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High Guard - A Mage Subclass

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 6:16 pm
by nsrr
Adds the High Guard, a mage subclass. The High Guard is a melee fighter with mid-range spells who can wield any staff in one hand and favors shields in the offhand.
Primary stats are Magic and Strength. All talents are spells and use only mana. Attacks with both staff and shield, with nearly all attacks (save for bumps) dealing the damage type your staff is currently aligned to.

Code: Select all

Unique Class Talents:
(X indicates the damage type your staff is aligned to)

Spell/Battlemage
Talents for fighting and defending with your staff and shield.

Arcane Guardian: Allows you to wield a 2h staff in your main hand and increases shield damage. Staff attacks will trigger a shield attack as X damage type, once per target per trun.

Mystic Ward: Passively deflect energy damage ( non-mind, non-phys) based on your block value. Successful teleports will also trigger Block if it is not on cooldown. Blocking and deflecting damage will each restore a small amount of mana.

Magical Defense: Passively gain Block value and projectile deflection chance based on Spellpower.

Greater Channel Staff: When you cast Channel Staff you will also project a melee shield attack as X damage type if the target is within range 4, up to once per target per base game turn.

Spell/Magical Assault
Talents for assaulting your foes.

Magic Burst: Deals X damage type to all targets in a radius 4 narrow cone and reduces target Spell Save by Y for 3 turns.
You may target yourself instead to project the spell in a radius 1 around yourself.

Sorcerous Slam: Deals Y shield damage as X damage type in a radius 4 narrow cone. Targets struck will be afflicted with Occult Obstruction  for 3 turns. Melee hits against  targets suffering from the effect will put up to Y talents on cooldown for 3 turns, at most once per target per turn.
You may target yourself instead to project the spell in a radius 1 around yourself.

Arcane Projection: Deals Y staff damage as X damage type in a radius 4 narrow cone. Targets struck will suffer from Magical Malady for 3 turns. Melee hits against targets afflicted with Magical Malady will increase all negative effects duration by 1 turn. For each effect extended, all positive effects on the target will lose 1 duration, up to Y.
You may target yourself instead to project the spell in a radius 1 around yourself.

Empowered Arms(sustain): Melee attacks will deal an additional Y damage as X damage type. Critical hits will repeat the damage in a radius 1 ball, striking the initial target again. 
Targets struck by Magic Burst will also be afflicted with Eldritch Echoes, dealing Z% of the initial damage each turn for 3 turns. Each tick can crit and any time Eldritch Echoes deals damage they have a chance to be Disarmed, Silenced, or Pinned for 3 turns if they fail to save against your spellpower with their spell save.

Spell/Phasing
Talents for battle mobility and defense.

Phasestrike: Teleport to and attack a target in range 8 for Y damage as X damage type, potentially intimidating (reduces spell, mind, and physical powers) enemies in radius Z around your destination for Z turns.

Phase Charged: Gain spell and phys crit and X damage type penetration for Y turns after hitting with Phase Strike.

Phase Shield: Gain W% increased resistance caps for Y turns after hitting with Phasestrike.. While Phase Shielded and Blocking, you have a Z% chance to shrug off detrimental effects.

Phase Shifted: increases critical shrug off chance by Z% and gain W% affinity to all damage  for Y turns after hitting with Phasestrike.

Spell/Battle Channeling
Sustains for combat utility.

Deepsight: gain accuracy, apr and range Y telepathy of all creatures.
Increases fatigue by 15%. No sustained mana cost.

Blinkguard: Any direct damage that would hit you for more than 15% of your max life will have a Y% chance to cause you to teleport to an empty tile within range 1, avoiding the damage and then instantly teleporting back to your original location. This can occur at most Z times per turn. This requires and consumes W mana, increased by fatigue.
Increases fatigue by 15%. No sustained mana cost.

