Lichdom spell retooling.

[Kaed]

For those unaware of the wizard spell called 'lichdom', it essentially makes you a skeleton that is night unkillable, able to respawn an infinite number of times as long as some sort of magical heart item called a phylactery exists. The problem with this, as far as I can tell, is that is it not exactly well-equipped for a station this large.

While it was incredibly frustrating dealing with a lich in the original station, that station was, at least, one in which you could reasonably expect everything to be on one, maybe two levels if you included the asteroid, possibly a third smaller one if you decided to also include the telecomms.

This is not so anymore. Now, it is not only possible to hide your phylactery in places so ass-backwards obscure no one would ever find them...

 

 

But within the very book that contains it, you have the tools to respawn infinitely and return to the station to immediately continue being a shitbag troll.

https://gyazo.com/e9f7fb7f73b3622fb3c0b2932ae2939e

Oh no, I seem to have been killed!

https://gyazo.com/d956b3194e62e3fabfd5d73e24528ea0

It's cool though, I'll just return to my phylactery hidden in a place so isolated no one will ever find it...

https://gyazo.com/6c2826052249b900c13aaab046956d64

Then return to fireballing the station via my recall spell! WHEEE!

Yes, you could very well claim admins exist to moderate cases of extreme trolling like this, but it also works for people who are being blatantly murderous and/or just disruptive. There comes a point in most primary antagonist rounds like wizard or ninja that full on-fighting begins between the security/crew and the antagonist. What this spell does at this current time is basically force this escalation of conflict to either stagnate forever, or continue until everyone who can fight back is dead. If the antagonist is beyond any reasonable chance of being taken out - and believe me, the game at current time does absolutely nothing to convey what is going on with liches; I didn't even know there was a phylactery involved until I did some testing, I thought they just don't die no matter how much you shoot them - then there is nothing you can do except try to ignore them or let them control the flow of the entire round.

I'm going to take a moment here to address something that I feel sure is going to come up in this thread.

I've heard the opinion expressed that lichdom is a great spell because it forces the crew to seek other alternatives besides 'get muh valids', but why exactly should the crew tolerate a clearly evil skeleton monster running around? Why should they treat them like a random visitor, or auditor, or anything except something worthy of fear and revulsion? Telling people that they have no choice but to seek diplomacy doesn't really tend to lead anywhere. It's a rare person that can pull of a 'peace wizard' in a way that is interesting to be around. More often than not they just putter around being a special snowflake and existing in their half-baked idea of why their wizard is here.

There's a reason why in this games inception as a concept these special characters were called 'antagonists'. They were equipped and expected to cause conflict and chaos on the station. We've evolved some since those days, but expecting everyone to just entirely discard conflict because they literally have no other choice except die or play 'extended, plus a wizard' is not an appealing prospect. Because, as far as I'm seeing, this spell isn't being used to advance some sort of gimmick involving being a lich, it's just being used as a free ticket to never die, ancillary to any actual goal they had for the round.

All that being said, I'm not really sure that removing the spell entirely is the best decision. It's not a bad spell, so to speak, but it's tremendously abusable in really obnoxious ways. There is no quality assurance in place for antagonists. They're not whitelisted, and the administrative staff makes no secret of their intentions to never do so. Giving a tool to antagonists this powerful is just going to lead to more rounds where it is functionally impossible to get rid of the wizard and everyone just gets sick of having them around. Perhaps placing some limitations on phylactery use would be good, but I don't really know what you could do to them without nerfing them to the ground. Some method of reliably locating them, and the game conveying that they exist at all, would be good, because the light they give off isn't sufficient anymore to make them easy to locate on this map. Maybe with every revival the liches phylactery becomes more obtrusive, until it can be tracked somehow, if that's even possible between z-levels.

[DatBerry]

my main issue with lichdom is that it is completely out of league with the other schools, why even go any other school when you can become an immortal necromancer with an army of angry skeletons? other than gimmicks and backstories, firepower alone the necromancer school is just not balanced compared to the other schools.

I think a good nerf would be to make the phylactery require power and have it act somewhat like the traitor's powersink, placing it over powered cabled and it requiring power, and with enough effort, you can hide it away from preying eyes unless someone is looking really hard for it. AND/OR everytime the lich is recalled the phylactery causes an abnormal effect much like xenoarch artifacts, everytime they respawn it will either cause an EMP, a fire, a sudden cooling effect etc, that could draw attention to the place it is in, so that lichs will try their best not to have to use it to avoid it getting found.

