Necrotic Warrior (Ring)

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

I designed this ring to allow for a knife wielding Antipaladin sort of build for the Wizard, I toyed around with enhancement tree action point distribution and found a fun build that would be possible if there were more points to spend in the trees while said build would not be overpowered......... I then narrowed down problems that could lead to an overpowered build and from there came up with a ring that would lock someone's choices into a specific direction. Basically, this ring allows you to adequately divide your action points between the Vistani Knife Fighter tree, The Pale Master Tree, and the Eldritch Knight Tree but it only offers enough leeway for a few combinations each of which would focus more on one of three trees.

Legendary Necrotic Warrior Ring

• Minimum Level: 29
• Necrotic Warrior: While undead and equipped with a dagger, you gain full BAB and are able to use your intelligence Modifier to determine bonus to hit and damage.
• Bloodrage Stoic: While under the effects of Rage or Bloodrage you are able to cast spells, additionally rage and bloodrage grants you +8 to intelligence rather than strength.
• True Vampirism:While undead your melee attacks gain 1D6 Vampirism per hit (This effect scales with negative healing amplification).
• +20 Quality Negative healing Amplification
• Green Augment Slot

Necrotic Warrior Ring

• Minimum Level: 15
• Necrotic Warrior: While undead and equipped with a dagger, you gain full BAB and are able to use your intelligence Modifier to determine bonus to hit and damage.
• Stoic: While under the effects of rage you are able to cast spells, additionally rage grants you +8 to intelligence rather than strength.
• True Vampirism:While undead your melee attacks gain 1D3 Vampirism per hit (This effect scales with negative healing amplification).
• +10 Quality Negative healing Amplification
• Green Augment Slot

[Questdoer]

could be cool, but instead of stoic I would call the effect "cold rage"

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

could be cool, but instead of stoic I would call the effect "cold rage"

I also think it should restrict spells to only necromancy spells, dimension door, and teleport.......

In reality though, this ring is worthless if the Eldritch Knight tree gets the right improvements during a pass.

[Valerianus]

no

[Domince]

I designed this ring to allow for a knife wielding Antipaladin sort of build for the Wizard, I toyed around with enhancement tree action point distribution and found a fun build that would be possible if there were more points to spend in the trees while said build would not be overpowered......... I then narrowed down problems that could lead to an overpowered build and from there came up with a ring that would lock someone's choices into a specific direction. Basically, this ring allows you to adequately divide your action points between the Vistani Knife Fighter tree, The Pale Master Tree, and the Eldritch Knight Tree but it only offers enough leeway for a few combinations each of which would focus more on one of three trees.

Legendary Necrotic Warrior Ring

• Minimum Level: 29
• Necrotic Warrior: While undead and equipped with a dagger, you gain full BAB and are able to use your intelligence Modifier to determine bonus to hit and damage.
• Bloodrage Stoic: While under the effects of Rage or Bloodrage you are able to cast spells, additionally rage and bloodrage grants you +8 to intelligence rather than strength.
• True Vampirism:While undead your melee attacks gain 1D6 Vampirism per hit (This effect scales with negative healing amplification).
• +20 Quality Negative healing Amplification
• Green Augment Slot

Necrotic Warrior Ring

• Minimum Level: 15
• Necrotic Warrior: While undead and equipped with a dagger, you gain full BAB and are able to use your intelligence Modifier to determine bonus to hit and damage.
• Stoic: While under the effects of rage you are able to cast spells, additionally rage grants you +8 to intelligence rather than strength.
• True Vampirism:While undead your melee attacks gain 1D3 Vampirism per hit (This effect scales with negative healing amplification).
• +10 Quality Negative healing Amplification
• Green Augment Slot

Vampirism becomes useless in reaper

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

Vampirism becomes useless in reaper

Lokeal 101-Does not care about reaper.

[Domince]

Lokeal 101-Does not care about reaper.

So it's an item thats meant for builds you play? When making an item it shouldnt be so centralized, it should be more flexible.

