ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This addon adds the Nekomancer as a playable class. Nekomancers use their dank powers to manipulate the powers of cats in strange and beautiful ways. Something I often hear is that people like the spooky theme of Necromancer, but hate the gameplay. So I decided to make a Necromancer-like class with better gameplay but a silly theme.
The addon can be found here : https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/Nekomancer

Nekomancers are summon-based mages that focus on debilitating their enemies while reinforcing their allies. They primarily deal physical and light damage. Uniquely, they do not use mana like other mage subclasses, relying souly on the soul resource. They use the soul resource in a much different way then Necromancer does, since they naturally regain one soul a turn. Combined with a relatively low soul maximum, they run completely counter to the standard ToME resources with tiny regeneration rates and huge maximums. Aside from the usual unlocked Combat Training and Survival, Nekomancer uses completely unique trees. It has 4 unlocked class trees, one locked class tree and two generic trees.

Talent Descriptions:

Class:

Spell/Threadfall:

Thread Bolt: You fire a bolt of thread, damaging all enemies in a line for %d physical damage.

Thread Weaver: You weave threads into armour, giving you %d armour and %d%% physical resist. The armour bonus will scale with your spellpower.

Entangling Threads: Your damaging Threadfall spells now also apply the Entangled effect to enemies they strike for 3 turns. The Entangled effect slows movement speed by %d%% and decreases physical resistance by %d%%. The Entangled effect ignores saves.

Thread Binding: You ensnare an enemy within %d squares with threads, dealing %d physical damage, disarming and silencing the target for %d turns. The disarm checks spellpower against physical save and the silence checks spellpower against mental save.

Spell/Groove:

Disco Ball: You conjure a strange mirrored orb and toss it towards a target, where it explodes in a burst of radiant light doing %d light damage in a radius of %d. This light explosion does not hurt allies and instead heals them for %d. The damage and the heal will both scale with your spellpower and can both crit.

Elegant Dance: Your elegant movements enhance your spellcasting. Each time you move, you gain a stack of Elegance, up to a maximum of five stacks. Each stack of Elegance gives %d%% light damage and %d%% movement speed(maximum %d%% light damage and %d%% movement speed at 5 stacks). Elegance stacks last three turns and have their duration refreshed each time a new stack is added.

Dance Floor: You turn an area of radius %d into a dance floor for %d turns. Each turn, every enemy on the dance floor will take %d light damage. Allies on the dance floor will instead be healed for %d. The damage and the heal will both scale with your spellpower and can both crit.

Eternal Dance: Your dancing skills reach their apex. If you would take more then %d%% of your maximum life in one blow, you consume two souls and nimbly dance out of the way of the blow, negating any damage above %d%% of your maximum life. If you do not have at least three souls, this ability will not trigger. Sustained talent, does not deactivate when souls reach 0.

Spell/Nekomatic Minions:

Cat Herder: You draw upon your inner catness and become able to create up to %d cats. You create a new cat every 10 turns while this talent is sustained. Cats have Sealed Soul and Engorged Eyes at level %d. Your cats inherit your increased damage and damage penetration. Your cats deal no damage to you and you deal no damage to your cats. If your cats wander more then 10 squares away from you, then they will teleport back next to you.

Cat Whisperer: Your knowledge of feline psychology deepens, letting you exhort greater agility from your cats. Your cats learn Evasion and Nekomata Pounce at level %d and additionally gain %d%% global speed.

Cat Magician: You imbue your cats with a fragment of your arcane powers. Your cats gain a %d bonus to spellpower and can cast Nekomata Claws and Nekomata Tail at level %d.

Cat Overlord: Your cats are an extension of your soul and share your burning determination. Your cats gain %d%% to all resistances and %d%% to stun, confusion and pinning resistances. Additionally, you can activate this talent to summon all your cats to you. If you are below the cat cap and have Cat Herder sustained, then you will summon cats up to the cap, at a cost of one soul per cat summoned this way.

Spell/Nekosis

Nekomata Claws: You grow vicious, yet adorable, claws and rake an adjacent opponent for %d physical damage. The damage increases with your spellpower.

Nekomata Pounce: You draw on the springiness of your cat soul and leap to a location within %d squares. If the target of your pounce was an enemy, you pin them to the ground with your claws for 2 turns. This pin bypasses saves.

Nekomata Tail: You temporarily grow a large and fluffy cat tail and whirl it around you, dealing %d physical damage and dazing all enemies within radius %d for %d turns. The daze checks spellpower against physical save.