Boltfury: Each time you cast a non-instant spell and after each teleport, you will cast Channel Staff at all targets within range 4 with increased crit chance and crit damage. Casting in this manner consumes no mana, bypasses other targets, and cannot fail, but the base damage of the spell will be reduced by 75%. 
Sustaining this spell reduces the base range of Channel Staff by 4. Increases fatigue by 15%. No sustained mana cost.

Phasestride: While sustained you will teleport in place of normal movement. Each teleport takes only Y% of a turn and consumes 8 mana , increased by fatigue.
Increases fatigue by 15%. No sustained mana cost.

Spell/Mage adept ( locked, high level)
Gain greater control over magic.

Magic Beam: Fire a beam of X damage type up to 5 tiles.

Magic Pull: Deal X damage type to a target up to Y tiles away and pull it up 5 tiles toward you.

Magic Blast: Deals X damage type to all hostile targets in a radius 2 ball up to 2 tiles away.

Shield Casting: Magic Burst, Magic Beam, Magic Pull and Magic Blast will have a Y% chance to also strike targets with a shield blow dealing Z% damage as X damage type. Targets hit by a shield strike will have a Y% chance to be stripped of one sustained effect.

Spell/Sorcerous might (locked, high level)
Absorb and store energy with your shield, using it to empower yourself.

Ensorcelled Shield: Each time you Block damage you gain a stack of Sorcerous Might for 8 turns, stacking up to 4 times with new stacks refreshing the duration. Each stack increases Spell Power by Y and Spell Range by 0.Z tiles. If you know Mystic Ward, you have a 25% chance to trigger Sorcerous Might whenever it reduces damage, up to once per turn.

Quickening: Consume 2 stacks of Sorcerous Might to increase attack speed by Z% for 6 turns. (12 turn fixed CD). While Quickened, melee attacks will reduce the cooldown of a random spell by 1/3 (rounded up, minimum 1), up to Y times per turn. This can affect the same spell multiple times. This will not affect talents with a fixed cooldown.

Conversion Field: Consume 2 stacks of Sorcerous Might to create a conversion field for Z turns which will have a 50% chance to reduce incoming damage by 50%, with Y% of negated damage converted to healing.

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 when this occurs, 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.


Spell/Medic  (generic)
Talents useful to a field-medic.

Mend: Heal yourself for Y and Y more over 5 turns as regeneration.

Phase: Teleport to an unoccupied space up to Y tiles away. Alternately, you may target yourself to teleport randomly in radius 4Y with minimum range 2Y, but tripling the cool down  (8 CD for direct port, 24 CD for random port).

Field Conditioned: Increase disarm and silence immunity by Y% each and raw mental save by Z.

Cure: Remove up to Y each of Wound, Poison and Disease effects instantly, and each turn for Z turns.
Base Generic Talents ( 1.3 Mastery unless specified)
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Technique/Combat Training
Spell/Staff Combat
Cunning/Survival (1.0 Mastery)

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Talent icons from https://game-icons.net
Class icon from https://opengameart.org/content/painter ... ons-part-1

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Get it here or on the Steam workshop.

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated, especially bug reports.

Enjoy!

Re: High Guard v1.0.1

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 8:33 pm
by Lokean

Code: Select all

if self.mana < 15 then return ret end
This doesn't nil out temp_blinkstride, so the first time you attempt to move with the talent sustained and less than 15 mana, the talent bugs out. This test should be in the initial if statement, so that attempting to move with <15 mana simply calls a normal move.

Also, you check for your sustain before all of the corner-case handling is done in the normal move function. This means you can teleport while asleep. encased in ice, confused or encumbered.

Re: High Guard v1.0.1

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 11:43 pm
by nsrr
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. I knew that one was likely to give me difficulties. Well, that first thing was just sloppy coding. Easy fix though, and it shouldn't be a problem to fix the other thing, either.

Thanks again, I'll get it patched up fairly soon.

