Class idea: Blackened Hand (Arcane Brawler)

[Planetus]

astreoth, if you'll remember my earlier suggestion on the alchemist origin with blackened hands, the idea is that an amateur/novice alchemist wandering in the wilderness looses his staff, uses/looses all but two alchemist gems, and is then cornered by some beast that would probably mean death to them. In desperation, instead of throwing the gems to explode at point-blank range, they grip them in their hands and channel magic into them. This causes them to burn with power, burning the alchemist's hands, but also suffusing those hands, and the body they're connected to, with magical power, allowing the alchemist to barely survive the incident and make it home.

Also, realize that not all classes/races have a commonly occurring origin. How often do mages get their magic ripped away by dark powers, but then realize the hidden psionic powers that turn them into a Doomed? How often does a necromancer's summoning of an undead fault enough for that undead to be conscious and let the undead kill him and fight out of his dungeon? How many Yeeks are sent out of their isolated, solitary island to explore the world? How many Celestials are ripped from the Far East and lost in Maj'Eyal? None of those are common, but all of them are possible occurrences in this world. To rule out an origin just because it doesn't happen frequently doesn't fit with the already existing classes and (undead at least) races.

[The Revanchist]

And let's not forget the entire concept of the Corruptor.

Being discovered by an influential, pampered, rebellious, immortal(ish) elf after... Everything that led up to that moment sure wwasn't a guarantee. On top of that, the Grand Corruptor embracing this power wasn't guaranteed. So the entire metaclass was on shaky grounds!

[astreoth]

okay I know that these events aren't common but they are recurring and thats why they work.

spellcasters who draw power from dark forces are evident in the myriad cults across maj'eyal cultists loosing the favor of their demon masters or being stripped of their power by zigur are probably common enough that they hit one with psionic potential every once in a while.

screwing up necromancy is probably likely for a beginner and cloaks of deception are known of among necromancers as evident by the necromancers primer lore mentioning derth being all undead people wearing cloaks of deception as a possible reason why necromancers seem unable to take root near the place. so it's clear theirs more than one way for undead adventurers to pop up.

the way to the mainland is guarded by subject z so their probably sending some through every once in a while its just their not surviving the trip.

okay according to zemmekys a lot are sent until he breaks the test portal and you get their as an adventurer by breaking the coral portal right? and while I admit the celestial classes path to maj'eyal is a bit of a one time thing the class itself is recurring.

and for corruptors remember the orcish blood mages, and plague spreading sorcerers of the age of dusk the rahloren may be one of the largest and most organized groups of corruptors but they weren't the first to use it and even without them their'd still be other crazy cults around to keep the corrupter metaclass alive.

so yeah these aren't common events but they are recurring ones and your current proposal is more of a one shot deal I could see him training others in the new art he learned like zemmekys does for chronomancy but the severe hand scaring kinda seems like a drawback that will push a lot of potential students away.

[Sradac]

I see a lot of arguing over lore here when in the end, who cares? This is an addon. If lore was supposed to be the most important thing here, this would be in the base game.

Why does this guy use only his hands to cast spells? Because he wants to. PLENTY of amazing addons dont fit into the lore at all, it really dosent matter. And you can't claim lore is the most important thing because ToME is an RPG when really....its not. No roguelike is much of an "rpg" beyond leveling up your character. There's no immersion, no deep choices, no huge over-arching storylines with multiple outcomes. In the end its the same: kill the bad mages, save the world. I can't decide to settle down and become a farmer and let the world burn, because thats not what ToME is. It's about epic combat.

And close ranged, scarily powerful magic that leaves the caster at risk? About as epic as it can be.

Also since when do mages "have" to have a staff to use magic? My archmage can cast spells just fine without one.

So fine, here's your lore:

Code: Select all

Blackened Hands were at one time some of the greatest students of Angolwen.  They were the brightest of the brightest, the most innate potential and had the best study habits.  But, they would not settle for "good enough" as Angolwen would have them do.  They knew they could do more.  They KNEW they had the power, that they could do great things.  They cared not for the warnings of the Spellblaze, because they knew those who created it were not careful.  They didnt have this deep, innate understanding of Magic that the Blackened Hands did.

They begin to experiment on their own with Magic.  Unfortunately, the majority of instructors in Angolwen keep the students staves locked up outside of classes, to prevent any kind of "accidents" such as the ones to follow.  They quickly learned that while dangerous, they don't necessarily have to have a Staff to channel Magic. Instructors began to question why they constantly wore gloves to classes and it was found out this was to cover their charred hands.  