Nekomata Form: You assume the form of a nekomata for the next %d turns. In this form, you deal %d% more physical damage and have %d more spellpower. In addition, your other Nekosis spells have their cooldowns reset.

Spell/Fantasy[High Level]

Fantastic Dance Festival: You and all your cats within sight perform a dazzling dance. Your dancing is so fabulous that all enemies within %d squares of a dancer take %d light damage. Allies within %d squares of a dancer are heartened by the performance and heal for %d life. If this healing would exceed their maximum health, then they gain any excess healing as a damage shield instead for 3 turns. The damage and healing both scale with spellpower and can both crit.

Fantasy Reverie: You trap an enemy within it's own fantasy world for %d turns. While so trapped, your enemy has its powers and saves reduced by %d as it struggles to distinguish fantasy from reality. Each turn under the effect, your enemy must make a mental save against your spellpower or lose one of its sustains due to lost concentration. If it succeeds on this save, then the duration of the effect is reduced by one. If the enemy has no active sustains, then it does not have to make a save. The initial application of this effect bypasses saves completely.

Fantasmal Orbs: Whenever one of your spells crits, you trap the excess magical energy in a luminous orb for 5 turns. You can only create one such orb per turn. Once you have at least two orbs, you can release their powers in a devastating magical explosion. The explosion deals %d light and %d physical damage(%d light and %d physical damage with max orbs) to all enemies within radius %d and shocks, dazes and blinds them for %d turns(%d turns with max orbs). The shock checks your spellpower against their spell save and the daze and blind check your spellpower against their physical save. The effect duration and damage scale with the number of orbs you have when you detonate them and the damage will scale with your spellpower. You can accumulate a maximum of %d orbs.

Embodiment of Fantasy: You complete your transformation into a creature of fantasy. You gain %d%% resistance to poisons, cuts, blinds, fears and diseases.

Generic:

Technique/Combat Training at 1.00 mastery

Cunning/Survival at 1.00 mastery

Spell/Vanishing

Uncertainty Principle: You render your position unstable, teleporting you randomly within a range of %d squares. This ability is instant to cast.

Diffusion Propagation: You infuse your own ethereal nature into your attacks. Whenever you cast a spell that takes a turn, you additionally deal %d physical damage in a radius of %d and reduce the affected foe's saves by %d. The save reduction lasts 2 turns and checks spellpower against spell save. The physical damage can crit and scales with your spellpower.

Quantum Entanglement: You interlace a nearby creature's self with your own for %d turns. During this time, %d%% percent of all damage you take is redirected to them as temporal damage. The percentage of damage redirected increases with your defense.

Phase Shift: You partially shift yourself into another dimension, turning yourself invisble with %d invisibility power, but reducing all damage you deal by 50%%. This partial shifting is very demanding on your soul reserves and consumes two souls per turn this effect is sustained.

Spell/Anime:

Sealed Soul: Deep within yourself slumbers the soul of a great and magical cat lord. You naturally regain one soul every turn. You can activate this ability to heal yourself for %d health and restore %d souls.

Engorged Eyes: Your catlike eyes are so large that nothing escapes your notice. You gain %d accuracy, %d%% spell crit chance and %d stealth and invisibility detection.

Soul Eater: You are the apex predator of the spirit world. You gain 1 soul each time you kill an enemy. Also passively increases your soul pool by %d.

Soul Gem: You learn to focus your soul into a gem, allowing you to equip gems. Additionally, you can activate this talent to fully move your soul into your gem. This distances your mind from the injuries you receive, giving you %d%% resist all. However, this adversely affects your reaction time, lowering your global speed by 20%% while this talent is active. These effects only apply when enemies are in sight.

Things that could change:
-I might add another locked class tree if I feel suitably inspired and if I think it wouldn't bloat the class. I think that the class is complete as it is now though.
-Basically anything balance related is up to be changed. I mostly just chose numbers and effects that seemed good, which is a pretty sketchy method. I've done some playtesting myself, but I don't think I'm a good enough player to judge how strong they are.
-If a talent straight-up isn't working, then I might replace or rework it.
-I might redo some of the icons if they're too hideous/boring
-Most talents are currently lacking particle effects/sound effects. I personally play with the sound off, so I don't care about the latter, but particle effects should be forthcoming eventually.

