---
# System prepended metadata

title: Deadites and Skeletons
tags: [design doc]

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## Deadites and Skeletons
Deadites and Skeletons, at the moment, suck ass. They are weak (but skeletons used to be incredibly overpowered, however they were nerfed incorrectly, I will get into details later). The undead are meant to be a threat, Zizo's ascension afterall did start a tide of deadites that besieged the nations of Psydonia (which allowed Zizo to take over the drow empire). This isn't reflected ingame, deadites are a joke and can be beaten by a peasant. Infection also sucks ass, because once you are infected not only can you not speak imperial (and speak infernal for some reason) but you also quickly die moments after infection. Skeletons should have been nerfed in a different manner, and hence this balance doc will include them.
### Bite rework
First and foremost, bites at the moment are too strong and too weak. They are completely negated by any sort of armour, but are also 100% accurate and can cause critical hits.
Because Deadites should be zombies, that includes biting people, tearing chunks of flesh off, etc. bites need to be reworked.
The current way bites work is you bite someone and your hand suddenly holds two intents, CHEW and DRINK. Quite messy in my opinion. Doesn't help that the only one who can drink blood are vampires, as anyone else (including deadites) just vomits it back out.

Bites instead should be akin to a kick, where you attempt to bite someone where you can reach (arms, torso, head when standing, legs when prone) based off of your SPD mostly and some PER, against opponent's SPD (and some PER aswell).
The damage of bites should be akin to punches, with the obvious exception that they can easily puncture the skin and cause bleeding.

Bites should be able to damage leather and cloth items but obviously not plate and maille. The difference would be strong bites, which aside from dealing more damage, should be capable of damaging plate and maille.
Regarding crits, bites should be able to obviously cause artery crits, but also have a critical hit where-in the biter tears out a chunk of flesh with their teeth, not only causing a bleeding wound but also significant brute damage.

When it comes to drinking blood, I would suggest the following:
Aggro grabbing someone's bleeding limb/bodypart and clicking on yourself with the mouth selected on the targetting doll, this will cause you to start drinking the target's blood. The more the wound is bleeding, the faster you drink.
Akin to how you can sniff bottles when you target the nose and examine an open bottle.

### Deadites
***Tough mean killing machines***
They should be tough, slow and resilient (but still killable) monsters. Hence these stat ideas, we can assume the average corpse-turned-deadite will have 10 in each stat. If it turns out these stats need tweaking, that can be done.

STATS
+3 Strength
+3 Endurance
+4 Constitution
-2 Speed
-2 Perception
-8 Intelligence
The intelligence malus is primarly for flavour purposes, as they can't really learn due to being unable to use items.

SKILLS
Expert wrestling and athletics, both for them to have high stamina but also so they can grab people. Unless there is a trait that gives you supernatural strength to be able to grab people.
NO climbing skill.
If unarmed skill doesn't affect punch/claw damage, no unarmed skill, otherwise they should get some.

TRAITS
Unable to die from bloodloss, (for flavour/roleplay their blood should be black, putrid ichor more akin to oil than blood.)
No sleep (duh)
Easy Dismemberment (not critical weakness)
Infinite Energy/Fatigue (not stamina!!!)
NO pain (duh, they are dead)
Strong Bite, so they are truly fearsome in melee.
NO dodge and NO parry, they will have to tank the hits instead, hence their high endurance and constitution.

INTENT
The general idea behind these is to make deadites into slow, cumbersome, difficult-to-kill monsters who can eat people alive, but still can be fought against.

### Skeletons
***Fragile and smart***
Skeletons are weaker, but smarter, brothers of deadites. They are capable of using weapons, and capable of learning new things. We can assume the newly-raised skeleton also had base 10 in all stats, like the deadite.

STATS
-1 Strength
-1 Endurance
-2 Constitution
+1 Speed
+2 Perception
+1 Intelligence

SKILLS
no need to give them any skills in anything, although getting average in some weapon skills would certainly be helpful for skeletons raised by the Lich, or whomever else could raise sentient skeletons in the future.

TRAITS
NO pain (duh)
NO bloodloss (no blood,duh)
Critical Weakness
Easy Dismemberment
INFINITE STAMINA (they truly do not tire)
NO SWIFT INTENT (this one is MOST IMPORTANT)
NO DODGE (THIS ASWELL)

YES sleep (explained further down)

INTENT
They are meant to be smarter than the deadites, although more frail. No dodge and no swift because of their infinite stamina, however they are lighter on their feet and can parry, encouraging them to use weapons.
>Why give them the ability to sleep?

So they can **LEARN**. Skeletons are the weaker but smarter brother of the Deadites, they should be capable of learning (they shouldn't however get the tired debuff, or if they have to because of the sloppy code mess that is roguetown, it shouldnt give them a stat debuff)

## Deadite infection
Infection should be a % chance (with luck mattering, the luckier you are the lower the chance of infection) when it comes to scratches from a deadite.
BITES however should be **GUARANTEED**.
However, infection should progress differently.
Upon being infected, a tumor forms in the body, in the body part where the wound infection occured (that means limbs can be chopped off to prevent infection, something like werevolfs).
After some time (perhaps a minute or two), the infection/growth/tumor (I will just call it the INFECTION, how and what it should be can be hammered out when coding it in and adding flavour) will spread to the brain/chest, which will require surgery to remove.
If the tumor is not removed in 5~10 minutes, the infected's skin rapidly rots and decomposes and they start speaking in Zizo chant only, after this one must act quickly as they have 1-2 minutes to remove the tumor and cure the rot.
Failure to do so causes the infected to die in a grusome manner (horrible pain, vomiting blood, all that body-horror stuff, think something like 28 days later series) and turns them into a **DEADITE**
The Cure Rot miracle should instantly cure the INFECTION, without killing the patient. It should only kill those who already turned into a deadite.

### Where infection can occur.
IF the Priest is alive, infection cannot occur in the city (people who were infected however can still turn).
The dead also can NOT raise as deadites in the city, with the exception of the sewer area.
HOWEVER, once the Priest dies, aside from the bad omen from their death, their protection over the city withdraws. Deadites can rise anywhere in the city, and infection can occur anywhere. The dead in the graves all rise up as deadites. (Possibly a sort of ghostcall that they can join as a deadite and literall dig their way out of the grave)
This obviously goes away once a new priest is appointed by Astrata. The admins should however only appoint a priest once some time has passed, or the city managed to fight off the deadite hordes, in order to avoid a priest dying and a new one instantly being appointed.
The exception to this will always be the church/altar, no matter if the Priest is alive or not. Deadite infection cannot occur at the altar, and the dead cannot rise as a deadite in its presence. Those who were infected however can still die and turn.

## Goals and Non-goals, Tl;Dr
### Goals
Make deadites and skeletons dangerous foes. Deadites due to their brutish strength and endurance, Skeletons due to their intelligence, ability to learn and use tools.
Infection should be deadly and dangerous, but not impossible to counteract.
The Priest guarantees the city's protection from the Deadites, if they die, deadites can rise and infect anywhere except the church/altar. Whilst the Priest is alive, this can only occur outside the city and in the sewers.
### Non-goals
Skeletons were too OP with their infinite stamina AND swift combo, we should avoid those.
However this shouldn't be avoided by COMPLETELY nerfing Skeletons. All skeletons needed was to have swift and dodge removed, instead someone went overboard and made them complete pushovers.