Aztecnologist (Dredmor mod)

Been on an old-school Dungeons of Dredmor kick lately. Tonight I published an entirely new Mod for Dredmor. 

Link: Dungeons of Dredmor mod: Aztecnologist 

Your degree in Applied Temple Trap Engineering from Mayincatecnical College will make those pesky Archaeologists feel appropriately unwelcome!

Archaeologists the world over plunder mighty tombs and temples, braving all manner of horrific traps to bring the power of scholarly tools like bullwhips and dynamite to bear to rescue the misty past from its rightful owners. Who maintains those ageless death-traps, and keeps them functioning generations after their installation? You do! You went to college for it.

This skill provides damage and resist boosts for Piercing and Toxic damage, and several levels of Trap Sight and Trap Affinity, but the main draw is the crazy activated abilities.

Synergy and Skill Selection:

Aztecnologist is a rogue skill about traps and ranged attacks. It features a number of abilities that scale based on your Trap Sight or your Trap Affinity.

It has great synergy with Tinkering, as well as any skill that gives you levels in the Trap-related stats.

There are levels that augment your ranged attacks (thrown or crossbow), as well as levels that provide a more melee-based rogue with something to do on the turns when the monsters aren't adjacent.

It works best when paired with other Rogue skills. If this is the only trap-related skill on your character sheet, you won't have enough Trap Levels to keep the attacks relevant on deeper floors.

If you've ever run a full-Rogue deep into DoD, you may have noticed that towards the end, you kinda have more Trap Levels than you actually need. Aztecnologist puts that excess Trap Affinity to work as the engine that scales your damage. Go rogue. You know you want to.

Complete With All The Fixings

In addition to the skill, this includes all the flourishes you'd expect from the creator of Interior Dredmorating.

By which I mean there's:

• a few new rooms to support the theme,
• new items including dangerous new traps,
• new statues popping up randomly in the dungeon,
• silly things for the monsters to say while they're trying to sacrifice you.

Here's a lengthy run-down of the skill, with designer's commentary...

Level 1: Pressure Plate Tecnition 101

In the intro classes at your first Trapped Temple, you learned when to duck, and where to tread lightly. It's a highly competitive field.

A straight-forward level that provides a bit of trap sight and dodge.

Also starts you with a couple simple traps in your inventory, a handful of throwing darts, and a weak melee weapon that adds to your Trap Sight.

Level 2: Assistant Frog Licker

It's an unpaid gig, you do it for the experience. Keep up the good work, and maybe one day they'll let you lick Chaac, the God of Frogs, and not just lick his Assistants.

A low-damage ranged attack on an 8-turn timer. When you hit the target, it gives you a buff that makes your next few melee attacks worth extra xp, and gives you an adorable frog halo.

The XP acceleartion is small, and will only remain relevant for the first few floors.

Also enhances your crossbow and thrown attacks with a 5% chance to create small clouds of poison at the target.

Also provides 1 toxic resist, a level of Trap Affinity, and a macuahuitl.

Level 3: Bloody Ballgame

Go Axolotls! It's hardly a temple without a Sacrificial Ballgame Team. As the famous saying goes, all traps and no play makes Azcalxochicoehua a dead boy.

Small stat boosts to make you less squishy, and a tiny boost to melee damage. Also a 3% increase to ammo recovery rate, so all styles of roguery get a little bump in the combat department.

On level-up it awards you a single high-damage throwing weapon for when you absolutely have to bean that monster before it can get too close.

Level 4: Solar Powered Spear Dispenser

You have learned the pinnacle of Mayincatecnical Trap Tecnology: The ability to make four spears and a rotting skull jump out whenever someone crosses a beam of light that's shining from the cieling.

Allows you to place a trap in any empty space at range, once every 30 turns.

Gives you 1 Trap Affinity and the only point of Tinkering in this skill tree. Also awards you the Tinkering recipe for the Solar-Powered Spear Trap in case you want to make one the old-fashioned way.

For shootier characters, adds another 10% chance to make a tiny poison cloud at the space you fire your bow or thrown weapons at.

Level 5: Hummingbird Tecnique

You nimbly flit between flowers, traps and ribs alike to touch the hearts of men, steal things out from under the feet of monsters, and earn the adoration of the Head of the Hummingbird Division of the Traps and Temple Services Department.

More combat stat boosts, another Trap Sight, and an activatible attack/utility/escape ability.

The ability performs a melee attack at range, picks up items from beneath the target, spawns a custom food item, and then teleports you randomly.

Depending on the situation, you can use it aggressively to rip the edible heart out of the target's rib cage, or defensively to put some distance between yourself and a dangerous foe.

Like any random teleport, it does come at some risk, so think before you use it. You don't want to end up trapped someplace you can't escape from.

(On level-up, this gives you a single Instability Infusion. That's your one "get out of jail free" card. Don't waste it frivolously.)

The Hummingbird Treats this ability makes are a food item that also makes you more ferocious. Huitzilopochtli is the Aztec god of hummingbirds and war. I'm not making that up.

While the buff is active, an adorable tiny hummingbird halo flies above your head, hungry to feast on the blood of your enemies.

Level 6: Olmecanized Warfare

Headbutt those pesky archaeologists with the power of your trap-building mentor, Stone Cold Steve Olmec. That'll teach 'em not to tomb-rob!

A small but strong AOE that creates a blocker. Useful for crushing monsters, or for delaying a horde's attempts to reach you.

Level 7: Pneumatic Gargoyle Coordinator

There's more to it than just swapping in a fresh gargoyle clip and pumping the bellows. Sometimes you have to run downrange to collect all the darts that missed, or to be a surrogate target... My bad, we call them Forward Observers now.

Useful buffs for shooty rogues, providing more damage, more poison clouds and more ammo recovery. Sight, Trap Sight, and EDR get boosted too.

Includes an activatible large AOE attack that fills the air around you with darts. Great for when you get surrounded, and honestly not a bad opening move for any zoo.

This AoE relies on Piercing and Toxic damage, which some non-fleshy monsters resist quite well. So just be aware that sometimes this will clear the room, and other times it won't make a scratch.

Level 8: Moctezuma's Retirement Plan

In a long career of Temple Engineering, you've learned how to build them, trap them, and even tear everything down on your way to the retirement party.

You know that part in Raiders where Indy gets chased by a giant boulder? This is that, but on purpose.

While active, you get a big defensive buff, and are constantly being teleported forward while relentlessly pursued by a giant stone ball.

Tricky to learn how to use it to maximum effectiveness, but crazy fun and sure to leave chaos and destruction everywhere you go. Turn it on, and race through a target-rich environment.

Stat boosts and a recipe reward round out the usefulness for those times when you aren't in the mood for chaotic carnage.

If you run in a straight line the entire duration, it looks like the boulder is chasing you. If you weave and turn, it's just chaos. Delightful chaos.

Feedback Requested:

Balancing for a bunch of abilities that use timers instead of mana, and scale to a stat that isn't directly combat-related is tricky. Let me know if you think I need to tweak some numbers to get it running just right, but if you do reach out to me, please tell me the combo of skills you were using, as I think skill choice will have a huge impact on your play experience.

Also, let me know if the 8th Level is just too hard to utilize. Having the boulder chase you is goofy fun, but it's really tricky. Conceptually, I could just as easily justify the boulder going in front of you, like you're the one pushing it towards Dr Jones. Switching it around would be easy (and the play style probably much simpler to understand if I did) so let me know if you think the current "it's chasing me" version is too weird to be useful. I set the damage pretty high so that even if your aim is awful you might get luck and smash something... but it's also possible I was too aggressive there.