Things that will not change:
-I will not change Nekomancer to use a different resource. I might change the maximum or the regeneration rate or the talent costs, but I'm not switching to mana or anything.
-I will not enable Nekomancer on enemies. Balancing a class is hard enough without also balancing rares with the class and I don't want this addon to have any impact on your game if you're not playing Nekomancer. Also, forcing you to fight cat enemies is pretty disgustingly evil.
-Similarly, I don't feel like balancing Nekomancer Adventurer combos, so I won't. If you really must play an adventurer with Nekomancer talents, then the Slightly More Adventurous addon has you covered.
-I will not dignify the existence of Blighted Summoning by giving your Friend Cats benefits based on it. Take another prodigy.

I like to think that I've been fairly thorough in playtesting, but there are probably still bugs and exploits lurking. If you run across any bugs then please report them. Include the relevant lua error and whether you have any other addons active. There shouldn't be any other addon conflicts, since I've made liberal use of shortnames and haven't superloaded anything destructively, but it's still possible that there are some. I did overload a single file for the Nekomancer's unlock condition, but given that no other addon has ever overloaded that file, it really shouldn't be a problem.

Premptive FAQ:

Q: I downloaded this addon, but I can't start a Nekomancer character!

A: Nekomancer has a lock condition. It's fairly easy to fulfill, but if you don't feel like playing 15 levels of some other class before playing Nekomancer, then the Ignore Race/Class Locks addon should work fine with Nekomancer

Q: How do I unlock Nekomancer?

A: Seriously, it isn't that hard. If you don't get the unlock hint, then you must be some kind of no-good cat hater who doesn't deserve to unlock Nekomancer anyways.

Q: My starting manasurge rune won't work!

A: That's because Nekomancer doesn't start with a mana bar. Their starting manasurge rune is useless because I haven't figured out how to remove it yet. Low priority because it literally doesn't matter at all since you can just replace it on turn 1.

Changelog:

1.0.1: Updated description somewhat
1.0.0: Initial Nekomancer release

Credits
minmay for helping me avoid sustainbug

Recaiden for helping me with Soul Gems

Shibari and nsrr for misc coding help

jotwebe for having a very helpful icon making guide

otowakatori for giving me the idea for nekomancer

http://game-icons.net/ for all the icons.

tl;dr better than Necromancer, don't really like it.

This feels like a less broken Chronomancer. That's probably a good thing.
The way you use Souls is pretty excellent.
Interaction with your cats is really low. You can heal them with your dance, and summon them to you, and that's it. They're effective, but they do their own thing even more than Shadows.
The number of buttons is gratifyingly low.
To get rid of the manasurge rune, I think you want to replace resolvers.inscription in the class's Copy in the birth file. It's set up originally in the Mage Superclass.
Combat training and Survival start unlocked for a mage class? Very unusual.
No interaction with Willpower/Fatigue
Not much to do with category points. I feel like every class should have at least 2 things it can unlock (even if it might prefer escort generics most of the time)

Threads
2nd skill is boring. Works though; it's a useful defense while using your melee spells, since you want light armor to enable Eternal Dance.

Cats
Cats will not Pounce over you to enter a fight, say if you're in a hallway. Perhaps if you straight-up lied to the tactical table and said it was an attack?
Cats are summoned creatures with a 1000 turn duration? It doesn't have to work that way, although it's probably pretty minor. The numbers on their icon is a little annoying. It also makes them disappear every time you level up.

Groove
The attacks here do too much damage with just 1 point invested.
I really expect Disco Ball to Blind. Maybe it could do that in exchange for less damage.

Vanishing
This talent category is great. Excellent work.

Anime
Straightforward stuff that makes the class work.
I like what you've done with Soul Gem. My only problem is that is makes me want to wear Tarrasca, and this a light armor class!
Why does Engorged Eyes give accuracy and stealth detection when you also have the Combat Accuracy and Heightened Senses? Is this for the cats?

Ways to up the production value
Sound on Thread Bolt, Nekomata Claws, etc.
Cat sounds
Different types of cat.
Disco ball projectile looks like a disco ball.
Disco ball attack is pointy rays of light rather than a sun ring
Dance Floor looks more pyschadelic
Thread bolt doesn't look very thready. Perhaps a variation on the lightning bolt particle effect?
Quantum Entanglement could show a visual connection between you and the entangled target.

