Golden Xan

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Mallius Odium
Players Playing Bloodbath Demo
Immemorial
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OG 2020
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Vampire Scholar
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Harbinger
Mar 30, 2019
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Hello everyone,

I want to share here and talk about some ideas I've had on how each character's mana type might be like in the game.

Note that I have no clue as to what they will actually be like upon release and don't even have a reason to believe any of them might be replicated in the game, I'm doing this just for the sake of fun and conversation. Don't take any of this for granted.

Vampire
Mana Type: Blood
Description: Blood works both as health and mana for the Vampire. The Vampire starts off with a full blood/health pool, and spends it as it casts its spells and skills, and as it gets hurt. In order to recover Blood, the Vampire sucks the blood out of its living enemies with a skill that does not cost blood itself. As it stands, the Vampire has only the blood pool bar visible in the interface.
Observations: I think that not only is this interesting as a gameplay mechanic, it also makes the Vampire stay right in the middle of the Trinary Archetype System in terms of mixed Magick, Artifact and Material capabilities.
Revenant
Mana Type: Rage
Description: As a tank kind of character, the Revenant acquires Rage as it is engaged by and as it engages the enemy. Its Rage starts off empty, and it gains Rage as the battle runs out. Rage diminishes over time when out of engagements, and is also spent to perform its skills. As it gains Rage by fighting, some abilities can be continuously sustained as far as it causes enough havoc in the battlefield to compensate for the skill's consumption of Rage.
Observation: "Being engaged" and "engaging" doesn't necessarily means being attacked. It means being taunted, targeted, damaged, or else by the enemy, as well as seeing enemies engage with its allies. Fighting is the most direct way to acquire Rage, but being provoked by the enemy or watching your friends fight and get damaged is enough to gain some Rage passively.
Liche
Mana Type: True Names
Description: As a prophet, the Liche summons destruction by chanting the True Names and altering reality with them. As a spellcaster, the Liche has a mana pool that starts off filled up and is spent as he sings out its prophecies in magical rituals. In order to recover its mana, the Liche can regain its undead "faith" by briefly abstaining from the fight while reading the books and scrolls of Deadhaus in something akin to a meditative stance, inspiring itself to do more magic.
Observation: Although the Liche is probably the class that more closely resembles a regular mage, I thought of making a connection with the lore we have available so far by calling it "True Names", something else entirely that we don't know much of as of yet.
Wraith
Mana Type: Fear
Description: Wearing the Amulet of Terror, the Wraith harnesses the fear of its enemies in battle to use it against them. Starting off empty, the Wraith gains Fear as it haunts objects, bodies, the allied undead and its living enemies. As enemies around the Wraith see the world around them distort in unholy ways, and as their friends and families are slaughtered in front of them in macabre fashion, they feed the Wraith's Fear pool while it stays in its Myst form. Once recharged, the Wraith reveals itself to scare its enemies' souls out of their very bodies.
Observation: "Myst form" is just an idea that I had for the Wraith. The character would have two distinct forms of being present in the game world, physical and mystical. While in its physical form, it can attack and be attacked and cast its skills. When out of "Fear", it can willfully transform into a mist that cannot attack, yet might or might not be able to be attacked. In Myst form, it can haunt objects in the scenery, dead bodies, and possibly living enemies to make them more afraid and recover its mana essence. It would not be able to recover mana in its physical form. I believe this fits with its dual nature of Magick and Artifact.
Ghoul
Mana Type: Gore
Description: The Ghoul starts off with no gore of its victims in its belly, but quickly gains power by eating flesh. The Ghoul can consume meat from both dead people and its living enemies, and an incredibly transformative metabolism allows it to perform astonishing feats of physical prowess by using the energy from the meat consumed. Supernaturally, it can eat, and eat, and eat, and its hunger is never sated, nor its belly ever filled.
Observation: I have no idea what the Ghoul will look like in the game. I imagine it being something like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, so it might be difficult to think of a frail-looking thing as an all-consuming beast, but maybe the Ghouls looks like something else entirely, a monster that begins small, yet becomes bigger as it consumes flesh and evolves in battle. By being created from the Artifact of Weaving, it has gained the ability to use the flesh of its enemies to transform its own body into what it needs to fight.
Banshee
Mana Type: Souls
Description: Similarly to the Vampire and the Ghoul, the Banshee travels the field of battle collecting the energy from its enemies. But while the Vampire can only suck the blood out of living things, and the Ghoul can eat meat from both living and dead, the Banshee can only absorb the souls of slain enemies. As a rogue-like entity, it assassinates individual targets in stealth to consume their souls and use them as fuel for magickal feats of fast movement, perceived by mere humans as teleportation. The Banshee does not carry souls in a pool of essence. Instead, it uses them to strengthen its own body and perform its skills immediately after consumption.
Observation: To be more detailed, in my envisioning of it I thought of the Banshee killing an enemy in wild, fast-paced combat, and given a few seconds after killing (and consuming its soul) an enemy to perform a skill, or multiple skills, until the next kill is claimed. If no ability is used after killing an enemy, the charge is wasted. You can imagine a mana bar that stays empty most of the time, fills up completely (or partially) as you perform a kill, and rapidly diminishes over time. Having the mana bar with any amount of charge makes the Banshee faster/stronger in some way and allow it to use its skills freely (or consuming the acquired souls for executing them). I also imagine the "teleportation" effect from the Banshee producing a strident wailing sound in the air, which is how the Banshee acquired its name.
Wight
Mana Type: Runes
Description: The Wight carries a variety of runes around its body. These Runes get charged with energy from realms other than the livings'. Unnatural in nature, they essentially are infinite sources of renewable energy. The Wight uses the charges in them to perform its abilities, and they charge themselves up on their own over time.
Observation: In order to be different from regular mana or other mana types, you get a limited amount of runes, such as 5, worn in multiple areas of the Wight's body. Some skills costs a high amount of energy, such as 3, 4 or even 5 charges. Others cost lest, such as 1 or no charge at all. The Wight can fight on its own despite the runes, yet complements its skill set with, basically, cooldown-based abilities. Each Rune has a recharge time of its own. The first Rune charges the fastest, and is the last one spent. The second Rune is spent before the first one, and charges slightly more slowly. And so on, until the last Rune, which takes the longest to charge up and is always the first Rune to be used, if it is charged. If Rune 3, 4 and 5 are used on a skill that costs 3 charges, for instance, and you continue to fight, Rune 3 and 4 might get charged and used again on a skill that costs 2 charges before Rune 5 charges up. Then, if another skill of 3 charges is used, Rune 1, 2 and 5 would be used while Rune 3 and 4 are on cooldown. Just as an example. I believe this perfectly fits with the Artifact nature of the Wight.