Re: High Guard v1.0.2

Posted: Wed May 16, 2018 2:24 am
by nsrr
v1.0.2
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Fixed a couple of issues with Phasestride. It will now check for iceblock, confusion, forced movement and the like, and the recursion flag will no longer inadvertently get stuck on when encountering a no-move situation.

Re: High Guard v1.0.3

Posted: Thu May 17, 2018 10:51 am
by nsrr
V1.0.3
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Fixed a problem where I apparently got stoned and wandered off in the middle of writing a status effect.
Well, I fixed the status effect anyway. The root problem will likely persist. Phase Charge will no longer have unintended lasting effects, though.

Re: High Guard v1.0.3

Posted: Thu May 17, 2018 2:54 pm
by PseudoLoneWolf
nsrr wrote:V1.0.3
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Fixed a problem where I apparently got stoned and wandered off in the middle of writing a status effect.
10/10 most realistic changelog

Re: High Guard v1.0.4

Posted: Fri May 18, 2018 10:38 am
by nsrr
V1.0.4
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nsrr wrote: The root problem will likely persist
Actually fixed Phase Charged. There was a negative sign lingering from lazy copy-pasting in the res pen value.

Not sure how I managed to miss it when I was fixing it before. I was in a rush to get it done and play Cults, I guess. Apologies for my stupidity. Also for the fact that I couldn't publish the update to Steam because it failed and I didn't have time to mess around with it. I'll get it up as soon as I can.

Re: High Guard v1.1.0

Posted: Sun May 27, 2018 3:33 am
by nsrr
v1.1.0
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[Battle channeling]
Instead of breaking on movement, channeling any one or more battle channels will impose a 50% movement speed penalty.
Sustain costs reduced to 50 mana; Aetherfeast sustain cost removed.

[Aetherfeast]
Rather than breaking on actions, now imposes a 10% attack- and mind-speed penalty.
No longer has a sustain cost.

[Deepsight]
Rather than draining mana, now increases fatigue by 20%.

[Phasestride]
Rather than breaking on actions, now imposes a 10% attack- and mind-speed penalty.
Improved speed.
Each movement now costs 10 mana, but is increased by fatigue.

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After spending some more time with the class, I felt that the restrictions on Battle channeling were too harsh and decided to scale things back a bit. Also, I feel that the base spell categories I included have a few select talents that are not really balanced well with the class mechanics. New talent trees are planned to replace them (two high level class trees and a generic tree), but it may be a while before they are ready to be released.

Not yet updated on Steam, because... this happens all the time and I don't know why. I'll upload it to the workshop as soon as I can.

Re: High Guard v1.2.0

Posted: Wed May 30, 2018 12:11 pm
by nsrr
v1.2.0
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[General]
Removed Temporal, Meta and Conveyance categories. Added Mage Adept, Sorcerous Might and Medic categories (see OP for details).

Removed Angolwen start.

Added Cunning/Survival locked at 1.1 mastery.

[Battlemage]
Reduced damage on automatic shield strikes.

[Phasing]
Buff durations now scale higher on all talents.

[Boltfury]
Added 20% fatigue penalty.

Re: High Guard v1.2.2

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 9:16 pm
by nsrr
v1.2.1
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Bug fix for something in v1.2.0, I forget what.

v1.2.2.2
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[Genereal]
Balance tweaks, mostly to Battle Channeling, Sorcerous Might, and Phasing spells.
Various bug fixes. If you found one and want to know if it was corrected, feel free to ask, I just don't want to list them all/didn't log all of them.

[Battle Channeling]
The Channeling Focus movement slowing effect will no longer prevent you exiting to the world map.

[Magical Defense]
The effect now allows you to Block the triggering damage type in the normal fashion, rather than its previous, overly-complicated effect.

[Instant Block]
Cosmetic name change: "Sorcerous Block"
Now also increase your maximum Sorcerous Might charges by [1-2].
(2 at raw talent level 4 with 1.3 mastery; more is theoretically possible with higher mastery, i.e. it is a scaling value, not just a binary value gated by talent level)

[Phase Locked]
Now reduces damage from the target of the strike, rather than from all other sources.