-Less broken Chronomancer is about what I was hoping for, honestly.
-I'm glad you like the resource system, since it's been pretty experimental. I'm a bit unsure as to how it holds up in the very late game, so more feedback on that would be appreciated.
-I'm not really a fan of micromanaging minions, which is why cats are so independent. I do have an Advanced Nekotic Minions tree partially brainstormed that has some more interaction to it, which I might add at some point. That'd also give more uses for category points.
-Yeah, I don't like classes with lots of buttons and I feel like adding more talents makes a class overpowered unless you pad them with intentionally useless talents.
-Hmm, I'll have to look into the resolvers.
-Combat Training starting unlocked is mostly for convienience, since any class can unlock it with 50 gold. Survival being unlocked is kind a relic of when Anime was a class category and they only had Vanishing for generics. I still think that it makes sense for Nekomancer to start out with it unlocked though. It's also another reason for Cunning to be a secondary stat.
-I don't really care about Willpower not having a use. Because of how souls work, it'd be hard to make a system not rife with breakpoints, which are bad. Fatigue has a similar issue, although Eternal Dance only working with light armour is my way of not making heavy armour the optimal way all the time. I'd like to make it more granular eventually, so that you'd still get some benefit out of it even with heavier armour.



-Thread Weaving is currently up for replacement. I'm just not sure what to replace it with though, since I'm not entirely sure how much damage/durability Nekomancer has at the moment. I did a big long playtest and then did some balancing changes and haven't tested out how it plays with the new changes.
-Yeah, I've been having issues making Friend Cats pounce properly. I thought the pin would give them enough of a reason to pounce to enemies, but there's probably something weird going on. I'll look into it. If I really can't figure it out, I'll just make it give them a free melee attack if they pounce to an enemy.
-I mostly followed the implementation of shadows, since they're the least buggy and best implemented summons IMO. Having them disappear when you level up lets them get updated stats or whatever, but I'll see about some kind of compromise that doesn't make you vulnerable if you level up mid-fight.
-Groove damage talents have higher damage because light is an off-damage type for Nekomancer. I'll see about nerfing Disco Ball a little though. Dance Floor can maybe just have a duration/cost nerf.
-Disco Ball not blinding is very intentional. Blinding enemies is basically like turning invisible to them and I didn't want to obviate their invisibility talent. I might even remove the blind from Fantasmal Orbs while I'm at it.
-Soul Gem + Tarrasca is something I've considered and I'm not that concerned about. I don't want to lock Nekomancer into light armour so much as give it benefits so that it's as valid a choice as heavy armour. Soul Gem's resists are intended to be an supplement to a heavy armour weakened Eternal Dance.
-Engorged Eyes giving accuracy was a relic from when Nekomata Claws was a virtual weapon like Dream Hammer was. I kept it because I was worried that the cats wouldn't be able to hit things late game. That turned out to not be a problem, my cats ended up with 70+ accuracy by late game. Stealth detection is because I despise stealth as a mechanic and wanted Nekomancer and their cats to ignore it as much as possible.

As for upping the production value, those all sound like good ideas. I find the animal noises that already exist in tome to be super annoying though, so I'm a bit hesitant about adding in cat noises.



Could you be more specific about what you don't like? I have some concerns myself about how fun the class is to play in its current state and some more detailed feedback would be appreciated.

Basically, playing a Mage is more complicated and less effective than playing a Weapon Class, and so without something else, some hook to make the class more interesting, it won't be terribly fun.

For Paradox Mage, it's Cease to Exist and stacking DoTs.
For Cultist, it's Prophecies and the process you go through to summon the Herald.
For Solipsist, it's all the Sleep Nonsense.
For Archmage, it's...nothing. Archmages are not fun.

Nekomancer doesn't have that something. Speed-boost sliding in and throwing down a maximally Elegant Dance Floor is nice, but it's not something to revolve a class around. And the cats are so autonomous that even though they're a large part of your power, they're not a large part of your decision-making. (It may just be that I prefer more minion management than you do.)

I know that isn't actually very specific.

Just a thought, but for the Thread second talent, I'd suggest switching it with the third (so the entanglement comes earlier as a defensive) then turning Thread Weaver into a bouncing attack à la Chain Lightning or the release of a Charged Aura. Kind of the thread jumping from enemy to enemy and tying them together - maybe with an added -turn daze as a gimmick ?

Another idea would be to steal the grabbing effect of Flying Grapple from the Gunslinger, make it an AoE where a tossed ball of threads explodes then gather a group of enemies in its center in a tangled knot ?

Anyway, just two silly ideas that popped in my head when I read the (very amusing) concept of the class. :p Good job.

