Outcast 'mod'. Rogue fixed.

[Claudius]

This is not really a mod because you have to use the editor to accomplish adding new learning bonuses to the rogue classes.

The rogue is underpowered, nobody wants to be a rogue. The only thing they can do at character creation is to throwing their knife and they have a learning bonus to thieving skills. Sneak is useless without summons which is one thing I fix. Other classes can also spend points to open the chests or return to the sewers later. Finally chests don't always drop good things.

This is one problem I fix is the starting rogue by adding a learning bonus to nether magic. They are an outcast and have dabbled in the dark arts. As they choose their path this makes sense. A hunter soon to be a ranger lord is in the wilds in contact with tribes and learning voodoo. Outcast. A ninja is clearly an outcast as is a cabalist which is kind of an occultist.

The second is to adjust the 2nd tier and 3rd tier to make them more powerful. Come on. A war witch is insane. I tried to keep a theme to the class slightly modified by me. And an interesting gameplay combined with power.

The third minor thing is to edit in a venomous dagger given to you when you talk to the shop of mysteries and decide to go to custer manor. She only gives it to rogues.

Thought of a fourth thing. You need nether spells and ketals. So consider yourself an ally of the mages guild. Once you get rogue guild membership you get a 'library card' to the mages guild. Using the quest feature of the editor set that you have completed the mage guild quest and are a member.

Summons are added with nether which helps the backstab. You don't get xp for a summons kill unless you hit once. But this should not be a problem unless you are killing an easy opponent with a strong summon. Most of the summons are distractions for example it would take a rat quite a while to kill a goblin.

How do we add the learning bonuses? There is an editor but you can't add learning bonuses directly. Search the dungeon lords forum for editor to find it. You can save your game exit. Start the editor and load your character. From there what you do is make a template that has the right learning bonus. Lets use nether as an example. When we spend xp on lockpicking we do not need to use the editor. Instead we just use normal thing. Only when we modify nether (for rogue) do we need the editor. So in the editor you make a template. Delete rogue and put in either: sorceror, ninja, wizard etc. Then save the changes. Exit and restart dungeon lords reload and spec your points in nether. If for example you picked wizard you should only add points to nether if you want to follow the spirit of my mod. Don't add points to arcane or even add points to spellfire. This 'mod' or idea is to have a balanced gameplay with a slightly modified rogue, but not to 'cheat' and add too much or infinite power. You can cheat if you want, but then you only need your imagination and not my guide. You could set all your stats to 100 and all the skills in the game to 15. Then give yourself the deathlord armor and 500 cataclysms.

Anyhow That is how to use the editor to simulate learning bonuses. PM me if it is hard to figure out for you to make a template.

On to the idea here is the guide for starting rogue:

Starting items: Summon rat nether spell with 10 charges and fear with 5. It is a long time till you can get bone dust therefore 10 for rat. Fear in the opening you can farm dead hair and plenty of bat wing to find though bats are a noble prey in terms of PITA. In any case this is better than rogue's usual start even if you burn all your charges finding the sewer. If you are new. Its kind of powerful to be able to farm up as much fear as you want but personally I don't bother grinding in this game anyhow.

You edit in an item by the items tab in the editor. Load the save and your character appears. Now open the items tab. Select magic and subcategory nether spells. Select summon rat and there is a field for number somwhere. Number 1 and number 2. Its number 2 where you add 5 or 10 to that field.

Just so you know to mix a nether spell go to your equipment screen hit nether. You will see your spells. If you click on the spell it will cast it. But the boxes on the left are where you experiment with recipes. If you hover over the spells you already have it tells how to make the recipe. For example fear is batwing and deadman hair. So put those in the boxes and you can create a charge of fear which gets added to the fear spell symbol which you click on to cast.

So this is the edit to rogue items. The edit to learning bonuses is nether magic learning bonus. Next I'll give the second tier classes.

The templates available for nether could be for 1-5 nether magic although 4 is the maximum possible: sorceror, wizard, shadow lord, shugenja, ninja, warwitch.

Hunter. The hunter lives in the wilds in contact with witches and tribes of demigoths. Therefore they get an additional nether learning bonus. They also have a requirement of 4 nether before you can take the hunter quest. This is on the honor system of enforcement. Remember you can always cheat to just give yourself hunter class so this is on the honor system. The more powerful nether magic will allow you to summon more things which helps backstabbing and ranged combat. Which is the theme of Hunter and Ranger lord.

Trickster. The trickster has dabbled in the dark arts of magic and mystery. They get the rune magic learning bonus. The template possibilities are valkyrie, paladin, war witch, celestial, crusader. The maximum rune magic character might be a trickster, valkyrie, warwitch which has the maximum of 3 rune magic. 4 and 5 are impossible even though we have the templates. Like the hunter the trickster has a new requirement of 3 rune magic.

Budoka. The mirror of the samurai the Budoka is equally skilled with weapons but also a student of ninjitsu and a rogue rather than armor wearing warrior. The budoka receives the skill inflict wounds. To add to this skill use the samurai template. The bukoka has a new requirement of 3 medium weapons.

Now onto the third tier classes.

Ranger lord. The ranger lord has now worked shamanistic magic into his reportoire. He gains celestial magic learning bonus which fits a ranger. By looking to the stars his magic increases. He also gains the skill alchemy due to his study of monster corpses. The ranger lord has a new requirement of 5 nether magic and 4 celestial.

Cabalist. The cabalist always had drained life but almost no spells to use it. Nether magic only has nether spray. So a cabalist marauder would only have nether spray to use his drain life. Ok that would be doable if you make 100 ketals for the nether spray for each dungeon I guess but my idea is better. Cabalist gains a learning bonus for arcane magic. The cabalist has unlocked the power of true arcane magic from their dabbling in tomes of wizards. They also get a new skill scribe. The cabalist has a new requirement of 4 arcane.

Ninja lord. The ninja lord is almost a weapons master. He gains a weapons learning bonus. He also has learned to use dai katana and other heavy weapons thus unlocking heavy weapons skill. This will help adept and mage ninjas. For fighter ninjas we need something so the ninja has learned to use enchanted blades and now gets magic weaponry skill. There is a problem with using the editor to edit ninjas is they lose dual light weapons. We are not going to let that hurt us so you can use the samurai template when you add points. Light weapons only matters at 1 or 5 I think so you won't be doing this often. After editing you will still have light weapons. There is no new requirement for ninja, their requirements are already quite high.

Always make a backup when you save and go to the editor. I think if you have too many advancement points or are exactly at level up it does weird things. You will have to experiment.

Let me know if you have questions, comments, or if you play this.

[Claudius]

I tried this and it was too much a PITA. I wish I could use the editor to change learning bonus.


But I have a new idea. New skills at character creation. Inflict wounds fits with rogue. For samurai rogues they get magical weapons due to arcane dabbling. For trickster samurai they get channel and scribe again due to dabblings in occult.