ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Summoners could use some love, I am suggesting three new summons, and two new control talents, along with removing Warpers and a reorganization of the trees. The totems that have been proposed could work in addition to these changes, though care would need to be taken to avoid repeating functionality. Here's how it would end up:

Summoning (melee): Jelly moved to Utility, replaced by Poison Vine
War Hound
Poison Vine: stronger attack but less HP than Jelly. Can not move, and hits for poison damage.
Minotaur
Stone Golem: EDIT: replaced by something similar, but more naturey. Needs a name.

Summoning (ranged): Spider replacing Warper. Warper removed.
Ritch Flamespitter
Hydra
Spider
Fire Drake EDIT: now a Cold Drake.

Summoning (utility): only summoning spells now, added Jelly, moved turtle to tier two. EDIT: altered, see below.
Jelly
Turtle
Beholder: (needs better name) has see through stealth and see invisible, buffs allies for + accuracy and crit rate, debuffs enemies for -stealth, -invisibility, and -defence making them visible. Low HP and no movement, but is invisible.
Shaman: (also needs better name) heals and removes debuffs

Summoning (control): Has some of the Augmentation skills, some of the Utility ones.
Detonate
Suppress Summoning
Phase Summon
Summon Control

Summoning (augmentation): two new skills to replace Detonate and Phase Summons.
Rage
Haste: activated, increases global speed of all summons by a bit for a while.
Resilience
Tenacity: passive +(10, 20, 30, 40, 50)% stun, pin, and knockback resists to all your summons.

EDIT: for locked/unlocked trees, Utility and Augmentation would be locked, the others would be unlocked.

It looks good, but shaman seems a bit underpowered for a 4th tier, and healing something that will vanish soon seems like it would drop the usefullness pretty quickly. maybe some sort of temporal beastie that loves to load on the debuffs, or something that spends it's time buffing the others.
and as long as there is some alterations going on, it really strikes me as odd that a construct is the top tier for the physical tree... stone golem seems out of place being that my alchemist has one that cannot use infusions.
maybe an Ent or behemoth to keep with the nature theme. something large and smashy

hamrkveldulfr wrote:shaman seems a bit underpowered for a 4th tier, and healing something that will vanish soon seems like it would drop the usefullness pretty quickly

Healing would have been extremely useful for my fight against the Orc Grand Necromancer (in the Prides), as most of my summons were dying with less than half of their time used. 15 turns is easily enough to require healing, especially at high levels. As for it being underpowered, they probably could use some debuff talents as well.

hamrkveldulfr wrote:and as long as there is some alterations going on, it really strikes me as odd that a construct is the top tier for the physical tree... stone golem seems out of place being that my alchemist has one that cannot use infusions.
maybe an Ent or behemoth to keep with the nature theme. something large and smashy

Agreed, a nature based summon would fit better than a Stone Golem, and I had already removed the Warper for that reason.

I like some of the proposed changes. The Warper and Stone Golem do indeed feel less "natural" than the others, and moving the Jelly to the Utility tree makes sense. The problem I see is that you removed a very obvious function in the Warper (a fantastic disabler) and did not give back that functionality. The first "natural" effect that rivals Time Prison is freeze, and there are plenty of opportunities there. What about changing Fire Drake to Cold Drake? There already is a fire damage type in the flame ritch, so I think that makes sense. I admit I have not experimented much with the Spider, so it may need changing to improve a bit, too.

I really don't like the Beholder, though. Some of that is because I feel it infringes on my idea for totems, and the number of NPCs that buff allies is very few and feels out of place. All of the NPCs that can see invis in-game are unnatural, too: ghouls, bone-giants, horrors, liches, vampires, skeletons, wights, etc. What about adding a creature and talents that does an AoE removal of stealth and invisibility, like the faerie fog from DnD?

We have "meat shields", "damage nukers", "disablers", etc... what niches are missing? A long time ago there was a "Beneficial Spirit" that helped with healing, etc, but that was before tactical AI and it may be nice to add it back in. I don't know how useful a "healer" will be on summons that already exist a fairly short period of time, do you find yourself wanting that a lot?

I'll leave the totems for another thread... still trying to flesh out a few more ideas before getting broader feedback on them. Cheers!

tl,dr version:
Fire Drake -> Cold Drake
Beholder -> changed, more naturey
Shaman removed, -> Pusher (knockback crowd control)
Enhancements to all old skills
Evolutions for all summons

yufra wrote:The first "natural" effect that rivals Time Prison is freeze, and there are plenty of opportunities there. What about changing Fire Drake to Cold Drake? There already is a fire damage type in the flame ritch, so I think that makes sense.

I agree completely, and was debating changing the element of the drake when I started the thread, along with many skill improvements, but decided to keep my changes to a minimum. Added Cold Drakes to the original post, as well, some skill ideas are posted below.

yufra wrote: I admit I have not experimented much with the Spider, so it may need changing to improve a bit, too.

