Something Darvin said about Drac...

[Lujo]

So in order to kinda ease various lovely discussions going on in the "hypotethical patch" thread, I thought I'd start one up about something Darvin said about Drac. It kinda came from the left field but I'm curious, for pure academic sake, to see what it is with Drac exactly (inspired by his brave suggestion that the silly end spike keeping that god hostage probably went on for too long, and I guess we really could've pulled that question a long time ago).

Darvins complaint/suggestion was that Drac's prep penalty is too prohibitive. My first instinct was go go "Wait, what, Drac doesn't have a prep penalty at all!". I mean I prepped him, left him at the entrance, went to worship another guy, came back, what's the pro... Ahhh, ok, I see the first problem. His prep penalty doesn't really stop you from still getting the silly sanguine + bloodswell health dispenser deal for the end spike. And it's a deal even with the penalties incurred by prepping him, because it's a silly ole spike (or rather it's THE Silly Ole Spike TM).

All right, but you can still prep a halfling and convert a bunch of po... Yes, ok, that's shennanigans. You're not so much playing Drac as playing a crafty halfling.

But you can go bloodmage with some health on 'im and go for silly early lifesteal and bloodswells. Yes, also shennanigans, and you're kinda better off stating that in JJ or Even GG or whoever for the Health and then moving into Drac.

But you could go Monk even with the penalty - Blood Curse is great for early monks, and Blood Shield is a no brainer. You can't use lifesteal, true, but that just means the penalty huts less, and you can finish with the late Sanguine + Bloodswells. Ought to be pretty good? Pretty much ideal, right? I mean if he had no penalty this would be THE way to abuse him...

Except... He still punishes you for killing undead (always a bunch around), punishes you using cydstep (not too relevant for guys who'd worship drac but it's a good glyph), punishes you for using Halpmeh and actually preffers you converting potions to using them. And the kind of guy who wants to worship him really wants to do most of those things! Drac has a prep penalty even if he has no prep penalty, because he's the only guy with any really tangible prohibitions. Except we don't think about it too often because we simply dodge actually worshiping him entirely and just cash in on the end spike which was supposed to compensate for all the PITA of being dedicated to Drac.

Add to that the following - he doesn't like you killing undead. And undead are bloodless to boot so it's really pointless to be in Drac if you're looking to kill any. It's just way too profitable to be in someone else first (I prefer TT myself but anyone but Binlor and Mystera works). You mop up the undead, then join Drac. He could start you off with a sack of gold if you worship him first, it would still be a better idea not to if you could first worship somebody else.

The point - Drac doesn't need a prep penalty as he already has a "worship" penalty. What he especially doesn't need is a prep penalty which makes worshiping him dedicatedly any worse of a deal. Because it's such a bad deal compared to other guys. The current penalty is more randomly annoying than anything, and it certainly doesn't stop shennanigans and prep-just-for-the-spike nonsense (even the "extra altar" gambit). I doesn't even prevent straight up worship (and god knows it does nothing to Paladins), it's just adds another psychological barrier to actually worshiping him.

I think that if at some earlier point we just collectively said "screw Bloodswell, it doesn't even sinergize with the rest of him that well" and asked for a decent prep "penalty" a bunch more stuff would've seen a lot more play. Stuff that's pretty good with Drac has historically been underplayed and under-appreciated.

Concrete suggestion: So what would a good "penalty" for Drac actually be? My idea would be that it simply started you as a worshiper of Drac upon entering the dungeon. You want those Bloodswels? Lets see you get out of worshiping Drac first, then you can come back for them, lol. I think this, as stupid as it may sound, would work.

[Darvin]

[Lujo]

What's weird I think my proposed solution actually does solve a part of the issue, because it's not that he's useless or unusable even with the current prep penalty it's just that it so rarely makes any intuitive sense compared to using anything else first - even if you do prep him.

The proposed move does also illustrate that "actually having to worship Drac" would be an adequate... penalty, for what the average user has been doing with him. The default way of using him all along was basically cheating the whole balancing on his spike, which is why it always seemed so ludicrous. It's not half as good as much as how much we've been complete jackasses.

