[Class] Blood Knight

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Blood Knight
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A blood knight as a fighter who has delved into the dark arts and can perform a 
limited number of offense effects using his own health.  In addition to the HP 
cost, using an ability also causes bleeding/wounds, with an amount proportional 
to the cost of the ability.

Due to the Blood Knight's abnormal constitution, all healing (spells, potions) 
is only half as effective.

Class features:  HD +10.  Skills as Ranger.  3 blows per round.  Intrinsic 
Regeneration.  All healing effects halved.

Races without blood cannot choose to be a Blood Knight.  This means:  No 
golems, androids, skeletons, spectres, zombies, or ents.

Blood knights gain extra blows when they are low on health.  Effects are 
cumulative.

Below full health, they gain +1 blow (4 max)
Below 80% health and above clvl 12, they gain additional +1 blow (5 max).
Below 60% health and above clvl 24, they gain additional +2 blows (7 max).
Below 40% health and above clvl 36, they gain additional +2 blows (9 max).
Below 20% health and above clvl 48, they gain additional +3 blows (12 max).

Class abilities:

Lvl 1 - Cut Self, cost 1 HP.  You cut yourself (does a small amount of damage, 
and gives you a grazed status).
Lvl 10 - Blood Spray.  You cut yourself and spray your arcane blood at nearby 
enemies.  Does 3d5+clvl+(clvl/4) damage to foes within 3 squares of you.
Lvl 20 - Blood Shield.  You gain +(100*(maxHP-currentHP))/maxHP for 30+1d20 
turns.  You also gain Reflection when you are below 60% of your maxHP.
Lvl 30 - Blood Rage.  You haste yourself and gain Berserk status.
Lvl 40 - Red Feast.  You have learned how to further sacrifice your life force 
in exchange for greater damage against your foes.  For 25+1d25 turns, during 
every successful blow, you deal 15 damage to yourself and 35 additional damage 
to your target.
Lvl 45 - Blood Pool.  You create a macabre Potion of Healing made of your own 
blood.

(Dave's Notes:  This is what a Berserker should really be like in my mind!)

Original issue reported on code.google.com by caltech....@gmail.com on 2 Nov 2010 at 5:50

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The variable bonus from Blood Shield is to AC, in case it wasn't obvious.

Original comment by caltech....@gmail.com on 2 Nov 2010 at 6:15

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Blood Pool providing unlimited !oHealing may be too strong.  We could make it 
also cost 20,000 gp.  For a million gp, you could make yourself 50 !oHealing.

Original comment by caltech....@gmail.com on 4 Nov 2010 at 9:12

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Actually, skills as Samurai might be more appropriate.

Original comment by caltech....@gmail.com on 4 Nov 2010 at 10:07

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Additional ability thoughts:

1 - Rename to "Blood Flow."

5 - Blood Sight.  You detect living creatures in the vicinity.

15 - Blood Bath.  Restore CON, remove poison.  

25 - Blood Seeking.  Your weapon gains a 2x slay against all living monsters 
for 30+1d30 turns.

35 - Blood Aura.  Whenever a living monster hits you in melee, the monster 
takes an equal amount of damage.  (Eye for an Eye, except only for living 
monsters.)

40 - (rename to "Blood Feast")

50 - Blood Explosion.  You take 500 damage, and do 500 damage to all living 
creatures in Line of Sight.

Original comment by caltech....@gmail.com on 4 Nov 2010 at 10:25

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Started for 0.0.4 ... I don't see anything too difficult to implement for this 
character.

Regarding: Lvl 45 - Blood Pool.  You create a macabre Potion of Healing made of 
your own blood.

Don't forget that all healing will be half as effective.  I actually don't have 
too big a problem with unlimited 150hp healing potions (or is this not what you 
intended?).  Though, perhaps after a while, you should become anemic?  I don't 
like the gold cost ... seems out of character.  I'd prefer to either restrict 
the number (like you can only do this once every 8 hours, or something) or to 
have some other cost (like stat drain).  Also, it will cost you hitpoints each 
time ... perhaps the cost should be really high (like 300).  Ideas?

Original comment by ckou...@gmail.com on 4 Nov 2010 at 5:07

• Changed state: Started
• Added labels: Type-Enhancement
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

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Yeah, it's meant to heal 150 HP and cost about 300 HP, but I was worried that 
the player would make like 1000 of these in the safety of the town.  I'd rather 
not do stat-drain (temporary makes it the same as costing about 1000gp, while 
permanent makes this ability useless).  