[Bygonehero]

I didn't even know there was a phylactery involved until I did some testing, I thought they just don't die no matter how much you shoot them - then there is nothing you can do except try to ignore them or let them control the flow of the entire round.

There's a reason why in this games inception as a concept these special characters were called 'antagonists'. They were equipped and expected to cause conflict and chaos on the station. We've evolved some since those days, but expecting everyone to just entirely discard conflict because they literally have no other choice except die or play 'extended, plus a wizard' is not an appealing prospect. Because, as far as I'm seeing, this spell isn't being used to advance some sort of gimmick involving being a lich, it's just being used as a free ticket to never die, ancillary to any actual goal they had for the round.

 

For someone who didn't know how the thing they are mad about even worked, you have a lot of opinions. Are they all well informed or are you basing them entirely on a single round?

 

I've heard the opinion expressed that lichdom is a great spell because it forces the crew to seek other alternatives besides 'get muh valids', but why exactly should the crew tolerate a clearly evil skeleton monster running around? Why should they treat them like a random visitor, or auditor, or anything except something worthy of fear and revulsion?

 

You shouldn't tell people how to roleplay any situation. Situations are good because they can manifest in any number of ways. If you are concerned with the binary aspect of overcoming an unkillable foe, then perhaps you should develop a strategy that doesn't involve killing it.

I can tell you are upset at a wizard lich, but despite all of this I agree that lichdom is too powerful as is, but there's a few ways it can be nerfed without changing the basics of the spell.

First and probably the most important, it should be obvious to anyone who has found the phylactery that it's evil and needs to be destroyed. Sort of like if you hold a cult sword as a non-cultist, it should be immediately known that the phylactery is bad. It should also make itself obvious that it's connected to the wizard somehow. These are to prevent cries of META from the wizard when someone does find their heart. Maybe make the heart repeat whatever the wizard says.

Secondly, I think the intensity of the light should increase after each respawn to further reveal the location of the phylactery and that like vampires, starlight should damage the phylactery to prevent it from being hidden in space.

Lastly, I believe that you shouldn't get your items to come with you when you reform your body as a lich. If you want to have a go between with this, then only magical items go with you when you respawn.

Now onto other matters. The lichdom spell is good because it does force people to not seek valids. Not every antag has to be solvable through conflict, if you feel someone is misusing their powers for trolling you should ahelp. Wizard is also an ongoing development project, so it's obvious that some things are going to be more powerful than others. Lets remove ourselves from the round and its problems and focus on how to make the wizard round-type more fun for everyone.

[Alberyk]

A necromancer has little to no mobility, because mark and recall can be erased via some ways and it is rather obvious, stopping them from returning, the only issue might be corrupted form which I may removed from their book.

Besides, there are some ways to kill liches without destroyed their phylactery. On the topic of the other schools of magic, I am looking into buffing them to make them more powerful.

[Bygonehero]

I think corrupted form is fine, but it should cost more and be a robed spell, its easily one of the most powerful spells as far as utility goes, it should get a higher cost/robe requirement to offset that.

[Kaed]

You shouldn't tell people how to roleplay any situation. Situations are good because they can manifest in any number of ways. If you are concerned with the binary aspect of overcoming an unkillable foe, then perhaps you should develop a strategy that doesn't involve killing it.

 

Except, you're telling me how to roleplay right now. I don't like antagonists who come onto the station to try and wander around not causing conflict and just pretending to be a special snowflake. I don't think it's in any way reasonable for a sophisticated, private workstation to permit unknown visitors with unknown technology to show up and be cheeky to the people in command, then just allow them to walk off and do as they please.

I don't think antagonists should all die, but I think it is entirely unreasonable for any antagonist to expect just to be treated with kid gloves and his or her 'gimmick' respected, just because they want it do. Especially when it's poorly thought out and/or doesn't make any logical sense. As the spellbook appears to be is right now, the only way to disable wizard as a threat the wizard indefinitely is to shoot off his feet or otherwise leave him unable to move, but that doesn't even work because

-They can still fireball constantly while unable to stand

-They can still use Corrupt form to run off

Which means, as far as I can tell, that you are demanding people sit down and negotiate with the dangerous lichwizard. Even if they did that, and gave him what he wanted, he's still on the station. He can't leave during the round. And he can decide, at any time, to start (or resume) being hostile to the crew, if he wants to. And you're right back to trying in vain to kill him, if that happens. Especially if the wizard attempts to murder anyone who opposes him. It's completely unreasonable for you to expect security to just tolerate an entity on board the station who is harming people so consistently.