[Discpsycho]

Why are you trying to give a Wizard so much melee capability? Without doublestrike, melee power and/or crit profile changes, Wizards will never be on par with classes designed for melee. I understand that that's the purpose of VKF, but you'll get a lot more damage out of a VKF melee or hybrid class. The purpose of Wizard is to cast spells - EK can be used to support other melee builds, but especially in it's current state it's rarely used for that. If you want an Int-based melee, you have other options.

Might I suggest you try a Wraith Swashbuckler, which is reasonably supported by existing items, rather than create ? 12 Wiz / 6 Bard / 2 Rogue gets evasion, PM auras for free healing, SWF with daggers and a buckler. Sink a few points into VKF and Harper for dagger and Int support, respectively.

The items:

Undead form is only available to Wizards with at least 3 levels (effectively 6, because nobody in their right mind uses zombie for melee). If you're using any or all of your other 14 levels for other classes, those trees will have more to offer than a Wizard, except for Sorc. So you're describing items you've designed explicitly for dagger-wielding PMs, which is a very specific, suboptimal start

The other Int-to-hit/damage options are Harper (~10 points for those and KTA), Swashbuckler, Rogue and Artificer. Besides Wizard, there aren't any other classes that specialize in Int that don't have Int to hit and damage. I understand that argument, but if you're running Int for hit and damage, you're going to want KTA anyway. So you've got slight AP reduction for one build and no benefit for other folks.

Full BAB is functionally a stacking accuracy bonus with a minor attack speed boost. Wizards and anyone with a good UMD already have access to that via Tenser's, which has some other benefits like a built-in Master's Touch. Warchanters get it with their 5th core, and any build can run in Divine Crusader to get that benefit - a destiny that already provides in-combat healing benefits, but with positive energy so the vast majority of builds can benefit from it

Your vampirism effect would have to be negative energy to work, which again would only help Pale Masters. A few items that specific exist, but not in melee because even with that kind of benefit, PM melee will be suboptimal. Similarly, the negative healing amp only helps PMs, though it's a bit more reasonable than the vampirism

Casting spells under the effects of rage is probably the most reasonable thing on this item. I don't know where you're pulling the +8 from for the Int bonus, but that rage power is unique to Barbarians - even Druids don't get that much to a particular stat. Warchanters are the other class that can rage without a spell, but their boost is dwarfed by this item's.

TL;DR: It's an item specifically designed for a rarely-used interpretation of one enhancement tree in a single class. It provides significantly fewer benefits to anything outside this niche build. It's redundant with slight variations in this interpretation that you claim are allowed for (T5 EK) and is eclipsed by Harper's most-used feature

TL;DR was TL;DR:

no

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

Why are you trying to give a Wizard so much melee capability? Without doublestrike, melee power and/or crit profile changes, Wizards will never be on par with classes designed for melee. I understand that that's the purpose of VKF, but you'll get a lot more damage out of a VKF melee or hybrid class. The purpose of Wizard is to cast spells - EK can be used to support other melee builds, but especially in it's current state it's rarely used for that. If you want an Int-based melee, you have other options.

Might I suggest you try a Wraith Swashbuckler, which is reasonably supported by existing items, rather than create ? 12 Wiz / 6 Bard / 2 Rogue gets evasion, PM auras for free healing, SWF with daggers and a buckler. Sink a few points into VKF and Harper for dagger and Int support, respectively.

The items:

Undead form is only available to Wizards with at least 3 levels (effectively 6, because nobody in their right mind uses zombie for melee). If you're using any or all of your other 14 levels for other classes, those trees will have more to offer than a Wizard, except for Sorc. So you're describing items you've designed explicitly for dagger-wielding PMs, which is a very specific, suboptimal start

The other Int-to-hit/damage options are Harper (~10 points for those and KTA), Swashbuckler, Rogue and Artificer. Besides Wizard, there aren't any other classes that specialize in Int that don't have Int to hit and damage. I understand that argument, but if you're running Int for hit and damage, you're going to want KTA anyway. So you've got slight AP reduction for one build and no benefit for other folks.

