Alchemist Infusions done right

[eliotn]

Since alchemist infusions are badly designed, I have a proposal for a redesign. It should be easy to implement (and I will start on it soon). I may have precentages wrong.

Key ideas:
-Transform Fire Infusion to a sustain.
-Allow damage to stack.
-Make them enchance abilities that deal fire damage, instead of nerfing them.

Infusion effects are chosen like card draws, one is randomly picked. This also happens for each creature. They work like they normally do, except duration is scalable, and infusion effects randomly occur.

Also, with damage conversions, you apply fire damage modifires, do the conversion, then damage modifiers for that element.

Fire Infusion (Sustained) - Infusion effect: Whenever you throw a gem bomb, creatures within the radius of the gem bomb have a [100/infusions active]% chance to be set ablaze for [1 + level of skill] rounds, dealing an additional 5% of the gem bomb's damage as fire damage per round.

Additionally, all fire damage you do is increased by [5 * level of skill]% while this skill is active.

Acid Infusion (Sustained) - Infusion effect: Whenever you throw a gem bomb, creatures within the radius of the gem bomb have a [100/infusions active]% chance to be blinded for [1 + level of skill rounds].

Whenever you do fire damage, [100/number of infusions active]% of it is converted to acid damage. This effect occurs after fire damage modifiers.

Additionally, all acid damage you do is increased by [5 * (level of skill)]% while this skill is active.

Lightning Infusion (Sustained) - Infusion effect: Whenever you throw a gem bomb, creatures within the radius of the gem bomb have a [100/infusions active]% chance to be dazed for [1 + level of skill rounds].

Whenever you do fire damage, [100/number of infusions active]% of it is converted to lightning damage. This effect occurs after fire damage modifiers.

Additionally, all lightning damage you do is increased by [5 * (level of skill)]% while this skill is active.

Cold Infusion (Sustained) - Infusion effect: Whenever you throw a gem bomb, creatures within the radius of the gem bomb have a [100/infusions active]% chance to be frozen for [1 + level of skill rounds].

Whenever you do fire damage, [100/number of infusions active]% of it is converted to cold damage. This effect occurs after fire damage modifiers.

Additionally, all cold damage you do is increased by [5 * level of skill]% while this skill is active.

Additional thoughts:
Would having all infusions give a scalable +% to all other damage types encourage an interesting choice?

[Aquillion]

Fire Infusion (Sustained) - Infusion effect: Whenever you throw a gem bomb, creatures within the radius of the gem bomb have a [100/infusions active]% chance to be set ablaze for [1 + level of skill] rounds. If any infusion effect is active, one is guaranteed to occur for each .

This misses a subtle but extremely important point about the current fire infusion (which the current wording of the talent totally obscures):

Its burning effect is not a good thing. It doesn't do any extra damage; instead, what it does is take the listed damage and divide it over however many turns instead of doing it all at once. If your bomb does 100 damage, and you're using the fire infusion, it will instead do 20 damage each turn for 5 turns (technically, it does damage twice the first turn, but you get the idea -- burning is purely a disadvantage. It never helps you, period.) This is why the fire infusion does more damage than the others -- to make up for the fact that its burning effect is actually a severe disadvantage. (And it is very severe. Every extra turn it takes for the full damage to hit is another turn the enemy gets to beat on you.)

What this means is that adding burning effect as the 'benefit' of the fire infusion doesn't work. If you want it to do extra burning damage (instead of causing your normal bomb damage to get divided over five turns as it does now), you need to mention how much extra burn damage you want it to do. But that isn't how it works now -- right now, the only effect is to make the bomb weaker.

Additionally, for the same reason, '[1 + level of skill] rounds' means that it gets weaker the higher your skill level is. The way fireburn damage works is like this: You input the total amount of damage, and it does that amount of damage over the listed number of turns. So if your bomb does 100 damage and lights the enemy on fire for 3 turns, it will do 33.3 damage a turn, total (instead of doing 100 damage initially. Not in addition to it.) If your bomb does 100 damage over 5 turns, it will do 20 damage a turn. The more rounds you put in there, the weaker your bomb is.

This is one of the things that ToME is really totally unclear about in several places. Poison damage is always weaker than other damage types, point for point, for this reason. Similarly, the Alchemist fire infusion is actually a lot weaker than it looks like (since it does damage twice on the first turn and they see all these damage numbers flashing everywhere after that and feel like they're doing a ton of damage oerall, players tend not to realize that its burn effect is strictly a disadvantage.)

Acid Infusion (Sustained) - Infusion effect: Whenever you throw a gem bomb, creatures within the radius of the gem bomb have a [100/infusions active]% chance to be blinded for [1 + level of skill rounds].

Lightning Infusion (Sustained) - Infusion effect: Whenever you throw a gem bomb, creatures within the radius of the gem bomb have a [100/infusions active]% chance to be blinded for [1 + level of skill rounds].

Why are both lightning and acid blinding effects? That seems a bit boring.

[Talonj]

One problem: Leveling fire infusion has negative side effects, in spreading out the damage. If you want the effect to actually be beneficial, I would suggest (7-level of skill effect) round burning time. As you level the skill, the intensity of the flame increases, burning victims more quickly.

Fireburn is an odd effect in that a lower duration is actually highly desirable, because that means the damage will be dealt sooner.

The new mechanic would certainly be interesting, and not outright destroying all other sources of fire damage for an alchemist would be a welcome change.

((Mmm... ninjaed, but posting anyway))

Aquillion is wrong about one thing: Fireburn actually deals half of the damage as instantaneous, and the rest over time, so a 100 damage bomb would deal 50 damage +10 per round for 5 rounds

Didn't notice the double-blind, but I would presume that's a copy/paste error.

