[REQ] Non-fire attacks for an evil fire wizard...

[Thothie]

So, imagine for a moment, you're an evil fire wizard NPC, final boss on a middle-high end fire map...

Nearly all the players you encounter are going to be immune to fire, through some combination of items or potions...

What do?

(That's right, now the NPCs want suggestions from the players...)

 

[Stoned]

He's a wizard aint he? Give him some sort of mana blast.

Something like this:

 

[FER]

Explosive attacks which deal small fire damage and high physical damage?

 

[Age]

He obviously needs to use blizzard wildly.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

you could perhaps make some of his attacks deal physical damage with an added burn DOT. Maybe bombarding players with flaming hot meteors would do the trick? He could also summon strong Efreets or fire djinns. There is also no reason why he should only be able to use fire attacks. Maybe give him a version of the Torkalath apprentice shield thing so he isn't easy to melee ?

 

[Stoned]

IF the players are going to be immune to fire damage in every way possible through pots or items, then what's the point of making him fire based? Seriously. I realize that some players wont have fire immune or resist pots on them and will still run the map..so I guess it isn't entirely pointless. How about giving him the ability to nullify all enchantments? The exception would be items that have a natural resistance to fire.

 

[zeus9860]

Wouldn't it work out if you managed to make a spell similiar to hollow/cold one (the homing ball) that dealt non elemental damage on impact and fire dot? Maybe give him 1 or 2 dark spells aswell?

Small suggestions:
-There is this one ability the novablade bandit leader uses which i would like to see used more often, some sort of huge rock that is slowly projected at players, perhaps use this for this boss with some adjustments?
-New type of projectile boulders (the ones the stone guardians/maldora use) with a new fiery look... make it physical impact damage, explode on impact, leaving a fire dot...
-Eye lazor anyone? :roll:

If he were to become fire and ice only, it would still be too easy... so i say something along the lines of fire + dark + magic damage (odds of using fire spells are possibly higher than the other 2 types of damage since he is a fire wizard afterall), and by magic damage i mean the type of damage the torkalath apprentice uses (if im not mistaking).

@Stoned if that mana blast involves taking away player's mana on hit and insta kill when out of mana, inb4 he becomes another hax type of boss added to the list, which is extremelly annoying (hollow one is a good example for this) >_>

EDIT:

@Stoned again, if he were to remove all enchantments like you said, *poof* there goes the reason for high levels to solo a new hard map because im pretty sure he would just put everyone back into their graves without much of a fight. And i'm against that fyi.

@Oyster, i'm ok with the summoning, though summoning fire djinns/efreet is getting rather old aswell... needs improvement on that. I sort of agree with the shield thing, i would agree completly if this would be a barrier that wouldn't cause overflowing issues like the one the tork elf does. It's annoying when you are getting hit alot, constantly pushed back and also dealing lots of damage to the enemy... too much stuff going at the same time = overflow.

 

[Keldorn]

No point in making monsters deal "dark", "magic", or other special damage types, since players do not have varied non-elemental damage resistance items, so they'd deal the same damage as a regular physical attack. As other people have said, attacks with a generic physical damage component would work, or combinations of fire with less commonly resisted elements.

You could make attacks hit with two or more damage packets (as in Holy Lance, Golden Axe) except with differing damage types if adding a fire DoT doesn't fit the flavor of the attack. Some sort of debuff spell that temporarily decreases resistances would also work, but that's not all that different from just making attacks non-fire based.

As for attacks that may look like they have more than one damage component or are non-fire but are "fitting" for a fire wizard:

Mana Burn (May need to be somewhat low in damage conversion due to powerful synergy against PA)
Boulders
Various obsidian, lava, or crystal projectiles
Meteors
"Dark" Flames with poisonous smoke
Energy bolts
Fiery Lightning
Thunderbolt that makes an explosion on impact
Burning acid

Fire flavored summons that can damage fire-immune players (Restrict summoning to adjacent to the wizard):
[Greater] Fire Elementals
Enchanted Fire Archers
Enchanted Fire Armors (Igneous rock reskin)
Petrified Skeletons (Igneous rock reskin)
Flamewings
Fire Djinns
Miniature Fire Reavers
Infernal Archers
Obsidian Scorpions
Fire based Lost Souls or Exploding Skulls

 

[FER]

In most RPGs I played (not many by the way) the wizards or healers are paried with a monsters who uses brute force.