Re: High Guard v1.2.3

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 11:34 am
by nsrr
v1.2.3
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[Greater Staff Focus ]
Will no longer project an attack if the target cannot be hit by Channel Staff but is still within range 4, e.g. if the creature is just the other side of a wall and you can see it via telepathy.

[Phasing]
Fixed a typo in the updated scaling for duration calculation. All three buffs now have the same duration scaling.

Re: High Guard v1.2.3

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 1:57 am
by Arcvasti
I decided to play this on a whim and did not regret it. I was a Yeek on Insane/Roguelike, if that's relevant. I died in Old Forest to a snake rare like a chump, so it's possible that I'm not yet good at this class.

Feedback:
-All the status application talents are missing important information. Which one of your powers do they use? Which save[If any] do they check? Do they check any resistances that aren't obvious? Just because vanilla talent descriptions deprive you of information doesn't mean your talent descriptions should.
-The extra shield attacks you get through Arcane Guardian don't seem to have the shield accuracy bonus for some reason.
-Magic Beam and Magic Pull deal really high spell damage. They scale with combatTalentSpellDamage(50,400) and combatTalentSpellDamage(100,400) respectively. This is frigging ridiculous. Blood Grasp, which is the most damaging vanilla spell that I know of, has combatTalentSpellDamage(20,290). Lightning's MAX damage has combatTalentSpellDamage(20,350).
-Sorcerous Slam and Arcane Projection have the opposite problem and scale pretty badly. The weapon multiplier would be mediocre for two-handed weapons and is frankly insulting for staff/shield attacks. The range/duration, which are what you want to increase, don't scale with level at all.
-Phase Strike scales similarly poorly.
-Greater Staff Focus's scaling is even more garbage somehow and is absolutely never worth more investment then 1/5.
-Sorcerous Slam claims that its damage increases with Spellpower, and yet it doesn't do any such thing.
-Magic Pull checks knockback resistance for some weird reason, but doesn't actually tell you that it does.
-Phaseshift drains mana and generates teleport particles on the worldmap.
-I honestly think that the Battle Channeling talents would be perfectly fine as they are with the movespeed penalty straight-up removed.
-They drain a fair bit of mana even with Aetherfeast on, they massively increase your fatigue, they take up 150 points of max mana and they reduce your attacking speed. Why aren't those drawbacks enough?

Typoes:
-Deepsight: Accurcy instead of Accuracy
-All Phasing talents but Phase Strike: imporve instead of improve
-Magic Blast: vioent instead of violent
-Phase Shifted: phsyical instead of physical
-Magical Defense Temp Effect: enchanced insted of enhanced

EDIT: More typoes:

Phase Shifted: durtion instead of duration
Greater Staff Focus: effect instead of effects

ANOTHEREDIT:
Found a few more description errors.
Phase Charged Temp Effect: increasse instead of increase
Phase Locked Temp Effect: Says that it reduces damage from all sources but the target instead of the target

ANOTHERANOTHEREDIT:

-The fifth level of Phase does literally nothing
-Conversion Field doesn't tell you that it needs Sorcerous Might Charges to activate.

Re: High Guard v1.2.3

Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 1:45 am
by nsrr
Feedback! Thank you! :D

I'll address the typos and work on clarity in descriptions. (I especially appreciate you pointing out the typos; as you may have surmised, I type very quickly and lean heavily on real time spell checking... which doesn't happen when the text editor language is set to 'LUA' ;-P)

I agree with most of your critiques on talent power. I'm working on a number of tweaks. It may take a couple days to test things, though.

I had considered reducing the movement speed penalty from channeling to an amount that could be reasonably countered with gear, maybe around 25%, but I'm willing to give it try with no movement speed penalty at all and see how things go. Just a couple notes on the other drawbacks: the fatigue can be countered completely by ICCTW (granted, it's prodigy, so it's a considerable cost to weigh) and the attack speed penalty is nearly as irrelevant as the mind speed penalty because you will be casting spells most of the time, and it's fairly easy to counter with gear anyway.