Full BAB is functionally a stacking accuracy bonus with a minor attack speed boost. Wizards and anyone with a good UMD already have access to that via Tenser's, which has some other benefits like a built-in Master's Touch. Warchanters get it with their 5th core, and any build can run in Divine Crusader to get that benefit - a destiny that already provides in-combat healing benefits, but with positive energy so the vast majority of builds can benefit from it

Your vampirism effect would have to be negative energy to work, which again would only help Pale Masters. A few items that specific exist, but not in melee because even with that kind of benefit, PM melee will be suboptimal. Similarly, the negative healing amp only helps PMs, though it's a bit more reasonable than the vampirism

Casting spells under the effects of rage is probably the most reasonable thing on this item. I don't know where you're pulling the +8 from for the Int bonus, but that rage power is unique to Barbarians - even Druids don't get that much to a particular stat. Warchanters are the other class that can rage without a spell, but their boost is dwarfed by this item's.

TL;DR: It's an item specifically designed for a rarely-used interpretation of one enhancement tree in a single class. It provides significantly fewer benefits to anything outside this niche build. It's redundant with slight variations in this interpretation that you claim are allowed for (T5 EK) and is eclipsed by Harper's most-used feature

TL;DR was TL;DR:

It's about past lives acquisition and avoiding multiclassing due to the lack of ability for one to farm lesser hearts of wood, I have a multiclassed character that badly needs a lesser heart of wood +20 due to updates and changes that made his build break, other multiclassed characters have been deleted in response to the same updates breaking their builds, only the multiclassed character that took heavy armor training came out somewhat unscathed and such has turned me into a class purist.

Since the character banks won't be getting expanded anytime soon I have to recycle my gear for each build with an exception to the gear that is bound to account thrown into the mix as I am not getting rid of pieces I spent so long farming for that still have purpose. I don't much enjoy spellcasting builds unless there is a gain such as collecting soulgems, dimension door, teleport, or self-healing however artificer is my favorite class and I always take him in the direction of Melee. In other words the ring is a concept item targeted at players who don't like spellcasting centric builds but need to get the wizard past lives out of the way and want to have fun in the process without needing to multiclass.

Ideally, an equivalent to these effects would be included when the wizard trees gain a pass.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

So it's an item thats meant for builds you play? When making an item it shouldnt be so centralized, it should be more flexible.

So you want an item to be centralized for reaper use?

[Algreg]

So you want an item to be centralized for reaper use?

An item viable in reaper is of use in any difficulty setting. An item tailormade for your magical BS builds from the future is of no use for anyone but you.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

An item viable in reaper is of use in any difficulty setting. An item tailormade for your magical BS builds from the future is of no use for anyone but you.

Observation of a concept that you'd not find use in+Not looking for people who would build this way if a path towards doing so was opened=Your opinion.

Reaper at its very core is a niche, everything around it that has appeal for some people isn't inherently exclusive to reaper (love for; improved experience gain, cosmetics, and enhancements that work outside of reaper)....... however if you were to strip reaper of those not so niche traits that have benefit even outside of reaper, then people would stop running reaper so much, in other words if Reaper had no benefits that effected any gameplay outside of reaper, people would rarely run it. Eventually it is possible that those committed to reaper will eventually return to primarily run elites after there is no adequate further gain from running on reaper.

[Discpsycho]

It's about past lives acquisition and avoiding multiclassing due to the lack of ability for one to farm lesser hearts of wood, I have a multiclassed character that badly needs a lesser heart of wood +20 due to updates and changes that made his build break, other multiclassed characters have been deleted in response to the same updates breaking their builds, only the multiclassed character that took heavy armor training came out somewhat unscathed and such has turned me into a class purist.

Since the character banks won't be getting expanded anytime soon I have to recycle my gear for each build with an exception to the gear that is bound to account thrown into the mix as I am not getting rid of pieces I spent so long farming for that still have purpose. I don't much enjoy spellcasting builds unless there is a gain such as collecting soulgems, dimension door, teleport, or self-healing however artificer is my favorite class and I always take him in the direction of Melee. In other words the ring is a concept item targeted at players who don't like spellcasting centric builds but need to get the wizard past lives out of the way and want to have fun in the process without needing to multiclass.

