# a touch of heresy

## wait why heretics

i mean it's not a priority but let's be real

- traitors won't happen on citrp by server direction
- offmaps are blocked behind 2-3 more refactors
- changelings are blocked behind 1-2 more refactors
- conversion antags won't happen by server direction
- technomancers are blocked behind a science xenoarcheology redesign
- wizards won't happen until we know what we're doing with psionics, because wizards won't happen but if they were psions........................................

tl;dr it'd be nice to have something cool and reboot the stupid cult arc with actual occultism before starting to reintroduce things like bloodcults and silly crap like that

and i'm bored
and i want to make something fun

lol?

okay shitposting over

## quick note

the word **antag** as per this document means "someone given the special role by admins/EMs/game coder to be an event role/character / offmap with this abilitiy by default"

citadel rp will never have a hard distinction between antags and nonantags, everything will use abstraction APIs to check knowledge for this reason. there's no such thing as an antagonist, only who someone is and what they're in the round to do.

the word **heretics** is a reference to those using these abilities. we're not calling it heretics in IC, but OOC design wise, yes, this is a remix of tgstation heretics so let's not overcomplicate it.

## theme

cultist simulator, because tg heretics is basically cultist simulator.

- there's x patrons, one for each school of magic / theme basically
- there's common magic you can learn
- this magic is often modulated by your active school of magic
- notice how i said active, we'll get back to that
- each path has magic you can learn

magic comes in

- abilities
- crafting recipes for items
- abilities that summon items
- abilities that summon items that are used in crafting recipes for items!
- passive perks (so nightmare to balance but i'm sure players like it; these shouldn't be too powerful in general, but we'll see what we come up with)

i'm so creative.

did i mention 'active'?

- backend wise, you're not limited to one school and patron. if you know more than one, you can switch the active one and it'll just work
- frontend wise, you generally will be because it's op as balls to be multiclassing, but, again, we'll see what we come up with
- cool things happen when you swap like your equipment re-theming dynamically to the other one

## backend

- citrp will get \[some kind of special role system] to store state
- i don't know how this'll work yet, initially it'll just be spells + items for EMs to use, seriously it's hell
- things all use abstraction APIs and wrappers
- much like with the theme for all antag stuff, you generally will be able to utilize most things even without the role. it's just that it's not a good idea to use, well, magic tools, without knowledge. backfirings happen, etc
- someday far in the future we'll add a way for nonantags to learn stuff

## schools of thought crime

### ash

ashes to ashes, dust to dust. why don't we speed up the process?

firey, incendiary, confusion, suppression. control dust clouds, set things on fire, unleash infernos

upsides: crowd control, burn stuff, disruption, redirection, etc
downsides: the evil ass validhunter CE with an advanced rigsuit (/s but like, not really?)

### blade

sometimes you don't need fancy 'cosmic energy' or 'lunar illusions'.

sometimes you just Really want to stab the guy you don't like

downsides: citrp is balanced around people-count; as an antagonist-ish role, heretics are instead balanced around being able to 1v1, maybe 1v2, and *survive* a 1v3-1v4 if they're not caught off guard. the entire combat system is designed to make one man armying discouraged unless people rush you one by one like cartoon henchmen. blade will make you more able to handle this, in direct combat, but ss13 works against you in that direct combat is not the only way, and obviously it has the least indirect utility.

upsides: maybe you don't care and you just want to pull a rezbit. isn't melee *fun?* oh, and your eldritch blast goes **through** your enemies, instead of just into them. metal.

### cosmic

exploit the connections between things, including those that are not and should not be there.

this is the AoE and territory class. imbue marks, tether your enemies together and laser people?

upsides: did i mention this is the laser class? if you have time to set things up this goes very well.

downsides: requires prep, territory control; if you get pushed to unfamiliar grounds, well, this is not a path focusing on mobile crowd control

### flesh

the flesh is weak, but can be made stronger. those that oppose will be molded by force.

upsides: debilitating against organics, can spread annoying infestations that buff you and debuff others. can create ghouls, evil creatures in general (other paths may get similar things but this is the 'make meat puppet' class). **self-regeneration if organic, self-reinforcement if synthetic**

downsides: not very useful against machines. this is a very obvious upside on citadel RP where there's so many synths and mechanics dealing with machines (see: a gun is a machine).

### lock

what's theirs is mine, but not vice versa. manipulate the abstract concept of *locks*; nothing keeps you out for long, and you can keep *them* out of things that rightfully belong to *you*.

upsides: this is the class based on access, and control. turn people's doors and access against them. get into anything you want. *violently* revoke that explorer's ability to access their own augment. maybe even 'unlock' someone's arteries for fun (oops!)

downsides: this is map control but roaming. the lock-smith cannot lock if there is no door. class is countered much like cosmic is, when there's not enough structures for it to assert its control.

