Bro i have a suggestion, Please add a quest log or menu to track quest, right now there is no way to tell on what quest we are in or what quest we have completed.
Good idea. I've been hoping to do... *something* like that for a while, just got a lot to juggle.
Are there any (planned) traits that reduce the upkeep of the various continuous skills? The only one I've seen is the Geomancy one that only works for earth skills. If memory serves (and boy, it fails often) there used to be a couple traits that did this and Vitality could really use a trait that reduces the upkeep of 'martial' stances, so that a player can use more than one consistently.
Just for a bit of context, I'm (still) rolling a SnS tank build. I've picked up the increased mana regen(+0.5), but I can only use a single stance at a time because they (almost) all drain 2 mana every turn which means I have to choose between the stances that let my character tank more/longer and the Intimidate skill which is necessary to draw aggro. I could also run both but then I'm constantly against the clock, which would be way more manageable if I could at least reduce the drain (per skill) to 0.8.
On a second combat note, it's very painful that poison, bleed and various other DoT skills (from my experience) stack damage and duration. It also doesn't seem to get resisted by defence(fair enough) or resistance(a little stranger).
This made it so that Chernobyl's corpse only did single digit damage(block + defence + max Vit) but he'd managed to stack around seventy bleed damage that'd last around a dozen or two turns. The only way to deal with this would be to get the stubborn or healthy traits, which only occasionally decrease the duration for a single turn or slightly reduce the chance that it applies, respectively, or 'spam' rampart to use the -5 turns to any duration thing (it has a base cooldown of 10 turns so it's only really viable for emergency use and I genuinely don't recall the -5 ever applying correctly).
I think it'd be plenty strong if it only stacked duration or if it was separate instances of DoT. It'd also really help if there were traits or something that reduce DoT damage.
I definitely intend to keep playing with how channels work, and changing costs in some cases, but they're already extremely strong in general, and I don't want to encourage running a dozen channels by adding too much stacking upkeep reduction - one or two channels is generally the intended experience. Nothing drains 2 mana a turn, for the record, tho the initial activation cost can be a bitch.
Something I hope to do Soon(tm) is try a max-mana-upkeep based version, where they lower your max mana rather than taking upkeep each turn, as well as adding a few more ways to increase max mana. So you can invest more into them if you want, but without too much upkeep reduction since that tends to get out of hand.
As has already been discussed here a little, different types of DoT scale differently. As a general rule of thumb, Poison is max HP% damage, Bleed is weaker but stacks, Burn is stronger but doesn't stack - though certain abilities and traits can let Burn stack or make Bleed stronger. All buffs/debuffs work the same duration-wise (it stacks, strongest one takes precedent if not stacking), so that much is intended behavior.
Adding DoT resistance traits/passives is a great idea, and something I could definitely do. It would be nice to play into it more. I could see some more abilities to counter it as well maybe?
re: traits to help with upkeep costs, you already mentioned Winds of Magic (+0.5 mana per turn) and Continuance (channeled Earth spells cost 0.1 less per turn). there's also Sorcery Manaflux (which increases mana regen by 0.2 per turn if you're wearing robes), Mistral Flow (which reduces channeled Aeromancy costs by 0.1, similar to Continuance), Emerald Stream (reduces cost of channeled Wind spells by 0.1 if mana blade equipped), Ritual Efficiency (reduces by 0.1 if athame equipped), and Channeling (reduces all channel costs by 0.1 per turn). it doesn't sound like most of those will be helpful to you if you're going sword and board tank, though. Channeling will help, and Sorcery Manaflux could if you're willing to change out your armor.
