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Serpent Thievery Buff
It's not as nasty as it used to be but I'm happy, now all my stuff that's returning actually has a purpose again. Thoughts?
Jonners said:
ANNOUNCE NEWS #3953
Date: 10/02/2013 at 21:17
From: Tecton, the Terraformer
To : Everyone
Subj: Serpent classlead changes
We're excited to announce the release of our classlead changes for the Serpent class! Like many of our classes, this is an extensive overhaul, with changes being made to most aspects of the skillset. One of our goals here was to make the class be more reliant on a single statistic, namely dexterity. So without further ado, I present the changes:
Subterfuge
----------
* DIRKs (artefact and regular) have had their damage statistic reduced significantly.
* FLAY balance time is now modified by the serpent's dexterity.
* BACKSTAB channel time is modified by the serpent's dexterity.
* PHASE channel time is modified by the serpent's dexterity.
* DOUBLESTAB balance time is now modified by the speed statistic of the serpent's dirk, and his or her dexterity.
* PICKPOCKET speed and effectiveness are more reliant on the serpent's dexterity.
* PICKPOCKET maximum gold values have been increased.
* PICKPOCKET will now steal groups of items, rather than a single one.
* PICKPOCKET can now steal specified items from the person. (**)
Hypnosis
--------
* DEMENTIA now prevents the illusion detection aspect of LIFEVISION.
* CLEANSE can now only self-strip actions (not afflictions) from the serpent.
* HYPERSOMNIA and CONFUSION now have a third-person message when they fire on the victim.
* Suggestions now have a lower random variance in their timing.
* MESMERISE has been reworked to boost the chances of a pickpocketing attempt. (**)
Venom
-----
* SHRUGGING has been reworked, being repurposed from a passive ability to an active one.
(**) The chances of PICKPOCKETing an item is quite low, using MESMERISE will boost your chances, but it still has a decent chance of failure. Once a specific item has been stolen, the victim will gain a vigilance defence which will greatly reduce their chance of having additional specified items stolen from them for a period of time.
Penned by My hand on the 16th of Glacian, in the year 636 AF.
~
You close your eyes momentarily and extend the range of your vision, seeking out the presence of Drugs.
Though too far away to accurately perceive details, you see that Drugs is in Mhaldor.
1
Comments
I am a bit confused by the description for shrugging, it is active now? So you have to actually use a shrug command? Does it then have a chance to cure a venom affliction? I am confused.
Now we can sell them on a free tree tattoo.
Also at new shrugging: If it cures paralysis>randomAffliction instead of just randomly, it looks fine. Otherwise meh, theyd have become Knight fodder. Previously they sacrificed having a strong offence against them for high defence. Now... a Knight can tear through them as easily as they already could any other.
Borran at 13 DEX says he's at roughly 2.0 seconds with Thoth's now. So either he has to take dex spec for a boost (hearing from a few other serpents that they aren't seeing much differences in speed with higher dex, so more tests are needed) or accept that he has a 1500cr artifact that stabs at former level 2 speed. It's great having to sacrifice so much con now for knights that will spam curare and own serpent momentum.
-----
I'll share the numbers of what I've learned here, to hopefully curb the amount of messages @Tecton will get in the future, or possibly inspire more of them!
Most of the attacks (dstab, pickpocket, flay) are capped in how much reduction they can receive, so any DEX over a certain value is not beneficial to reducing balance times any more. I don't know specifically what this number is, you'll have to test for yourselves, but I do know that at 16 DEX I was at maximum balance reduction. Thoth's dstab was sitting around 1.82-1.86 balance times with max reduction and Nimble.
Some things are not capped in reduction, the only one I found while I was testing extreme DEX ranges was backstab channel time. At 16 DEX Backstab took 3.6 seconds to complete. At 19 DEX it took 2.5 seconds to complete. Possible Phase is uncapped as well, I didn't test it.
Shrugging works through paralysis currently, and has a 10 second 'cooldown' before it can be used again.
Item pickpocketing lets you get any non-worn item on a person. It has extremely low chances to succeed (10% or less, not enough data to be sure at this point). It is increased by Dexterity, but like attack speeds it is capped scaling. Once an item pickpocket attempt fails, you're 'immune' to item pickpocket attempts for an hour. A good compromise to the prior theft system, I think. High value items can be stolen again, but at very low odds. It still takes the channel time, and mesmerise time to maximize efficiency, so you're looking at ~20 seconds of prep time to attempt on someone with anti-theft. You can't constantly attempt high-value theft on that person because of the cooldown, and it always alerts you to the name of the person who attempted to take the item when it fails. I have not seen it succeed, so I don't know what is seen then.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
You will be mechanically unable to dstab with a thoths slower than you could previously.
You will also gain the least amount (in dstab, at least) as a person who owns a thoths. There is a hard cap on how fast dstab can go. The benefit is that you'll be able to sacrifice dex for con primarily.
It is a one-handed weapon.
Damage: 71 To-hit: 204 Speed: 271
Thoth's fang has no venoms or magical effects on it.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
If you have a thoths, you can safely run around with as little dex as you want and max out con and still hit the exact same speed as you had pre changes.
Flay was mostly on the list of things to be modified just to be in line with other similar subterfuge abilities. Due to how fast flay already is it is pretty minor scaling on it (but it is there).
A serpent who specs/traits for dex with no artie dirk will fall between old assassins dirk and old buckawns spine dstab speed. I just read the announce, I guess that's a typo. Dirk speed won't influence dstab, its all your dex and artie dirk (if applicable).
Item theft:
Its considerably higher than ten percent.
Dstab:
With 12 dex you're not actually getting any dex bonus for any of the subterfuge abilities. It starts kicking in at 13. I'm not sure if its just perception or not, but your dstab speed won't have changed at all.
I think that's a pretty easy price to pay for regaining the ability to target any item a person isn't actively wearing.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
I know that a lot of former thieves enjoyed the puzzle that figuring out how to bypass reflexes and systems gave, and this is a step in the right direction, but at the same time, one chance at theft followed by "Well, you stripped selfishness, made them forget to put their coins back in their pack, fooled them with the bar of gold trick, and successfully convinced them that the hand at their hips was actually a friendly neighborhood Siren but you rolled an 8 when you needed a 9, sorry, try again later!" isn't enjoyable.
I'd prefer to see it changed to one item stolen triggers the theft, and then maybe give them an increased cooldown to prevent them from being picked apart clean like in ages past. That way, thieves get that one special thing that they can hold for ransom, people get a reason not to loiter about where they can be preyed upon, and you avoid complete griefing like stripping someone of all their clothing, vials, journals, and everything else that wasn't tattooed into their skin could bring.
It's also worth nothing you can't target pickpocket gold.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."