Rune of the Spirit Realm

[Frank]

Hello everyone.

I have not made a proper forum post in ages. Work has kept me very busy lately and so I have spent most of my freetime working out or playing in the mornings. I'm gonna try to fix that eventually as I do enjoy a little shitposting every now and then, but for now let's talk about the cultist ability Rune of the Spirit Realm. So what is wrong with this rune? Well let's start with describing the rune and what it does. I stole the wiki description for this as it is easy to understand and can be seen below:

Quote

 

This rune gives you two powerful options:
 

(1) To manifest ghosts as semitransparent homunculi, which are effectively weak, humanoid cultists with no self-preservation instinct. To sustain these homunculi, you must remain on the rune, and each homunculus you have summoned will cause brute damage over time. This option is only available on the space station itself, as the veil is not weak enough in space or Lavaland to give spirits a physical form. If you get stuck on the rune after summoning a ghost, use your ritual dagger to remove the rune before you get hurt too badly. Each rune can summon up to 4 ghosts total, but each objective accomplished lower the rune's power, to a minimum of 2 ghosts.

(2) To ascend as a dark spirit. This option will give you virtually unlimited knowledge. You can use information given to you by ghosts in this form and commune with the cult with your booming voice to coordinate them. You can even use this function after manifesting ghosts to help guide them in combat - manifested ghosts can also see regular ghosts and therefore can see your dark spirit as you lead them in battle!

 

 

What is this rune used for?

As you can see you have two options when using this rune.

The first option lets you spawn in ghosts that can aid you a lot of different things, mainly conversion. You can also spam pylons around yourself and summon a lot of ghosts and tell them to go kill sec or your target. This is incredibly frustrating to go up against as the ghosts can just go ham without the fear of dying or anything. Self preservation is not a factor when you can just be respawned by the same guy again. These guys can also soak up a lot of damage from lasers and do a lot brute damage to people all around. It's very cheesy.

The main problem however is the usage in conversion. Spawning in a couple cult zombie things is what makes it possible to be a solo cultie in the first place. You don't have to rely on your teammates and you can just go all "Gal'h'rfikk harfrandid mud'gib!" and convert people by summoning however many zombies you require. To convert or sacrifice your victims you do need to be 2-3 cultists around the offer rune and the zombies count as cultists when doing this.

The second option lets you ghost from your character. It's extremely busted, but I have no problems with this because it helps you track down your target and coordinate fellow cultists to take them down and offer them to Nar'Sie. This is useful and sometimes necessary for a cult to even be able to find the right person to sacrifice, as Kerberos is fricking huge and Cyberiad is a pretty big station as well.

 

Teamwork is the only way:

The cultist gamemode is one of two gamemodes where antags work together, the other being Shadowling. I'm not counting revs because it's just unga and it's not in the main rotation. Not gonna talk about abductors either even if that is somewhat teambased.

The description of the gamemode tells you that "You must work with your brethren to summon an avatar of your eldritch goddess". But you don't have to do that. A cultist both can work alone if they choose to because of how this rune works. You don't have to rely on anyone. All you need to do is grab some plasteel, make yourself a nice base, grab unsuspecting people from maints, pull them into your base and summon ghosts for conversion. In my opinion this is not how it should be, because you are supposed to be a team of cultists. This is not a solo operation and I feel like the first option of this rune should be removed.

 

Balance and impact on the game:

The shadowling gamemode has a lot of problems, but when they win it's most of the time because they manage to work as a team. This is how a teamantag is supposed to be. If you're fairly capable and you have three bald shadowlings on your side you are gonna have a bad time. Sometimes you get unrobust or incompetent players and this is fine. That's just how the game is. It's the same with security, as security relies heavily upon teamwork. If you have an incompetent team you will end up getting stomped and possibly game ended while recieving no backup. Shadowlings can work alone, but they don't have an ability that lets you straight out ignore teamwork completely and do your own thing. So why should strong independent cultists who need no team be allowed to exist? This should be the most teamoriented gamemode on both sides. It's just straight out silly that this is possible. Cultists should win by working as a team, not by having 1-2 competent cultists converting crewmembers until the cult snowballs out of control.

Reckless conversions are not necessarily a good thing for the cult either. The moment the halos show up, the crew is allowed and even encouraged to protect their workplace from cultists. And unlike sec, they will rely on stuff other than stunbatons and tasers which can end horribly for you. Facing the wrath of the tide is not in your best interest at all.

 

My suggestion:

As I mentioned early, I think the first option should just be removed. This will make cultists a lot more team oriented. In the early game, converting will be a lot harder. This can be fixed by having more roundstart cultists (6 at high pop and maybe 4 at lowpop?).

The only big difference this will make in terms of difficulty is that it requires cultists to be more coordinated when converting. Unrobust cultists who are self aware will still be helping out as they will end up teleporting around or stay at the base to help convert crewmembers. This is optimal as converting as a cultist is way too easy right now and it might add some more balance to a cult round. And the pylon zombie spam? That can fuck right off. It's garbage and should be more frowned upon. It's dumb. Sorry, not sorry.

The second option should be the only option even if it is completely bonkers.

Thank you for your time. Sincerely, Mr. English is my third language.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Frank
Adding some stuff