Warlock Discussion
Chris
next action.
I think I will just make this consume more energy. Its easier to
code ... Damage * 1.5, so is Energy Used * 1.5. Just like the
Mindcrafter drain mana spell.
[2] Confusion Blast - Deal damage, then confuse monster for 1 turn
unless resisted (no monster immune)
Do you mean monsters that resist confusion/chaos aren't affected at
all, but everyone else is? I'm thrown off by the "no monster
immune" ... since no monster is currently immune to confusion, unless
they resist it :) Note that for monsters, resist chaos still means
resist confusion ... only players got nerfed in that respect.
[3] Dispelling Blast - Dispel Magic, then do damage
This is definitely thematically sound ... but I don't think I've ever
had occasion to actually use dispel magic. Or its rarely useful. So,
in practice, I think this will be weak. Maybe we should also add
extra damage to evil monsters?
[4] Prismatic Blast - 5 hits (acid, cold, fire, elec, pois), each 1/2
damage
These will be elemental blasts, and frequently resisted, no? Maybe we
should boost the radius to 2?
[5] Class features: HD +2. Skills as Mage. 3 blows per round.
Maybe skills as priest? Mages really can't fight, and that might make
some of the combat gifts rather useless. Also, what are your thoughts
on starting stats? Mages get -4 Str and -2 Con, which totally suck.
Keep this?
Anyway, its coming along. If I could stop playing, I might finish
this guy up :)
Dave Zhang
[1] Empowered Blast: Damage * 1.5, cannot use Eldritch blast on the
next action.
I think I will just make this consume more energy. Its easier to
code ... Damage * 1.5, so is Energy Used * 1.5. Just like the
Mindcrafter drain mana spell.
Er... there's a big difference here :) Not being able to use it in the next round means you can do something else, like quaff a !oHealing or read a ?oTeleport. Costing 1.5x energy makes it useless (it's always better to do the same DPS over smaller time intervals..). Since this is a clvl 45 ability, it's meant to be useful.
Mainly, I'm thinking about max damage here. At clvl 50 and max CHA, you're doing 26d20 = 273 damage base, with range 8. +50% damage is 410 damage, which is Wand of Rockets range.
[2] Confusion Blast - Deal damage, then confuse monster for 1 turn
unless resisted (no monster immune)
Do you mean monsters that resist confusion/chaos aren't affected at
all, but everyone else is? I'm thrown off by the "no monster
immune" ... since no monster is currently immune to confusion, unless
they resist it :) Note that for monsters, resist chaos still means
resist confusion ... only players got nerfed in that respect.
Er... sorry for the confusion. I meant that even monsters normally immune to confusion should have some chance of being confused by this. Maybe a +15 to the saving throw.
[3] Dispelling Blast - Dispel Magic, then do damage
This is definitely thematically sound ... but I don't think I've ever
had occasion to actually use dispel magic. Or its rarely useful. So,
in practice, I think this will be weak. Maybe we should also add
extra damage to evil monsters?
This and Confusing Blast are intentionally meant to be a bit weaker than Draining Blast, Prismatic Blast, and Vengeful Blast, because the pact penalties are far lower. Avoiding Angels through a game is easy. Avoiding Demons is hard. :)
[4] Prismatic Blast - 5 hits (acid, cold, fire, elec, pois), each 1/2
damage
These will be elemental blasts, and frequently resisted, no? Maybe we
should boost the radius to 2?
Actually, not that many monsters resist RBase. There's AMHD and GWoManyColors, but most other monsters resist only a subset. Against a Spectral Wyrm or Archlich, for example, you do 3/2 normal damage (acid, fire, elec), or 410 damage. Against a Greater Balrog, you do 2x damage (acid fire cold pois), or 546 damage. Against a GWoSpace-Time, you do 5/2 normal damage, or 683.
Keep in mind you do the damage for free, unlike all other classes!
Thus, I feel this is pretty balanced as is. You won't use this against Solars or the Serpent, but it's generally useful for a lot of other monsters.
[5] Class features: HD +2. Skills as Mage. 3 blows per round.
Maybe skills as priest? Mages really can't fight, and that might make
some of the combat gifts rather useless. Also, what are your thoughts
on starting stats? Mages get -4 Str and -2 Con, which totally suck.
Keep this?