[Aquillion]

Aquillion is wrong about one thing: Fireburn actually deals half of the damage as instantaneous, and the rest over time, so a 100 damage bomb would deal 50 damage +10 per round for 5 rounds

Oh. Right. Well, you get the idea.

But the problem in the above suggestion isn't just the turn thing. The problem is that it treats 'you do fireburn damage' as a benefit, on par with 'you do acidblind damage', when in fact fireburn damage is a disadvantage and acidblind damage is an advantage. If the fire infusion didn't increase your overall damage more than the others (as, in this suggestion, it doesn't) nobody would ever have a reason to use it.

Of course, this also clearly shows that the talents need to be written in a more comprehensible way. It's clear that what the OP really meant (and what the talent should do) is "you light the enemy on fire for X additional fire damage per turn for X turns" or something similar. But it's important to emphasize that that's not how it works currently and that all of the burn damage currently inflicted by the fire infusion comes 'out of' the base damage of your bomb rather than being added in addition to it.

I was seriously pissed when I found out about that, since the way the talent is worded gives no real hint of it and makes the fire infusion look much better than it really is.

[bricks]

I just plain don't like the infusions. They take the very cool idea of transmutation and change it into palette-swapped damage types. I'd rather Acid Bomb and Fire Bomb be two different skills, the Infusions be dropped, and alchemists get a new tree. Acid Alchemy would be nice.

[Aquillion]

I just plain don't like the infusions. They take the very cool idea of transmutation and change it into palette-swapped damage types. I'd rather Acid Bomb and Fire Bomb be two different skills, the Infusions be dropped, and alchemists get a new tree. Acid Alchemy would be nice.

I totally disagree. The implementation leaves a lot to be desired, but I like the way they work -- it emphasizes the idea that the alchemist's bomb powers are all ultimately based around knowledge, so you can substitute things to obtain similar results.

Making separate Acid Bomb and Fire Bomb skills seems more boring to me -- that would be making them too similar to Archmages. Alchemists are supposed to work differently -- for the most part, aside from their fire alchemy tree (which I dislike), most alchemist skills are 'synergistic' and work together to enhance one facet of their capabilities (bomb / gemstone / staff / golem.) I think that this synergy is more interesting than giving them a bunch of different Archmage-style talents, and helps establish that what they're doing is different from using an Archmage's spells.

[eliotn]

Fire Infusion (Sustained) - Infusion effect: Whenever you throw a gem bomb, creatures within the radius of the gem bomb have a [100/infusions active]% chance to be set ablaze for [1 + level of skill] rounds. If any infusion effect is active, one is guaranteed to occur for each .

This misses a subtle but extremely important point about the current fire infusion (which the current wording of the talent totally obscures):

Its burning effect is not a good thing. It doesn't do any extra damage; instead, what it does is take the listed damage and divide it over however many turns instead of doing it all at once. If your bomb does 100 damage, and you're using the fire infusion, it will instead do 20 damage each turn for 5 turns (technically, it does damage twice the first turn, but you get the idea -- burning is purely a disadvantage. It never helps you, period.) This is why the fire infusion does more damage than the others -- to make up for the fact that its burning effect is actually a severe disadvantage. (And it is very severe. Every extra turn it takes for the full damage to hit is another turn the enemy gets to beat on you.)

What this means is that adding burning effect as the 'benefit' of the fire infusion doesn't work. If you want it to do extra burning damage (instead of causing your normal bomb damage to get divided over five turns as it does now), you need to mention how much extra burn damage you want it to do. But that isn't how it works now -- right now, the only effect is to make the bomb weaker.

Additionally, for the same reason, '[1 + level of skill] rounds' means that it gets weaker the higher your skill level is. The way fireburn damage works is like this: You input the total amount of damage, and it does that amount of damage over the listed number of turns. So if your bomb does 100 damage and lights the enemy on fire for 3 turns, it will do 33.3 damage a turn, total (instead of doing 100 damage initially. Not in addition to it.) If your bomb does 100 damage over 5 turns, it will do 20 damage a turn. The more rounds you put in there, the weaker your bomb is.

This is one of the things that ToME is really totally unclear about in several places. Poison damage is always weaker than other damage types, point for point, for this reason. Similarly, the Alchemist fire infusion is actually a lot weaker than it looks like (since it does damage twice on the first turn and they see all these damage numbers flashing everywhere after that and feel like they're doing a ton of damage oerall, players tend not to realize that its burn effect is strictly a disadvantage.)

Ok, burning is taken away from bomb damage? That is a bad idea. Time to change the wording so that it is clearer.

Acid Infusion (Sustained) - Infusion effect: Whenever you throw a gem bomb, creatures within the radius of the gem bomb have a [100/infusions active]% chance to be blinded for [1 + level of skill rounds].

Lightning Infusion (Sustained) - Infusion effect: Whenever you throw a gem bomb, creatures within the radius of the gem bomb have a [100/infusions active]% chance to be blinded for [1 + level of skill rounds].

Why are both lightning and acid blinding effects? That seems a bit boring.

That was a typo. I meant for lightning to daze.

[eronarn]

It would be kind of nice if you could choose any of the infusions starting from L1. I don't see why you should have to know the Acid infusion to use the Lightning one, for instance.

I don't like the idea of activating multiple infusions at the same time - I think they should be exclusive. On the other hand, a boost to infusions based on how many talent levels you've dedicated to them would be cool. This would also open up the possibility of an unlockable 'advanced infusions' tree for Alchemists with stuff like arcane or light damage infusions.