Regarding Magic Pull checking knockback resistance: It may seem odd, but knockback resistance is basically used as 'anything forcefully moving you that is not a teleport'-resistance, in general. It will be clarified in the description.

I hope you'll give it another go when I get it updated. You may have caught on already, but I'll just point out that stacking Out of Phase bonuses is one of your best defensive options in case it helps you on future runs. Between Phase Strike and Phase you can keep the buff up most of the time, and with Phasestride it's only limited by how much mana you have. Phase Locked and Phase Shifted serve to amplify the effect against your primary target, as well.

Thanks again!

Re: High Guard v1.2.3

Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 4:19 am
by Arcvasti
Magic Pull checking knockback resistance is weird because neither Bone Grab nor Mindhook seem to check it. Pretty sure Abduction doesn't either, although I haven't checked the code for that. I'm not in any way opposed to it doing that, just that it's kind of an exception that way.

I had no idea that Battle Channeling affected your mind speed. I read it as spell speed, since that would actually be relevant. Literally the only talent I can think of that High Guard would use mind speed for would be Healing Nexus.

I considered getting ICCTW for the fatigue reduction, but I'm not sure that it's really that good a prodigy for them. 50 str likely doesn't give as much damage as usual considering that shields suffer from low multipliers plus the offhand penalty and staves don't scale with strength very well. The physpower is nice, but Arcane Might gives more and helps their multipliers better. I'm not even convinced that fatigue is a big deal since aetherfeast + manasurge means that they have very few mana problems. Heck, Eternal Guard might actually be more useful on them for better uptime on Quickening/Conversion Field and of course Cauterize is fantastic as always.

The interaction between Phasestride and Out of Phase items never even occurred to me. Considering how much mana Aetherfeast + Manasurge can give you, that sounds like it could get really strong... with the right items.

I actually played another High Guard right after the other one, this one a Cornac that survived to level 21 before getting swarmed in alt Maze.

More Feedback:
-The relative placing of Conversion Shield and Sorcerous Block just boggles me. Conversion Shield is like a combination of Defiled Blood and Webs of Fate, both of which are very good defensive talents. A 50% chance to absorb 50% of damage is about 25% damage reduction, which is pretty good. And it even heals you for some of that damage, which means it might get up to 30-40% damage reduction. Requiring two charges of Sorcerous Might to activate it is a pretty steep price, at least in the midgame when your block cooldown is still higher. Sorcerous Block is twice as expensive and yet is vastly less effective at reducing damage. In the very late game, you might end up with a really good block value of 400. Sorcerous Block lets you block up to 400 damage from a single attack. Conversion Shield reduces all damage against you by at least 30% for eight turns. And yet Sorcerous Block is higher level and twice as expensive. And the final straw is that by the time you can get four Sorcerous Might stacks before the fight ends, you probably already have really good Block uptime and don't need Sorcerous Block that much.
-Sorcerous Block compares just as poorly to Quickening, since better uptime on your disables and heal means more durability.
-I'd suggest making Conversion Shield the apex talent of Sorcerous Might and having Sorcerous Block be much cheaper and earlier in the tree.
-I'd also prefer removing the RNG aspect of it and just making it 20-25% damage reduction instead.
-Quickening's description is also kind of ambigous and makes it seem like it gives you an Invigorate kind of effect instead of a Suncloak kind of effect.
-I kind of forgot to mention this earlier, but the scaling on Empower Arm's proc is quite weak, even considering the staff/shield accuracy bonus. I'm also kind of baffled at having the combatTalentSpellDamage for it have a base value higher then the maximum value, but it's not like I know how the scaling talents work or anything.