Ah, you didn't get my later revision post. I was thinking skills and stats as Bard. Except with a +1 Stealth instead of -5.
Anyway, its coming along. If I could stop playing, I might finish
this guy up :)
Haha, no worries. Playtesting is also important. :)
I somehow feel that the Warlock needs a couple more abilities to be really attractive, because I expect the 1/2 damage vs. pact monsters to be pretty daunting.
Dave
--
---
David Yu Zhang, Ph.D.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation
Wyss Institute, Harvard University
Chris Kousky
>> [1] Empowered Blast: Damage * 1.5, cannot use Eldritch blast on the
>> next action.
>>
>> I think I will just make this consume more energy. Its easier to
>> code ... Damage * 1.5, so is Energy Used * 1.5. Just like the
>> Mindcrafter drain mana spell.
>>
>
> Er... there's a big difference here :) Not being able to use it in the next
> round means you can do something else, like quaff a !oHealing or read a
> ?oTeleport. Costing 1.5x energy makes it useless (it's always better to do
> the same DPS over smaller time intervals..). Since this is a clvl 45
> ability, it's meant to be useful.
>
> Mainly, I'm thinking about max damage here. At clvl 50 and max CHA, you're
> doing 26d20 = 273 damage base, with range 8. +50% damage is 410 damage,
> which is Wand of Rockets range.
>
player "moves" are handled so that I can clear a flag that I set on
casting.
>>
>> [2] Confusion Blast - Deal damage, then confuse monster for 1 turn
>> unless resisted (no monster immune)
>>
>> Do you mean monsters that resist confusion/chaos aren't affected at
>> all, but everyone else is? I'm thrown off by the "no monster
>> immune" ... since no monster is currently immune to confusion, unless
>> they resist it :) Note that for monsters, resist chaos still means
>> resist confusion ... only players got nerfed in that respect.
>>
>
> Er... sorry for the confusion. I meant that even monsters normally immune
> to confusion should have some chance of being confused by this. Maybe a +15
> to the saving throw.
Yeah, its weird, but this is what I coded up first, but then I re-read
your description and thought I was completely reading into it too
much. What I did was: All monsters get a save (mlev >
randint1(plev*2)). Resist Confusion and Chaos are meaningless.
Alternatively, we can do: Only monsters with RConf or RChaos get the
saving throw. Everyone else is just affected. I hesitate on this
since this means you can just munchkin kill monsters by chain casting.
And note, the monster gets its confusion counter set to 2 if affected
(and if confusion is < 2, of course). The counter does *not* get
bumped up on every effect. Its hard to get a "confused for 1 turn"
effect. What ends up happening is that they are confused until the
game engine decrements monster confusion counter, which is every 10
game turns I think. The result is they might be confused for a few
player moves depending on speed. We'll need to playtest this, but I
think the saving throw will just handle it. A DL70 monster will only
fail its throw 30% of the time against a CL50 player. Oberon will
fail only 1%! The final alternative, that RConf and RChaos boosts
saving throw is also a good option. Let's playtest a bit to see if
this is necessary. It would make many high level monsters immune (or
seemingly immune if you never witness a failed saving throw).
What are your thoughts on the actual saving throw to use? And note
that what the game often does is (mlev > randint1(plev)) making things
useless except in the early game. I hate that ...
>
>> [3] Dispelling Blast - Dispel Magic, then do damage
>>
>> This is definitely thematically sound ... but I don't think I've ever
>> had occasion to actually use dispel magic. Or its rarely useful. So,
>> in practice, I think this will be weak. Maybe we should also add
>> extra damage to evil monsters?
>>
>
> This and Confusing Blast are intentionally meant to be a bit weaker than
> Draining Blast, Prismatic Blast, and Vengeful Blast, because the pact
> penalties are far lower. Avoiding Angels through a game is easy. Avoiding
> Demons is hard. :)
>
OK, no change here. I still haven't coded the damage reduction issue.
Hopefully, I won't forget to do it :)
[...]
Dave Zhang
Yeah, its weird, but this is what I coded up first, but then I re-read
your description and thought I was completely reading into it too
much. What I did was: All monsters get a save (mlev >
randint1(plev*2)). Resist Confusion and Chaos are meaningless.
Alternatively, we can do: Only monsters with RConf or RChaos get the
saving throw. Everyone else is just affected. I hesitate on this
since this means you can just munchkin kill monsters by chain casting.