I also thought about restricting number:  you could potentially make it a 
"Potion of Blood" which has the same effects as !oHealing, except the game can 
check to make sure you never have more than 20 of them at one time.

Yeah, maybe let's just playtest with unlimited !oHealing, and come back to this 
issue only if it's too strong.

Original comment by caltech....@gmail.com on 4 Nov 2010 at 5:23

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I was thinking of doing a new potion type anyway, since we might want other 
types of Blood Potions, or we might want to tweak the effects (without 
simultaneously effecting !Healing).  Plus, getting a Potion 'Blood of 
<PlayerName>' might be cooler than having a !Healing pop under your feet :)

Original comment by ckou...@gmail.com on 4 Nov 2010 at 7:10

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How about this:
The Blood Knight has a Blood Pool intrinsic ability, available from an early 
point in the game.  The cost is always 50% of your max hp.

Blood Pool creates a Blood Potion with your own blood!  What kind of Blood 
Potion? Well (and please help me out here):
Level 1: Potion of Average Blood.  It tastes salty.  No effect.
Level 10: Potion of Young Blood.  Heals a bit.
Level 20: Potion of Strong Blood.  +2 Fighting stats for a bit.
Level 30: Potion of Quick Blood.  Extra speed for a bit.  +2 fighting stats for 
a bit.
Level 40: Potion of Heroic Blood.  Extra speed for a bit.  Heroism and +3 
fighting stats for a bit.
Level 50: Potion of Immortal Blood.  Heals 300hp.  Restores all stats and life. 
 Cures stunning (but not cuts).  Extra speed and heroism for a bit.  +4 
fighting stats for a bit.

Anyway, I think the idea of making variously powered blood potions all 
throughout the game would be fun.  We can balance this power in a number of 
ways.
[1] You can only activate this ability every so often, perhaps once or twice 
per day (So some sort of new player counter).
[2] You can only have so many blood potions at a time (both home and inventory 
... shopkeepers have no interest in your blood potions!)
[3] Blood potions sour.  After a few hours, they become useless.  (Not sure how 
to implement this ... perhaps every so often they just randomly disappear?  But 
I'd prefer an object timestamp (turncount) and after so many turns, they become 
spoiled).

Original comment by ckou...@gmail.com on 4 Nov 2010 at 8:02

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Hm, I'm not sure I agree with this direction; primarily because the Blood 
Knight already has lots of interesting features.  Maybe potion-crafting should 
be forked out to a different class (maybe Bloodcrafter?  Could be a subclass of 
a generalized "Crafter" class, which would include Weaponsmiths). 

Another thing, I had in mind the idea that the Blood Knight is all about 
sacrificing his own health to kill his enemies more quickly.  +2 Fighting Stats 
(which I interpreted to be STR, DEX, CON) doesn't fit well with this theme, 
because the +2 CON gives the Blood Knight more HP.  Same thing with Young 
Blood, which heals the Blood Knight, whereas I want things that hurt the Blood 
Knight's HP.

If we do want to keep the array of Potions as part of the Blood Knights 
Arsenal, we can make it so that each potion yields a temporary penalty to CON 
(with the penalty increasing for more powerful potions), which has to expire 
naturally (cannot be restored by Blood Bath).

Along a similar vein, let's make it so that Blood Rage gives only the Haste and 
Berserk effects, and not the mini-heal associated with a !oBerserkStrength.

Original comment by caltech....@gmail.com on 4 Nov 2010 at 10:34

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So, just the CL45 Blood Pool, then?  You'll get a Potion of Blood that heals 
150hp.  You can make as many as you want ... for now.  (Really, in the final 
battle, healing 150hp is not that useful, since you will need to teleport out 
of line of sight to do it).  I suppose you could carry a few hundred of these 
... We'll take steps to tone it down later if need be.

Original comment by ckou...@gmail.com on 4 Nov 2010 at 11:19

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Added for 0.0.4
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Initial coding complete.  We'll need to rebalance after some playtesting.

Original comment by ckou...@gmail.com on 6 Nov 2010 at 3:50

• Changed state: Fixed

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Original comment by ckou...@gmail.com on 12 Nov 2010 at 10:22

• Added labels: Milestone-0.1