ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I will make a new character soon and do some tests! I like these changes, at least on paper. Earth render was a little odd in that it knocks back and then you want to step into the area... so you get hit with your own bleeding, which I was ignoring at high levels, but it is still odd to be damaging yourself like that or at low levels being afraid to step forward and have to pass a turn and wait for them to come to you which is a bit passive. I hope you are still thinking about trances. I really like the sound of that and have thought about it a bit since I posted last. Sorry about your network issues, an hour to upload a few kilobytes is rough.

from a fluff perspective I'm sad to see earth render change. shattered earth is a very evocative feel. couldn't you have made it not hit the user?

I understand what you mean, astral. It took quite a bit of fiddling to get the targeting right to make that area effect bleed work, but I really liked the flavor of it and that's why I spent the time on it. In practice, however, I felt the mechanic suffered from exactly the problems that scul mentioned. Making the bleed avoid the actor could work, but I also wanted another way to dish out the Sapped Energy effect. Having that, plus the bleed, plus the armor hardiness debuff feels like way too much going on for one talent. Out of the effects, removing the area bleed made the most sense to me, gameplay-wise. I'm toying around with some ideas for possible new trees and other ways of spreading Sapped Energy (bleh, that needs a better name... I didn't realize I was going to use it so much when I first came up with it). If I come up with something I like, I may end up removing that aspect from Earth Render and bringing back the bleed with user immunity.

Fair. I hope you come up with something then.
Alternate names:
Enervation
Listlessness

I am back, I know you hope you had gotten rid of me, but I do not give up so easily . Any more ideas for additional tweaks to White monk? I am still thinking about a few things (you can delete the mobility tree I think since the assasin addon that is being merged into game includes all of that besides slow motion, I have many other ideas if you are interested in hearing them)

I just died in my first real attempt at doing one that was not AM. Apparently I found another way to break revive... Seriously, I am not looking for it, but my hope is that the class could be polished enough to be added to the game.

In anycase, I died to a boss, well not a boss, but to inner demons. You can probably guess where this is going. The all had my skills. So the best I can tell is that because tons of them spawned and pushed my movement speed so very low that turns passed without me getting to do anything. I am not sure, I basically was at high health, took one step and then got spammed with hits over and over and the log says revive triggered but either it did not block damage, or it somehow blocked 2 turns of damage and I was still stuck without enough energy to act for that long? I cannot say, I just know I just moved and had no chance to do anything and then dead, should have screenshotted chat log, but I was annoyed at myself for not getting out of there the first time I saw inner demons (because the boss was almost dead and I was low on stamina, so it was my fault, but I was thinking revive would at least give me a chance to get away (healing and movement speed buffs)) It feels like even if my movement speed was very low something was bugging out to allow that to happen. In any case, let me know if I can give more details or you want to hear more ideas about new class tree!

PS In the mean time I am about to try Dark priest which appears to also be made by you, I will try not to break anything.
PPS It just feels like White Monk is Just on the edge of being perfect and just needs a few tweaks to push it over the edge

Thanks for the continued feedback, I'm certainly not tired of it!

That stinks about the inner demons, I'll need to invetigate what might have happened. I have a feeling you're on the right track with the slow. I'll have to see if the limit I put on Air Render affects clones of the player. I should probably out a limit on how far it can reduce speed. Probably 25-30% .

I do have some tweaks coming, including more ways to spread the Enervate (new name for Sapped Energy) effect and a replacement for Mobility. Update has been mostly done for a week or so, I've been slowly testing the changes while waiting to see if I got more error reports or feedback. Should be good to go after I investigate and, hopefully, resolve the issue you experienced.

Well do not be afraid to just release it. I still really like the class, like I said, it is one of my all time favorite archetypes, monk/unarmed fighter. Brawler in the base game is nice, but it is missing that "something-something". And I feel that White monk is moving in the direction of having what I wish Brawler had.

So if you release things I would play it and give you feedback rather quickly, just post that you pushed an update and you will get feedback from me probably within that day if not sooner.

Can say, if you're looking to test clone interaction in the field/with normal-ish gameplay (instead of dev mode shenanigans), the faerie race addon floating around is really bloody good for it. Their dark faerie race has a passive clone racial that means you basically test everything (the AI is willing to use, which is something to consider in and of itself, really) under just about every scenario (whether you actually want to or not, ohoho). Probably one of my go-tos when I'm looking to break an addon for whatever reason.

... it usually manages it, too -- clone interaction is easily one of the most consistently unstable things in the game, and addons often forget to consider they exist even when they're not in the class/race's kit. Which means even other addons aside, things start breaking the moment a randunique or adventurer with the class's talents happens to roll forgery of haze or somethin'. Entirely possible to miss while testing, too, because it's pretty rare something does end up with both what you're trying to test and a clone talent of some sort at the same time.