And note, the monster gets its confusion counter set to 2 if affected
(and if confusion is < 2, of course). The counter does *not* get
bumped up on every effect. Its hard to get a "confused for 1 turn"
effect. What ends up happening is that they are confused until the
game engine decrements monster confusion counter, which is every 10
game turns I think. The result is they might be confused for a few
player moves depending on speed. We'll need to playtest this, but I
think the saving throw will just handle it. A DL70 monster will only
fail its throw 30% of the time against a CL50 player. Oberon will
fail only 1%! The final alternative, that RConf and RChaos boosts
saving throw is also a good option. Let's playtest a bit to see if
this is necessary. It would make many high level monsters immune (or
seemingly immune if you never witness a failed saving throw).
What are your thoughts on the actual saving throw to use? And note
that what the game often does is (mlev > randint1(plev)) making things
useless except in the early game. I hate that ...
Yeah, I agree. I hate the current monster saving throw system. I was thinking of replacing it with
(randint1(100) + mlev > 2 * clvl + stat)
Where stat is the guiding stat, linearized (3 to 40). Warlocks are guided by Charisma, so at clvl 50 with 40 (18/220) CHA, a dlvl 100 monster has 60% chance of making the save. If they resist confusion, let's say they get an additional +30, so 10% chance of being confused.
A dlvl 60 monster that resists confusion has a 50% chance of being confused. A dlvl 60 monster that doesn't resist confusion has a 80% chance of being confused.
If you're planning on doing the Duelist next, that's the formula I had in mind for a lot of the specials.
Dave
Dave Zhang
Dave
Chris Kousky
>>> next action.
[snip developer whining about using more energy cause that's easier]
> OK, I'll figure out how to do this :) I'll need to find out where
> player "moves" are handled so that I can clear a flag that I set on
> casting.
>
The world will have you to blame for this, Dave. I'm going to add a
new game mechanic, called spell blocking. Basically it is a timed
effect that ticks down on player actions rather than based on world
time. This effect blocks the players ability to cast spells, and the
Empowered Blast will be the first to use it, bumping the counter up by
one.
But, in the future, this will become a monster spell! Sort of like
Dispel Magic, but the player gets a saving throw, and if failed, they
lose the ability to cast spells for a short amount of time (and I mean
short!)
It might become a monster aura: Antimagic.
It might become a curse or trap effect.
It might become a monster melee effect.
Muhahahahaha! Too evil?
You cast a Mana Storm. The Serpent of Chaos grunts in Pain.
The Serpent of Chaos says 'Your puny spells make me laugh!'
The Serpent of Chaos casts Antimagic. You feel encumbered.
Hope you brought some ?Teleport :)
Dave Zhang
Dave
Chris
for a CL50 ability:
Double: Fires 2 Eldritch Blasts, possibly at different targets.
Damage is 26d20 (assuming you get your Chr maxed, which is harder than
you might think!). Expect 273 + 273 = 546. Its powerful, but I'll
tweak it so the fail rate is about 8% for a CL50 18/*** character.
That surpasses a Mana Storm (500), though the higher fail rate
somewhat compensates. Its on par with the Mirror Master's Binding
Field (555), the Bard's Wizardry of Sauron (100d10), and a bit weaker
then Death's Hellfire (666) or Demon's Blood Curse (600).
Without this, finishing against The Serpent will be a bit difficult, I
think. You have Empowered (410) but the side effect is not so great,
unless you plan to quaff every other turn (With the new monster AI,
you might have to!). This is on par with -Rockets (400) but Rockets
are a weak way to win, IMO. Your other options are Special, but only
if you have made a pact with Demons (536 ... you take 179). I feel
that character might be reduced to Extended (273) which is only
slightly better than the Mindcrafter's Psycho Spear (150+d150). I've
never won that way :)
My benchmark for the distance spellcaster finish is the Mage's 5% fail
Mana Storm for 500hp. This class will exceed that with the Double,
but only slightly.
Another option for Double is to fire twice, but slightly nerf the
damage of each, maybe by 10%. Or decrease the damage sides by 2 or
something (26d18 rather than 26d20 for 247 avg damage each).
[2] Does anyone else find the random range of this class annoying? I
always select a target before casting my spells! I'll macro something
like \e*tmb, but sometimes the target is in range, and sometimes not
depending on how the 1dX roll goes. Anyway, I can get used to this, I
guess, but I probably need to change how I target monsters (Cast
first, then target).
