High Guard - A Mage Subclass

[nsrr]

Pretty sure it doesn't consider ESP. At least, it doesn't consider Track.

There's a special thing for applying daze on the end of the trick that the new daze on-hit uses. That should probably work more cleanly.

Ah, Magic Burst doesn't check spell save? I thought it did for some reason. It's probably fine as it is in that case.

25% respen at max would be fine. Crit chance would need to go down to compensate though.

The thing is, I never actually noticed debuffs getting extended or buffs getting removed. Like, not at all. I might just have been missing something though.

By the time you have Eldritch Echoes stacked up, the enemy is already dead. The damage is piddling compared to how much you deal just by bumping. That definitely doesn't change if you have to bump a bunch of times to get Eldritch Echoes doing anything at all. I guess it has limited utility on the turn before you kill an enemy, making sure they don't take you with them.

I'm going to test out the 'in combat' and see how that works out for the slow. If it's too wonky I'll try an 'enemy in sight' approach.

Switching out the daze for blind experimentally.

Magic Burst actually is checking save for the status at the moment.It has changed a few times in revisions and I had myself confused. Testing out a slightly buffed spell save debuff with no check and no defense debuff. Deepsight is being moved to the first talent in Battle Channeling and High Guard will start with a point in Combat Accuracy. Blinkguard I'm experimenting with to make it very good one-shot protection (the chance to trigger will increase with the amount of damage recieved, such that at max talent level and 100 SP you'll have a 100% chance to avoid hits over ~65% max life, with minimum trigger value of 15% max life). Talent will be banned from NPCs, and moved to tier2 in place of Deepsight.

25% res pen sounds good. I'll add a new function for the power so the crit scales seperately.

I tested Magically Malady quite a bit to make sure it was doing it's thing, but unless you are checking durations every turn it can be easy to miss. It's overly complicated, though, so I plan to rework it a bit while keeping the basic idea of making your melee hits shorten/remove buffs and extend debuffs.

Fair points on Eldritch Echoes. I wanted it to take a bit of build up before it could start applying nasty debuffs, but the current implementation is too restrictive. Scraping the damage check and just giving each tick a chance to debuff. Without a daze or any other way to reduce phys/mental save just applying with Spellpower and checking immunities should limit it a lot.

[nsrr]

v1.5.2
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[General]
Slight changes to talent scaling all around.

[Magical Defense]
Now also gives a passive chance to deflect projectiles.

[Battle Channeling]
The slow effect is now only applied when enemies are within sight.
Deepsight has been moved to tier 1 and Blinkguard to tier 2.

[Blinkguard]
Triggering damage increased to 15% max life. Chance to avoid damage is now increased by the percentage of your max life the damage represents, plus an amount that scales with talent level and spell power. This means that a hit for 100% of your max life or more will always be avoided so long as the per-turn limit has not been reached. At TL 5 and 100 spellpower you will have a 100% chance to avoid damage of ~65% max life or more. NPC's may no longer use this talent. Mana cost scales down with talent level.

[Phasestride]
Now deactivated on rest.

[Phase Strike]
Range increased to 8.
If there is not an empty tile adjacent to the target, the spell will fail (without using turn energy or setting cooldown, etc).

[Magic Burst]
The Aether Affliction effect no longer checks save when it is applied and now only reduces Spell Save (Defense reduction has been removed).

[Eldritch Empowerment]
Eldritch Echoes now deals more damage, and ticks have a chance to apply pin, silence, or disarm regardless of the amount of damage dealt.

[Sorcerous Block]
Reworked into:
[Sorcerous Retribution]
Whenever you take damage from, or are afflicted by a negative effect from, a hostile actor 5 or more tiles away, you have a 10% chance to gain one stack of Sorcerous Might. If you have at least 4 stacks of Sorcerous Might, you will also attempt to afflict a Mark of Retribution upon the source. The mark will last 3 turns and increases all damage you deal to the target by Y% per stack of Sorcerous Might, so long as the target is 5 or more tiles distant.
Passively increases the maximum number of Sorcerous Might charges by Z.

[nsrr]

I realized I forgot to fix the typos that were reported, and I found some weird behavior with the restructured Phase Strike.
If something rare happens, such as an actor moving onto the tile you were attempting to teleport to, the spell will now abort and you will see a message in your combat log that the spell has 'fizzled'. This could still be a little wonky and if anyone notices any strange behavior, I would appreciate feedback on what you notice.

v1.5.3
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[Phase Strike]
Checks adjusted to account for rare situations in which an actor moves onto the tile you are attempting to teleport to.

[General]
Fixed the typos I failed to fix in the last version, including one were I re-wrote almost the entire description... except for the part with the typo :facepalm:

[nsrr]

v1.5.4
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[Arcane Gaurdian]
Reconfigured the tracking of the turn procs; the shield hit can now occur once per target per your turn, instead of once per target per target's turn.

[Shield Casting]
Reconfigured the tracking of the turn procs; the shield hit can now occur once per target per your turn, instead of once per target per target's turn.

[Field Conditioned]
Mental save now scales separately from immunities.

[Arcvasti]

Got a halfling high guard to level 15 on insane and then died to getting permastunned in old forest.
Feedback:
-Boltfury + Greater Channel Staff gives tons of sorcerous might charges and mana against groups of enemies with melee retaliation.
-Phase Strike seems to work inside vaults. This is probably not your fault, lots of teleports in vanilla do this.
-Quickened gives an absurdly obscene amount of combat speed. I get that it's supposed to be a large buff because High Guard's attack talents are all spells, but now that Arcane Guardian's shield bash works properly you can output insane damage even with bumps. A buff of 30% combat speed at 5/5 would probably be too much combat speed. The amount it actually gives is just insane.
-The respen on the Phase Charged tooltip is wrong. It seems to be using the effect ID instead of the effect respen power.
-When I got hit with a blood grasp from point blank range with Blinkguard, I teleported one square away and then instantly back into the projectile. This happened five times in one turn.
-Magical Defense activation text is misspelled
-The Medic spells all have breakpoints at 3/5, but the last skill is especially bad. It goes from curing 3 effects to 8 when going from 2/5 to 3/5 and going from 3/5 to 4/5 does literally nothing.

