Fate Meta-Class: Subclasses: Wyrdthief, Oracle, Champion

[Planetus]

I love this idea of fate/luck/fortune (I'd suggest fortune as the resource name) classes. One thing that seems a little odd to me, though, is the vagueness of the divisions between classes. I'd like to suggest the following themes:

Champion: based on taking advantage of assured good luck (as already suggested). The Fortune Champion is sure of his fate, sure that it would never fail him, though he doesn't know what his fate will bring him. Many passive chance bonuses (crit hit, etc.) and various sustains that give him bonuses when he gets lucky and compensations when he gets unlucky. I would also highly suggest an ability that has a chance to re-roll a crit the enemy rolled on him. Fortune would be the only resource, if any.

Oracle: based on reading fate and plainly manipulating it to create the future he wants. The Oracle read and manipulates fate to bring terrible luck to his enemies. Maybe some self-centered AoE sustains that have a chance to damage/status effect any enemy within range, and maybe some that trigger stuff whenever an enemy in range gets unlucky. Basically, a mid-ranged "I am here and you die" caster type. Fortune is the resource, but it is coupled to the tarot cards that the oracle uses to tell/manipulate the future.

Wyrdthief: based on tricking fate and stealing fortune from enemies. The Wyrdthief, maybe renamed Fate Stealer, gets two types of abilities. One is a thief-themed version of the Champion, where the thief can steal luck from enemies (luck the stat and things like crit rate, hp regen, etc.), and plant his unluck on the enemy (including negative status effects, or maybe the next failed roll). The other is themed on the tarot cards of the Oracle, but with a cheater theme, where the thief can deal from the bottom of the deck to enemies, instead of the top, or can switch the card he drew for one up his sleeve before fate notices. Maybe a cross between the two would allow the thief to steal the fate cards of enemies, or plant his own bad fate on an enemy. The resource is still Fortune, but sometimes tied to tarot cards, maybe without the ability to shuffle them at all (just resets when all cards are used).

[Infinitum]

Fortune is a good name for the resource as well. I could totally get behind that.

Some more brainstorming regarding the Wyrdthief card abilities, it would be cool to tie them to a custom card game using the minor arcana (13 or 14 cards to a suit have both been used historically so both work imo, 13 would make it easier for people used to modern decks, 14 enforces that our cards are different - I'm going with 14 below since Squire/Knight is way more evocative than Jack).

The basic premise of what I was thinking of is essentially Poker but played using a 56-card Minor Arcana deck and with a hand consisting of 4 cards. 4 cards is partly because we don't want a contemporary game within the game, partially because it'd make it somewhat easy to graphically show the players/enemy's hand at a glance by adding a small icon representing the suit and number of their cards in each of the graphical tile's 4 corners (no idea how this could be done for ascii models though). The strength and suit of the hand decides the bonus/malus provided (these are always beneficial to the player character however).

Using the 4 "classic" Tarot suits gives us Wands, Swords, Cups and Coins (there are of course variations, but these are easy to link to specific abilities). The actual effect on players/monsters could of course vary, but I think having longtime effect buffs/debuffs would work best. Examples given (effect on player/enemies respectively):

Swords: Damage Bonus/Damage over Time
Cups: Increased Healing rate/Decreased Resistances
Coins: Luck bonus/Luck malus
Wands: Increased saves/Random status effect

I think that having guaranteed (albeit random) positive returns for the player is pretty mandatory in order for the tree to be playable in practice. Possible hands and outcome could then be:

High card - Weak effect of the suite in question
Pair - Weak effect of both suites in the pair
Allied Kingdom (1 card of each suit in hand) - weak effect of all 4 suits (also setting this apart as totally not poker)
Court (only court cards in hand) - Medium effect of the highest suit on hand (..totally not poker)
Two Pairs - Medium effect of the suits in the higher pair
Three of a Kind - Medium effect of the suites involved
Straight - Strong suit effect of the highest card in the straight
Kingdom (flush) - Strong effect of affected suit
Allied Straight (once card of each suit, in a straight) - Medium effect of all suites
Four of a Kind - Strong effect of all suits
Kingdom Straight (straight flush) - Stronger effect of suit
Court of [suit] (royal straight flush) - Strongerest effect ever.