[3] Any thoughts on changing the Wraithform and Invulnerability
activation frequencies for this class? I made them 2x more likely to
fire, but that is only because I have never had either of these
mutations actually kick in at a meaningful moment for me, and consider
them rather useless. Am I alone in this?
This class is almost done. I just need to clean up some things, like
spell browsing and descriptions and what not ...
--Chris
Chris
> always select a target before casting my spells! I'll macro something
> like \e*tmb, but sometimes the target is in range, and sometimes not
> depending on how the 1dX roll goes. Anyway, I can get used to this, I
> guess, but I probably need to change how I target monsters (Cast
> first, then target).
Lev 1-15: Range = 5
Lev 16-31: Range = 6
Lev 32-47: Range = 7
Lev 48-50: Range = 8
If you didn't mean this, I think this approach would play better than
what I implemented, which was:
Lev 1-15: Range = 5
Lev 16-31: Range = 5 + 1d6
Lev 32-47: Range = 5 + 1d7
Lev 48-50: Range = 5 + 1d8
Its the changing range on every cast of the spell that is annoying.
Dave Zhang
I'm also still thinking about both the lvl 50 ability and Warlock damage in general. I'm now feeling like it's too light overall.
At clvl 32, with say 18/150 CHA, that's 17d14 damage, or 128 damage. That's kind of peanuts, compared to an archer or ranger. A Chaos Mage with Disintegrate would do 102 damage, but has a radius of 3 and unlimited range.
At clvl 40, with say 18/180 CHA, you're up to 21d16 damage, or 178 damage, compared to 220 damage from unlimited Magic Rocket and near endless mana from Eat Magic. Sure, you have your special ability to either heal 89 HP or do 356 damage at a cost of 119 damage, but I'd say both are rather less good.
Actually, I was imagining no fail rates for Warlock's Blasts, although I don't think this will matter much.
Thus, in general, I think we can upgrade the Warlock damage a little. Maybe (1+clvl*3/5)dY (+20% damage upgrade). With this, at clvl 50 with max CHA, you're getting 325 basic damage, and 488 damage from Empowered. 650 for Vengeful, at a cost of 216 HP.
For the lvl 50 ability, I was thinking of making it *not* an Eldritch Blast ability, but rather something else that different specific to each pact. If we don't want to do summons (because we all suck with Summoner classes), we could make it something like "Polymorph Demon Lord." I.e. give more HD, speed, maybe some other abilities, although it'll be hard to make it not overlap too much with previously granted abilities...
Dave
Dave Zhang
Yeah, I've only found random Wraithform useful once in a rare while (i.e. I'm hunting down a hard quest monster who doesn't Dispel, so I move somewhere close to the monster but separated by a wall, and wait for it to kick in before engaging).
One alternative possibility is to make it activatable Wraithform and Invulnerability, but with a very, very short duration (like 2 turns). With a +30 speed, that'll be 6 actions. Hrm. That sounds a bit long. How about 3-4 player actions?
Dave
Chris Kousky
various levels in wizard mode and trying out their power. Then we can
adjust as needed.
For now, I'll keep the Wraithform and Invulnerability mutations, as
well as the CL50 Double blast as is and change them later after both
of us can do some playtesting. I might go back to trying the
summoning approach, as it is thematically sound, though I'm worried
that a lack of any spell points will require you to immediately
dismiss whatever you summon, since you can't pay upkeep. The mimicry
will overlap, I think. The reason I thought of doing Double was that
every option in the 'm' command is an Eldritch attack, and power
logically progresses upwards (or abilities are granted). Gettting a
double blast was consistent with this, but its no big deal.
At CL26, my Lucky Kutar, doing nothing but choosing stat boosts to Con
and Chr, has 18/136 Chr. Attacks go for 14d13 at range 6. If the
fail rate were 0%, this is too much, I think. As new abilities become
available, they should be difficult to use for a bit. In short, I
like keeping fail rates around, but they probably need to be tweaked.
It seems really really powerful as is, though the low range sort of
balances this out. But 100hp of continues ranged damage is nice at
this point. Compare a Chaos mage with a 16d8 Doombolt for 70. Damage
is 50% higher, and the big thing is not running out of mana. A mage
can generally kill 1 or 2 monsters before they have to flee. But I
haven't done any real play testing, so it is hard to say. Archers are
probably not comparable at this stage, plus they sometimes miss, and
also need to balance inventory to carry ammo (which is one reason the
quiver in vanilla is probably broken).