They're expelled from the school, practice on their own, yadda yadda yadda you get the picture, fill out the rest yourself. I came up with this in about 5 minutes so its not the most descriptive.

Basically super power-hungry mages who tried to practice on their own. The mechanics can focus around risk vs reward. This class could have the hands down, most damaging magic in the game. But it comes with a risk. Its crazy hard to control that kind of power. Hard to direct it where you want it, so most spells are short range. But not only that, hard to keep it from blowing yourself up.

Throw in something like a backfire mechanic, sure why not. But more importantly, make almost every spell do area damage. Damage that will hurt you. Initially, a LOT. Set them up so they can 1-shot pretty much almost any enemy early on but also weaken themselves.

Eventually, they learn to control this. Give them something like spell-shaping, but never 100%. They should always be at risk of their wild powers. Maybe even give them a mechanic that keeps them going and keeps the risk up. The more they hurt themselves, the more of that magically energy they absorb. Like a perpetual motion machine.

They hurt themselves with magic, they absorbs some of the mana back. Not all of it, but enough to keep them going.

Think of them as a Wild Mage if you want. Or like Ignus from Torment. Or whatever. Some mages that are insanely power hungry, but also are insanely egotistical. They won't dabble in Blight because thats the "easy way". They believe themselves to be the "true" masters of magic so they stay to its truest forms (elemental, arcane, etc.) but they unleash them to devastating effects.

Why do they want to save the world? They don't. They want to show those mages who the real ArchMage is. And they want to break that damn staff, because staves are a crutch.

[astreoth]

yeah arguing about lore because I want the class to be compatible for main game integration may just start out as an addon, but if it comes out up to par want this to get main game integration. I mean this all did start from wanting more unarmed variety in the main game.

also your idea sounds awesome but considering how high the damage of this class would be, backlash on abilities could easily end up suicidal, not to mention archmages don't need staffs to use magic they just use them for stronger magic.

[The Revanchist]

I really, really want to see what happens when someone tries to break a Godslayer weapon, now.

I don't know that "fireworks" would be the extent of it. Maybe not "total annihilation", but definitely pretty cool.

The " stronger magics" are exactly what they want to channel, though. And seeing as their egos got the best of them...

[Planetus]

I don't think finalizing the lore and working it into the lore of ToME is absolutely necessary, but it does lay a thematic path to establish the skills that will follow. I'm already seeing several of the lores pointing in very different skill-build directions: Highly skilled and controlled melee (mine and maybe Atarlost's), wild and dream-built melee (astreoth's), wild and uncontrolled (astreoth's and Sradac's). The themes of blight-corrupted, wild power fueled, mad (err... inventive) alchemist, scarcely lucky mage (of any kind I guess), and such all would lead us to very different classes.

I don't like the idea of this class being a 'run the bleeding edge' class, so I don't like Sradac's idea, but it is a maybe. I'd like to see the class get a few cones that need a melee starting target, a few self-centered AoEs, a few rush/backhand like movement skills, one or two (or three) shields, and the like, but I don't want every hit to be a melee-based explosion that burns them as well.

Of course, I'm trying not to push my ideas for the class as the only ones, just casting my vote for them.

[Hogulus]

A lore idea that I think would unite a lot of the concepts here:

Most mages are formally trained. They have an instructor telling them to remain calm, clear their mind, and gently sense the strings of magic weaving the world together around them. They start small, using their minds to give the smallest ones a little tug to create a few sparks, and only once they're ready do they move on to untangling the thickly-woven cords that can release bursts of flame, electrical energy, and so on. They can still see the larger, snarled knots tied in the world's fabric, but they know such things are outside their ability to control; and most importantly, no matter how clearly they can see the threads of it pulsing through the air in front of them, no matter how tempting it is to just grab a thick rope of it and wrench it free with all their might, they know to only reach out gently with their mind and pluck the strings, or use a staff to safely pry them apart and insulate them from the surge of raw magic. A bard doesn't make music by pulling the strings from his lute, just cacophony.