EDIT:
Made yet another halfling high guard because why not. Died at level 10 in Norgos.
-The battle channelling talents do NOT make autoexplore safe. You still have a chance to get doubleturned. Please just remove this awful penalty. It does nothing in combat, makes tarrasca broken and makes normal play annoying.

[nsrr]

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback!

I have an update in the works. Typos and bugs are taken care of. I scrapped the movement slow on Battle Channeling and tacked on another 5% fatigue each. Reduced the speed scaling on Quickened to 12.5%-25%. Tweaked Cure scaling a bit. Mystic Warding has a 3 per turn limit on mana gain now. May play around with a limit on per turn stack gains for Sorcerous Might. I believe I found a solution for that situation where Blinkguard ports you away from and then back into a projectile multiple times, but it's a little hacky and needs more testing. I'm not sure it will interact properly with Gunslingers due to the two projectiles on a tile at once situation. Also, situations where the damaging talent moves you (kickback or pull).

Anyhow, I wanted to let you know that I've seen your feedback and I am working on something, but it might be a little bit before I get it uploaded, mostly due to testing the Blinkgurad change.

[nsrr]

v1.5.5
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[Battle Channeling]
Movement slow removed. Fatigue cost increased to 15% each.

[Blinkguard]
No longer functions if you are frozen. This was an oversight before; frozen status is meant to prevent teleportation.
Modified to handle triggering from projectile damage better. I tested this against several different projectiles both at range and point blank and did not encounter any errors or multi-hits from the same projectile, but it would hard to say it was exhaustively tested. If anyone notices any strange behavior with this talent, please let me know.

[Mystic Ward]
Mana gains from damage prevented are now limited to 3 times per turn.

[Greater Channel Staff]
Shield hit proc now properly limits hits to once per enemy per your turn, instead of enemy turn.

[Quickened]
Attack speed bonus now scales from 12.5% to 25%.

[Cure]
Cooldown increased to 10 turns.
Scaling adjusted.

[scul]

I do not really want to do this... But I am obligated to based on personal ethics. There is a... glorious bug, but a bug none the less. Noticed how I was doing major damage to things that had 100% immunity to an element.. And then lo and behold I had 250% resistance penetration. Apparently when you add penetration from phase charged it is becoming permanent. I really don't mind but I am guessing you did not want us to all have 250% all penetration by the second or third tier 1 dungeon.. But maybe that is what you want? Perhaps phase charged can also add permanent +25% all damage, stacking per use?

The preceding is a joke obviously, except the part about the bug. Trying out high guard after your changes, might need to take a break until the bug is squashed because I know that is going to be unfair later on, already feels unfair at level 9.

[nsrr]

Thanks for the report, I appreciate it!

I had fixed an error in the effect, but apparently I made a typo when doing so. I got focused on testing something else and forgot to make sure this was working properly. I've uploaded a new version, with the effect fixed. Unfortunately, it won't correct the extra res-pen you've already accumulated.

V1.5.6
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[Phase Charged]
Resistance penetration will now be removed properly when the effect expires.

[scul]

You are welcome as always. I like your mods. If you want to fix spelling just let me know and I will compile my list. Nothing game breaking, but a few I have noticed. Enjoying the changes so far! I will have a more complete update after I win or die. (Normally the latter but this is only nightmare roguelike, so should not be too bad).

[nsrr]

I won't twist your arm, but if you feel like taking the time, I would certainly not be against fixing spelling and typos. I'd be glad to hear your feedback on this class, too

[scul]

I feel like perhaps you fixed one or two since I last looked. Or I am just thinking about another class. I'm any case just a couple of minor ones.

Mystic ward : successful, (lacking an a)

Bolt fury : last line says critical chance and power. It is unclear if that is referring to critical power or another kind, earlier in the skill you said critical damage. Not wrong but could be confusing.

Eldritch empowerment : mentions magic burst in second paragraph, but in first paragraph it says just burst so it could be unclear (should be named in first paragraph?)

Only one spelling error, I will get back to playing and if I notice more I will tell you!

[astralInferno]

fiiinally got round to trying this! having loads of fun, too.
boltfury and phasestride do seem to be... a bit strong together. this is with arcane might and a bunch of other stuff, so it might just be that Im way too OP and that normal play they'd be fine, but I turned phasestride off so I didnt kill bosses by teleporting at them. xD

...not that killing them by walking at them wasn't fun.

[nsrr]

Glad you're having fun with it. Er... Phasestride probably doesn't even need to exist anymore. It does have fun interactions with Boltfury and Greater Channel Staff, but it was originally there to make up for the movement penalty that all Battle Channels used to impose. The penalty just did not work well.i. practice, and even attempts to limit to applying only when enemies were in sight still caused a bad interaction with auto-explore. So eventually (recently), I scraped it and leaned hard into the fatigue penalty instead. I should probably replace it, not sure what with, though. Maybe I'll tune down the remaining three talents and add a capstone Battle Channel mastery talents of sorts that improves the channels. I dunno, though, that's just something off the top.of my head and I have no idea when I'll get around to working on this again. Just getting into a new class, a little more expansive than this one, working with some mechanics I haven't used before, so I'll probably be focused on that for a while.

[nsrr]

v1.5.7
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ToME 1.6 compatibility (updated mastery description for Arcane Guardian)