Apart from actually being a legit good move, it would have also made a great running gag about Drac having "the steepest prep cost".And it would result in people coming up with Drac strats, even if nothing at all is done to Bloodswell and Sanguine. And I suppose whining about it would also be pretty hard. "The Drac prep penalty is awful!" - "What, you actually have to use him if you prep him, good lord, what were we thinking!?".

If there's fodder for a tweak patch, and I'm kinda sure there is, this one might be the no. 1 most legit thing to fiddle with a bit. Single player games get balance tweak patches all the time (really, they do, Shadowrun: Dragonfall had a bunch and that's the last proper RPG I've played), and this would be a "point people to content" kind of thing.

[Lujo]

[Darvin]

[Lujo]

Patches on a crusader, or whatever, the point is that Drac actually does the heavy lifting in that pairing (you only really need a bunch of piety, 15% resist whatever and +5 +10% damage from Taurog, heck you even lose 2 mana from Taurog, and you get everything else from Drac). Go at it Taurog first - one of the strongest builds in the game for so little effort it's not even funny, go at it Drac first - much more reasonable effort-to-effect ratio, god hopping all and all that jazz. You get the same silly effects, but you actually pay for it properly.

Heck you even get to powerlevel with health potions while in Taurog -.-' And without Drac you're just a Taurog guy, big whoop. Talk about dodging balance on stuff...

EDIT: Even crazier - you can go into a run aiming to really be just "Taurog guy", find Drac on the last tile and BAM, you're this guy instead. And if you go Drac with the goal of being this guy, which you can't be without Drac, it's impossibly more complicated (perfectly doable ofc, just not on the same planet in terms of complexity and actually using your head and various features).

EDIT: And you can pull off simmilar stunts just with less obviously brutal end results by going GG first (get your health up and a bunch of effortless piety), or TT first (level up off of easy-to-fireball undead, grab dodge and learning, convert into drac, go nuts, works better with spellcasters but you still end up with Dodge on a Drac monk by the end if you know what you're up to. TT penalty be damned. Healthmonster Priests are absolute kings of the GG/JJ approach, Dwarf/gnome bloodmages of the TT approach, or halfling bloodmages/anythings of the simmilar JJ approach. Taurog Monks don't necessarily even need the dragonshield. Many of these are also incredibly stupid with Rogues.

Try any of these without Drac - they're good but not necessarily moronic. Try any of these Drac-first - you can do it, you're silly by the end but you did the appropriate stuff. And if you don't find the best other guy for a god hopping jaunt - no matter they're all fine enough with just Drac. Go at any of these and find Drac on the last tile - BAM you're a pretty effortless complete monster.

EDIT: Props to Blovski for actually teaching me most of these other Drac happy things way back then. We could've and should've really figured this and a solution to this out all the way back then.

[Astral]

What do you think of changing Drac's prep penalty from Bloodless to Undead? So every monster retains it's blood but some of them punish you on kills.

It would barely effect players who wish to join/convert into Drac late, but would make early worship more reasonable. This way you can invest into lifesteal based strats without random RNG screwovers. If you turn your character into a halfvampire you can also use your new undeads as bloodcows without trouble. When you want to kill a high level monster who ended up becoming undead, your lifesteal still helps you in combat, you just lose a little piety in the end.

For dedicated worshippers stacking up sanguine and taking multiple bloodswells would still be challenging. While the number of bloodpools increased, accessing all of them costs a lost of piety, so you will be able to take less boons than usual.

Although the increase in bloodpool count further boosts late joiners

So what if prepping Dracul made X% of monsters Undead, while also joining him reduced this into say X/2%. What this means, is that late converters have to waste more popcorn/kill more monsters before they can sidestep the penalty, and all these missing monsters would translate into less overall kill piety under Dracul.

Why I like this version is that it's an indirect buff to dwarfs - lifesteal is more reliable - and it also creates an interesting prep choice for Priests.

Any thoughts?

[Darvin]

[secondserpentarius]

[Blovski]

^
That's a great idea for a penalty : )