I appreciate that scul, it's just that I've put out some really sloppy work in the past (*cough* Prowler *cough cough*), so now I get a little paranoid about releasing updates only to have a horrible bug pop up right away. I like to give everything at least cursory pass to make sure things are functional, and I like to do a little play testing to check out balance when I make changes that are somewhat significant, as with this update. Combine that with lack of time due to the Holidays and such, plus minor distractions that come up, and... well, here we are. On the plus side, I think the class is now very polished and I'm eager to see what you (and anyone else that wants to send some feedback my way) think of the changes.

Shouldn't have to wait much longer, though. I will make the couple of changes I mentioned regarding Air Render and then post the new version. Hopefully the clone death you experienced was due to wonkiness from highly reduced speed and that will be solved by these tweaks. I would prefer to have the problem solved, but I have a feeling that it's going to be a tough nut to crack due to being clone-related, so I won't delay the update further. Look for it later tonight, or come morning.

v 1.3.0 is now up. Proper change log in the OP when I have time.

Highlights:
Fending is now Generic. Mobility replaced with new tree Agile Combatant, essentially a revamped Mobility (first talent is probably over-powered currently and will likely be nerfed a bit).
No longer start with Combat Training, however, Guided Hand will now allow you to wear gauntlets without Armor Training and will provide a boost to accuracy equal to that of Combat Accuracy. The tree can still be purchased from the weapon shops in Last Hope/ Kruk Pride.
New advanced tree, requires Wil: Technique/Transcending. Focused around spreading and manipulating the Enervate effect, to debilitate your foes and increase the power of your Rending attacks.
The Enervate effect will now reduce a target's movement speed to a minimum of 25%; the effect will continue to build stacks even if this limit is reached, however.
Spin Fist now has a chance to Stun rather than Daze, and vice versa for Blink Counter.
Secret Fist now has a chance to place a random talent on cool down for 3 turns each tick, rather than a talent fail chance.
Air Render AI limitations adjusted slightly. If the actor is in your party (including the player), it will have a cooldown of 0. Otherwise, the cooldown will be 3.

Wow, these look really good. I will be trying this very soon. Right after I finish my Dark Priest....

Okay, definitely enjoying the changes, I will have thoughts on them once this character dies/wins!

Two quick things (somehow I find all the weirdest bugs)

1) Minor Lua error under certain conditions when using secret fist. I need to repeat it so I can get it each time, but it seems to be something to do with when something dies from secret fist, not a hard crash or anything, just a single error. But I have gotten it to repeat a few times, just not consistently.

2) A game breaker under the correct edge conditions. Somehow when I get hit with dreamscape, I make clones and I am not sure if you can normally tell them to drop gear or swap equipment, that would not be your area, but these have equipped a dagger and a mindstar.... not even sure if I have either of them in my inventory, but regardless, it means that as a monk I cannot use any skills except perhaps rush and autoattack which is super weak since I have no buffs for daggers or mindstars and that locks out all skills. So I am fighting a dreaming horror and I do not think it is possible to beat him (he is from a vault so above my level, but not by that much, only like level 40 and I am 25/26). Since before I can kill him he hits me with dreamscape andheals full in the scape since I can do basically 0 damage to him while in the dreamscape. Anyways, I will let you know on anything else I run into, assuming I can at least not die to this horror.

Ouch, good luck with the horror. I'll have to look into how Dreamscape works and see if I can figure anything out. I don't remember having problems with gear like that in Dreamscape before (at least with other classes), but I have no idea how it generates the clones' equipment or if you can get them to drop stuff. Thanks again for the feedback! This is exactly the kind of thing it would have taken forever to find on my own.

As for Secret Fist, I think I might know what's going on there. There's a fair chance I forgot to give it a check to make sure the target is still alive when it tries to put a talent on cool down. I'll check it out.

Ok, the problem with Secret Fist was exactly what I suspected. Fix is good to go for that.

I did a little testing on Dreamscape and discovered that if you have no weapon in hand, but you have weapons in your inventory, your clones will, in fact, equip those weapons. I have no idea why this is. It's possible it was a contingency put in place in case you were disarmed when Dreamscape (or maybe any cloning?) took effect, but, if that is the case, it seems they neglected to add a contingency to the contingency for unarmed fighters. I did my tests with a Brawler, and he was left in just a bad a spot. A bunch of clones wielding daggers with no way to use their talents.

Unfortunately, that means there's not much I can do, except recommend that you try not to carry weapons around. I will, however, raise the issue with the powers that be and see if we can get a check added to ignore this mechanic for unarmed fighters, since it is pretty crippling.

Updated with fix for Secret Fist bug. Also, tweaked starting talents a bit. I realized I wasn't granting any generics at birth, so I decided to start them off with a point in Vitality and Heightened Senses and removed the point from Rush.

Sorry for the delay; life and stuff.