My gaming experience is 28 years. It started with 8 and 16 bit consoles and continues on the PC. Mostly these are RPGs and MMORPGs in a fantasy setting.
For example, now the Necromancer + Shaman build will summon both undead and living creatures. What doesn’t give full experience like a master of undeads. It is logical that if a Necromancer is present in the build, all summoned creatures can be undead versions of the Shaman’s and the Occultist summoned: Spiked Briarthorn, Ghost of Primal Spirit, Familiar Zombie, Skeleton of Hellhound. If there is an Occultist in the build and there is no Necromancer, all the samons can be demonic: Demonic Briarthornand and Demonic Primal Spirit (Primal Demon). It is only a visual component to let player feel like true Necromancer or Demonologist. Although the correspondence of icons and skills won’t made hurt.
The method of priorities was described above (necromancer => demonologist => alive summoners). This can be implemented in other ways, for example:
the visual type of summoned will be determined by the first Mastery,
each Mastery will have one skill, taking which all the summoned of another Mastery will stylistically correspond to this Mastery.
I like the idea. But people might have other preferences - e.g. skeletons should become ghosts or zombies. Provided Crate wants to spend resources on this, this can be achieved with item skill modifiers - i.e. the transformation would be achieved by equipping specific items / sets.
With the work that is required atm to create a reskinned pet, this is unlikely to ever happen.
Say you want to make a set that turns all the skeletons into burning skeletons, convert all vitality/physical into fire damage. So now you need to create 26*4 new pet files and 4 new skeleton meshes to support it. Without any tech changes to the engine, I don’t foresee this or OP’s suggestion ever coming to Grim Dawn, not even in a mod.
That is a very subjective request. Consider for a moment the order you came up with. What if someone else prefers things with a different priority? The game not only does not keep record of which mastery you chose first, that seems like a very unclear determination for what skins you’d end up with (ex. what if someone prefers to level with X, but wants their final pet look to be based on Y?).
The game is built on a dual class system, so some compromises have to be made.
There is also what Asylum says. Pet reskins are a ton of work.
The main idea is that Necromancers will summon undead and Demonologists - demons. So other ways:
Necromancer will summon any existing model of undead monster instead summoned of Occutlist\Shaman. It even can be model of Blight Fiend instead of Spiked Briarthorn and Wraith insead of “Ghost of Primal Spirit”. And the same for Occultist`summoned.
Make a checkmark “one Mastery” when choosing the first Mastery (or anyother way). Accordingly, a player can take only one Mastery. But it will have a “+ scale” two times longer (or two times powerful and require twice points) and all other skills will have 50% more points. I.e. for example, Summon Briarthorn contain now 16\26 points, but with option “one Mastery” will be 24\34. It will give possibility to create clean Necromancer or Occultist. And will let to make playable one-Mastery characters.
Yeah, the game is built on a dual class system. But from it aesthetic problem have only summoners.
P.S. Additional idea is to remove the limit of +10 to skills or increase up to +15 \ +20.
maybe in gd2, and give the illusionists another ability to reskin your pets however you want! no need to overcomplicate the engine by tying it to mastery or skills, if we just want to customize our pets’ appearance and graphic effects.