I could maybe see a case for telling people to chill the fuck out who just rabidly attempt to murder the wizard over and over while said wizard largely just tells them to stop it and respawns with a sigh of exasperation, but they don't tend to do that. The almost universally respond with deadly force when attacked, like a normal bad guy.

I'll acknowledge we seem to have different expectations from a round, but that doesn't mean either of them are wrong, so telling me to 'seek an alternative' isn't really a solution, it's just a demand to play how you want to play.

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That aside, I'm glad we at least agree that the lichdom spell needs some retooling. According to a talk I had with Lohikar, there are currently only two ways to destroy a phylactery - using a null rod on it, or somehow deleting it, such as by putting it in a deconstructive analyzer. So, it doesn't seem to have 'health' at this time in the first place, that could be damaged by starlight. Also, most of the asteroid is dark and outside of starlight, so that doesn't super solve the problem.

I think perhaps giving a cooldown of several minutes on respawning from the phylactery would be reasonable too. In the sense that if you die too often, you have to wait a period to use Dark Resurrection. This would allow people to actually retrieve your corpse temporarily if you wizard-rush them too often, and punish you for relying too much on your immortality rather than other skills you might have.

[Bygonehero]

You shouldn't tell people how to roleplay any situation. Situations are good because they can manifest in any number of ways. If you are concerned with the binary aspect of overcoming an unkillable foe, then perhaps you should develop a strategy that doesn't involve killing it.

 

Except, you're telling me how to roleplay right now. I don't like antagonists who come onto the station to try and wander around not causing conflict and just pretending to be a special snowflake. I don't think it's in any way reasonable for a sophisticated, private workstation to permit unknown visitors with unknown technology to show up and be cheeky to the people in command, then just allow them to walk off and do as they please.

I don't think antagonists should all die, but I think it is entirely unreasonable for any antagonist to expect just to be treated with kid gloves and his or her 'gimmick' respected, just because they want it do. Especially when it's poorly thought out and/or doesn't make any logical sense. As the spellbook appears to be is right now, the only way to disable wizard as a threat the wizard indefinitely is to shoot off his feet or otherwise leave him unable to move, but that doesn't even work because

-They can still fireball constantly while unable to stand

-They can still use Corrupt form to run off

Which means, as far as I can tell, that you are demanding people sit down and negotiate with the dangerous lichwizard. Even if they did that, and gave him what he wanted, he's still on the station. He can't leave during the round. And he can decide, at any time, to start (or resume) being hostile to the crew, if he wants to. And you're right back to trying in vain to kill him, if that happens. Especially if the wizard attempts to murder anyone who opposes him. It's completely unreasonable for you to expect security to just tolerate an entity on board the station who is harming people so consistently.

I could maybe see a case for telling people to chill the fuck out who just rabidly attempt to murder the wizard over and over while said wizard largely just tells them to stop it and respawns with a sigh of exasperation, but they don't tend to do that. The almost universally respond with deadly force when attacked, like a normal bad guy.

I'll acknowledge we seem to have different expectations from a round, but that doesn't mean either of them are wrong, so telling me to 'seek an alternative' isn't really a solution, it's just a demand to play how you want to play.

-----------------

 

 

Na man, I never told you to do anything other than highlighting the logic in that if killing something isn't working, maybe another solution should be looked into. Putting words in my mouth is silly. If you want to rant over your round fine, but don't do it in a suggestion thread.

[Scheveningen]

Hey, Kaed? How is playing the game in an effective way as an antagonist "trolling"?

That aside, liches aren't immune to pain and there are ways to cripple their ability to do pretty much anything. Applying stuns, a straitjacket and a muzzle and throwing them into an isolation cell will completely disable them for the rest of the round. After which, you can blow them up with a sufficient yield bomb and deny their ability to return to their phylactery.

I get you have a very anti-antagonist viewpoint on how roleplay should be, but honestly people seem to prefer to just allow the antag to powergame them to death rather than fighting back in a smart capacity. It's fine, for now, perhaps the phylactery needs to be rooted in a single place that can be detected through the xenoarch scanner or through a pinpointer.

