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nikothedude c3c54bf66c Heretic rework & reintroduction - less prog, less murder, more cultsim LARP (#5445)
# Before TMing this please contact me on discord, I'd like to observe
the TM

## About The Pull Request

### There is a shimmer in the air, again. Familiar. The nighttime walk
of dreams yet again takes the uncomfortable form of an icey woodfield,
moths and owls swooping overhead. An uneasy shiver runs down the spine
of the world. The gaze of the Light focuses on our lowly region of space
- will you knock?

Design doc V1 (Tentative, may change based on feedback):
https://hackmd.io/@NikoTheGuyDUde/B1XEAAv3Zg

Reverts https://github.com/Bubberstation/Bubberstation/pull/5268 by
reworking heretic into a far less scaling, less dangerous, and less
murdery antagonist. Read the design doc for more.

### DISCLAIMER
I was not a mainline heretic player, nor someone who had constant
contact with ehretics. Therefore, I am not the best judge of heretic's
balance. A lot of this is **prone to change**.

### Changes
Heretic is now named **acolyte.**

#### Base kit
1. Heretics can no longer blade break. This is because jesus christ
blade breaking was annoying but also as a way to remove some of
heretic's crazy mobility.
2. Cloak of shadows and warren king's welcome are now 0.5 cost shop
items.
3. Passives are purchased now, with cost based off the path itself.
4. The same is true for blades and the mansus grasp mark, being 2 cost
nodes.
5. The heretic aura is now completely disabled, until I find some way to
use it.
6. The living heart ritual now requires plasma. You cannot get a heart
in perma, good riddance.
7. You can no longer shovestun after a grasp. Still a very useful tool,
though.
9. _**ASCENSION IS GONE.**_ Your only progression is with your
objectives. Find a gimmick to do if you want. Opening ways will be hard
enough.
10. Rituals & Mansus grasp are disabled if you have no heart. Its now
complete neutering.

#### Countermeasures
1. No heart = No rituals and no mansus grasp for anything but runes.
2. Added antimagic collars to security and cargo that act the same as
having no living heart, but is less invasive and can be more easily
removed.
3. Most heretic items have examine hints to non-heretics now.

#### Progression
1. Heretics now only progress via their intrinsic objectives, and only
up to a point. Ex. 0.5 points per influence, 2 points per way.
4. Passive generation is also substantially slower.
5. Heretics now have access to **fifteen knowledge points** on spawn,
and **their entire research tree+draft shop**. No more draft freebees
exist, either. (This is prone to change)
#### Objectives
1. Drain Influences - Influences now passively drain sanity aroudn them,
cause hallucinations, and have a rare onetime chance to spawn a heretic
mob. The heretic must drain **six-seven** influences to gain **two**
knowledge points.
2. Open Ways - Ways are a new type of heretic influence that spawn
exclusively in high-importance or high-traffic areas. A heretic must
perform a ritual with four randomly generated items on the way to open
it. Once open, the way has a variety of effects, the majority of which
are **beneficial, but in a bad way.** Ex. spawning 5000 mols of a
valuable gas. The heretic must drain **three** ways to gain **four**
knowledge points.
3. Wildcard - There are currently five wildcard objectives any heretic
can roll. **One:** Steal 1000-1250 credits from crewmembers using the
Claw of the Capitalist ritual. **Three:** Have 9-10 crewmembers consume
potions from the Mawed Crucible. **Four:** Perform a ritual in the SM
chamber to neuter its output for 10 minutes. **Five:** Perform a ritual
in the AI upload to upload 3 ion laws to the AI.
#### New spells
1. Cloak of shadows & Warren king's welcome are now 0.5 cost knowledge -
This gives me a reason to give heretics just a bit more starting
knowledge.
2. The Owl's Secrets - Sacrifice a radio, a pair of ears, and a
bluespace crystal to cast a curse on the telecomms processors. For five
minutes, any outgoing message will be corrupted into heretic-speak, and
will damge the sanity and brain of anyone who hears them. If you start
seeing hypnophrase in the chat, take off your headset or turn off the
processors. 2 uses, as this has the potential to be really annoying. 1
cost.
3. Paranoia's eye - A silent, focusless spell that curses nearby people
to see everyone around them as heretics and disables their ability to
examine them for one minute. 1 cost.
6. Claw of the Capitalist - Allows you to transmute someone's blood into
money by stealing it from their account. Each 1u of blood of 5% drained.
If the blood is from a phylactery, it wont steal any that will reduce
the target's account below 300 credits. The target is notified when this
happens. 1 cost.
7. Voice of the mansus - Single use, but re-researchable, ritual that
allows you to do a fake announcement. 1 ears, 1 radio. 0.5 cost.
12. Trickster's pen - Transmute a pen, a sheet of plasma, and a pair of
eyes into a pen that can be used to change the name, age, job, and trim
of a card, and clicked to turn you momentarily near-invisible. 1 cost.
13. Trickster's mask - Transmute a bandana and a spraycan into a
chameleon mask. Thats it. Best with the pen. 0.5 cost.
14. Trickster's Promise - prestidigitation. You can make an item glow,
clean a atom (cleans forensics), shoot confetti, or my personal
favorite, increase the food quality of an edible by 2 and add 5u of a
weak synth-healing omnizine to it. Perfect for chef heretics. 1 cost.
15. Unwrap Minds - EARLY PULL FROM
https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/95796/. Scalpal, glass
shard, paper, victim. Hypnotizes the victim with whatever is on the
paper. 2 cost.
16. The Blacksmith's Hammer - One diamond, one set of wirecutters,
upgrades your mansus grasp to emag whatever you hit on right click. One
time use - has to be reinvoked every time. 1 cost.
17. Watching Eye - One set of eyes, a sheet of plasmaglass, and a
blindfold creates a one-time small item that can be viewed as if it was
a long-rnged x-ray camera. Has 10% opacity, for sneakiness. While
uncontained in anything, the heretic can whisper a phrase - such as
sleep, blind - to create a short-term, localized negative effect on
non-heretics that the eye is viewing (but only if theyd be viewable
without x-ray). 2 cost, only one can be made - high risk, high reward.
Sprite by Burger, from path of exile.
#### Spell rebalance
1. Ether of the newborn now doesnt heal normal damage. Get a medkit for
that. Additionally, implants remain. Get a _doctor_ for those, or use
any of the other methods to break them.
2. Mawed crucible potions can now be consumed by non-heretics, albiet
disgusting. The potion shop gimmick is real. Additionally, crucible soul
now lasts for 20 seconds and leaves a trail towards the location you
jaunted from when you return. This is because I've heard quite a few
people complain about this thing in the olden days. This doesnt make it
useless, but it does make it more difficult to use.
4. Space phase now has a 2 second do after before phasing out,
uninterruptable. This is mainly for tramstation and icebox when holy
fucking shit it is ridiculous.
5. Wave of desparation now costs 3 points.
8. Armor is now four points.
9. Rust kit and paintings are gone.
10. Codex morbus is gone. Sorry, I dont want to deal with rebalancing it
right now.
11. Phylactery now needs LOS, and has a 3 second do after.
12. Void cloak now disguises itself instead of going invisible.

