(Racepatch) Starsigns, comments please

[Celeborn]

This is a draft list for the starsigns for the upcoming race patch. Please forgive the crude descriptions, as they are unfinished. Any comments are welcome.

Note: To explain for the starsign power loss: A percentage of the starsign powers have moved to Ancestries. You get to choose a race, a starsign, AND an ancestry after the patch comes in.

Starsign Listing

• The Artist
  Great learners and artists.
  Characters born under this starsign tend to be great artists and sages, quick to learn and very creative. They often consume whatever crosses their path with passion.
  muse: +10% xp gained (stacks with human xp bonus).
  up to +5 luck.
  flee, recall, supplicate xp penalty halved.

• The Comet
  Blessed with incredible speed and agility.
  gain (up to) 10 high mobility.
  minimum mobility capped at 75 instead of 70.
  cover twice the normal distance with travel.
  no room-to-room walk delay.
  gains innate spell power: haste.

• The Fool
  Blessed with almost supernatural luck.
  +25% chance of causing a critical.
  +25% goldfind, +10% treasurefind.
  +5 to all saving throws.
  +5 luck.

• The Heirophant
  Destined to be a deity's protege.
  +5% magic complexity, +20% divine complexity.
  on depart/resurrect, your corpse appears before you.
  never drop their deity's favor below zero.
  slowly gain favor over time.
  crowned faster.

• The Hermit
  +20% sensory complexity.
  reflect spells 20% of the time
  truesight.
  darkvision.

• The Hero
  +4 magic complexity, +4 attack and +4 mobility.
  Resistant to bloodloss
  able to control one extra normal summon.
  effect of bardic empathy doubled.
  +2 charisma.

• The Hospic
  +30% body complexity.
  +25% hitpoints.
  can restore hitpoints by expending mana or blood.
  faster wound healing (for trolls: pre-patch level limb/wound regeneration).

• The Juggernaut
  Brutes and Bullies.
  Characters born under this starsign have a greater connection with the material plane, empowering every action with a mighty reaction.
  +10% physical and body complexity.
  +2 attack rating.
  +10% spell, melee and range damage.

• The Knight
  add up to +5 melee attack.
  -1 second from weapon speed.
  15% balance bonus.
  gain +1 damage reduction/level.

• The Pentagram
  Inborn magical might.
  It has been said this starsign brought forth may spellcaster of legend. Characters born under this starsign have a strong connection with the rampant energy, destining them to great feats of magic.
  +15% magic complexities.
  wildsurge rate and spell fail rate reduced by half.

• The Shadow
  shadow dancing: avoid up to 1/3rd of all melee attacks.
  can turn invisible at will.
  permanent passdoor.

• The Tower
  +4.0 range weapon attack bonus.
  can see three squares further on the map.
  know their lat/lon at all times.
  +2.0 mobility bonus.

• The Void
  immune to almost all spells.
  obtains the innate spell: dispel magic.
  cannot cast magic or use potions.

• The Womb
  up to 25 magic resistance on level.
  +8% magic complexities.
  -2 mobility and attack rating.

[ShanaArkai]

you might want to take away Voids using jewellery to cast spells as well. but do you think that would make them too weak?

[Quintos]

My opinions:

The Artist 4/5
Considering what you give up for the exp bonus, I do not feel that 10% extra experience is too extreme. The other gimmicks aren't much either. A decent starsign for those who want to level quickly.

The Comet 2/5
Depends how strong the innate haste is, but I don't think that this starsign will be a very useful starsign considering the powers you get from other starsigns. The mobility will be nice, but apart from that, the added magic of another starsign will give a player more speed.

The Fool 4/5
This fair starsign, although probably not the greatest for a main character, would be useful for a utility alt that looked for chests.

The Heirophant 2/5
The complexity bonus is decent, but divine isn't exactly the most useful school. The depart/resurrect bonus is marginal...on resurrection, your corpse will probably be there already and on depart, there's a good chance they'll end keeping their equipment due to the change that seems to be planned on the MotD.

The Hermit 3/5
Sensory is a rather trivial school. Truesight and darkvision are rather trivial and not really worth giving up other powers. The spell reflection could be nice, but 20% doesn't quite seem to be worth losing other bonuses.

The Hero 1/5
A static complexity boost really isn't too useful apart from low levels. Bloodloss resistance is really just a gimmick with the ease of regeneration. Regular summons are really pretty useless, unless elementals are included, in which case it ends up very strong. The effect of bardic empathy being doubled probably won't be that useful. It may be useful if it affect verses of the magi, but that only makes the difference of about 30 epic levels.

The Hospic 4/5
The complexity boost is quite useful for a healer/buffer. Extra hitpoints are always useful. Restoring hitpoints by expending mana is very useful. Faster wound healing is trivial due to the regeneration spell.

The Juggernaut 5/5
Useful complexity boosts. Pretty trivial attack rating bonus. 10% extra damage would go a long way though.

The Knight 5/5
5 attack rating bonus is nice. -1 second from weapon speed is a nice bonus to have, although I'm guessing that if it comes before haste, it's not really gonna make a huge difference in the long run. Great balance bonus and 50 dam red is very nice, when damred becomes factored after resists.

The Pentagram 7/5
Great complexity bonus. Half the spell failures is phenomenable also. Very powerful without useless bonuses, useful for almost any player.

The Shadow 4/5
1/3 of all melee attacks missing is a lot of avoided damage. Invisibility and pass door are nothing more than gimmicks.