Anyway, consider the next release just an opportunity to check things
out a bit, and then we can revamp as necessary.
--Chris
Chris
> and Chr, has 18/136 Chr. Attacks go for 14d13 at range 6. If the
> fail rate were 0%, this is too much, I think. As new abilities become
> available, they should be difficult to use for a bit. In short, I
> like keeping fail rates around, but they probably need to be tweaked.
and there is no downside to using Extended since there are no casting
costs. There is a higher fail rate, but it is moot at this point.
So, with my stealth, I just wander around and roll thru everything
very quickly. In short, I think it might be waaaay too powerful :)
Maybe Extended should come much later?
Dave Zhang
Dave Zhang
Dave
Dave Zhang
every option in the 'm' command is an Eldritch attack, and power
logically progresses upwards (or abilities are granted). Gettting a
double blast was consistent with this, but its no big deal.
Wait, how did you code the spell-like abilities like Detect Objects, Protection From Evil, and Recharge? New activatable mutations?
We should be careful not to let Recharge become a standard mutation that can be acquired with !oPolymorph.
Dave
Chris Kousky
<David...@wyss.harvard.edu> wrote:
> BTW, you did code the 1/2 damage to pact monsters, right?
>
I think so. You also get a warning telling you that you are less
effective against monsters you have made a pact with. The warning is
part of the monster lore for that race (e.g. Novice Warriors, Novice
Mages, and Brodda the Easterling are 3 separate monster races). You
only get warned once per monster race.
Chris Kousky
> Protection From Evil, and Recharge? New activatable mutations?
>
> We should be careful not to let Recharge become a standard mutation that can
> be acquired with !oPolymorph.
>
Mutations too, but, no, the I did not add new mutations, just new
Class activations, so nobody else can get them. They come up in the
'A' command.
I suppose I could do them as spells instead. At the time, I only had
a single 'Realm' for all warlocks, though I discovered today to get
custom descriptions, I really need separate realms. So, if we want
those as spells instead, I can do that.
Dave Zhang
The way you implemented class-activatable abilities is fine.
For the pacts and the lvl 50 abilities, I really do want each of the pacts to be more different. We could keep the Double Blast, but I'm thinking of making each pact have some other benefit as well. Thoughts:
Dragon: This pact is about melee. Stone Skin, +STR, +Melee. Maybe we should encourage this more by giving further +STR/+DEX/+Melee/+ToDam/+Attack benefits? Not necessarily only at lvl 50, maybe sprinkle more melee benefits throughout the class.
Undead: This pact is about survival. Lots of resistances, extra +CON and stealth, healing with blasts. We could potentially add +HD at certain levels.
Demon: This pact is about devices and other forms of magic. Bonus to magic device skill, INT, and Recharge abilities. We could potentially add more Device skill and or some kind of charge-drain resistance. Actually, I like the latter idea.
(weaker) Aberrations. This pact is about detection. We've already given them everything they'll need for detection, but maybe we can add some miscellaneous things like Sterilize.
(weaker) Angels: This pact currently lacks a focus. I'm not sure what to add here. Maybe add the mutation Banish monsters directly to Hell?
Dave
Chris Kousky
across all experience levels. You top out at range 15. My CL26 guy
has range 6 normally, and 9 extended. 10 * lev/50 gave range 11 at
this point, which oddly feels like too much??
A radius 0 ball is advantageous for stealth. Kill monsters one at a
time without waking up nearby monsters. So spear and blast are
definitely not what I want at this point, since my close range will
result in me getting swamped. Stop playing Sexy, Dave :)
Remaining responses are inline.
On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Dave Zhang
<David...@wyss.harvard.edu> wrote:
> One more quick thing: This applies to other types of damage, in addition to
> Eldritch Blasts? We don't want an Undead Warlock just to switch over to
> using Wands of Rockets against Archliches.
Yeah, should be *all* damage.
Codespeak: There's a function mon_take_hit() that I think is where
all player damage against a monster goes, since this is where players
gain xp. Except I can't nerf damage there since callers make
assumptions about the damage they pass in (like double checking to see
if a monster is killed ...) Instead, there is a mon_damage_mod() that
gets called, hopefully everywhere, first, and handles monster
invulnerability. I nerf damage there, and it should work for
everything, including player auras.