Examples given; a player holding 9 of Swords, 9 of Cups, 9 of Wands and the Squire of Wands would have a three of a kind and thus have a moderate increase in damage, regeneration per turn and saves. An enemy holding the Squire, Knight, Queen and King of Swords would hold the Court of Swords and proceed to take a fuckhuge amount of damage per turn until the cards times out.

--

Tree brainstorm using the above rules (modified from my earlier suggested tree):

Game of Courts (Luck/Cunning):

Draw: The player draws 4 cards and keeps them on hand for 10 turns. Casting this before the previous hand has timed out replaces the least valuable card in that hand with a new one from the deck and resets the timer. Chance of drawing good hands scale with luck. Higher talent levels increases strength and duration of effects. Effects scale with Cunning.

Deal: Deals 4 cards from the deck to all enemies within a radius. The cards stay for 10 turns. Casting this on an enemy that still has cards on hand this randomly replaces their highest card on hand. Odds for being dealt "good" hands scale with luck. Higher talent level increases strength and effect on enemies. Effects scale with Cunning.

Trump: Gives the player a damage/attack bonus when attacking monsters holding a worse hand of cards than him/her (bonus scales with talent level, cunning and relative hand strength).

Hustle: Replaces a card in the player's hand with a card chosen from target enemy's hand and resets both the player and enemy's hand timers. Higher talent level reduces Fortune cost and cooldown.

--

And a separate tree focused on immediate effects as well as making shuffling the deck matter (since the discard pile is a known quantity, one can choose to use talents of the most prevalent suit left in the Minor Arcana).

Sleight of Hand (Luck/Cunning):

Storm of Swords: Remove the top 8 cards of the minor arcana - for each Sword card removed this way deal X physical damage to target enemy. Causes bleeding. Damage scales with talent level and Cunning.

Ward of Wands: Remove the top 8 cards of the minor arcana - player gets a damage shield absorbing up to X times the number of wands removed this way. Scales with talent level and cunning.

Game of Cups: Remove the top 8 cards of the minor arcana - for each cup removed this way the player may return a card from the discard pile on top of the minor arcana. Higher talent levels lower the cooldown and talent cost.

Wealth of Fortune: Remove the top 8 cards from the minor arcana - Whenever the player would steal luck the next X turns instead he or she steals that amount + the amount of coin cards revealed this way. Duration increases with talent level.

EDIT: Oh yeah, more tl;dr: The Joker. Strictly speaking the Joker is set apart from both the 56/52 suit cards and 21 trumps of a Tarot deck. How about instead of having it being part of the minor/major arcana it shows up at random as a punishment of sorts when players attempt to use either at low luck levels? The exact nature of what would happen would be very random of course in spirit with card style artifacts in roguelikes everywhere .

[Fayd]

I can definitely understand people's concern with calling it "Luck." Imagine if this were in the default game (not an add-on) and I played a Wyrdthief for my first character-- the whole time I might be saying, "Hey, +max psi artifact, don't think I need that." Next game, I play a Berserker. Especially since Luck is a hidden attribute, and since I'm familiar with it as a resource for Wyrdthieves, I'll probably say, "Hey, +luck artifact, don't think I need that." I'd be mistaken, of course.

But if you're just looking at it as an add-on, the picture changes. You can expect people to come to the add-on with some experience with the game. Calling your resource "Luck" suggests to those players that +Luck items would affect it. And Luck is something that is already thematically part of ToME. (Whereas "karma" comes with different baggage that you might not want to attach to the game's background, and definitely does suggest different things to different people-- for instance, to me, it does suggest that you gain it from acting justly, and that might pervert your thematic vision.)

