New Versionino, lots and lots of changes, rebalancing, major changes to talents and lucky charm, etc. I've made several bard skills scale with wits. Probably the last version except maybe minor tweaks until game release. But who knows.
NEW SKILLS
Come Together (1 AP, 4 CD)
Bring all allies within 10m towards you and apply floating to you and your allies for 1 turn.
Push Off! (1 AP, 3 CD)
All characters within 6m of the bard are pushed 5m.
ENEMY BUFFS
Enemies are globally buffed in classic mode to receive 15% more vitality, magic and physical armor, and a hair more movement speed.
Three new champion types. About halved the initiative bonuses that champions receive.
Slightly decreased the chance for epics from champions and regular, buffed enemies. Non-champions will drop less gold.
Added a couple new enemy buffs and removed the weakest buffs that enemies could receive (encouraged, invisible, rested, favourable wind). Reduced Fragile Dodger's dodge bonus to 35% (from 40%).
Fixed the second enemy buff code (but still off by default). Also added a tweakable percentage chance (%SecondBuffChance) for enemies to receive a second buff.
LOOT
Reworked lucky charm so that whenever you enter combat, enemies have a chance to gain extra loot relative to your lucky charm amount (+6% chance per point). Even at level 1, you'll have a small chance for legendaries. Multiple characters with lucky charm can increase your chance for loot, but won't add more loot per character. Containers no longer benefit from lucky charm. The problem I had with lucky charm was that you always felt like you needed to have a designated looter, which was annoying. Removed the Treasure Song skill I added (no longer does anything if you still have it).
Wands no longer generate surfaces, but they deal 15% more damage and all have a 50% chance to apply the relevant statuses: fire wands have a 50% chance to cause burning, water wands chilled, air wands stunned, and poison wands poisoned. Fire wands deal slightly more damage than other wands, air wands provide a movement speed bonus, and poison and water wands provide resistances. This was mostly to make fire/poison wands not the only obvious choice for how much damage the fire/poison explode combo does.
Slightly buffed most of the unique skills that I added for random legendaries.
LUTES
Added a new, secret lute. Nebora might have a book that will help you...
All the lutes now have custom descriptions. Various major and minor balance tweaks to the lutes.
Prismatic Thunder lute is now unique (sold by Zaleskar). Rainbow Songs now allows you to cast Tame the Chaos on an enemy to give them two vulnerabilities (behaving like Dance of the Elements does, basing the vulnerability on status the character has, though it still restores their armor, so its best used when they're not near surfaces.)
Increased the healing of Creative Burden on the bard from 20% to 35% when you have the Headbanger status. Whiplash now contributes as a status for Masochistic Melody. Thrasher now applies masochistic melody to yourself for 2 turns on hit and has piercing damage.
BARD BALANCE
Overall lots of buffs to make various skills more enticing and interesting. I think I've overall been a bit too conservative and concerned more about balance than fun factor. Not trying to make bard OP, but many bard skills felt low-impact. Thanks to ReallyTho/Vozzlike for lots of feedback and discussion.
Completely rebalanced Jingle. It is now a 2 AP skill with a 1 memory cost, and reduced its range to 10m. Eliminated some of the strongest buffs it can apply (blessed, fortified, magic shell), added a few more weaker and mid-level ones. Overall hopefully it feels a bit less power-swingy, and allows for more versatility with the AP cost and memory redution.
Song of Living Nightmare now "upgrades" various statuses as well as applying a random status. Upgrades burning to necrofire, chilled to frozen (1 turn). If the target is poisoned, also applies acid, if slowed, also applies crippled, if bleeding, also applies weak. In addition the skill scales with wits. Each point in wits increases your chance by 3% to apply a status for 2 turns rather than 1, plus 10% chance for free. So with the base 10 wits, you have 40% to apply negative statuses for 2 turns, 20 wits is 70% to apply for 2 turns, etc. It will start off weaker than now up until about 14 wits, where it will start to get more reliable than before.
Barbarian's Delight is now an AOE buff of 12m. It also now heals the character for 25% of their max life when they get a kill. It also now heals the character for 10% of their max health when they get a critical strike. Should feel more rewarding to get kills with it, less situational, and less concern about "killstealing" for the buffs.
Soundwave now scales with your wits. With less than 14 wits, it works as now, with 14-18 wits it applies the second level Cacophony status which reduces resists by 20%, and with 19+ wits it reduces resists by 30% and deals more damage with its DoT.
Reduced the AP cost of Cacophony to 1 (from 2), and its cooldown to 4 (from 5), and increased the range of its initial damage from 8m to 10m. Should be more worth it to give up your leadership for 2 turns.
Masochistic Melody now also increases movement speed (.40m per level of masochism), and at level 5, it also increases AP recovery by 1.
Slightly Crescendo's movement speed bonus, and it now grants 1 AP recovery and floating on its second level.
Reduced Feedback's cooldown back down to 2 (from 3).
Increased the range of Feedback and Resonance by 2m.
Song of Guilt cooldown reduced to 4, from 5.
Rhyme now applies most statuses (nearly all buffs) for 2 turns rather than just 1.
Call and Response cooldown reduced to 2 (from 3), and now heals for 15% per buff instead of 10% (damage percentage unchanged).
Increased magic armor restored by Tame the Chaos.
Dance of the Elements range increased from 8m to 10m.
Earworm reduces resists by 30% instead of 35%.
OTHER CHANGES AND FIXES
The Demon talent now gives you increased power for each character you set on fire, and also requires Pyrokinetics 2 instead of 1. Every time you set a character on fire or necrofire (including yourself or an ally), you gain +5% damage, movement speed, and fire resist for 2 turns, stacking up to 5 times. I hadn't planned on changing existing talents, but I was implementing this for something else and figured it made sense for Demon instead.
Naturally, I had to do something similar for Ice King, which now grants you buffs to your damage, hydrosophist skill, and water resistance whenever you chill or freeze characters, for a max of 20% dmg, +3 hydrosophist, +25% water resist.
Five Star Diner now lets you equip a weapon for free once per turn and eat or drink something for free with +10% healing once per combat. That is, you immediately recover an AP when equipping a weapon. Remember, unequipping weapons costs 0 AP, so removing a dual wield set and equipping a bow will cost 0 AP.
Skin Graft, Wings, Adrenaline, and Teleport now require 2 points in their respective ability trees (though you can still start with adrenaline as a rogue with scoundrel 1). Again, I've been wanting to avoid trying to rebalance default things, but these abilities are just too good for a splash point.
Teleport scrolls now cost 3 AP.
Skin Graft now instantly reduces your AP by 2 (though you can cast it with 1 AP left if you want). Simply too strong, and this nerf probably won't even make too much of a difference, but it hurts the double adrenaline combo at least.
Reduced healing potions to 25% (small) to 35% (large), and healing elixirs to 50%.
Shed Skin now clears a lot more statuses (positive and negative), including staggered, decaying touch, shackles of pain, vulnerabilities, auras, bard buffs, etc.
Feedback can dissolve Shackles of Pain.
The origin characters now start with the backstabber talent like non-origin characters do.
Acid and Suffocating auras now properly grant immunity to acid and suffocating
Fire Immunity (e.g., from Phoenix Dive) can be stolen with Swindle and copied with Rhyme.
Rhyme can copy a lot more statuses, including most ones you can steal from enemies.
Updated many status and skill descriptions.