### Changed paths

#### Void
In the interest of making void a little less murderkill, I opted to add
some flavor and alternate use to void's abilities.

**Void chill** can now put you to sleep if you click its status. This
sleep will heal you via cryoxadone. Being hit will wake you up, as will
void chill going away.
* This is intended to add a alternate, medical use to void, as well as
to nerf void chill a little bit. It does nothing to help you in active
1v1 combat, but if the void heretic disengages, you can heal yourself.
Its alsl nice and flavorful.
Void chill is also now nearly 100% countered by leporazine. Coffee and
tea help with the slowdown, but dont help with cold at 5 stacks.

**Void pull** is gone. **Cloak of darkness** replaces it, with perfect
invisibility taht prevents the use of any tools or abilities while its
active. Being hit instantly banishes it. The cloak slowly cools the air
around you, so if people are aware of your status of a void heretic,
they might be able to guess the chill in a previously warm room might be
you.

**Void conduit** no longer griefs windows and doors. It now chills the
air around it, while putting people to sleep - using the same eldritch
sleep that void chill does. You can use coffee to counteract this, or
simply fire at the conduit from a distance.

**Void cage** now heals the target for 2 of each damgae type a second.
Can now be self-cast. _Still useful for its intended roles._

**Void phase** now has a 40 second cooldown instead of 20. 20 is
ridiculously low for a jaunt with guaranteed EVA power, and 40 should
prevent its abuse.

_Void will probably receive further changes._ On the docket is a void
phase nerf and a void conduit nerf.

#### Moon

**Ringleader** no longer stuns you if you kill a clone, only knocks
down.
**Lunar parade** now lasts for 45 tiles, down from 60.
The passive's healing is reduced by 25%.
The blades upgraded brain damage is now 20, and the sanity threshold for
insanity is now disturbed.
The armor now translates slughtly more health, meaning its less
protective.

_I understand moon the least of all the paths, but I love its flavor, so
I decided to focus on it. Im balancing based off what Roxy suggested
were the issues._

## TODO

- [x] Void path rework
- [x] Investigate if we need to nerf moon more, maybe reflavor it as
well
- [x] Implement the third objective
- [x] Rigorous bug testing
- [x] Rewrite UI
- [x] Remove irrelevant tarting spells (sacrifice, notably)
- [x] Add more non-combat spells

### Implemented paths

- [x] Void
- [ ] Moon
- [x] Lock
- [x] Flesh
The paths beneath this line will be focused on after the initial TM is a
success.
- [ ] Blade
- [ ] Ash
- [x] Cosmic
- [ ] Rust
## Why It's Good For The Game

Heretic is one of the most flavorful internal antagonists in the entire
game, flavorful enough people were making characters around heretic,
people had entire storylines based on heretic, and I feel a lot of value
was lost with heretic. Simulatniously, uh, _**heretic was one of the
worst designed antags in the game?**_ Too powerful, too scalable, and
generally just has a "I HAVE A ANTI-EVERYTHING SHIELD" vibe.

This PR brings it back as a static, traitor-style antag with limited
progression. Variety is always good.
## Proof Of Testing
<details>
<summary>Screenshots/Videos</summary>
TODO
</details>

## Changelog
🆑
add: Heretic - Now reworked as a far less oppressive and far less
scaling antagonist
/🆑

---------

Co-authored-by: Roxy <94389951+SapphoQueer@users.noreply.github.com>
2026-06-18 20:37:25 +02:00
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