[Arrow768]

I like the idea of making it detectable via the xenoarch scanner / the pinpointer.

It might also be a possibility to scale the time to respawn with the time since their last death:

last death less than 5 minutes ago: 10 minutes respawn time

last death less than 10 minutes ago: 5 minutes respawn time

more than 10 minutes ago: 2 minutes respawn time

[Kaed]

Hey, Kaed? How is playing the game in an effective way as an antagonist "trolling"?

That aside, liches aren't immune to pain and there are ways to cripple their ability to do pretty much anything. Applying stuns, a straitjacket and a muzzle and throwing them into an isolation cell will completely disable them for the rest of the round. After which, you can blow them up with a sufficient yield bomb and deny their ability to return to their phylactery.

I get you have a very anti-antagonist viewpoint on how roleplay should be, but honestly people seem to prefer to just allow the antag to powergame them to death rather than fighting back in a smart capacity. It's fine, for now, perhaps the phylactery needs to be rooted in a single place that can be detected through the xenoarch scanner or through a pinpointer.

 

I don't really think say, chopping off all their arms and legs and throwing them in a hole is a thing that should ever be considered a viable solution for dealing with problems on a roleplaying server. You might as well advocate for straitjacketing and muzzling every lich. There's no fun or even roleplay to be had in lying helpless on the floor in a dark room with no way to ever escape. Even being dead provides more player interest in the round goings on than that.

I'm also not sure what statistical pool you're drawing from when you make this (at least to me) absurd hasty generalization that 'people seem to prefer to just allow the antag to powergame them to death rather than fighting back in a smart capacity'. I certainly don't think that, and while I can't prove otherwise, I refuse to believe that every person on this server aside from me feels the way you claim they do. A lot of people more likely don't know what mechanics are being used by the antagonist, because they don't, IC or OOC, understand how to beat them.

This is turning into a bickering thread more than anything, though, so I will acknowledge you have a good idea in the bit about rooting the phylactery. I think it should be something the lich has to set up to use. The heart should have to be rooted to a spot, making it float in the air and glow ominiously within a field of dark energy or something, for you to use it for a dark resurrection. Maybe even emote to nearby people about feeling chills down their spine and dark whispers.

If it's not been set up, and is just a random object, you can't use it to revive at. The 'set up' format should be like a destructible structure that turns back into the regular heart item if hit or shot enough. It should also not be something you can hide in a locker, it's a visible structure that can't fit in containers. It should show up on some kind of scanner when active, maybe the anomaly scanner.

The heart itself should probably remain difficult to destroy, requiring the chaplain to null rod it or something. That way the lich can theoretically retrieve his phylactery if it's taken.

[sonicgotnuked]

Except, you're telling me how to roleplay right now. I don't like antagonists who come onto the station to try and wander around not causing conflict and just pretending to be a special snowflake. I don't think it's in any way reasonable for a sophisticated, private workstation to permit unknown visitors with unknown technology to show up and be cheeky to the people in command, then just allow them to walk off and do as they please.

 

This just seems valid hunty, keeping the wizard or ninja or whatever denied access and talking to command the whole time does not make the round more enjoyable and it does not add more conflict when you have security chase after them every single time they are out of your view, sometimes we get peace wiz, just a thing that happens... ehh- I just felt like pointing that out.

Secondly, my main point is you can just drag them to the crematory and the fire balls usually travels only one direction while they are down so use your click drag skills and keep out of their direction they are shooting the fire ball.

[nodnodnod]

I like the idea of making it detectable via the xenoarch scanner / the pinpointer.

It might also be a possibility to scale the time to respawn with the time since their last death:

last death less than 5 minutes ago: 10 minutes respawn time

last death less than 10 minutes ago: 5 minutes respawn time

more than 10 minutes ago: 2 minutes respawn time

 

Not a terrible idea, actually. Perhaps every time he respawns, it gets easier to detect where he's storying his phylactery, as well?

[Alberyk]

New changes: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/3292

-reduced the mobility of the necromancer school by removing the corrupt form jaunt

-increased the price of raise dead to two points to make the lich and raise dead combo less powerful

-added a chance of creating a central command report everytime the lich is send back to his heart, so, hidding and keeping the phylactery is not an easy job, and gives a chance for the crew to find out how the wizard is returning back to life