Actually, Luck as a resource, and as a stat are in fact one and the same. I know it comes with some interesting balance concerns, but I think it is an interesting use of a largely unused game mechanic. I'm stating that now, for the record, in plain English. This was my conception from the beginning, I probably was just unclear about it. As far as the other suggestions go, I will definitely consider it; I'm still not 100% sure about what I would do with the card system; I may actually crib some ideas from the Deck of Many Things. But before I get all that down, I'm getting the base of the classes down. I like some of the ideas so far, and I'll try to put together the Wyrdthief first.

[darkgod]

Just for info; I'm watching this topic

[Fayd]

Oh. Well then. No pressure.

Depending on my schedule, I may get around to getting the foundation of the code for the "resource."

[Fayd]

Well, I tried to get on the IRC... but then the server flipped out and I couldn't get back on. Tried a few things, no dice. Maybe I should get a dedicated client...

Announcement! I have figured out how to make cards work in a way I am satisfied with. They shall be Ammo that requires Magic and scales with Magic (and maybe Cunning). They will be fairly boring projectile weapons for the most part, but when used in Wyrdthief or Oracle skills, they will do many different things. The list of which might end up being linked to the material quality or Unique Artifact name.

I know it takes out some of the explicit "Hands" things, but I honestly feel this a less complicated, but more interesting, solution.

[nate]

That's a great idea-- lets you make a wide variety of cards.

Hopefully you can make some effects for the cards that affect other classes, so that you're not just diluting the drop pool.

If you ever want to make decks based on talents, you could always integrate it. Here's something I was imagining:

Talent 1: Adds 2-10 of wands to deck; adds knave of wands; adds lady of wands; adds king of wands; adds ace of wands (at levels 1-5)
Talent 2: Same, but with cups
Talent 3: Same, but with coins
Talent 4: Same, but with cups

Then, you collect Major Arcana (could be the classics, could be new ones like The Wyrm), and any in your inventory get added to your deck.

[Fayd]

That's a great idea-- lets you make a wide variety of cards.

Hopefully you can make some effects for the cards that affect other classes, so that you're not just diluting the drop pool.

If you ever want to make decks based on talents, you could always integrate it. Here's something I was imagining:

Talent 1: Adds 2-10 of wands to deck; adds knave of wands; adds lady of wands; adds king of wands; adds ace of wands (at levels 1-5)
Talent 2: Same, but with cups
Talent 3: Same, but with coins
Talent 4: Same, but with cups

Then, you collect Major Arcana (could be the classics, could be new ones like The Wyrm), and any in your inventory get added to your deck.

Of course, I want to make them a unique option. That said, I see them being a feasible ranged option for Arcane Blades or Shadowblades that focus on Magic. Even if they don't get a skill tree to use them spectacularly, they'll be at least as good as using a bow or sling for the Shoot talent. And if this goes somewhere, there could be item Egos that give some temporary Talents for skills.

[Planetus]

If you ever want to make decks based on talents, you could always integrate it. Here's something I was imagining:

Talent 1: Adds 2-10 of wands to deck; adds knave of wands; adds lady of wands; adds king of wands; adds ace of wands (at levels 1-5)
Talent 2: Same, but with cups
Talent 3: Same, but with coins
Talent 4: Same, but with cups

The problem with this is that, if the effect type is dependent on the suit, and certain suits are good while others are bad, the player is spending new talent points to unlock a bad option, or could stop at just the first good option and not go further. I'd rather suggest:

Talent 1: Adds 2-10 of each suit to deck; adds knave, squire, lady, and king (at levels 2-5)
Talent 2: Adds additional damage to ranged attacks with cards, like a weapon specialization.
Talent 3: Lets you shuffle the deck, with higher levels allowing more cards in the previous deck and lesser cooldown time.
Talent 4: ??? Maybe some kind of rapid-fire, like Deal Hand, or something? Target up to 5 closest monsters and hit each 4 times?