Spider probably should be changed, as it scales extremely well with level (went from ~50 to over 550 damage from level 1 to 5 at clvl 50). I would reduce the cooldown on poison spit to about 2, and increase its damage output at low levels, while maintaining it at high levels.

yufra wrote:I really don't like the Beholder, though. Some of that is because I feel it infringes on my idea for totems, and the number of NPCs that buff allies is very few and feels out of place. All of the NPCs that can see invis in-game are unnatural, too: ghouls, bone-giants, horrors, liches, vampires, skeletons, wights, etc. What about adding a creature and talents that does an AoE removal of stealth and invisibility, like the faerie fog from DnD?

On sober second thought, the beholder is a bit too arcane and would be hard to have good AI for. Revised below.

yufra wrote:I don't know how useful a "healer" will be on summons that already exist a fairly short period of time, do you find yourself wanting that a lot?

The health to duration ratio of my summons was about 50-100HP : 1 round, so healing isn't an issue at all in small fights (as the enemy could not deal out damage fast enough, and usually died within a few rounds anyways) however, most boss fights easily reached 200 damage per round to a summon (leading to death at 1/2 to 1/4 duration). This is annoying, and reduces your damage output significantly, but it is hardly fatal as long as you have one or two summons alive. One way to overcome the objections would be to make it a regen that stops duration decay while active, however, it sounds like people aren't liking/wouldn't use the shaman...replaced below with a crowd control mob.

yufra wrote: We have "meat shields", "damage nukers", "disablers", etc... what niches are missing?

I think it's pretty well covered. The triumvirate of tank/DPS/healer is well represented, with disablers taking the place of healers.

Summoning (utility): Beholder changed drastically, Shaman replaced by Pusher
Jelly
Turtle
Beholder: radius (6, 7, 8, 9, 10) talent to light area, remove stealth, and remove invisibility. Can use talent "spot", it is channelled similar to Feed (long duration, 1 target, requires LoS), and gives target -(10 * talent) invisibility and stealth, -(12 * talent) defence, and -(5 * talent) accuracy. Weak HP and defence.
Pusher: surrounded by a rad 1 effect that has a 50% chance to knock back hostiles every turn. Has various crowd control skills, mostly knockbacks (including AoE). Fairly high HP and defensive stats.

Random talent enhancements
Detonate: add most of the other summons , gaining access to them based on skill level.
Suppress Summoning: add (15 * talent)% chance to be unaffected.
Phase Summon: Allow (1 + talent) jumps, applying the effect to each summon, and potentially reorganizing many summons.
Summon Control: Add/remove restrictions from AI choices.
Rage: add free action, wild speed, and clear one detrimental effect on cast.
Resilience: + (talent * 2) resist all in place of Constitution boost.
All summons "evolve" at talent = 3-5 depending on the summon as follows:
War Hound to Warg, gains movement speed and bleed talent
Venus Fly Trap to Poison Vine, gains poison damage (in addition to the nature damage it had)
Minotaur to Maulotaur, gains some skills
Stone golem replacement to ???, gains one infusion
Ritch Flamespitter to ???, gains a fire burn attack as well.
Three Headed Hydra to Four Headed Hydra, gains Sand Breath and +1 range on breaths.
Spider to Spitting Spider, gains better attacks, talent spidric poison (pinning + poison)
Cold Drake to Cold Wyrm, gains skills.
Jelly to Ooze, gains movement
Turtle to War Turtle, gains damage (still less than war hound)
Beholder to triple beholder, gains ability to spot three enemies at once.
Pusher to Mover, gains pulling skills (eg mindhook)

I like the sound of these changes quite a bit, especially replacing the fire drake with a cold drake and the rearrangement of the control and augmentation abilities. Suppress summoning still seems kind of superfluous; what if it also suppressed "unsummoning?"

Moving the jelly to a locked tree is harsh, but probably fair. An additional, in-combat means of reducing equilibrium is probably needed to replace it; though I don't know where to fit that. I suppose there's always the Antimagic quest.

Here's an idea to consider: summons could provide the summoner with a buff so long as they are active. It could, perhaps, be linked to only a few summons, like detonate, and part of the Utility tree. I don't know that the utility tree needs 4 additional summons, and it would replace part of the function of the shaman.

Additionally, it would be good to expand the range of creatures that can be detonated, perhaps to one per tree. I think stone golem (or whatever replaces it) or the poison vine are the best candidates for the melee tree. Further, the detonate skill could gain effectiveness depending on what percent of the target's life is left. Detonating a ritch at 100% health should do a great deal more damage than one near death.

The summon evolution idea is cool, but you could just add a new skill without coming up with a new name. Either way it makes putting more points in a given summon a better option.

Personally I would prefer the ability to summon a sand drake over ice drake. Blind resist is much rarer than stun resist.

