Mentalist class

[ghostbuster]

There are almost no psionic addons. So here is my attempt with the mentalist, an original class that inherits some features from solipsists and afflicted .

Mentalist are psionic that specialize in manipulating the mind of their foes.
They can mostly deal short range damage, but they are highly resistant and resilient to effects. More they are very effective at applying debuffs to their foes and have mastered the use of mind control, psychoanalysis, mass manipulation, propaganda, hypnosis, ventriloquy and even gold to create confusion, weakness, demoralization, betrayal and subversion among their foes.
They wear mindstars that they handle directly with their mind.
Their most important stats are willpower and cunning.

Generics
Cunning/Survival (1.0 locked)
Psionic/Mentalism (1.3 locked)
Technique/Combat training (1.0)
Psionic/Mental resilience (1.3 wil) *
Psionic/Thrill (1.3 cun) *

Class
Psionic/Psychic Assault (1.3)
Psionic/Solipsism (1.3)
Psionic/Nightmare (1.3 level 10, locked)
Psionic/Mind control (1.3 wil) *
Psionic/Brain damage (1.3 wil) *
Psionic/Watchfulness (1.3 cun) *
Psionic/Discord (1.3 cun level 10, locked)



Class talents

Mind control

1/ Powerless
activated
Render your target powerless for 3 turns. Powerless creatures cannot move and lose physical, spell and mind power. On taking damage, chance to increase the suration of the effect.

2/ Brainlock
activated
Brainlocks targets around you. Casting duration reduces with TL and can be instant.

3/ Propaganda
activated
Diffuse misleading information to demoralize your foes and to manipulate their mind. Foes in an area get manipulated loosing saves. Misinformation has a chance propagate to siblings and can stun or confuse.


4/ Hypnosis
Sustained
Hypnotize the target, reducing its mental save and mind resistance. It is also unable to move and take some mind damage every turn. He also has some chance to fail the use of a talent or to deactivate a sustain.
Hypnosis can be broken by the victim at every turn by a mind or random check.
It can also be broken by a finger snap of the caster that will release the sustain, and deals mind damage on wake-up and gain some psi.
Drains 5% of max psi per turn while sustained, increasing with the hypnosis duration.


Brain damage

1/ Hypocondria
activated
Renders a target hypocondriac. Any mind damage over a threshold has a chance to induce a psychosomatic disease dealing blight damage and reducing a stat.

2/ Nervous breakdown
activated
Create a nervous breakdown on a target, giving it a chance to fail on talent use. If a fail happens, the target enters a depression, reducing its speeds.

3/ Oblivion (CD 12)
Activated
Victim is brainwashed and forgets a sustained talent per turn.

4/ Insanity
Sustain
10 Psi
On inflicting mind damage, chance of madness.
(similar to cursed/madness, but base chance is much smaller and increases with damage amount)

Watchfullness

1/ Clairvoyance
Sustained
20 Psi
Concentrate on a zone of control around you. Gives ESP in the zone.
Can be deactivated to clear the zone with a blast of telekinesis.


2/ Mental ripost
Passive/activated
Gives retaliation to any damage if the foe is in the zone of control.
Retaliation is either mind damage or a melee attack at 10% strength if mindsabers are sustained.
May happen once per turn and per foe up to a maximum number of foes increasing with talent level.
Can also be activated to attack targets up to this maximum with an attack similar to retaliation (mind or weak mindstar attack with mindsabers).

3/ Mind planning
Passive
Also gives defense and mind save per foe in the zone of control.

4/ Psychoport
activated
For 2 turns, you can psychoport as much as you want in your zone of control. Time for a leap decreases with talent level.

Mindsabers

1/ Mindsabers
Sustained
When sustained, any melee attack with your mindstars is followed by another attack for 10% mind damage.
The number of times it can happen per turn increases with talent level.
Also give access to a talent allowing a short range mindstar attack for 10% mind damage.
Forbids all melee attacks, but psionic ones.
Cannot be sustained with psiblades.

2/ Brainsmashing sabers
Mindsabers attacks also deal extra mind damage (radius 1 at TL 5)

3/ Whirling sabers
passive
Make your mindsabers rapidly whirl around you deflecting projectiles and reducing melee damage.
At TL 5, melee attackers may injure themselves and take a 10% mindstar attack (once per foe).

4/ Flying sabers
activated
Long distance double mindstar attack for 10% mind damage, with reduced procs.

Discord (lvl 10 locked)

1/ Bribe
Activated
Use gold to try to bribe an ennemy and have it join your faction for some turns. Payoff increases with ennemy rank and player money.
If a bribed ennemy kills one of its ex-fellow, its betrayal gives a chance to create paranoia or panic around it.
Passively increases all your gold incomes.

