Developers Corner

Introducing: The Lifesculptor

Masters of life energy, they aren't simply healers, they control all things relating to life energy. Among their powers include the ability to both drain and inject life energy into people, plants, or other things. They don't have MP, rather they have a (small) reserve of life energy that they expend. They of course must drain this life energy from some source, be it plants, people, monsters, or themselves, resulting in HP damage to whatever the target is. The uses of this life energy range greatly, from healing to control over nature to making golems. They of course can yoink the energy spent on a golem right back as though they were walking W-Tanks. The driving theme behind the Lifesculptor is the requirement that they drain the life out of something to be able to use their powers. Draining the environment is the only thing that doesn't directly deal damage to something or someone, but that takes an extremely long time to do, and their reserve is small. So in a combat situation they may need a willing source.

Of course, it doesn't have to JUST be HP. They could probably restore MP as well, since the definitions of both MP and Life Energy are mutable.

In a game that ALSO has clerics, these would be the fastest and best healers as long as they had life energy to spend, which wouldn't be long unless they had a willing victim to drain. Clerics would be able to heal more people and HP on a full tank than Lifesculptors, but they'd do it much more slowly. Paladins would be practically worthless in this respect, and would probably end up fuel for the lifesculptor.

As a bonus point, if these are the only healers in the game (which would make healing in a raid a very interesting role), that would make Paladins the undisputed champions of buffs and holiness and an actually unique class of their own. Everybody wins. Except the bard. The bard never wins.

Very cool! When the tank is getting pummeled, and the damage dealer on the sidelines still has full health, this guy can just go "yoink" and wait for DD to scream and holler for a heal.

what about targeting enemies?

Already been done check out vanguardSoH bloodmage

Not quite. Blood mages are pretty different from what I had in mind.  Really, blood mages are closer to a cleric than to a lifesculptor, since their focus is still on healing and buffs, where a lifesculptor is focused on healing and pets (ideally golems would be a pretty big part of lifsculpting, if for no other reason than they're essentially a free refill of life energy if you destroy one). Though the drainage mechanic is similar. I honestly can't think of any Lifesculptor buffs other than possibly increasing max hp.

Plus, draining an ally would be the ideal way to recover life energy in a pinch.  If I made a game I'd probably make low  HP detrimental in some way other than just having low HP, so draining yourself would be a bad idea in most cases.

Sounds like a pretty cool consept to me. I would give them a couple more abilities than just draining and restoring life to objects but other than that its not half bad.

Draining and tapping into others, self, pet, critters and nature to deal damage or do other spells is quite old concept imo. I'm not saying its bad, your idea sounds great base for a new course with this. But to be honest, many games already utilize tapping and zapping of life and different essences from others for benefit of the player.

I would suggest you dwell deeper into this idea, and come up with some new ideas to it too.

What comes to mind just offhand, is maeby you want to generate many different essences to drain, which would be used to different spell types. Draining energy from an ancient stone at ruins, would give you ability to cast earth golem. A tree would bring up abilities to cast roots spells, tree golem, strenght of the nature and similar. Eventually draining willing source, would give pool to later heal friends directly or "scuplture" an image pet of the ally. Same with enemy too?

Even tho this, or your idea in first place, has not much to do with clerics, it could be cool =)

Sounds like an earth/ kinetics controller in coh.

Sounds like what druids should be like.

Except, technically, a druid should control life AND death magic.

sounds like the basic concepts of a vampiric/life-tap type class.  how is this different than WOW's warlock?

I prefer old MUDs version of a cleric, where CrLi(cure light wounds) used on a living creature will cure no matter if they're friend or foe, and on an undead it'll cause damage.  there used to be substance to Clerics, and they could fight melee combat quite well, many of which even wore plate, similar to a paladin but the paladins are more heavy hitters, buffing up their weapons to destroy undead or heretics.  Clerics were healer/warriors but developers seemed to have watered them down to a healer only class with very strict damage abilities(WoW's cloth based shadow priest for example or that almost useless holy nova).

this is a cleric, and the fighter had less armor...