I hate to say it, but multiclassing is the support for running spellcasting classes as melees. If you don't multiclass as a caster, you don't have to sacrifice much spell utility. Having a character that can self-heal, group-heal, deal melee damage, spell damage and buff, all on par with classes that specialize in those? That's not especially balanced. I understand the aversion, as I've had multiclassed characters screwed up by updates or my own stupidity (usually the latter). Take 10 minutes to Excel something out, or use a build somebody else has created. As long as it's not a build defined by an exploitation of known bugs (eg, SWF/TWF Wolf druid), the odds that it'll get broken are pretty slim, as not many things get nerfed these days. And Lammania notes come out with a couple of months notice, so you can TR somebody if breakage is imminent.

Rather than design items that only work for a single example of this pure-spellcaster-turned-melee, why not design something more general, e.g. an item that provides melee power (or doublestrike, or some other melee feature) based on empty spell slots? That way primary spellcasters can gimp their casting for melee benefit, kind of like you're requesting but slightly more balanced.

Reaper at its very core is a niche, everything around it that has appeal for some people isn't inherently exclusive to reaper (love for; improved experience gain, cosmetics, and enhancements that work outside of reaper)....... however if you were to strip reaper of those not so niche traits that have benefit even outside of reaper, then people would stop running reaper so much, in other words if Reaper had no benefits that effected any gameplay outside of reaper, people would rarely run it. Eventually it is possible that those committed to reaper will eventually return to primarily run elites after there is no adequate further gain from running on reaper.

Compared to past lives, the effects of reaper enhancements outside of reaper are pretty minimal. 41 points in the melee tree nets you +4 hit/damage, 3 MP/RP and +1 Str or Dex. The tank tree gives 120 HP (100 kicks in at 25), +1 Con, +1 to all saves, +1 Dodge and cap, +3 PRR/MRR. The caster tree gives +550 SP (again, mostly at later levels), +6 USP, +1 Int or Wis or Cha. And getting a substantial number of reaper points takes a lot of farming. Other than these benefits, the only other ones are cosmetics.

But honestly, I disagree with your last statement. People will continue to run Reaper without non-reaper benefits for the same reason I run it: challenge and xp. Even though I only have 8 or 9 reaper points on my main character, it breathes some life and challenge back into levelling process, particularly in lower levels

[Domince]

So you want an item to be centralized for reaper use?

No i want an item that doesnt support your one build that you play because melee casters arent that good.

[Algreg]

Observation of a concept that you'd not find use in+Not looking for people who would build this way if a path towards doing so was opened=Your opinion.

Reaper at its very core is a niche, everything around it that has appeal for some people isn't inherently exclusive to reaper (love for; improved experience gain, cosmetics, and enhancements that work outside of reaper)....... however if you were to strip reaper of those not so niche traits that have benefit even outside of reaper, then people would stop running reaper so much, in other words if Reaper had no benefits that effected any gameplay outside of reaper, people would rarely run it. Eventually it is possible that those committed to reaper will eventually return to primarily run elites after there is no adequate further gain from running on reaper.

I enjoy seeing your faux-intellectualism degrading further into incoherent ramblings. If you understood the kind of language you try to emulate you´d know it aims for coherence and preciseness, not the exact opposite as in, you know, your style. Also, once again, the only times you are correct you state things obvious to everyone. Of cause reaper is run for those things. And once again, your magical potential world is irrelevant as those rewards exist currently. Not to mention it does not invalidate what I said one bit: If you create something useful for reaper now, it will stay useful even if they´d remove reaper difficulty completely tomorrow.

[Discpsycho]

I enjoy seeing your faux-intellectualism degrading further into incoherent ramblings. If you understood the kind of language you try to emulate you´d know it aims for coherence and preciseness, not the exact opposite as in, you know, your style. Also, once again, the only times you are correct you state things obvious to everyone. Of cause reaper is run for those things. And once again, your magical potential world is irrelevant as those rewards exist currently. Not to mention it does not invalidate what I said one bit: If you create something useful for reaper now, it will stay useful even if they´d remove reaper difficulty completely tomorrow.