2/ Ventriloquy
Activated
Emit a shriek at the position of a foe. This deals some physical damage around it and concerned ennemies are confused while thinking this foe is the source of the damage.

3/ Suspicion
Activated
Try to mentally suggest a target that there is a traitor around him, giving it paranoia.

4/ Revolution
Activated
Foment a revolution in an area. Foes (except bosses and higher) have a chance to revolt against their chiefs and to join a rebel faction for some turns. Loyal foes have a chance be stunned of confused by these events. Both have a chance to forget their current target.
Requires gold increasing with the number of bosses in the area and player money.

Generics

Mental resilience

1/ Mental Resistance
sustained
Sustain that converts a small part of damage taken to mind.
Also increases mindsave, mind resist, mind resistance cap and give a small mind affinity

2/ Psychotherapy
activated
Regen like effect that cures body and mind.
For 5 turns you convert some psi to health. If you are under solipsism, regen some psi instead.
Passively increases healing factor.

3/ Transference
Activated
Usable on a foe or on the player.
For some turns, one detrimental effect is removed and possibly transferred to surrounding foes.
This exhausts the patient and it takes 7% of its max health as mind damage per turn.
Type of effects, duration, radius and number of transferts increases with TL.

4/ Mental revolt
Passive
On taking damage, you have a small change to have one or more detrimental effects duration reduced by one. Only applies over a threshold and chance increases with the amount of damage.


Thrill

1/ Thrill
sustained
Crits give a stack of thrill (once per turn) up to 4.
Each stacks gives critical power.
Passively increases phys and mind crit chance.

2/ Unrelenting
passive
Thrill stacks give global and movement speed, mindpower and bonus mindpower (used to overcome mental save).
When at 4 stacks of thrill, mind crits give psi and phys crits give health.
Can be activated to gain an effect increasing mindpower and giving mind damage and penetration on sucessful checks (mindpower vs save)

3/ Empath
activated
Empathically transfert life from foes around you to your heal pool.
Also render foes empathic for some turns, taking a part of all damage dealt to other empathic NPC.
Number of foes increases with your thrill stacks (and all stacks are consumed).

4/ Hubris and Nemesis
activated
Excitation makes you enter an insane and arrogant frenzy.
When activated, you are fully healed and cleared from effects and jump to attack one of you foes. Then for 3 turns, Hubris gives a large bonus to global, attack, spell, mental, and movement speed, crits and all damage modifier and resistance penetration (increased by thrill stacks).
But Nemesis follows Hubris and *every* turn for 8 turns, you take back *all* damage dealt during the Hubris as mind damage (up to 250..200% of your max health), and Nemesis attempts to apply stun, confuse or another nasty effect to you.


Known issues.
Mentalist has been tested by several runs to the east on normal, NM and insane on vanilla and with many addons, but I am not sure all the talents have encountered all the possible situations.
The class is overload free and no superload fully redefines a function. All vars/talents/effects are properly prefixed and thus, there should not be any compatibility problem. But who knows...
Tweaks are required (and feedback is welcome).
Graphics needs some improvements.
I never play tome with sound on and sound effects are just a cut and paste a standard sounds. Suggestions are welcome.

This is just a overview of the class. You can find a more complete description of talents, with comments, implementation notes and probably many spoilers in
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DD1 ... sp=sharing

Or better. Play it and enjoy!

[minmay]

When this addon is enabled, redrawing the screen while you have any sort of talent failure chance (such as confusion, crippling poison, etc.) causes you to lose turns. The culprit is your preUseTalent superload:

Code: Select all

function _M:preUseTalent(ab, silent, fake)
   local ret = base_preUseTalent(self,ab,silent)

You fail to pass through the extremely important fake parameter.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

Well, I tried. I rolled a Nightmare Yeek Mentalist, went into the Ritch hive, and died to the first enemies that I met, which were a regular chitinous ritch and an ant.

1. How does one deal damage? Every hit with Mindsaber Attack dealt 0 damage + 0 mind damage against a level one ant. No other level one skills deal damage at all aside from Mind Sear which I skipped, since I wanted to check out the new stuff. I suppose Psychic Assault is a required tree. I put 1/5 in every other T1 skill and 2/5 in Mind Sabers and Clairvoyance to start with.

2. Not being able to bump attack and also restricting mindsaber attack to a 2 turn CD is absolute garbage. Why, exactly, does mindsabers restrict melee? And if it is restricted, why is our replacement "basic attack" on a cooldown?