That's it. That's how I envisioned them. They are considerably different mana types for what I believe will be considerably different characters. Since we expect them to have specialized and varied gameplay styles, I believe these speculations help fit them in multiple categories. I don't even know if they are fitting with what the creative team of Deadhaus have in mind for them already, though.

I also realize that some of these ideas present problems of their own. The biggest of them that I can see are two.

First, some would require a constant supply of minions to fight with in battle, such as the Banshee, and that could complicated things if there is a boss battle at some point in which there is no regular enemy to regain power from. Of course, that depends on whether there will be boss battles and what they will be like in the first place.
Second, having 7 classes with 7 wildly different skill sets, play styles and mana types that play completely different from one another, yet connected in the same battle, might prove challenging to balance. And I'm not even considering the possibility of more classes being added in the future.

But I think these are good ideas to start from, anyway.
So, I hope you enjoyed reading and feel free to leave your own comments and ideas below. :)
 
The notion of treating the lich like a dark priest whose magic is tied with their faith is intriguing. Perhaps instead of a magic it could be more like faith and the use of the magic behaves like a sin by punishing the caster for calling upon the forbidden true words, maybe even making it a sin bar instead of mana which needs to emptied instead of filled. After so much use at a time the lich must stop and pray to the dark gods for forgiveness of the sins caused by using the true words or else their health will soon begin to be sacrificed as penance with continued use while the sin bar is full.

Edit: Had another thought on a mana option though I'm not completely certain which class it could fit best.

Pain- Thriving off of pain sustained within a given area with a multipler for everyone sustaining damage, be it friend or foe.

Add in that it could specialize in aoe abilities and basically it becomes the sort of class that excels against enemy groups, be it on it's own or better with a team of it's own; but is at a disadvantage against singular adversaries, especially on their own.
 
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I liked the Liche mana type idea! It's different.
 
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What if along with generating mana it also builds your character up to a secondary transformation like an overdrive, like the vampire becoming the bat after consuming so much blood?

Picture the ghouls starting off emaciated but as they consume so much gore at a time their bodies fill out and expand into morbid gluttons.

Picture the Revenant's armor reacting to the increased rage by thickening and spreading further over their bodies until they become enveloped by it.
 
Yeah, I like this. We currently don't know what it takes for the Vampire to transform, but being able to do it in a "overdrive" fashion seems fitting! And they might make a connection with the mana type generation, indeed.
 
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