I'd like to have Suppress Summoning replaced with something else. There's just not enough instances of enemies summoning creatures for it to be useful. The only creatures I can think of that can summon are the Honey Tree (which I've only seen like 5 times total) and The Mouth (and stopping him from summoning would be a bad thing)

Um, I think you need to get further in the game then. There are a lot of summoners later on (mostly dragons and undead) and they can be a real pain.

Hee, yeah, lategame gets fun with all those summoners.

Perhaps Suppress Summoning should be moved to the end of its tree, then? It's kind of annoying to have to put a point in something I won't use for a while...

Also, minor suggestion: Perhaps using Nature's Touch on a summon should extend its duration a bit? Right now it's kinda pointless to use that on your summons, since they're going to vanish real quickly anyway, and it seems like it's behavior that should be encouraged.

My two cents on Suppress Summoning:
It is garbage. Unless it has recently changed, it means you cannot summon. Any skill that hurts yourself to the point where you are completely disabled is imho complete garbage.

Instead, skills that improve the life, duration and damage of summons are very good. Something like:

Summon augmentation:

Duration +1-2-3 turns
Health +10/15/20 %
Elemental damage (fire, cold, ...) +10/20/30%
Natural damage (acid, poison, physical, ...) +10-20-30%
Tenacity is crap, since summons inherit the resistances of the summoner. That means players already have a way of getting stun resist on the summons. This could be an alternative for using other equipments, but IMHO if a summoner wants stun resist then he has to wear the gear for it and not get it cheesy.

The golem used to be one of the more interesting summons when he had the ability to do a earthquake that terraformed within a radius. This was before digging tools where implemented and players would get stuck. Perhaps this can now be enabled again. Maybe we will have to give players the ability to dig without a pick (but it would take 60 turns or whatever).

Most importantly, turtle should be a tier 1 skill since it is the bread and butter utility skill. Instead of giving it damage, let it disable foes (example: disarm skill)?

It might be good if each level in Suppress Summoning gave you a 20% chance to be able to ignore it yourself... even if it's useful later on, it is a bit bizarre for summoners to have a skill that negates their own core feature.

And I missed the fact that turtle was moved to tier 2 in the proposed changes. Yeah, that wouldn't work -- it's really important for staying alive early on in many cases (while the jelly isn't really necessary until later, because the tier 1 summons are all so cheap). If you want to add damage to the turtle, why not make it gain that when upgraded?

Suppress Summoning might be made more useful if at level 5 it became targetable. But I think that the reasoning why it hits you is that you're supposed to have your summons out (and be able to keep them out) before casting this.

Turtle I don't have very strong feelings on whether it should be tier 1 or tier 2, and I found jellies much more useful as soon as I had them unlocked (thus their placement in tier 1) I assume that people want the tree unlocked by default as well. Also, it does gain the ability to damage when upgraded. As for disabling instead, sounds as good, but not necessarily better of an idea.

Tenacity: I didn't think that 50% resistances on summons would be cheesy as other (mostly melee) classes have skills that give up to 75% stun resist to themselves. As for it being weak or useless, it covers many different effects, so diluting the value could be justified, and summons are usually the ones hit by attacks that stun etc... A possible change would be to change it to (10, 20, 30, 40, 50)% or less chance to avoid any detrimental effect for summons.

Suppress Summoning: I found it to be useless, and never used it. Changes to make it not affect you would help. Here's a different idea, called Transfer Life for now (needs better name) Drains up to (5 * talent) turns of duration and (10 * talent)% of the current life of (3, 4, 5, 6, 7) enemy summoned creatures, transferring the duration and health to all of your summons, split equally. This can bring their duration above normal, but cannot bring their health above 100%.

Foo Drake: Sand Drake sounds good, although it would make the Summoner lean more towards physical damage.

Changing Evolution to an added talent instead: good idea, it would make it much simpler, while having a nearly identical effect if it included passive effects as well as activated ones.

Summons giving buffs to the PC while active: I would much rather have a skill opposite of detonate, maybe Absorb that gave you a buff based on the summon sacrificed.

Nature's Touch: it is kind of weak in battle, but I don't know if +duration is a good way to fix it, and can't think of a better one, unless it was made an instant cast, and/or given range.

Detonate: My thought was to have it able to affect nearly all summons, perhaps those of tier (1, 2, 3, 4, 4). Higher tier monsters do more damage in general. I'm conflicted about basing damage on life remaining. Effects are like:

War hound-blood explosion? (blight?)
Ritch Flamespitter-Fire explosion
Jelly- Slime explosion

Poison Vine-Poison explosion
Hydra-lightning/acid/poison explosion
Turtle-physical + stun?

Minotaur-physical + bleed?
Spider-Poison + pin
Beholder-mind + spotted effect (-accuracy, -def, -stealth, -invisibility)

Nature golem-???
Foo Drake-Foo damage
Pusher-Physical + knockback (like Doomed skills)