[ghostbuster]

Thanks. I tried for a couple of hour to understand the usefulness of this parameter...
I uploaded a fix.

[ghostbuster]

Well, I tried. I rolled a Nightmare Yeek Mentalist, went into the Ritch hive, and died to the first enemies that I met, which were a regular chitinous ritch and an ant.

1. How does one deal damage? Every hit with Mindsaber Attack dealt 0 damage + 0 mind damage against a level one ant. No other level one skills deal damage at all aside from Mind Sear which I skipped, since I wanted to check out the new stuff. I suppose Psychic Assault is a required tree. I put 1/5 in every other T1 skill and 2/5 in Mind Sabers and Clairvoyance to start with.

2. Not being able to bump attack and also restricting mindsaber attack to a 2 turn CD is absolute garbage. Why, exactly, does mindsabers restrict melee? And if it is restricted, why is our replacement "basic attack" on a cooldown?

1/ Mindsabers start to be useful with T2 talent that adds decent procs to your attacks.
Until that, that is just 10% melee damage and you have rely on mind sear or regular mindstar attacks (without sustaining mindsabers).

2/ Mindsabers can be extremely powerful by mid-game, thanks to many attacks and procs.
There are two reasons for restricting the use of mindsabers.
1/ On a randboss with dissolve or flurry, mindsabers procs and attacks would be too deadly.
2/ It happens that it can be completely doable, even with a two turns CD. Just have to rotate one of the mindsaber attacks (ms attack, flying mindsaber, mental ripost), with mind sear and one of the many available debuffs. I did my way to level 35 on insane (and I do not consider myself as a top player). This is part of the uniqueness of the class.

[PseudoLoneWolf]

Fair enough. I'm willing to give it another shot, with Mind Sear this time. I'll be back with more feedback after I manage to make it out of the T1s.

[ghostbuster]

I pushed a new version. Until you know mindsabers T2, attacks and extra attacks are 100% weapon damage.
With T1 mindstars, nothing fantastic, but less confusing and allows to experiment the new stuff from start.
(note that you have two attacks, which is coherent with the 2 turns CD)

[PseudoLoneWolf]

I'm not super far in yet (Just got off the Yeek starter island) but as I have to leave in a moment I wanted to stop by and put in the feedback that I have so far.

- First of all, the first four levels kind of suck, but really early game kind of sucks on most classes, so I don't dock points for that. I do take issue with Mind Sabres being pretty much ineffective prior to the T2 skill, but it is what it is. Spamming Mind Sear for four levels is boring, but pretty much standard procedure for Solipsists as well.

- I'm still salty about not having a bump attack, but, alternating Mind Sear -> Mindsabre Attack early on isn't awful. Later on you get more things to put in the rotation and you don't really want to ever bump again, so, I accept this as a feature.

- In the game log, Mindsabre procs hit six times instead of the two, or four that the talent description seems to imply. This might be a bug, or if not, the talent desc is unclear. But they consistently hit six times when I use Mindsabre Attack.

- Mindsabres also say that they proc on "psionic talents, automatic attacks, and attacks with a telekinetic weapon", except that there's no way (to my knowledge) to get a telekinetic weapon on this class and they don't seem to proc on psionic talents (mind sear, for example). Again, this might be a bug or might just be poorly described, I'm not sure. They kick ass on automatic attacks, though, Mental Riposte is pretty good.

- Clairvoyance lets you see dudes when you're blinded. Glorious. I didn't really respect this skill until I learned that. The knockback teleport is pretty sweet as well, although I always forget to use it.

- Transference has a typo (Tranference) in the name.

- Mental Resistance is absurd and I want to call for a nerf to it. But it's so awesome and it adds a LOT of VERY much-needed survivability to the class, since you can't really kill things quickly, which is the main form of defense in ToME. Also since I was a yeek and would have died to a stiff breeze without the mental conversion + affinity.

Overall, I like this so far. I don't much like the lack of damage dealing capabilities at level one, but Mind Sear can carry you enough for other things to start coming online. I'll be interested to see how this goes once I start being able to apply status consistently. I'm very happy to see more people trying to make psionic classes - seems like everybody wants to make wizards and nobody gives us new psionics or wilders or chronomancers very often.

Looking forward to seeing more!

[ghostbuster]

- In the game log, Mindsabre procs hit six times instead of the two, or four that the talent description seems to imply. This might be a bug, or if not, the talent desc is unclear. But they consistently hit six times when I use Mindsabre Attack.

