playable Old Man character brainstorming
This has been kicked around in a few threads, but not really elaborated upon. Let's get some ideas on paper.
Here's what I've been thinking about:
We know only a couple of things about the Old Man: he opens rifts, he builds fortresses from scratch, and he's never as dead as he seems. I figure as a teacher of apprentices and as a fortress-builder, his niche can be versatility-- he's been around long enough to know a lot of tricks. So while the War Mage is sturdy and the Sorceress has a lot of raw power to throw around, the Old Man is just crafty and resourceful.
So, what if he had the health of the Sorceress and the mana of the War Mage (tied for worst in both categories), but had an extra action bar slot to bring one extra weapon/trap/trinket to each level (eleven in single-player, seven in co-op). This way, every characters has one thing (health, mana, or action bar space) that's above the baseline. Extra action bar space is sort of huge; he's definitely got to have some glaring deficiency; maybe he just totally lacks a Tar Trap/Ice Vent analogue to control the speed of incoming monsters.
He needs at least two unique weapons and two unique traps to be on par with the other characters, so here are a couple suggestions.
- Fortress Builder's Staff: Your typical gnarly wizard staff. Primary fire is a slow-firing small AOE with low damage, but which adds a short-duration slowing debuff. (If the Old Man doesn't have any Tar Trap/Ice Vent style trap, or the Acid Sprayer + Slow, this could be his primary way to slow groups. Can slow them down through a killbox, but needs constant attention.) Alternate fire places a little acid blob on the floor which lasts a short time, damaging any enemies that walk through it. One unique upgrade turns the acid blob into a more damaging lava blob with burn debuff; the other unique upgrade turns it into a cold blob which freezes enemies but does no damage.
- Tome of Incantations: Wizard's spellbook with a bunch of different effects, depending on how long (if at all) you hold the fire button. Primary fire is a long-range projectile; secondary fire creates a temporary aura that damages enemies that get close. The spells cycle through different element/debuff combos (fire + burn, ice + chill, lightning + stun, acid + slow, etc.) depending on how long you charge it before letting it go. None of the damage is spectacular, but this has enough versatility to get around enemies' elemental resistances.
- Mini-Tower: Place on the floor, works like a barricade, only taller. Gnolls and players can't jump over them. Guardians can stand on top and be semi-safe, and the sides of the tower are the right size for smaller wall traps (grinder-sized) to fit on them. Special upgrade allows a shorter version of this to be placed on walls as a platform you can jump on to reach high places.
- Cauldron: Place on a wall, and it operates like the acid cauldrons found in some levels. Shoot it and it spills, and refills over time. One unique upgrade turns the acid into more deadly lava with more/better debuffs, the other unique update makes it spill automatically when enemies walk underneath.
Obviously we can't have the Old Man coming back from the dead (any more than everybody already does in this game), and I don't know if it makes sense to build a strategy around dying, but we can make the Old Man's double-jump/feather-fall type ability be teleporting back to the spawn point near the rift if you hit space again while in the air.
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So: thoughts? Better ideas? Reasons why this is terrible?
Insta gibbing orcs on a constant with no reset is bad. Especially when it acts like a decoy...
i think the real idea is to have a level editor mode.. where you can use the mage to construct levels form scratch.. so instead of traps you have walls and floor and stuff that you can place to make your own levels that are uploaded to robot for others to play and rate and stuff.
i think the real idea is to have a level editor mode.. where you can use the mage to construct levels form scratch.. so instead of traps you have walls and floor and stuff that you can place to make your own levels that are uploaded to robot for others to play and rate and stuff.
There is no way that is happening. Just too different from the way the game is now. New mechanics would have to be added in... that's more of a OMD3 thing than a DLC thing. Instead, maybe he just places down some uber-strong barricades that look more like short walls.
Maybe the old man's jump special is like sort of running jump like yoshi from super smash bros. So instead of just a double jump, he jumps once, then if you hit space again he sort of climbs up a little more, then starts falling at a lower gravity than normal.
I like the idea of the decoy portal, but maybe instead of sending them back to the start, I think it should suck up as many orcs as possible in a short time, then, it explodes/sets-on-fire/freezes the orcs it took in with an amount of power proportional to how many orcs it took in. So it'd be great to use on crowds of orcs.
I think giving a character an item slot advantage would be brokenly overpowered.
I do like the idea for a taller barricade but allowing you to build on them also seems game breaking to me, this could be an interesting idea for OMD3 but haphazardly slapping it into OMD2 will radically change everything.
Keeping with the fortress builder theme, how about a portible rift trinket that opens a fake rift, luring orcs toward it like a decoy. Orcs that enter can be sent back to the start or perhaps killed like a void wall. I imagine either having it stay open for a limit amount of time if it sends orcs back to start, or having a maximum number of charges that drain at the same rate that rift points would be lost at it if it kills orcs.
if (runtime > 3600 && map == "King of the Hill") { throw new NoHighScoreForYouException("Crash to Desktop"); }