re: DoTs, that is not an issue i remember ever having. admittedly, i haven't had time to play yet this update, and it's been at least two versions since i fought Chernobog, so that could be a new problem since i last fought him. the only times i remember taking more than about 11 or 15 damage from a DoT, it was because the DoT was for a percentage of my max health. Rampart is not the only way to reduce debuff duration; Shared Flow can reduce debuff durations by one turn, and Hygieia removes all temporary debuffs. i'm not sure if "debuffs" includes DoTs, but Rampart says debuffs as well, so i'd guess it does. however, Panacea explicitly removes DoTs. obviously, those are magic, which might not fit your character concept, but Celica has Shared Flow. neither Sarah nor Metatron have Hygieia or Panacea, so you'd have to learn them yourself if you wanted them. (personally, i'm surprised Sarah doesn't learn them, but that's not really relevant.) also, you mentioned the base cooldown of Rampart being long; the trait Flow reduces cooldowns by one turn, and the trait Motion Inflect reduces cooldowns by one turn for every offensive spell cast. further, the ability Invigorate reduces skill cooldowns by two or three for all party members every time it's used.
i do think that a Vitality trait to reduce DoT damage would be interesting. i also think that the basic channels available to everyone with no requirements, including the stances, are a bit weak to have that steep an upkeep cost. the channels available through magic are usually slighly stronger while being half the cost to upkeep. i realize this might be a balance concern; the magic channels are probably cheaper because mages need their mana to attack or heal, so most mages can't realistically have more channels going than non-mages despite the reduced costs. even so, the basic channels feel a bit weak to me.
Beta Siofra is the one time I got cucked by DoTs myself, and she's gotten a few nerfs over time. I got 99 problems, and all of them are stacking Burn lmao.
Sarah will learn more over time, but I didn't want to bloat levelup move lists so much and put a decent bit into their trust scenes - still kinda working out exactly how fast they should pay off admittedly.
As I told zeraligatr, I like the vitality/dot trait stuff.
The basic channels currently are just there so the basic melee guys have something to spend mana on. They are weaker, but require 0 investment and have no mana competition in many melee builds. When I get into the channel rework down the road, they'll probably be normalized with other channels on max mana reserve costs.
My issue/question regarding upkeep was mainly in regard to non-magic based upkeep and whether non-magic based characters can/will reduce this upkeep, it seems a bit odd for a barbarian or monk style character to need magic to do that. Btw, does Ritual Efficiency even affect upkeep? It only mentions spell cost, I assumed that meant casting cost.
I didn't realize DoT was a percentage of health but that seems like it might explain part of it (still seems weird that my 200-ish health character was taking ~35% damage from it). Mirroring what I said about upkeep, seems weird to need magic to deal with this or needing to have certain party members with you (which also limits trust build up for other characters) just in case an enemy or boss has DoT. I know about reducing cooldowns but getting a ten-turn cooldown low enough to use Rampart as an 'anti-DoT' requires quite an investment in terms of stats and traits, if DoT even counts as a debuff. (And Sarah should definitely get Hygieia/Panacea, she's the dedicated healer of the group.)
Keeping vitality abilities from overshadowing magic could involve health costs for these abilities or to have lower effectiveness (though still allowing non-casters some way of dealing with more situations). The channels feel kinda weak to me, aswell, maybe they'll get mastery like intimidate does?
You're right though, I think that non-mages should have more options to deal with that stuff. Can't promise it'll be immediate, just, confirming that I agree.
you are correct about Ritual Efficiency, it appears i misread it. idk, i don't use athames; i'm more of a mana blade guy. i was just quickly skimming through the traits list.
looking through the DoTs available to players, it seems that poisons usually do a percentage of the target's max hp, while burns and bleeds do a percentage of the user's stats. 35% does seem pretty high, though, so there may still have been some weird stacking issues. i don't know if DoTs count as debuffs; you had mentioned Rampart as an answer to DoTs, so i was assuming they did.
having one or more Vitality-based ability that channel for a percentage of your max hp instead of mana could be really interesting, if it works out to be balanced. not in the greataxe "use hp as a casting cost for this ability" way, but in the "autocast or turn it on whenever you want and it takes hp at the start of your turn and turns off if you don't have enough" way. not sure how nicely it'd play with the several traits/abilities that restore a percentage of your max hp every turn, though; too little cost and it won't overcome the passive regen, too much and anyone without the passive regen won't be able to use it.
HP based channels is an interesting idea as well. I hadn't thought of that. I don't think it would be difficult to set up, though I've said that about many things before and been wrong lmao. Reserving max HP, similar to mana in revamped channels, might be a decent way to balance them.
