The Ancestor (from Darkest Dungeon)

Looking for ever more knowledge and power, Ancestor has decided to visit that strange tall Spire the new residents of the Hamlet keep mumbling about.
Of course, however, it’s not gonna give up its secrets easily.
As you have now joined the Family, dear Heir, you are hereby invited to share the journey.

No tool of unmaking is without its merits. Stabs and swings, bullets and concoctions – all is good and well, as long as it does its job. Mastering all these tools in all their variety for one singular purpose is what helps him go on and forth even without any power reachable from the Heart.
However, too much of a choice often leads to too slow of a reaction… and too quick of a passing. Ancestor chooses his tools based on what’s currently needed, adapting each Adventurer’s skillset at times appropriate.

Unlike most other visitors of the Spire, Ancestor doesn’t rely on usual techniques of blocking or otherwise avoiding the damage. Instead, his main survival tactic is centered around flesh, as he knows it full and well. Healing back the broken body, Temporarily or not, is now a second nature for him.
Quite literally.

…is not something that bothers Ancestor anymore, once he found out the Truth. However, this also meant a complete lack of any sort of shining valor during desperate times – you cannot bounce without touching the floor beforehand.
In the process of watching all the highs and lows of adventurers from all lands, Ancestor has learned quite a bit – and that includes the moments of excellence. He sharpened his mind to take advantage of all that Virtue – all the while never failing to comprehend the reality. After all, he knows it all too well to be afraid of such unsophisticated horrors.

Flavor text ends here. Thus begins boring simpleton technical stuff, with spoilers and all that.

Ancestor is a playable class featuring over 100 cards, most of which are skills taken from all characters (Musketeer excluded, obviously) from the original Darkest Dungeon game – with few Ancestor’s tricks thrown in. Also some Potions (5) and Relics (16). No new encounters, not yet.

Key features include (but not limited to):

Due to the sheer amount of cards, card rewards are limited to Characters.
You have to choose from 5 to 17 (8 by default, configurable in the mod’s config) Character Packs at the start of each run. Card rewards will only contain cards from Characters you have chosen.
For each pack, you’ll get one Starter card of that character at the start. I don’t really like all that Strike and Defend meta, as such Starter cards are actual Common cards that you can get later via card drops. They’re not broken or anything, but they’re good enough, and certainly better than Strike or Defend.
Due to lacking Strikes and Defends in his kit, Pandora’s Box and Strike Dummy will not drop when you are playing as the Ancestor.
You can change your Character Packs at each Rest Site as a Free Action.
Ancestor’s own card pool is not limited to Character Pack and will drop at all times. You also get 3 Basic cards based on Ancestor’s moves from his first boss phase to start.
Do note that this mechanic affects ONLY card rewards. It doesn’t affect neither Shop pool nor in-combat card generation.
If you choose all 17 Characters in the config, the mechanic is disabled (all cards can drop, but you’ll start with 17 Starters on top of 3 Ancestor’s Basics)

In trying to remake stalling prevention mechanic from the Darkest Dungeon game, and wanting to make a character based around Healing instead of Blocking, just like it’s in DD, I’ve come up with the Declining Heal mechanic.
Card that do Declining Heal will heal you as normal on the first use, but subsequent uses will give you Temporary HP instead. Both heals are reduced by Frail, and Temp HP scales with Dexterity just like Block does.
Unlike usual prevention of healing cards spawning in combat, Declining Heal card don’t have such a restriction, however they’ll only grant you Temporary HP – no healing.
Because Block is no longer a major mechanic, Calipers provide additional benefit for the Deciling Heal mechanic – on second use, only half of healing is convered to Temporary HP, i.e. second use of the card heals for half the amount and gives half as much base Temporary HP. The relic will still provide its usual effect (e.g. with Panic Button you can save leftover Block).
There’s more damage prevention mechanics than that of course, both from StS and Darkest, and also of mine creation.

As Ancestor can’t really stress out anymore, adding Stress as a mechanic doesn’t make much sense. However, Virtues are still applicable… somehow. Virtue is somewhat akin to Mantra from Watcher, but instead of damage burst it gives you scaling.

…and much more! Mod includes mechanics re-imagines in StS from DD and of mine creation inspired by DD.

• Fixing all the (inevitable) bugs;
• Russian translation (my native language) – Implemented;
• Rebalancing of things unbalanced. Nerfing of things broken. Buffing of things useless.
• Event integration (not gonna do new events, but gonna add Ancestor flavor to them – which will include an event Relic);
• DD Boss Cards: similar to Boss cards from Downfall, but Bosses from Darkest Dungeon.

• Ancestor playable at Boss side – turns out Downfall supports that by itself, so just enable that in Downfall’s config if that’s what you looking for;
• Ancestor as main game Boss encounter;
• Ancestor as character-Boss encounter;
• Different event flavor at Boss side.

• Actual new encounters. No idea what’s the point of all the enemies from DD being in Spire, and also no ideas for their mechanics, as they’re all very heavily designed around 4-party team and mechanics not present in StS. So not these. But events? Maybe? I dunno lol.
• Maybe some other new content I might want to do idk.
• VFX re-imagination, with giving each card animation and sounds from DD, and few more flavors here and there (odds are only flavors will end up being implemented).

Q: Why is Downfall a requirement?
A: Main reason: plans for future in-depth integration. Second reason: re-use of mechanics (like Pyre and Bruise). Third reason: I just like it ok?!

Q: Why do [insert_ugly] sucks to look at?
A: Skill issue. I can’t draw SНIТ. My absolute pinnacle in art is SНIТposting.

Q: There is already DD themed mod for StS tho?
A: ikr

Q: When is [insert_language] translation.
A: Tomorrow.