The Tower 1/5
Ranged attack bonus is pretty useless seeing as how often ranged weapons are used. Seeing three squares farther on the map may be nice when exploring, but most area locations are already common knowledge. Knowing latitude and longitude are gimmicks with sextants so easy to acquire. 2 mobility bonus is nothing.

The Void */5
Seems to be an elemental killer and always fun to play against casters with. I can't give a solid rating to this starsign.

The Womb 4/5
MR is very nice to have. Pretty good complexity bonus. Mobility and attack penalties aren't too bad.

[Eomer]

I have a question about the Hospic:

faster wound healing (for trolls: pre-patch level limb/wound regeneration).

What does this mean?

[ShanaArkai]

if your a troll, and pick the hospic as a star sign you will get the same regen (hp/limbs) as you had before the new race/star sign patch

[Jerardo]

Edited: Quintos beat me to the rating and I didn't think 2 similar ratings would be necessary.

To sum it up, Pentagram is overall useful. I don't like the idea of nerfing them, so I'm suggesting boosting other starsigns to be the "same level". Hospic, Juggernaunt, and Knight looks decent.

15% overall magic is a huge bonus. Why? Magic can do many things... including boosters (15% better heal, speed (3x spells), stats up, etc etc) and 15% better offensive spells (breath, arrow, psi blow, sleep, etc).

[weems]

How does the Void's dispel work? Does it always succeed?

[Nuitari]

The Pentagram
Inborn magical might.
It has been said this starsign brought forth may spellcaster of legend. Characters born under this starsign have a strong connection with the rampant energy, destining them to great feats of magic.
+15% magic complexities.
wildsurge rate and spell fail rate reduced by half.

Get used to seeing this starsign; it's the only one that will be picked for serious characters.

[Skeletal]

Will this be ALL the star signs? Or will others like The Waterfall and such just stay the same as they are now and not worth listing.

[Kiasyn]

All the starsigns.

[weems]

The Pentagram
Inborn magical might.
It has been said this starsign brought forth may spellcaster of legend. Characters born under this starsign have a strong connection with the rampant energy, destining them to great feats of magic.
+15% magic complexities.
wildsurge rate and spell fail rate reduced by half.

Get used to seeing this starsign; it's the only one that will be picked for serious characters.

I'm going to have to agree. With this current layout, the ONLY starsign worth picking for pretty much any build (unless you wanted to make a build that didn't have a caster, but that would be ineffective and stupid anyway), is the pentagram. Hands down, no contest. The other starsigns do not really come close.

[Navith]

I agree with everyone else, pentagram is pretty much the only way to go unless you're feeling experimental.

[Nuitari]

The Artist - One big gimmick. 10% xp gain is powerful, but complexity bonuses are nicer since being higher epic level but weak for your level(which is what an xp bonus and the absence of other bonuses cause) isn't a good state for pvp.

The Comet - +7.5 ac, some useless gimmicks, and a haste spell that no good character needs later on because of the speed cap. At higher epic levels, the Pentagram will give more AC and probably more speed, anyways.

The Fool - This will be used on chestfinding alts.

The Hierophant - Some newbies might pick this because of the description. -10% universal complexity and double spell failure rate for 20% divine complexity and some useless gimmicks? No thanks.

The Hermit - Gimmicks ahoy!

The Hero - Wow, that's powerful, at least until you reach level 20. Resistance to bloodloss is irreleveant with the regenerate spell, which every serious character has, the complexity bonus doesn't scale with level, and the other bonuses are worthless.

The Hospic - Body complexity is probably the most important complexity, and it's one of the complexities that determine your MR. 30% is large bonus in this version of the patch. The hp/wound regeneration is neat, but even less useful than the useless regeneration trolls already have. Expending mana for hp isn't very useful, except maybe in nomagic rooms, especially since this starsign gives body complexity. Body complexity is the one that gives healing, no one with a good heal spell is going to need the "expend mana to restore hp", and no one without a good heal spell is going to pick this starsign since the body complexity is the biggest bonus. Overall, this is one of the best starsigns, and picking it instead of the pentagram wouldn't neccessarily make your character completely worthless.

The Juggernaut - 10% to two complexities, one of them a useless one, vs 15% to all complexities? +10% damage vs half spell failure rate? Next.

The Knight - Restore it to the way it was BEFORE nerfing the starsigns, then give it the lizardman's 30% slower balance drain, and it becomes (arguably) as good as the pentagram for primarily melee characters.

The Shadow - Hey cool, I'm very resistant to melee(and ranged?) attacks. Oh damn, I have no complexity or MR bonus so I'm getting ripped to shreds by magic/elementals, I can't catch my opponent, I can't pierce my opponent's MR to strike back with magic, and I can't heal effectively. Gee, I wish I had picked The Pentagram.

The Tower - If the three squares applies to mines and stacks with mine smell, you are required to have this on one of your mining alts. That aside...is this starsign SUPPOSED to be a joke? +4 AR on ranged attacks only, +2 AC, and a free spyglass and sextant?

The Void - This will probably be completely useless, but it could end up being good. It basically depends on how effective their innate Dispel Magic is.

The Womb - If magic is ever fixed so that it's not easy to get enough MR to be magic-immune, this starsign might be an alternative to The Pentagram, unless you're planning to gain thousands of epic levels. Then again, probably not.

[Celeborn]

Hi guys!

I've used your comments to tweak things. Please continue the discussion at: http://forums.dark-legacy.com/viewtopic.php?p=9596. I'm closing this thread.