ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/worldeater

During the Allure Wars, the ogre race went through several experimental attempts at improving them even further.
One such attempt, nicknamed the Brute Squad by the team working on them was an attempt to focus and increase the aggression
shown in battle. While successful, and quite intimidating to the enemy, training ogres for outright brutality led to many
descending into a kind of bleak madness, their hardwired goal-focused brains becoming mired in blood and brutality. While
the experiments were discontinued, a rare ogre is still born showing the results of that work, even larger than most and
with an...aggressive appetite.

Worldeaters start with Path of Horror and Slow Death Demented trees, and a whole bunch of locked trees to pick from with 3 category points. The general concept is that there are several valid paths they can take ranging from demented/two-hand weapon, Demented/cursed, Demented/wilder-dragon, 3/4ths Demented/two-hand, Demented/Unarmed or even Demented/Ogrewield-Twohand+Shield Offense.

To be blunt, I'm bad at the game. 750 hours, I know how to play and how things work generally, I'm just real bad at it. I like playing on Normal Adventure and whacking stuff with stuff. I like playing around with Adventurer ideas, but inevitably I die before getting to what I wanted to try so I have to repick all the skills, and etc...plus the Adventurer skill modifier tax hurts me in my min-max.

So, now that you know the background of how this came about, back to the concept. I like doing theme adventurers, and playing around with Big size and size-related stuff seemed fun. The original version of this, about 50+ iterations ago was Path of Horror/Slow Death/Wilder-Sand Drake/Two-Hand Weapons/Cursed-Slaughter, which you could still make, and it's hilariously overpowered in the early game. Then I thought, ehh...3 resources is a pain unless you're really in the mood for it. So then I started tweaking. And then I was like...hey, Grapple exists. And eventually we ended up here. I feel like it ended up moderately balanced (at least compared to the base Demented classes or reworked Sun Paladin, woo boy.) Generally while it has several strong trees from several classes, it has about half the kit and ends up being 50/50 or some other split. (I admit it is kind of most of the 'good' Demented trees available, but without Worm Friend, which personally I find so good that dropping it alone is balance). Generally it ends up being Path of Horror (Slow Death is more...thematic than great) and...something. If you really work it you can come up with hilariously overpowered combinations even out of this limited list, but mostly it's more about trying fun combinations, at least for me.

Oh, also, having both Thuggery and Blacksmith end cap skills is probably overkill if not overpowered, but I liked Thuggery thematically and wanted Blacksmith for the size category (also brute labor, sort of thematic. May make a non-steamtech version of Blacksmith, Power of the Proletariat or some such and change out the T4).

Original version didn't have Conditioning, but I locked Dark Sustenance (despite being so thematically good, same with Sand Drake) to make going Cursed a full choice and wanted 1 more generic. As usual it helps a ton early game, so win-win imo.

Most martial abilities are 1.2, with a few 1.1, to represent them being well trained brutes, but not exactly elite warrior levels. Except for all the ones that are 1.3 because by god min-maxing. Majority of 'thematic' skills are 1.3, by which I mean "stuff I thought would be cool to test with redonkulous size or other abilities available".

Stats are set to be able to start with any set of abilities at least at rank 1, although if you want rank 2 armor mastery for shields it requires a point in Blacksmith, and Unarmed Mastery requires putting all 3 starting stat points in cunning. Honestly, the starting stats plus 3 is probably over the top, but...eh. It's not the most op thing ever. Actually...I should probably have dropped the Will 3 points. It was set to end up base 12 because for many iterations Dark Sustenance and sometimes Slaughter were baseline. I don't feel like doing version 1.0.1 five minutes after finally releasing it. Maybe later.

Been a while since I did one of these, so if anyone wants to download and look over my code, I *think* everything is working. I've tested the class a fair bit to make sure it felt like what I wanted it to be, but given how many minor syntax errors I managed in the process I live in fear that I did something and some thing or another in the background that I haven't noticed isn't working or isn't working right.


As a side note, at one point after the class ballooned up to 10+ class skills I tried splitting it off into 3 classes, one Ogre with access to 2-hand, shields, demented, and curse. One Krog with dual-wield, unarmed/grapple, Sand Drake and Fungus. And a 2nd Ogre with Path of Horror/Tentacle/Face and unarmed/grapple. At that point they felt way too on-the-rails and only one 'correct' build, which is how we ended up with this latest version. It feels much more like I wanted it to this way, where you have an actual choice of what kind of build you want to make.

Things I'll note: Defensively decent choices available, almost any path you pick will include at least two good pickups (starting with Overgrowth being the obvious). Can be easy to glass cannon yourself without heals or enough mitigation however, and lacking bump damage on some skill combinations. Some good/great debuff resists depending on what you pick, but lacking full clears. Most skill combinations really shine in terms of active attacks, but, for instance, Tentacle/Ogre Wield 2-hand/Rampage/Battle Tactics (and/or bloodthirst. Unstoppable into Rampage is...silly) bumps like a pro. Three of the more obvious skill sets end up with two movement abilities, which is good but honestly Carrion Feet is the greatest thing in the world. Passive 50% and 10 range targetable jump, amazing. Not 100% sure there is enough stamina support if you want to go full monty warrior skills.

If anyone has any overall thoughts or suggestions as well I'd love to hear them.

I also updated one of my addon classes from 5 years ago, the Blackstaff. Given that no one was exactly clamoring for such an update, I don't figure it needed it's own thread. Honestly, since I really enjoy playing around with class ideas I would do a collected addon of them, but I doubt anyone wants a dozen extra sub-classes cluttering their start screen. I generally only publish the ones that I actually find enjoyable or thematically interesting. The Blackstaff is kind of both, I like the concept from both a build experiment and story perspective:

Charged with keeping the secret of Angolwen's location by any means neccesary,
the Black Staff operatives of SI:3 are an elite mage-rogue force. Capable of dual wielding weapons while maintaining an arcane focus for support and cover fire, they ferret out spies with their cunning, keen senses, and divinatory magic then eliminate them with extreme prejudice.

This updated version takes the class in a somewhat different direction, and starts them in Angolwen. The Angolwen starter dungeon can be done with a phase door rune, but it is...tricky. So they start with a controlled phase door rune. A bit of a cheat, but let's say it's SI:3's version of Bond gadgets. To be done in future updates possibly: changing psi-fighting to a custom arcane talent.

If a custom talent ends up being beyond me, I may rebalance them and give them back psionic/projection, probably drop spell/enhancement and the locked magical combat if I go mana/psi like that.

I may update my other older ones as well eventually, Oozefist especially I shouldn't have bothered releasing prior to putting the work in to rebalance it with it's own talent tree. Unfortunately when I started to try to work on that recently I instead created a passable and interesting wilder-bulwark class and then an insanely overpowered 2-hand/wilder/light class, so there's some insight on the kind of stupid things I actually have the self-restraint to spare everyone else from.