...can we leave the Lokeal-bashing out of this thread? For once? There's not much point in ad hominem attacks in every single thread. At least give a reason for not liking the item, or put in more than the half-second it takes to write "no"

[cpw_acc]

While many items are obviously intended for certain classes, I don't really like the idea of an item specifically for undead characters that provide almost no benefit for anyone else.

This also seems way too powerful as it steps on the toes of enhancement trees and negates other specific restrictions.

E.g.

If you're the kind of char that wants to use INT for attack and damage then there is the Harper tree you can invest in to gain that. If you then get this ring as you've defined it, suddenly you get that ability for nothing. This means you are able to reinvest those enhancement points, which is equivalent to giving you a dozen free enhancement points.

Similarly for raging. Its an ability that gives specific bonuses but with specific drawbacks. An item that negates all those drawbacks cheapens the original ability.

So...that's a 'no' from me. At least in it's present form.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

While many items are obviously intended for certain classes, I don't really like the idea of an item specifically for undead characters that provide almost no benefit for anyone else.

This also seems way too powerful as it steps on the toes of enhancement trees and negates other specific restrictions.

E.g.

If you're the kind of char that wants to use INT for attack and damage then there is the Harper tree you can invest in to gain that. If you then get this ring as you've defined it, suddenly you get that ability for nothing. This means you are able to reinvest those enhancement points, which is equivalent to giving you a dozen free enhancement points.

Similarly for raging. Its an ability that gives specific bonuses but with specific drawbacks. An item that negates all those drawbacks cheapens the original ability.

So...that's a 'no' from me. At least in it's present form.

This discussion served its purpose, I've a good idea now on what is needed and will make a move when the Wizard and Sorcerer pass comes. I should have gone about this differently, ever since this post I've been using the discussion section and theoretical items as conduits for thought on the matter of what would be most appropriate for a build to become possible through (or was it another post? I forget already). The Answer here is as simple as a completely redone Eldritch Knight tree where the Tensor's Transformation Toggle is moved to the third core ability slot and modified to include intelligence to hit and damage. This would leave plenty of room to allocate action points to the Vistani Knife Fighter Tree and increase overall build synergies.

[Domince]

This discussion served its purpose, I've a good idea now on what is needed and will make a move when the Wizard and Sorcerer pass comes. I should have gone about this differently, ever since this post I've been using the discussion section and theoretical items as conduits for thought on the matter of what would be most appropriate for a build to become possible through (or was it another post? I forget already). The Answer here is as simple as a completely redone Eldritch Knight tree where the Tensor's Transformation Toggle is moved to the third core ability slot and modified to include intelligence to hit and damage. This would leave plenty of room to allocate action points to the Vistani Knife Fighter Tree and increase overall build synergies.

Why do you want wizards and sorcs to be able to melee well? They arent meant for this at all, i dont think a caster should be able to do this.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

Why do you want wizards and sorcs to be able to melee well? They arent meant for this at all, i dont think a caster should be able to do this.

That's the thing, I don't want them to be able to melee well, I just want it to become realistic that they can survive melee........... frankly their attacks can be as weak as would justify such, but in reality..... the closest thing in DDO to a death knight tree is a combination between the Pale Master tree and the Eldritch Knight tree and if the Eldritch Knight tree is reorganized right, it might make possible for a reasonable powerful and reasonably weak imitation death knight build, it's all about making the possible skillpoint allocations in the enhancement trees only capable of so many combinations.

The reality of the build this would use, is that it most stresses defence........ fulfilling the defensive aspect could come with a tradeoff where the spells you are allowed to cast are reduced to a single school of your choice and a couple of utility spells such as dimension door and teleport (Basically only so your build does not hinder your traveling capabilities or let your team down when they expect you to cast dimension door).

The point is making the Wizard a class that more playstyles are compatible with as to clean up the waters some must tread through to get wizard past lives while also making the wizard at least somewhat fun in said playstyle, that being said.... a build can be fun to play but weak at the same time. Clerics can become quite formidable if you build them melee, but Clerics don't have access to all the spells a wizard would have, in fact you can make a wizard that only casts spells from a certain school and make them situationally decent. All of that being said it really wouldn't be rocket science to fix the Wizard and Sorcerer Eldritch knight trees.