 

[Srgnt Rehab]

Make his f1r3 d4m4g3 s0 OP th4t its imp0ssible to play with0ut f1r3 immunity!!!1!1!ONE!1

 

[Thothie]

IF the players are going to be immune to fire damage in every way possible through pots or items, then what's the point of making him fire based? Seriously.

I could say the same for the whole damned map. Suffice to say, someone decided to call my bluff, and I suspect there'll be much tweaking involved before I get this released.

How about giving him the ability to nullify all enchantments?

A 50% Weakness to Fire spell might be an option, provided the players can get it themselves as a reward (likely followed by similar weakness spells for each type down the line). One downside, however, is this wouldn't affect all types of Fire resistance (such as Phoenix Armor - as it is handled outside the normal resistance system). There might be one or two creature types that would be unaffected as well, and there'd need to be some error testing involved. (Our enchantments are far too varied to be nullified globally - not that I'd do that anyways.)

I'm also not certain if our current elemental resistance system handles "over 100%" - so that a -50% of 125%, for instance, would leave you with 75% resistance. I'd have to check it over again and see.

@Stoned if that mana blast involves taking away player's mana on hit and insta kill when out of mana, inb4 he becomes another hax type of boss added to the list, which is extremelly annoying (hollow one is a good example for this) >_>

That thar would be a problem, although it might not be a bad idea to have him nullify manna in a non-fatal fashion (no bugs involved with that), to cut down on the cold-based specials used against him. Granted, the Phoenix Armor fire->manna effect would counter that right quick.

@Others...

Flaming boulders be amongst the first things I was considering. Easy enough.

Summons came to mind second. I especially like Keldorn's set... Could make some flaming scorpions (simple enough). Had planned some Lava Boars (likely more phys than flame).... Pregnant thought of actually making him transform into a large Flame Wing for some time.

The meteorite spell used by the Nova boss and Undamael is a tad screwy, but only does fire damage. Might be possible to rain a set of those from the ceiling in some sequential order (thus avoidable) and make them do physical explosion damage + fire DOT.

Dark energy eye beams mentioned by a few, also an option. In Shadahar's case, it just makes him an easy target - but I might be able to tweak this one up to persistently attack a single target for a few seconds, rather than do a simple rotation. Maybe I could rig it so another player could sacrifice himself and interfere with the beam by interposing its path with his body - though that'd be tricky.

Amongst the more complicated things I was coming up with, were thorny lava vines that grow out of the walls in his boss chamber and thrash about, like so:

Bugger is that it'd need to be animated, and I don't think we can get it animated in time.

A non-animated variant, that just damaged you when you crossed it (pierce+fireDOT), might be an option, but I'd still have to setup *some* basic animation to come into the room (which I might be able to pull). There's the additional complication that collision detections can only be done in very basic boxes or radiuses, script side - so I suspect we'd be restricted to round-ish bushes of these things, if they were non-animated... I *might* be able to tracelines between the bones of a more complex vine (provided we're not talking more than three lines or so), but I'd have to see how insane the overhead for that would be.


Thanks again for all the suggestions, I've just not felt real inspired lately, I suppose.

 

[Age]

Thanks again for all the suggestions, I've just not felt real inspired lately, I suppose.

/inspire-hug
:>

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

Bugger is that it'd need to be animated, and I don't think we can get it animated in time.

I don't think there is any shame in delaying a patch until you get things right. Quality is always better than quantity.

 

[zeus9860]

I don't think there is any shame in delaying a patch until you get things right. Quality is always better than quantity.

Not entirely correct but OK.

3 options i see:
1)Ignore that bit, release patch earlier and then it could be added sometime later in another patch when its finished;
2)Stick with the main plan, do it, also possibly delay the patch to next month since we are basically halfway anyways;
3)Or simply drop it and dont do a thing :roll:

I prefer option 1 the most and i consider option 2 reasonable/good.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

I don't think there is any shame in delaying a patch until you get things right. Quality is always better than quantity.

Entirely correct in my opinion. I'd rather see something nifty than another half-assed map with half-assed monsters.

 

[Thothie]

We're masters of half-assed around here.

Better half-assed than nothing at all, being the design philosophy that got us to where we are today, such as it is. :\

 

[Age]

The game exists. Good enough for me, half-assed or not.
Quality preferred, existence appreciated. Dev discretion.