Oddball Stat + Talent Interactions

[Doctornull]

(...) Now, this is a question of degree, but I'd like to see more talents use wildly off-base stats for extra effects. Like what if shield pummel got extra stun duration based on cunning, or vitality boosted how much spell save you got from the magic stat? If every class had a few talents that had some extra scaling with each stat, then we could let your choice in stats influence your playstyle more heavily.

Note that I'm specifically talking about having these off-stats increase these talents - I don't want the talent, as is, to be penalized for not having it.

Some mechanical ideas:

- For class trees, focus on one off-stat per tree. So idea might be that Shield Offense benefits from Cunning, rather than just Shield Pummel.

- For generic trees, it's harder to justify such focus, since trees get shared more and since the player gets fewer generic talent points. So going talent-by-talent is fine IMHO, especially for popular trees like Survival and the first two talents of Conditioning.

[Delmuir]

Oh I like this idea very much.

I agree with the limitation on generic categories but perhaps this effect should only apply to talent categories, given that many generics are shared by way of escort missions and it could lead to some cheese combos.

This would allow for better race/class combinations as well as super-powered skills, in a sense. It's a cost-benfit issue and a good one. Trade off some primary stats to enhance certain skill or category… more so, this might allow such a trade-off to make some crappy skills more interesting.

I'm a bit at a loss as to what kind of effects this could have and only two came to mind:

Necromancer Advanced Minion's category:

Points into dexterity or strength (not sure what makes more sense) could improve the global speed of your minions and golems, the damage of undead explosion, and the damage limit or duration (either one would make this actually useful) of the sacrifice shield.

Archmage Stone and Earth categories:

Strength could improve the damage and/or range of skills in this category.

Just a thought...

[Red]

A lot of celestial or just straight up magic could benefit from Willpower, but that runs serious risk of being overpowered since Willpower is such a nice stat to have anyway.

And hate to branch off from the "one tree, one secondary stat" idea so fast, but Summoners could have summons scale directly with their stats along with your own, though at a higher rate since you still need Willpower and Cunning. So you can make your Melee tree better by buffing Strength, upgrade your ranged summons with Dexterity building, and general survivability buffs with Constitution work. This would also synergize nicely (possibly overpoweredly) with Swift Hands, since you could swap on all your +Strength gear before summoning your Golem, then all your +Dexterity for your Flamespitter, etc. etc.

[Effigy]

This seems like a useful change. Currently, most builds are all about pumping 2 primary stats and Cunning for crits. Adding some opportunity cost to the attribute spread would spice things up.

[Nagyhal]

An excellent example of this I feel is in dao's recently released Forgeknight.

Most of the class is composed of the familiar Techniques talents, like Shield Offense, 2h Assault, Conditioning and what have you.

Then, the work of the Forgeknight addon is to add several new trees which aid in the process of "forging" or upgrading pieces of weaponry and armour.

The bulk of the class's ability predictably rely on Strength, Dexterity and Constitution. BUT there are these 3 little skills, one that adds increased nonphysical damage to your weapons scaling with Mag (along with non-Mag reliant effects), one that adds a similar effect but for your armour, and another (a generic) that adds a straight-up bonus to your Mag and Cun.

And what this says to me when I'm playing as a Forgeknight is: "You don't need to worry about levelling Magic for this character, but if you do wish to go the Magic route and acquire great Mag-based tools that are available to each character, like Light, Vile Life, even Staff Combat, then this class is going to support you in that and you're fully able to see unique benefits from your decisions."

I think that's what makes it such a sweet thing for me, not that it's a powerful or very well balanced secondary build option, but that what you get is something unique, a charming and flavoursome reward for the decision you've made.