Some mages, however, are not so fortunate. Whether they're arrogant enough to think they can control the whole of magic, frustrated and impatient with simply prodding a source of immense power, practicing in secret where having a staff would be too conspicuous, desperately clutching at the weave in a panic, drained of the concentration that lets them sense which threads can be safely touched, or simply don't have the guidance or research to know any better, they reach for a pulsing conduit of magic, one far more powerful than their minds and bodies can handle. Most die, blown apart in a messy fashion by the released energy, or find themselves welded to a channel of blight, unable to let go as it warps them with corruption. A few, however, survive, their hands scarred and mutilated from the direct contact, but the rest of their being infused with raging magic. These "blackened hand" mages, bereft of the dexterity that allows other mages to finely redirect the weave in whatever direction they choose and pull on a selected string linked to a distant location, act as a conduit for a powerful storm of magic that they can just barely control. With their cauterized hands, they can claw at the weave itself fearlessly, bringing countless severed strands down on those near them, or simply grab their foes and let the magic flow.

tl;dr: grabbed a source of magic they couldn't handle, whether out of ignorance, arrogance, carelessness, or desperation

[Planetus]

Hogulus, I love your summation of many options into one! The build also leads to something of a blend: a mage-warrior that's mostly about control, but control on the brink of breaking. Most talents would imply some skilled, smooth martial-artist like movements, both in physical and magical realms, but a few here and there, probably at high tiers, suggest a more wild, uncontrolled way of fighting, probably incredibly powerful, but with serious consequences to their use (massive resource drain, inflicts negative status effects like Pin, Blindness, Burning, etc, or maybe even deals damage to the user). It also kind of suggests a break from the classical mage elements. Strike at massive knots of many forms of magic, and anything could come out! One thing that kind of bugs me, though, is how it ties the physical to the mental/magical realm. Reaching out (figuratively, we're really doing it with our minds and magical senses, right?) and grasping a massive knot burns your physical hands? I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think the official in-game lore suggests that magic is done more with the mind/spirit than with the actual body.

And, for the record, my original idea was all about arrogance and paying the price for it, so mine will probably always be that.

[Hogulus]

My idea is that it's a process that's 95% mental and 5% physical. In a lot of settings, the need for casters to wear robes is explained by the requirement of performing elaborate gestures, and in ToME wearing heavy armor makes casting drain your mana faster.

This is kind of a contrived metaphor, and not entirely consistent with how the relevant physics actually work, but my idea for it is basically... Imagine you're wearing a fancy glove that functions as a metal detector and has an embedded electromagnet, and you're dipping your hands into a vat filled with nonmagnetic aluminum dust and a few pockets of iron shavings, plus one or two strong neodymium magnets. People without the gloves, or with their gloves turned off, would just stick their hands in, flail them around, and come back up with little, if any, iron in their hands. If the gloves are powered with energy (mana), though, you could sense the locations of the pockets (useful magic), turn on the magnet to grab them, and sense the magnetic forces well enough to avoid turning the magnet on near the neodymium (blight or overcharged magic) to prevent damage to the gloves. (A Blackened Hand is, effectively, wearing a glove strong enough to suck up all the fillings and neodymium without worry of damaging them, destroying the orderly nature of the pockets but also giving him a fistful of what he's after.)

Magic allows you to see the threads, and lets you bring your hands / staff into the same plane of reality, or otherwise "phase" into a state where the threads can be interacted with; this is most of what a mage spends his effort on. But there's still a little bit of physical interaction necessary to wrangle the threads into compliance.

[Planetus]

The analogy to magnetic fields is, well, interesting. I think I like multidimensional phase space better. The standard person sees space as three dimensions, plus time. People with magically attuned senses see it as more like a dozen or so dimensions, with physical reality only working on 3 of them, and then time. A mage activates magic by interacting with the magical weave that occupies the remaining 9 or so dimensions, moving in, twistwise, and the like, but also needing to move his hands up and left and backward to reach the appropriate position in all 12 dimensions. Their magical senses, run through their minds, allow them to 'move' in the other 9 (or however many) dimensions, even when they're not moving in the standard 3. Some of those dimensions may also involve vibrations, which explain any use of chants or incantations, and also to some degree how a properly timed/tuned shout can disrupt all magic around it. It essentially sends the entire world around it spinning rather chaotically through the weave in those dimensions, so anyone trying to use magic either couldn't get a grip on anything or is very unlikely to get what he wants.

The Blackened Hand, then, managed, probably by pure accident, to actually tie their hands into the weave itself, like it got knotted around their hands or something, causing a lot of damage to the hands, but also ensuring they've pretty much always got direct access to tons of magic, if often confused and a bit random magic. Ok, working through this, I guess my interpretation also suggests the class would get high (though not necessarily 100%) silence resistance.

[astreoth]

you know that's actually really good the lore for magical items already says their made through permanently attuning the items to specific threads so this could work out pretty well.