Behind the scenes, we have been going round and round debating skills that avoid essence loss and constructs that give them. We've punted this issue to envoys and have never come up with a satisfactory conclusion.

Thus, after much consideration and review, we have come up with a game plan and are 90% sure of doing the following:

• Remove the Black Crypt power
• Remove the Black Nest power (possibly removing the entire construct)
• Remove the resurgem benefits from the Moon Altar
• Remove resurrection/sacrifice powers from the Angel Font
• All death avoidance skills would receive a small experience loss
• Darkrebirth skill modified (see below)
• Lichdom skill modified (see below)
• Transmigration skill completely revamped (see below)

Darkrebirth

* Small experience loss (conglutinate level).
* Crow users with Darkrebirth skill can make eggs in their nests for others

Change to Lichdom

* Small experience loss (conglutinate level).
* Those who have the lichdom skill turn into archliches.
* Arcliches could plant a lich seed in others.
o If you are a lich marked by Archlich Bob -- Bob gets increased damage for cold aura if you
are in the same room as him.

New Transmigration Idea

* While deep bonded, you acquire some qualities of your animal (see below).
If the animal dies, its spirit merges within you for 60 minutes.
* While the animal is alive and in a body (not merged with you) , you will be protected from death insofar
that the animal will die in your stead.
* If animal saves you, you have a small experience loss (vitae like) but you keep your defenses.
* If you die while the animal is merged within you, you both die and you lose the animal
(until you call another one).

* Serenwilde
o owl - +1 int, flight
o badger - +1 con, +1 damage buff
o fox - +1 dex, cold/fire resistance

* Glomdoring
o tarantula - +1 con, leaping into air and grabbing
o viper - +1 dex, dendroxin immunity
o widow - +1 charisma, mactans immunity
o bat - +1 int, flight

With these changes to Transmigration, I believe the 18 power to deepbond is a little high for this since it no longer gives any protection, just a tiny little boost that frankly I wouldn't see anyone bother deepbonding for when you are saved from death without deepbonding and the boost you get is random and you aren't saved if you die. I really think the effects should be swapped around, to, once you rebirth, you get the boosts of that animal, and then when you deepbond you get the protection of death. And why does Glom get four animals heh

Also on a side note of excessive power costs, 60 power to build a fetish I think is too high too

Ah, I knew I forgot something.

Lich and Darkrebirth and Transmigrate (and possibly vitae?) will cover essence users. We have made an executive decision not to treat essence differently from experience, i.e., those skills that mitigate experience will also mitigate essence loss (to what level is yet to be determined). I understand and appreciate the arguments many of you have passionately put forth saying that essence is difference than experience and there should be not loopholes, etc., but part of the reason we are moving towards these changes is so these skills will encompass those with essence. In other words, we are taking a baseline philosophy that skills will not suddenly be made less useful upon attaining demigodhood or ascendancy. Again, how much will be mitigated is yet to be determined, but the decision has been made.

Um-- you still get protection. You get X seconds of serpent shield, a vitae-like experience loss, and don't lose any of your defenses. That's pretty nice right there, better than anybody else's vitae equivalent. 8 more power to keep all of your defenses, which may have cost a bit more than 8p to put up, over vitae. And then add in the bonuses!

Though the bit I don't understand is, when the animal dies it's spirit merges with you for 60 minutes, what does that do?

Though the bit I don't understand is, when the animal dies it's spirit merges with you for 60 minutes, what does that do?

I thought it was, that if you 'die' the second time during that hour, then the animal actually dies instead?

I thought the animal took your death if it -wasn't- merged with you

Though the bit I don't understand is, when the animal dies it's spirit merges with you for 60 minutes, what does that do?

I don't think that a prismatic barrier should be given on lich. Now before you stop me and scream bias, let me explain why I believe this to be the case. When a lich dies, they spend an amount of time as an invincible soul that is stopped by eye sigils, on the other hand a soul is immune to various attacks that someone behind a prismatic barrier is not. Therefore only one or the other should occur. Either a lich reforms immediately and has a short prismatic barrier (probably around the 10 seconds that trueheal has) then they should not become a soul at all, if however, the soul remains, then there should not be a prismatic barrier.

I can't speak for the other two skills being changed, for as far as I know, they cause an immediate resurrection without grace.

The egg has a short time as a soul before you're reborn "wherever you left your egg" (local area for non-Crow people, at the nest for Crows).

I am okay with this if all demigods across organizations experienced the same thing. Death mitigation skills currently favor those with access to lich, dark rebirth, and transmigrate because all of the above fire before a demigod's phoenix ability does. However, skills such as resurgem, resurrect, and sacrifice all fire after a death and thus are rendered useless to a demigod. If this is the direction things are to go, then resurgem, resurrect, and sacrifice should be changed in some manner that helps a demigod mitigate essence loss.

I agree with what is stated in the qoute above. If an executive decision was made to make all of the experience loss mitigation skills cover essence users, then please make sure this is true across the board.

But why're the animal choices so limited?

I am okay with this if all demigods across organizations experienced the same thing. Death mitigation skills currently favor those with access to lich, dark rebirth, and transmigrate because all of the above fire before a demigod's phoenix ability does. However, skills such as resurgem, resurrect, and sacrifice all fire after a death and thus are rendered useless to a demigod. If this is the direction things are to go, then resurgem, resurrect, and sacrifice should be changed in some manner that helps a demigod mitigate essence loss.

As long as it's also done with Ascendants, so we get some use out of Conglutinate when we die off-Prime (for example). As I said earlier, we lose no essence at all, so for us the thing is "time spent reforming, and ways to avoid/reduce that time".

With these changes, Lich will still be king off-Prime, Rebirth king on-Prime and useless off-Prime, and sacrifice/rez useful all-around (though it takes a Demigod to sacrifice).

Why should sacrifice require a Demigod to use on another one? That would be like saying the Archlich must be a Demigod to give lichseed to another Demigod level player.