Anyway, especially if this talent tree becomes available for other classes somehow, the cards could become a viable ranged weapon for any magic class.

[Infinitum]

I'm interested to see how this turns out, gl with the coding!

[Fayd]

Thanks Infinitum. I'll see how things go this weekend; I think I'll actually have time to devote to coding.

As far as cards go, I think at this time it'll be a sustain. The decks can be used normally with Shoot, for damage and a chance for a weak somewhat random effect. If the sustain is active, you can use Deal to invoke a much greater effect. It'll end up being similar in concept to the Gestures tree the Doomed have, changing how mindstars work.

Alternatively it would just give them Deal. But I like the idea of a luck-sustain for this.

[nate]

The problem with this is that, if the effect type is dependent on the suit, and certain suits are good while others are bad, the player is spending new talent points to unlock a bad option, or could stop at just the first good option and not go further.

You're right, but that can be worked around by adding utility activations (draw vs shuffle vs cut vs draw from discard) at various levels, and by making the strength of a card proportional to the suit.

You can combine detrimental and beneficial effects in the same deck, just by having the strength of the effect scale with the affected character's Luck stat. That way, laying a detrimental card on yourself isn't very painful, because you have a high Luck, and laying a beneficial card on an enemy isn't too bad, because they only have a moderate Luck stat. In fact, you could have the same card be beneficial or detrimental, depending on the targets's Luck.

You can prevent deck stacking by having cards not take effect until the affect character takes damage (maybe, not even revealed until damage).

Since this group of classes is going to need other talents as well, and because sometimes it's hard to come up with ideas, I've thought of a new talent group based around probabilities:

Working name: Wagers

Level 1: Law of Averages: Sustained ability. Removes spikiness from incoming damage. At level 5, enemies will always hit you, but have their damage reduced by their miss rate; their crits will do no extra damage, but all of their damage will be improved by their crit rate and mult; damage range will always be right in the middle. That should make incoming damage nice and flat.

Level 2: Gambler's Fallacy: Activated ability, special cooldown, instant use. When activated, your next crit check will always crit; following that, your next naturally rolled crit will not crit, but will instead allow you to use Gambler's Fallacy again. Additional ranks allow you to go into larger crit-debt with this ability, so that at 5, you could get 5 guaranteed crits in a row.

Level 3: Longshot: Activated ability, cooldown ~25. At level 5, you attack with a chance to kill equal to damage done divided by target's remaining health. If you don't kill, your attack is downgraded to a miss (no damage).

Level 4: Heads or tails: Sustained ability, cooldown ~10, instant use. This changes the rng.percent function when learned, so it actually has an effect whether it's on or off, it just has opposite effects. When off, it changes the distribution of numbers determined by rng.percent to be more bell-shaped, thus making unlikely events even more unlikely. When on, it changes the distribution to become bimodal, thus making unlikely events much more likely. This is a potentially very powerful effect, but one that would be very difficult to learn to use well (steep skill cap), hence why it's at the top of the talent tree: I expect that some people wouldn't want to learn it. Additional levels make the effect more pronounced (steeper curve for the distribution, modes closer to 0 and 100 when it's on). It only affects rng.percent to prevent gaming things like merchant randarts, but I think you could safely affect rng.range as well.

I didn't include any resource costs, because I'm uncertain exactly how resources are gained and lost-- not sure what costs ought to be.

[darkgod]

Bump, how is this going ?

[noxnoctum]

Really liking the sound of these

[Fayd]

Bump, how is this going ?

Darkgod, not much progress yet; law school papers came up. Also I am still confused about how to actually code! I have some ideas at what to look at for models (thank you solipsists) but it's slow going, I'm afraid. I have to learn LUA as well as figure out how to code what I want. so...