### moon

sanity. illusion.

theme of the day is the manipulation of perception. powers can drive people crazy, make you hide in plain sight, etc.

upsides: **very** good at confusing people. illusions, etc. oh and your attacks tend to be more piercing.

downsides: "confusion and illusions" are not high dps.

### rust

what's created can be destroyed. your patron, the blacksmith, is a master of both. but uh, mainly the latter.

upsides: **debilitating** against machinery, can spread annoying infestation that buff you and erode ~~others~~ everything. **self-regeneration if synthetic, self-reinforcement if organic**. can degrade things to destruction. gets recipes to make cool things maybe?

downsides: little effect on organics, and there's many situations where your aura of property destruction is not the biggest perk or most useful tool.

### void

space and time alike are yours to wield, and those in the way of your research will perish within your frigid domain.

upsides: **crowd control, crowd control, crowd control, mobility.** yours is the domain of energy and motion!

downsides: much like driving people insane with illusions, crowd control is not high DPS.

## core mechanics

### mansus equipment (basic)

'heretics' get the ability to summon (**not craft, but summon**) equipment with probably some kind of cost/whatever later, but for all intents and purposes this gives them baseline gear.

### knowledge

heretics will get knowledge trees.

for now, things will be per-round, meaning they'll be able to progress within about 2-3 hours of active engagement to reach near-endgame.

knowledge can be acquired from reality fracking, and other things we'll eventually implement (see: later on)

#### passives

some things when unlocked give passives; passives can be always on, on sometimes, etc.

passives generally don't make you that much tougher (except for maybe some themed perks)

some passives require the school to be active (again, multiclassing is rare but possible in code).

#### actives

spells.
duh.

#### crafting recipes

some knowledge nodes unlock crafting recipes.

with them, you can craft things with crafting system.

**all heretics crafting will be done with game's crafting system.** it's by time that system was refactored and expanded; this is a perfect time to do so.

## initial implementation

initial implementations will take a while to do and be in the form of many PRs, and will require some backend changes.

they'll form the root of the system and allow us to build onto it later.

### explicitly not included

- very advanced spells
- ascension
- permadeath/kill/lethal/sacrifice mechanics

all of the above need to be rethought for citrp. we're not averse to brutal mechanics and lethality, but this is not a server where we want to encourage a bodycount.

yes, the ascension should make you powerful and fuck shit up, but it won't make you an unstoppable demigod here.

### mansus equipment - basic

mansus equipment can be summoned to your hand / body. later on this will have a cost, but for now, it's free and just an instant channel.

mansus equipment will gradually fall apart with relatively quick speed (later on occult tech stuff can be used to preserve them for study) while not being on the wielder. they're considered part of the base embodiment of the wielder's control over reality bending.

#### blade

a summonable blade. effects based on active school, power scales up with your unlocked and active knowledge.

it's at any rate, a decently powerful weapon that's decent against most gear. not hugely overpowered, but nothing to laugh at. generally will be able to pierce any station armor (including security armory) enough to be not too tankable, while not being so high DPS that it's an instant kill.

it will **not** have tgstation's teleportation / escape mechanic.

can be thrown for various effects.

the blade may be made to have 2 tile reach, and basic cleave effects. its overall DPS is not ridiculous (say, 25-30 damage tops with high armor piercing), so I'm not worried about making it too OP. remember: they're still human beyond the abilities and increased physiological defenses from some paths, and citrp is a **very** gun and armor happy server.

#### armor

pretty decent but not overly powerful armor.

- not space-proof by defualt.
- decent armor tier but not ridiculous mitigation
- enhances reality bending magicks when worn (infact, things are balanced around the innate 1.25-1.35x multiplier this gives you; not wearing it is a significant downside.)
- dampens magic being used on you by a decent chunk. mage wars, anyone?.

### general effects

applies, in general, to many things; a lot of more generic / common spells, blade attacks, etc

#### ash

fire / incineration effects, ablative armor, fluidity of movement

#### blade

melee weapons and counters are more powerful, attacks become more piercing. boring school for generic effects, really, as it's kind of the direct combat school

#### cosmic

idk lol, marking, connections, etc? cosmic is themed that way..