On a minsaber attack you should have one message for the (dual) attack in the log and one message for each extra hit (one per mindstar).
So that's 3.
But you may have retaliation that will perform one or more attacks on enemies. And each attack can be followed by extra hits from your mindstars (up to x, but once per enemy).
I changed the messages to have something clearer. Extra attacks will indicate if the attack was main or off hand, to help identification.
The code is done, but I will wait to push it.

- Mindsabres also say that they proc on "psionic talents, automatic attacks, and attacks with a telekinetic weapon", except that there's no way (to my knowledge) to get a telekinetic weapon on this class and they don't seem to proc on psionic talents (mind sear, for example). Again, this might be a bug or might just be poorly described, I'm not sure. They kick ass on automatic attacks, though, Mental Riposte is pretty good.

Mindsabers can proc on psionic talents that perform a melee attack. Thats mostly ms attack, flying ms or mental ripost. And on automatic attacks (mental ripost passive or whirling sabers).
But for adventurer, I also authorized other psionic talents (actually anything that consumes psi). This concerns mostly mindslayers. And TK weapons can proc also, but only if it is a mindstar (and it should not happen in vanilla tome)
Psionic talents that do not perform a melee attack (like mind sear) do not proc mindsabers.

- Clairvoyance lets you see dudes when you're blinded. Glorious. I didn't really respect this skill until I learned that. The knockback teleport is pretty sweet as well, although I always forget to use it.

Its radius can be up to 4 and mental ripost retaliates if the enemy is in clairvoyance zone... And it increases your psychoport range.

Glad you enjoy the class. I would also like to see less arcane and warriors and more other kind of classes for a change.

[nsrr]

Looks cool, I'm definitely going to give it a try. First impression is that I'm slightly worried about a class that relies on sticking ailments, but I saw a talent that gives you a bonus to overcome saves, so perhaps it will be fine. Aside from that, looks like a lot of fun. I enjoy the ranged-melee attack idea, and I really like the idea of a Psionic mindstar tree. It really drives me crazy that 'Psiblades' are a Nature Gift and all of the talents in mindstar mastery are nature-themed and use Equilibrium. I want Mindblades, damnit, not pansy little thorns

[Arcvasti]

Been playing as a Yeek[Playing races with exp penalties aggravates me] Mentalist and here are my thoughts[Heh]. I got to level 8 and decided to see if this class was broken enough to beat Subject Z[It wasn't], while forgetting that I was on roguelike.

General thoughts:
-There are LOTS of typos and grammar issues. I checked through all of the talents and they all have at least some kind of error in them. The most common issues are mixing up you and your and inconsistent capitalization of talent names[In vanilla, each proper word in a talent name is capitalized]. Another big one is inconsistent pronouns for the targets of the abilities: Sometimes you use "they", sometimes you use "it" and you even use "he" a couple times. Not really a big deal, since what the talents actually do is pretty clear, but still an aesthetic issue
-Likewise, all the little icons have the same blue and yellow background. It makes it kind of hard to tell which talents are sustained and which ones aren't.
-The entire Discord tree is awful. Like, really really bad. Just terrible. It violates pretty much the best thing about ToME4: No consumables. Consumables are a terrible mechanic. There is not one game where that is not true. Its also a pretty strong tree for the same reason that Domination Hex/Inner Demons are super good. Since the class even HAS Inner Demons, its main mechanic isn't even that unique. In any case, I'm just going to pretend Discord doesn't exist from this point forwards.
-Mind Sabers is sort of interesting, but the no bump attacking restriction seems pretty arbitrary and pointless. It really wouldn't affect the power level of anything at all. It also seems to be bugged: Whenever one mindsaber attack crits, ALL mindsaber attacks that turn crit, which doesn't seem intentional.
-The power spike Mind Sabers get when you hit level 4 is super weird, since 16 mind damage on hit with at least four attacks is far more then the puny 10% tier 1 mindstar damage you were dealing up to that point.
-The Brainlock ability seems super strong, especially since the class is already really good at inflicting brainlock with all of their mindpower up and mental save down abilities, as well as Synaptic Static. Being able to perma brainlock enemies is ridiculous because it puts all their talents on cooldown AND prevents them from coming off of cooldown. That said, I haven't actually tried it at high levels and it might just be somewhat useful.

[sajberhippien]

Consumables are a terrible mechanic. There is not one game where that is not true.

Come on, that's BS. It doesn't fit well with the tactical power fantasy game style of ToME, but there's many great games where it's a central and key mechanic. Star Realms, Numenera RPG, and Neo Scavenger are just three examples that I've played in the last 2 weeks where removing the single-use components would make the game far worse.

