New Iconic with a Twist: Drow Acolyte - Idea/Theorycrafting Thread

[manman1235]

I've been workshopping this idea for a while that I think people will really like, but it's fairly complex. I figure I'll describe the basics first and then get into some of the technical details that start to complicate things. The idea: Drow Iconic that uses toggle-able transformations similar to Druid's animal transformations to become either a Scorrow or Drider. These transformations should be mutually exclusive and granted based on a Deity feat chosen at Level 1: Follower of Vulkoor for Scorrow and Follower of Lolth (does not currently exist) for Drider. This choice would also change your starting spawn location to either the Claw of Vulkoor in Eberron or the Demonweb in Forgotten Realms, respectively. You would then go through a sequence similar to Bladeforged's where your deity appears before you as your Class trainer.

Pretty cool, right? Well, at least I think so. Now let's talk about where this starts getting complicated. I'll break it down into sections describing what technical details that would need ironed out and how I propose they be handled:

• Base Class
• Lolth Deity Feats
• Enhancement Trees
• Misc.

Base Class

This seemed obvious to me at first: Favored Soul. But my thoughts became more unclear as time went on. Let's talk about where this gets complicated:

1. Favored Souls don't get transformation feats.
2. Iconics have historically only been created for Free to Play classes.
3. The other religious classes (Cleric and Paladin) already have respective Iconics, and the classes used for Iconics have historically never been repeated.

My thoughts turned to Druid, a class that is now Free to Play centered around animal transformations. Warlock also came to mind, with its recent jump to Free to Play and flavor of forging a pact with a deity or other powerful being. I was basically stuck between these three choices, none of them seeming quite right.

Ultimately, this was where the idea sat for a while; no single class fit this idea perfectly, so I was unable to make the idea fit in the framework of DDO. After all, what good is pitching an idea for an Iconic if it would necessitate creating a whole new class? Or... would it? A recent addition to the mechanics of DDO rekindled my inspiration for this idea: Archetypes! With this new feature, an Iconic character could have a racially exclusive Archetype to grant it unique new abilities that better distinguish it from its base class.

For this particular Iconic I propose a new Archetype of Druid, called Arachnid Avatar, that is exclusive to Drow Acolyte. The main features of this archetype would be new Scorrow and Drider transformations, a custom spellbook, perhaps revised class feats, and new enhancement trees based largely on existing Druid ones.

Lolth Deity Feats

I think the best approach here would be to create a new set of Lolth Deity feats that can be taken by any Drow created in the Forgotten Realms (which, for the moment would just include this Iconic but could be taken by vanilla Drow should starting in the Forgotten Realms become an option).

With that established, let's start with the Favored Weapon. Choosing only from weapons currently in the video game, here are my top picks and why I included them:

1. Dagger: some sources on the internet cite Lolth's Favored Weapon as either Dagger or Whip. I'm limiting the scope to things that already exist in DDO, so Whips are a no go.
2. Quarterstaff: Similarly to Dagger, most Driders in the game currently wield Spears, and while I think that's awesome, the closest available option is Quarterstaffs for the time being.
3. Khopesh: Badass. Under-utilized. Needs love. Plus it's the only one of these three not currently taken by any Deity and it has a similar flavor to a Dagger or Scimitar.

As I alluded to, Dagger and Quarterstaff are already taken by other deities, but those are Eberron deities. Forgotten Realms deities only cover Maul, Bastard Sword, and Heavy Mace. That being said, repeating weapons at all in Deity feats breaks precedent, so I can understand hesitation to do so. If I had to choose right now, it'd be Khopesh.

Deity Feats:

• Level 6: Lolth's Avatar - A clone of Vulkoor's Avatar but it spawns a Drider instead
• Level 20: Damage Reduction: Good

Enhancement Trees

My main goal with enhancement trees is to create loose equivalents to Druid's. I basically view the Druid trees as follows:

• Nature's Warrior: A DPS tree with goodies for Wolf
• Nature's Protector: A defensive/2HF tree with goodies for Bear
• Season's Herald: An elemental caster tree for non-animal Druids

I like this, at least in theory. You can still dip into any of them and get some worth without playing that tree's specific animal transformation (or lack thereof).

In that same vein, I propose the following for my Archetype:

• Scorrow Tempest: A 2WF/poison damage focused tree with goodies for Scorrow
• Dreadweaver: A 2HF/CC focused tree (CC from SLAs like Web/Evards) with goodies for Drider
• Acerbic Shaman: A poison caster/healer tree (probably throw some Poison SLAs in here)
• Drow Acolyte: A modified Drow racial tree. Open to suggestions here :P

Unlike Druid's animal forms, there's no logistical reason you shouldn't be able to cast when transformed into a Scorrow or Drider, so why not lean into that? Plus, most Drider and Scorrow enemies in the game do a combination of melee and casting. And since you're a follower of a deity and Druids naturally have divine spells, we can make up for what we lack in a defensive tree by granting bonuses to healing capabilities (and maybe a little PRR/MRR in one of these trees wouldn't hurt).

Misc.

This thread is already becoming too long so I'll be summing the remaining things up quickly.

• Spellbook: This should be heavily altered because Druid spells don't match the flavor I'm going for here. Some attacks similar to Druid's Maul like Spiderbite or Sting could be neat, as well as some good poison damage.
• Appearance: I can't think of too many appearance options that'd be different from vanilla Drow. You'd be spending most of the time transformed ideally anyway. Definitely needs a stylish cosmetic, bonus points if there's two different ones and the Lolth one pairs well with the mask from the MoTU expansion.
• Iconic Past Life Feat: Entirely open to suggestions here. One thought I had was an AoE crowd control/poison damage over time move with 3 uses/rest, but I could see that becoming overly complicated or overpowered.

Finally, I just want to point out that while I love DDO, I've never really been fully versed in or ever had a good grasp of the metagame of DDO at any given moment in time. What I'm going for here is expressing something I think would be cool to see in the game and how it might be able to be implemented using the framework that already exists. Any specifics like feats, enhancement trees, and spells I've mentioned are super subject to change. Feel free to discuss below what you love or hate about this idea and my proposed implementation. I'm super open to feedback.

TL;DR

• Driders and Scorrow are cool and I wanna play as one in the video game.
• Archetypes have a lot of potential for making Iconics more unique and special.

[shmagmhar]

I like your idea . a FVS archtype could splash druid stuff . seems like something they could do easily .