Re: High Guard v1.2.3

Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 1:04 pm
by nsrr
I think maybe the pull talent I saw that checked knockback resistance was from something odd, like an NPC horror talent, maybe. I played around with those a bit way back when I started modding. In any case, I think I will keep the check and just clarify the description. I don't think it will be a big hindrance to the player and, conversely, I feel it would be unfair for High Guard NPCs to have an irresistible pull.

Mind speed penalty is attached to the same sustains as attack speed. It felt thematicly appropriate, but you're right in that it has essentially no effect. I'm now leaning toward just putting a 10% fatigue penalty on each battle channel and removing all other penalties, at least as a trial.

I probably wouldn't pick ICCTW either, but it is an option for dealing with fatigue. You could also go for light armor and light armor training, or look for gear with -fatigue. There are quite a few prodigy options that could work. I'd recommend defense over offense, but that applies to pretty much everything. One of the things I like about High Guard is that they only really care about one stat, and a bit about one other, so you're free to pick whatever for your third and potentially pick from lots of different prodigies. I'd be curious to see how Eye of the Tiger would work out with a +crit chance build; Boltfury can potentially give you a lot of effectively passive crits. If you have EoR then Range Amplification Device should be fun. I feel there is some merit to not spelling everything out explicitly, giving the player some room for discovery, but I will say here that I used getTalentRange very liberally, so it will increase the radius of your three cone attacks, Magic Blast radius, as well as the radius of Boltfury and Greater Staff Focus. I think that covers them. Phase Strike, Phase, Magic Beam and Magic Pull are also covered, as you would probably expect. Still, there are probably better options. Eternal Guard should be good. Spectral Shield I don't think would be very good, because Magical Defense should let you situationally block the damage type you're most concerned with at the moment. Prodigies that are always good are still good, of course, Cauterize especially, as you noted. (I wonder if you can block the smeared damage? I never checked that.) Whenever 1.6 drops I think the new Elemental Surge / Endless Woes could both be good, considering you can easily control the type of damage you're dealing.

I'm not totally crazy about Sorcerous Block, either, to be honest I kind of wanted to do a passive/reactive block, but I thought it was too similar to a talent I have in my Shield Tactics mod... but that's sort of a silly reason. I'm thinking something that will trigger on hits over x% life and reduce damage based on your block value, as well as triggering block for free, but requiring and consuming two stacks of Sorcerous Might. On a cooldown, of course. Basically the same as the final talent in Shield Tactics. Still passively increasing your max stacks, too.

I feel there's some place for RNG in a tactical game, and I like Conversion Field the way it is. It has a long duration, practically 50% up time, and the potential for very high damage reduction when you incorporate the healing aspect which can be increased up to 250% with healing mod. It's not 100% reliable, but I think that's fine, considering.

Quickening gives the same effect as Quicken Spells, which is effectively cooldown reduction. I'm not sure which of the talents you named that is more like, but I recognize it is not technically the same as spells cooling down faster as stated in description. I'll update the description on the talent and effect to reflect properly how it actually works.

Empowered Arms scaling might not seem that great, but remember that crits double the damage on the main target and hit all targets around it. And yes, scaling is weird. The base number is not a set 'low' number, rather a number used in a factor of the scaling formula to effectively increase how far along the scaling curve your value will start. Effectively it multiplies the max value by a 'spell power factor' and 'talent level factor', where the max possible value for factor each is 1, resulting in the maximum value when you have 100 spellpower and talent level 5.https://te4.org/wiki/Scaling#.28cTSpD.2 ... pellDamage It's... not the most straight forward calculation, to say the least.

All that said, after looking at the numbers again and comparing it other on-hit damage buffs, I'd say a little bit of a damage increase probably wouldn't hurt it, considering it's the final talent in the tree and all.

Thanks again for the feedback. Most of the tweaks and description/typo fixes are done, I just need to go over the battle channels and code the new Sorcerous Block (shouldn't take much considering I already have a talent that works almost exactly the same as what I have planned).