Very cool ideas here. Ghoulish is a character concept I frequently return to. There's something about having rads on my health bar that triggers a weird neurosis in me on other characters. I have a nagging compulsion to remove them. Ghoulish changes that relationship, allows me to think of rads more like a resource, and the last rank eventually gives me the means of clearing away those tiny red slivers of anxiety inducing "too little to waste a Rad Away on" pixels. This mod takes that concept and runs with it. It's definitely going in my upcoming playthrough. Thanks!
I feel healing from radiation is counter-intuitive to the intentions of the perk. All of your buffs come from radiation, why would you want to essentially nerf yourself?
The thought has struck me as well, and it's a good question. I've found that it's a bit of a balancing game between the pros and cons here. Radiation still isn't an entirely beneficial thing. It's more that when you pick the Ghoulish perk, rather than radiation being nothing but a reduction of your effective Health, as it would be to a normal person, it and its red bar changes in what way you are strong. Once you become severely irradiated, despite the very high Endurance you would have at that point, you would still have much less effective Health than if you were radiation-free. To put it simply, you aren't at an advantage in every situation and it depends on the circumstances now more than ever. All the new advantages come from radiation, but so do the new disadvantages; less effective Health, a potential reduction of Charisma, less Experience Points, and less Health restoration, are all things that you may want to be careful with.
Radiation does restore your Health, but if you are irradiated enough, suddenly there is much less Health that can be restored, and much less space for more radiation. Furthermore, with your Radiation Resistance increasing, it means that the more irradiated you are, the more difficult it becomes to use the radiation for this restorative purpose. Solving this issue by healing the radiation damage using RadAway is simple in the normal modes, but becomes much more difficult in Survival Mode.
Also, the radiation does eventually kill you, even with this perk. As such, slowly but continuously healing the radiation damage increases how well you can survive in an irradiated environment. Getting yourself irradiated quickly when you need it shouldn't be too difficult either; carrying around some irradiated consumables could pretty much function as the Ghoul's own little version of chems.
Also, it's the last rank, and the only other thing it affects is a single extra point to the location-based Charisma effect. In other words, rank 4 is a fairly optional one that you can pick. As said, in the normal modes, unlocking this rank may not be as important, but it would be really useful for Survival Mode.
To sum it up: getting irradiated is awesome with this perk, but being irradiated can be a problem.
I ALWAYS take the ghoulish perk, all 4 levels. Just last night, I ran across a small group of plutonium ghouls. One "turned" and started fighting on my side against his brethren. It was such a hoot. I also ramp up radiation in the Glowing Sea and Far Harbor eightfold so having it heal spontaneously once I'm away from it is a plus.
The changes introduced here seem very well thought out. On the other hand, I have never intentionally allowed 60% of my health to be replaced by radiation (Sons of Atom and certain hotspots don't always respect my intentions). In addition, with rank 4, it will heal spontaneously anyway. The only source of irradiation I can think of in Goodneighbor is inside Bobbi's tunnels. You might want to consider lowering that number and/or adding a more convenient source of radiation to Goodneighbor.
You do have a good point about Goodneighbor. Adding items into the world itself seems like a job for another mod, but maybe it would make sense if the threshold was set a little lower. The main reason it was set at 60% is because of the Pip-Boy Ghoul feature. Around where do you think the threshold would be reasonable?
Thanks for asking. Of course there is no perfect number. Since, with rank 4, the irradiation is not going to hang around anyway, one might need to attain 80% in order to reach Goodneighbor with 60%. That would be a little dangerous. So maybe 40% threshold would be good.
I'm at rank 4 in my current game, but I'll try it out eventually. It sounds like a great idea.
Interesting idea. This Charisma mechanic would naturally make Goodneighbor the preferred trading spot for ghoulish Sole Survivors. However, I feel the last two perks a little bit lacking and not worthing the investment. I never took the Goulish perk EVER, but this mod made it sound a good idea. Nice job!
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Radiation does restore your Health, but if you are irradiated enough, suddenly there is much less Health that can be restored, and much less space for more radiation. Furthermore, with your Radiation Resistance increasing, it means that the more irradiated you are, the more difficult it becomes to use the radiation for this restorative purpose. Solving this issue by healing the radiation damage using RadAway is simple in the normal modes, but becomes much more difficult in Survival Mode.
Also, the radiation does eventually kill you, even with this perk. As such, slowly but continuously healing the radiation damage increases how well you can survive in an irradiated environment. Getting yourself irradiated quickly when you need it shouldn't be too difficult either; carrying around some irradiated consumables could pretty much function as the Ghoul's own little version of chems.
Also, it's the last rank, and the only other thing it affects is a single extra point to the location-based Charisma effect. In other words, rank 4 is a fairly optional one that you can pick. As said, in the normal modes, unlocking this rank may not be as important, but it would be really useful for Survival Mode.
To sum it up: getting irradiated is awesome with this perk, but being irradiated can be a problem.
The changes introduced here seem very well thought out. On the other hand, I have never intentionally allowed 60% of my health to be replaced by radiation (Sons of Atom and certain hotspots don't always respect my intentions). In addition, with rank 4, it will heal spontaneously anyway. The only source of irradiation I can think of in Goodneighbor is inside Bobbi's tunnels. You might want to consider lowering that number and/or adding a more convenient source of radiation to Goodneighbor.
Thanks for your good work.
I'm at rank 4 in my current game, but I'll try it out eventually. It sounds like a great idea.