>
> The way you implemented class-activatable abilities is fine.
My objection to the 'A' command is the key binding for an action
changes dynamically. So 'Ad' might be berserk activation now, but the
next mutation you pick up may bump it down to 'Ae' ... and you die
'cuz your holding down a macro key! I'd prefer spells for this
reason, despite the herculean effort it took to figure out how to get
them as class activations. Thoughts?
>
> For the pacts and the lvl 50 abilities, I really do want each of the pacts
> to be more different. We could keep the Double Blast, but I'm thinking of
> making each pact have some other benefit as well. Thoughts:
> [snip]
>
Those might work. I'd rather replace Double Blast then.
Chris
> > For the pacts and the lvl 50 abilities, I really do want each of the pacts
> > to be more different. We could keep the Double Blast, but I'm thinking of
> > making each pact have some other benefit as well. Thoughts:
> > [snip]
>
> Those might work. I'd rather replace Double Blast then.
Your suggestions of more in character bonuses, given incrementally is
good, in which case we should keep the CL50 spell, whatever it is.
For some reason I didn't read you last point very closely. I'll get
on addressing it once I wrap some other stuff up :)
Dave Zhang
across all experience levels. You top out at range 15. My CL26 guy
has range 6 normally, and 9 extended. 10 * lev/50 gave range 11 at
this point, which oddly feels like too much??
Hrm.. I notice a label redundancy here. Let's call the radius 2 effect a "Eldritch Burst" to prevent confusion.
I'm actually feeling like range 11 is OK for Extend.
It seems rather like the alternatives (Spear, Burst) are too weak / useless. Maybe the right thing to do is to replace one of these (Spear?) with something more useful. Maybe Eldritch Chain. You hit 1 monster, and 1/2 of the damage chains to another random monster within range. Or we just might add that in as a new ability.
A radius 0 ball is advantageous for stealth. Kill monsters one at a
time without waking up nearby monsters. So spear and blast are
definitely not what I want at this point, since my close range will
result in me getting swamped. Stop playing Sexy, Dave :)
Haha, I had never even considered the stealth aspects of a radius 0 ball. Wait, if you Eldritch blast in the middle of a pack of monsters, does the monster get stuck if it can't displace other monsters? That seems oddly overpowering. I initially said radius 0 ball because I didn't want the Eldritch blast to be bounced by monsters that reflect bolts.
My objection to the 'A' command is the key binding for an action
changes dynamically. So 'Ad' might be berserk activation now, but the
next mutation you pick up may bump it down to 'Ae' ... and you die
'cuz your holding down a macro key! I'd prefer spells for this
reason, despite the herculean effort it took to figure out how to get
them as class activations. Thoughts?
(I assume you mean the "U" command, since "A" is mapped to activate artifact).
Oh, that one is easy. Make it so that they're "available" from the get-go, but can't actually be used until you hit the minimum level. Kinda like Hell Lance for Paladin. That way, the key binding doesn't change.
Cheers,
Dave
Chris Kousky
Stat boosts will be 5 * lev/50 rather than a flat +3 at CL25.
Skill boosts will be x * lev/50 rather than a flat bump at CL10, where
x varies depending on the skill.
Dragon Pact:
The Dragon pact seems to need incremental RBase similar to the
Draconian, but I guess this would be a defensive attribute. I'm
adding plusses to hit and damage instead, prorated across all levels.
I'm also bumping up max blows from 3 to 4 for this pact.
I'm still working on the other pacts.
Chris Kousky
> useless. Maybe the right thing to do is to replace one of these (Spear?)
> with something more useful. Maybe Eldritch Chain. You hit 1 monster, and
> 1/2 of the damage chains to another random monster within range. Or we just
> might add that in as a new ability.
>
situations when you want to take out a bunch of critters in a row.
Burst just proved handy against a pack of DE Warlocks. Remember, the
damage does not diminish with distance, so they all took the full
brunt and were slain. Burst will also be nice for hounds and
breeders.
Other Changes:
Extended back up to 10 * lev/50. Max will be 18 which is what Mage's
start with. I guess that is just fine.
Undead Pact: +100 * lev/50 to max hp.