Yeah, I had about the same thoughts honestly. I'm leaning more towards the pulling a group of enemies in because I could also have it pull in your cats so you can get them to maul the guy in the center. Or I might have a Friend Cat Toss ability in Advanced Nekotic Minions instead. Haven't decided yet.

I've been playing this a bit and wanted to share a few random ideas.

Eternal Dance could be improved by Elegance and Dance Flooor. My idea is that if you are on your dance floor and have Eterna Dance active and have more than 125% move speed, you gain X% chance to completely avoid damage. This would help save on soul consumption from Eternal Dance as a certain percent of big hits are totally negated, but it requires set up, some upkeep, and is limited by an area of effect and duration. Could make the negation chance scale with move speed in some way, so it can energize more with Elegance, but capped at a low enough value to negate movement infusion cheese.

I feel like cats and thread should interact in some way. Give cats increased power against Entangled foes, or make cats pounce at enemies when they become Entangled, or something like that maybe? Cats could pounce to and focus on Threadbound targets. Maybe cats attacks against Entangled targets could knock them back, like a cat swatting a yarn ball.

I wish Fantasmal Orbs could be used for at least one other thing. I would scale back the resists on the final talent or remove them and add/change to an active that consumes all of your orbs to cleanse/shorten negative effects.


I feel like there should be a Cat Scratch Fever de buff somewhere. Working in more cat puns could never hurt. Cat's Meow. Cat's Pajamas. Cool Cat. Cat-tastrophy. Cat-aclsym.

An advanced tree for full on close range Nekomata could be fun. A couple more attacks and a capstone that turns Nekomata Form into a sustain but also renders all activated talents aside from Nekomata attacks unusable. Drastically reduces cooldowns on said talents while active.

The class is pretty good now, does pretty well in the early game with either cat heavy or nuke heavy builds in my experience. I feel like Eternal Dance creates too much of a resource disruption once you get into harder enemies. You need to use your expensive disables, but you also need the souls to negate damage, and you're not left with much to actually kill the enemy. Overall I like the resource system for the class, but this makes me want to either pass on this talent and just go for heavy armor or stick to bump attacks to reserve my souls for defense. Maybe if I had invested in cats they would have helped me absorb enough damage and kill mobs a bit quicker so that the soul drain would have been less of a problem, but I'm somewhat doubtful. I'm playing on Nightmare, for reference.

I've definitely been considering tying together Elegant Dance and Eternal Dance, but I haven't found a satisfactory way of doing so. With current implementation you'd just be encouraged to move in between spellcasts, which isn't very fun. Synergizing with Dance Floor is a new idea though. The thing that comes to mind for me is making Eternal Dance work better at higher health% in some way.

Cats and thread already interact in that lowered physical resistance makes your cats deal more damage. Having cats prioritize Thread Bound/Entangled enemies is something I'm thinking of doing, although I might need to make a custom cat ai for that to work. It might also be redundant with the Advanced Nekomatic Minions tree, which hasn't been finalized by any means.

Eh, I don't like the idea of having a talent that makes another talent in the same tree obsolete, which is basically what would happen. I originally had it so that you could use Fantasmal Orbs as a cleanse/heal or as a big strong laser, but then decided against it. Nekomancer already has plenty of heals and them not having cleanses is an intentional weakness.

The resists on Embodiment of Fantasy are intended to be the analog of Lichform immunities. I'm not entirely happy with the scaling though, so that'll probably end up reworked. One of Nekomancer's weaknesses is no status cleanses, so I'm definitely not adding in one of those.

I considered having a close range Nekomancer tree like Dream Smith, but ultimately decided against it. I think Nekomancer works best as a mid range caster like Doomed, tossing out spells from behind an array of Friend Cats.

Hmm, possible. Nekomata Claws are probably too risky for not enough benefit at the moment. And adding a debuff with a spellpower check would buff player Nekomata Claws without making Friend Cats too powerful... Yeah, that sounds good.

Friend Cats are a big part of defense/resource usage for Nekomancer. They kill things, giving you souls through Soul Eater, and don't cost you souls to do it. They're also great for meatshields/distractions. I don't really intend to have much support for a Friend Catless Nekomancer. since it's so central to the class. If I were going to do that, it'd basically be an entirely seperate class and I don't want to try to shove two classes into one class. You can get away with something like 3/1/1/1 though, although their damage will suffer. Giving Nekomancer some damage that doesn't depend on Friend Cats is definitely on the table with the Thread Weaver rework and they're pretty good at proccing on_spell_hit stuff with Diffusion Propagation.