Lightweight herald changes - simp's wishlist

[simpetar]

Not saying that heralds are the weakest quasiclass out there, but there is a lot left to be desired. Some spells are outright broken (like Planar Perinarch that does nothing), some spells are severely underpowered (Freezing Fog). Also some spells could be justified in herald repertoire, but for whatever reason they are not. I have more thoughts on the topic (that I may share if discussion follows), but tried to keep the OP brief.

Spells that could be available to heralds, but currently aren't
1. Cloud of Bewilderment - treated as conj, including the mechanical change at (effective) LSF.
2. Murderous Mist - treated as conj. They already have Cloudkill and Horrid Wilting, this would fit the bill.
3. Incendiary Cloud - treated as conj, additionally inflicts penalty to discipline and concentration on failed fort up to 2*foci, or -12... I mean COME ON, why did this spell not make it in the first time?
4. STORM Tower - treated as conj when cast by herald of STORMS! Got the reference? Eh, nevermind. In addition to its normal effects, all enemies inside must make fortitude save each round or be knocked down for 1d4 rounds. Fume-like enemies need to make fortitude save each round or be instantly destroyed. Both effects respect SR.

Spells that are currently available for heralds, but could use a buffer
1. Freezing Fog - does (CL)d6 cold damage per round, no damage splitting. Dexterity drop is ok.
2. Static Field - no damage splitting.
3. Storm of Vengeance - does sonic damage, instead of electric (more like thunderstorm). Heralds already have access to elec cloud in Static Field, after all.

Misc fluff
Storm Sprite's pt2 spam is great... if there are people who need assisting. Lesser Orbs of Electricity/Sound are useless, they virtually never hit. Same for the Spam of Cure Seriou Wounds, it tends to be in single digits. Suggestion: ditch the Lesser Orb spam completely and turn the healing in Mass Cure Moderate Wounds and scale it of the herald's own Heal skill. That way the Sprite will be lot better than a glorified BBoD.

[louisvilleslugger]

Bumping this up. The recent addition of epics spells for herald's was nice. Would be great to see all the cloud spells be usable by them as well.

[Deleted]

I like all of these ideas.

[Raj]

Jun 24, 2019 20:48:54 GMT simpetar said:

Planar Perinarch that does nothing

[FunkySwerve]

(Perinarch is presently working on dev). Way ahead of you

Funky

[FunkySwerve]

As to the rest of your post:

1 and 3 were deliberately excluded as HoS spells. Not sure on Murderous Mist, but I think it was as well.
You'll have to be clearer what precisely you are suggesting with 'damage splitting', but assuming you mean combine the two types into one at twice the dice, not happening.

The SOV idea looks fine. Taking that and the ST to the Team.

Funky

[chirality]

The split damage on those clouds is a perennial gripe. I don't think the wishlist is necessarily a straight 1:1 doubling of single-type dice, but rather some redux of the core dual-type mechanism. It's frustrating and ineffective, for a few key reasons. I can't speak for simp, but I'd consider a fair trade to be something around 2/3 of current total die.

The main thing is to just have it only deal one type--I don't think we'd really haggle over the total single-type dice dealt, since virtually anything would be better than the current even split.

I always thought Murderous Mist would be a bit much (despite being literally a cloud in function, and thematically a "mist" in flavor, it doesn't fit at all in herald's conceptual focus, with cloudkill already being a stretch, and at any rate I don't feel like access to poison+death clouds is a great balance point--even after mob poison changes, herald could easily replace a vast chunk of instakillers with minimal effort and very high efficiency, even with clouds getting gusted). That said, the argument that poison nerfs did happen, and cloudkill is a herald spell anyway, could easily be made for the opposite case.

Not sure why CoB was deliberately excluded, as the combination of ench+conj would seem to truly fit hand-in-glove with herald.

For fire cloud, I always defended it not being a herald spell for reasons, although I think I was basically the only one ever who didn't find it to be a bitter pill to swallow.

[simpetar]

Dec 3, 2020 23:17:41 GMT FunkySwerve said:

You'll have to be clearer what precisely you are suggesting with 'damage splitting', but assuming you mean combine the two types into one at twice the dice, not happening.

I would rather my younger post about heralds be bumped, it goes more in depth here: highergroundpoa.proboards.com/thread/25941/herald-ideas-revised

TL:DR version:
1. By "split damage" I mean spells half (or any part) elemental and half exotic. Clouds (or really any spells, but clouds especially) that split damage have a number of issues: they cause double KB, double dip from damage resistance and in a good number of cases one type damages the monster and the other part out-heals it.
2. CLoud damage looks ok on paper: damage is high on per-cast (or per-slot) basis, but in reality no monster on a dynamic and smooth run lives long enough to take the full damage. Heck, they don't even stay still in the cloud.

[swingking]

First of All. Thanks for The epic and para spell. Haralds might even get a spot on a run now 😁

I do Hope it is possible to make the clouds a bit more appealing to use. I barely use the cold cloud and My greatest wish is to have a fire cloud to with desent dmg.
I do like Simps other ideas for the change to The Harald clouds to.

Cheers Jan

[FunkySwerve]

Just reviewed the HoS spell list on the forums. Based on your prior post, and a vague recollection, I think Storm Tower was already added as a Herald spell.

As for the others, Inc Cloud will always be a hard no, for both thematic and balancing reasons. Heralds will never complete 'the elemental type cloud arsenal' of damage types, as you put it.

Ditto CoB, re balancing reasons - think CoB plus Mind Fog.

Given that all your spells are getting a damage boost through perinarch, I'm in no rush to buff them at this point.

I'm not entirely opposed to giving Heralds sonic, pending Team discussion - we'll see on that.

Funky

[FunkySwerve]

That's a no on sonic on SoV.

However, we will prevent double kb on Freezing Fog and Static field, for Heralds.

Funky