's working (I'm not sure I like the alternative of message spam), I'm hesitant to make it randomly take mana only sometimes. It's looking like I might be in the minority, but I've found tactical relevance in how few infused hits an early character gets. You only put up infusion for a dangerous target, and hope to kill it with what you do get. Otherwise, you're just a normal melee character. You're a melee character first, and a spellcaster second. You have a small trick you can use for some extra damage once during a fight.
But yes, it currently is too weak early for how strong it is late on a level 1 spell. Whether that means making it a higher level spell and buffing its early usage, or finding a way to nerf it late, something will end up changing.

Thanks everyone for the feedback!

[mumra]

I suspect their custom stats code overwrites the weapon's benefit by accident.

If you used ghost_demon to set ac/ev then I think it *should* be compatible with weapon brands (if not then it'd be good to fix this certainly).

[ZoFy]

Song of slaying- Only one suggestion. Make it last about twice as long or keep the accrued slaying bonuses when renewed. It should at least be able to last a mid to long duration battle- losing the bonus during a fight where it would otherwise fill it's niche effectively is lame and would not be unbalanced otherwise.

Well, keeping the bonus on renewal would basically mean giving free +5/+5 slaying bonus to any melee char who recasts the spell, which sounds OP. I'd rather suggest increasing the song's duration on each kill.
Also, i was somewhat surprised about Song of Slaying giving its bonus even to highly enchanted weapons. So, not only low-level Skalds can use this spell to their advantage but all the melee hybrids if they are okay with 12 noise it makes (the same amount shouting does). I'm not sure on whether it's balanced or not. The same doubt can be applied to Infusion.

[crate]

It's looking like I might be in the minority, but I've found tactical relevance in how few infused hits an early character gets.

This is kind of interesting yes but it very quickly goes away and just becomes a slotless ring of slaying

[Siegurt]

It actually has a power cap of 50, so 4 damage max (Since it's not rolled, approximately equivalent to a +0,+8 ring at max power, or a +0,+4 ring at no power).

Given that the mana drain is the only indication that it's working (I'm not sure I like the alternative of message spam), I'm hesitant to make it randomly take mana only sometimes. It's looking like I might be in the minority, but I've found tactical relevance in how few infused hits an early character gets. You only put up infusion for a dangerous target, and hope to kill it with what you do get. Otherwise, you're just a normal melee character. You're a melee character first, and a spellcaster second. You have a small trick you can use for some extra damage once during a fight.
But yes, it currently is too weak early for how strong it is late on a level 1 spell. Whether that means making it a higher level spell and buffing its early usage, or finding a way to nerf it late, something will end up changing.

Thanks everyone for the feedback!

Whoops looks like I miscounted the number of pips
I personally would love some sort of message spam, I mean we get feedback for brands, after all..
The easiest thing I can think of to make it not as good later would be to subtract d(target's AC) from it.
You'd likely want to increase the upper end damage slightly to compensate, or double the amount, and roll it (So you'd get the same average, but be able to push damage through high AC on rare occasions)

[Igxfl]

As it currently stands, I see few reasons why a non-Troglodyte weapon-user at any stage of the game wouldn't want to learn both Infusion and Song of Slaying and cast them all the time.

[crate]

well song of slaying the reason you dont use it is it is basically always worse having it active than not

but you are right about infusion!

[Siegurt]

Infusion sucks away your MP which might be better spent on some other spell, it's *mostly* good, and so unless you have other spells to cast during combat it's probably a good "always up" spell, but if you need MP for an escape option or rebuffing or something, you might want to skip it (There's no way to cancel it)

Song of slaying causes a big old heap of noise, drawing everything in earshot to you, it's like shouting every turn. Using it all the time would be very likely to get you overwhelmed and dead.

It *is* useful if you've already got a passel of trouble following you around, *and* you draw that heap of baddies far away from all the black, *and* they are the type of thing that getting a few points of slaying bonus would help you kill things more quickly and more safely. Of course that often firmly falls in the category of "don't get in that situation in the first place" but you know.

[Igxfl]

Ah, I didn't catch the noise part. Infusion remains really good despite the mana cost, though.

[DracheReborn]

Infusion sucks away your MP which might be better spent on some other spell, it's *mostly* good, and so unless you have other spells to cast during combat it's probably a good "always up" spell, but if you need MP for an escape option or rebuffing or something, you might want to skip it (There's no way to cancel it)

I'm surprised that people keep Infusion up on higher level characters. The MP drain is a big deal to me, and as you point out there's no way to cancel it or making it selective. So keeping it up means either resting a lot after killing bunches of popcorn, or exploring with half or less MP.

I found the old War Chants book on a recent Skald I tried, and immediately Fire Brand/Freeze Brand replaced Infusion as my go to spell for extra damage. Infusion is great on early Skalds that don't have a better use for mana (but I agree that it could be improved further), but once you can use a big weapon, the old brand spells are better. And yes, I know that Infusion stacks, but once I found the brand spells I'd use Infusion only for really tough enemies, because of the MP drain.

Song of slaying causes a big old heap of noise, drawing everything in earshot to you, it's like shouting every turn. Using it all the time would be very likely to get you overwhelmed and dead.

I've found Song of Slaying most useful against pack enemies likes yaks or ugly things that you can probably take one on one with good tactics and a lot of tedium. But yeah it seems dangerous to use all the time.

Spectral weapon does seem improved, and maybe even a little too powerful. It now basically doubles your damage doesn't it? Seems that way to me anyway. At least, my spectral +5,+6 branded great mace kills stuff pretty fast. Early on it got destroyed a lot, but maybe that was before the patch.

[pickled_heretic]

My take with OgSk.

Infusion seems fine. I always use it, and it does feel like it really helps in the early game. I never really have a problem with running out of mana.

Song of slaying and shielding are both seemingly worthless, for different reasons. I never notice the bonus for slaying, and the times when I want to buff myself are not when I am killing piles of trash but rather when I am fighting something tough.

Shielding is ridiculous. Now the mana drain for infusion is not so bad, but shielding is pretty much guaranteed 0 mana in one turn and then you are left much worse than where you started. Cast it once to find out how bad it is and immediately amnesia it.

Spectral weapon is hilarious. I love seeing what kind of mob or unique I can kill in one swing next, it's like dual wielding GSCs. I try to keep it up in pretty much any fight that is not completely trivial, and it is almost always worth recasting if it dies. It feels a bit overpowered, but maybe it is a special case for ogres.