#### flesh

flesh growths, mutations, reanimation of creatures, generating life, infestation.

fun. less useful against synths (except some other stuff that will infest synths), more useful against people

#### lock

probably less passive effects and a lot more active; this is a school of control over uh, well. locks. of any kind. it'd be nice to have passives that make things open for you when hit, though.

#### moon

literally drives people insane, is that enough for you?

#### rust

flesh but for synths and machines. spreads rust, breaks stuff, degrades equipment.

#### void

temporal-spatial manipulation. things like eldritch blasts chill and disrupt victims, your blade applies more force (not more damage; think concussing) on strikes, etc. more fluid in general for the user.

### reality fracking

every map flagged to allow it (see: the code randomly does this at first based on vars, **and later on intelligently does it based on how active a map is, as thematically this is more efficient near populated and developed areas**) will spawn reality fracking locations.

these can shift over time, and even regenerate.

reality fracking is a source of research \[how? we don't want research points only mechanics maybe?] **and** likely some kind of power / energy for a heretic.

reality fracking does not cause a permanent rift that's visible the rest of the round.

instead, as its name implies, this is the heretic fracturing reality to reach out to the Mansus room to commune with their patron and receive boons.

it will cause **intense** effects based on the school in the vincinity; these effects fall off over time.

as an example, a rust school fracking reality near your engine would be **very, very bad.**

### schools

all of the 8 paths (ash, rust, flesh, lock, void, cosmic, moon, blade) will get initial implementations

### spells

'later on' has a lot of spells that aren't necessarily needed for base, but should be added in base too as time permits because they're so important

see: rust having the ability to spread rust / corrode stuff.

these are only the bare minimum combat spells.

#### eldritch blast

this is honestly unabashedly a "how to make non-murderbone heretic usable on a server where there's too many milsim-esque levels of weapons going around"

unless heretics get made fucking *immortal* (unfun for everyone), they **need** a basic ranged attack to deal with the fact that anyone doing fighting at all generally has a sidearm at the least.

therefore, they will get a basic low cooldown spell. click + hold, throw out a blast.

- this blast is modulated by your schools and knowledge. some knowledges make it more powerful, and some classes (active, passive, otherwise) give it effects. as an example, flesh will be **very** unpleasant to be hit by for organics, rust for synths, `way of the lock` will form barriers only you can pass through while unlocking airlocks for you, etc.
- VFX changes color (and maybe impact effects later) based on active school, isn't that *cool?*
- experimental: how long you hold down determines strength (and cooldown). 2-3 seconds = basic attack, not that debilitating, comes back in a few seconds. 5-10 seconds = decent 7x7 aoe and you're not using it again for like 3/4 of a minute. this is probably a bad idea, it's just an idea.

#### emergency recall

TODO: come up with a fancy name

tg has a thing that lets you shatter a blade to escape
we need something similar, but **not** as instant or easy as that.

this is just theorycrafting for now, but it'd be cool to have something that lets you escape back through the `room with no walls` to `somewhere else`. you can't entirely control this somewhere else (teleportation magic is complicated and there's a reason there's 2 paths whose gimmicks is "going to places you can't get to normally" while the others have less of it and more "destroy your way to the place you can't get to")

this is kind of the 'anti brick mechanic'. if you get cornered and you can get to an area of relative safety (this mechanic doesn't make capture impossible but it makes it so if you can get away temporarily you can get away permanently), you can cast it on a channel and maybe a telegraph that is very obvious.

when it's finished, you're pulled out of the world and given places to resurface (you can't stay in this state forever, if you don't choose you'll be ejected `further and further away from your current location, including to different overmap entities (as long as the game determines you have a way back from there)`).

this gets harder and harder to do as more people are around (and remember, nanotrasen security **is allowed to kill brigged people if they can't contain you on this server**), so it's not exactly a get out of jail free card as it's **loud as fuck.**

but if you can get away and get distance, this lets you literally escape the sector, no shuttle needed.

### crafting recipes

tl;dr add basic crafting recipes to make:

- a tome. **tome is stateful. losing it is a big deal.** losing it doesn't mean you lose access to your abilities unlocked from knowledge, but you may have to re-research that knowledge to go further down the tree. **do not lose your tome to the authorities.**
- maybe a few utility items? ones that boost spell potency? cloak of shadow? unlike the blade and **basic** armor these don't disappear over time and so are more annoying if found because it's evidence.

## later on

- see repository for more info, spells/abilities/passives are being theorycrafted as WIP datums as needed
- same goes for cross-system interactions.

### common

- all base spells in tg will be evaluated for porting / inclusion

### ash

### rust

### flesh

### lock

### void

### cosmic

### moon

### blade

### advanced / cohesive design