EDIT: And it's not like ToME doesn't still have a handful of consumables, such as Re-Assemble. The issue with consumables is when they become ubiqutous and the "limited use" aspect is ignored, such as say the healing potions of Diablo. Limited-use effects can provide very meaningful choices.

[ghostbuster]

I pushed a new version with better descriptions/grammar and a minor bug fix.

Looks cool, I'm definitely going to give it a try. First impression is that I'm slightly worried about a class that relies on sticking ailments, but I saw a talent that gives you a bonus to overcome saves, so perhaps it will be fine. Aside from that, looks like a lot of fun. I enjoy the ranged-melee attack idea, and I really like the idea of a Psionic mindstar tree. It really drives me crazy that 'Psiblades' are a Nature Gift and all of the talents in mindstar mastery are nature-themed and use Equilibrium. I want Mindblades, damnit, not pansy little thorns

I had exactly the same feeling with psiblades. It is too nature based. And maybe cursed psiblades can be considered as well.

-Likewise, all the little icons have the same blue and yellow background. It makes it kind of hard to tell which talents are sustained and which ones aren't.

I will try to switch color on sustainable talents, to avoid confusion.

-The entire Discord tree is awful. Like, really really bad. Just terrible. It violates pretty much the best thing about ToME4: No consumables. Consumables are a terrible mechanic. There is not one game where that is not true. Its also a pretty strong tree for the same reason that Domination Hex/Inner Demons are super good. Since the class even HAS Inner Demons, its main mechanic isn't even that unique. In any case, I'm just going to pretend Discord doesn't exist from this point forwards.

I do not really agree with the consumable issue for the discord tree. First, only two talents are gold based (bribe and revolution), others (ventriloquy and suspicion) are regular talents but coherent with the "discord" thema.
Concerning gold, it is somehow special. There are real consumables. For instance, in T2, when you have no more scrolls of phase door, you can no longer teleport, and this availability or potential loss has a major impact on your ingame tactic. It can be interesting, but T4 gas done a different choice. Gold is really different. It is a consumable as it does not regenerate. But, players do not miss money (in games, of course!). It is a matter of choice. Will I use my gold for this special artifact or keep it to be able to bribe some foes? These talents will use ~2% of your gold and you will probably always be able to bribe an ennemy.
Also, this tree grants better incomes and you really have some more money. Not comparable with mana regen, of course, but you can probably bribe a boss a couple of times per dungeon without really missing money.
Actually these faction changing talents are powerful, but are more lifesavers than regular talents. Bribing or fomenting a rebellion with money is not supposed to be used constantly (this is probably also true in real life!). Being gold based avoids any spam of these talents that would be game breaking.

Actually gold based talents is somehow experimental as are most features of the class (more based on debuffs than damage, affinity based-survival, no bumping, etc). Maybe not a good idea, but interesting to experiment, IMHO.

-Mind Sabers is sort of interesting, but the no bump attacking restriction seems pretty arbitrary and pointless. It really wouldn't affect the power level of anything at all. It also seems to be bugged: Whenever one mindsaber attack crits, ALL mindsaber attacks that turn crit, which doesn't seem intentional.
-The power spike Mind Sabers get when you hit level 4 is super weird, since 16 mind damage on hit with at least four attacks is far more then the puny 10% tier 1 mindstar damage you were dealing up to that point.

Actually, mind sabers are supposed to be one important source of damage and on the average, with the extra attacks and retaliation, you can do damage more or less comparable to mind sear. Hence the restriction and the unavoidable gap at level 4.
Concerning the crit issue, probably it is just a coincidence. Every attack calls either attackTarget() or attackTargetWith() and I do not see why there should be any correlation.

Thanks to all for your feedback.

[nsrr]

Ran into an error last night, but my internet had cut out and it was late, so I didn't get a chance to post it. I'm not at my computer now, so I don't have the error handy, but I can tell you what happened. I activated Unrelenting then used MS Attack. Next turn I got an error saying something like a bad argument or nil value for 'dur'. Error repeated every turn and then Thrill duration started to go negative. Manually canceling Thrill did not stop the errors, but after canceling Unrelenting as well they did stop and I was able to continue playing. Hopefully that's enough to work with. Otherwise, I'll dig out the error when I get home.

Aside from that, no real issues. Haven't gotten too far into the run. First boss was a hassle as I couldn't stick Powerless on it. Still, managed not to die by kiting and hitting it with Mind Sear. After that and the resulting levels boost, things got much smoother.

[ghostbuster]

It is always the same. I should have known... Whenever you do a an untested last minute change, there is a bug in it.
Fixed unrelenting. Should work now.