Very rough class idea: the Shattered

[tylor]

and who would that be? human, elf someone else?
higher and ogres were engineered to have their qualities.
how could someone engineer a race of split people, stable enough to repopulate, and maintain the trait hereditary?

Ghouls and Skeletons also had some other race before It happened.

But traits of their new state has overrided watever they had before.

[Radon26]

so there is someone shattering people...

[twas Brillig]

This is a really neat concept! It works really well with ToME's temporal and afflicted themes, like you said, but I can also see an interesting Positive/Negative dichotomy with the celestials. You could probably get some interesting folk lore/urban legend angles with dopplegangers, shadow people, etc.

I agree with Frogtaur. The biggest problem with this idea is keeping the AI from ruining everything. Even with a tight leash on the player, the default AI will tend to get lost behind the player or get sidetracked chasing down enemies. Either one of those becomes a big problem just from a power stand point when one half or the other ends up fighting a rare or a boss on their own, and it also makes things like balancing "If the two are more than 3/+ squares apart they lose 10%/- hp per turn" harder. One alternative would be to teleport the inactive half of the player when it got out of range, which would also make it a lot easier to get away from a losing fight cleanly.

One thing that ought to be figured out pretty early is "what happens when one of you dies?" There's something interestingly roguelikey about that being it. If half of you dies, they're gone until you get a resurrection. On the other hand, your halves are probably going to be fragile (and, again, reckless) enough that death is going to be really hard to avoid. Rather than taking half your health in one hit forcing you to play defensively, it means you're semi-permanently crippled. For play-ability's sake, I'd suggest giving each half a respawn trigger and only completely killing the player once both halves are dead.

I expect a side-effect of this mechanic is it's going to turn out they're either really durable or really fragile. Because of that, I'd lean towards making them a class so their mechanics can weight things the other way -- i.e. if having two bodies makes it too damn easy to escape a fight, have their talents revolve around sacrifice, recklessness, fragility, paradox, etc. If having two bodies means anything with AoE explodes both your pants, give them lots of good ways to shrug off damage if played strategically.

[HousePet]

Perhaps both could be in one tile? Or just one creature, with one life bar but each time you perform and action, your other half does its own attack?

[tylor]

so there is someone shattering people...

Maybe it as something like this http://i.imgur.com/2Aih4rO.jpg

[tylor]

I agree with Frogtaur. The biggest problem with this idea is keeping the AI from ruining everything. Even with a tight leash on the player, the default AI will tend to get lost behind the player or get sidetracked chasing down enemies. Either one of those becomes a big problem just from a power stand point when one half or the other ends up fighting a rare or a boss on their own, and it also makes things like balancing "If the two are more than 3/+ squares apart they lose 10%/- hp per turn" harder. One alternative would be to teleport the inactive half of the player when it got out of range, which would also make it a lot easier to get away from a losing fight cleanly.

Class talents (if it is a class) can be tailored to two-man fight. With abilities like "teleport both to target", "attack enemy and command other to focus on same enemy", "aggro all enemies" etc.

One thing that ought to be figured out pretty early is "what happens when one of you dies?" There's something interestingly roguelikey about that being it. If half of you dies, they're gone until you get a resurrection. On the other hand, your halves are probably going to be fragile (and, again, reckless) enough that death is going to be really hard to avoid. Rather than taking half your health in one hit forcing you to play defensively, it means you're semi-permanently crippled. For play-ability's sake, I'd suggest giving each half a respawn trigger and only completely killing the player once both halves are dead.

Simple way is to just make single hp bar for both. Which would make area attack enemies extra nasty.
Maybe shared status effects too. Or make it "rubber band" - hp of both is averaged each turn, status that one is habing (both good and bad) has chance of be copied or moved to another.

[twas Brillig]

Simple way is to just make single hp bar for both. Which would make area attack enemies extra nasty.

Not just area attacks, but also hordes. On the one hand, getting surrounded by 8 enemies is bad enough, but getting surrounded by 16 is potentially twice as bad. I don't think area attacks are particularly common among enemies, but outside of vaults neither are gigantic hordes? There's also the possibility to (depending on implementation) build or equip one body as a tank and tie up enemies.

Leaving aside companion AI, does the enemy AI distinguish between the player and their allies? Or will it always go for the first thing in sight, unless a taunt effect changes its target, etc? Part of the reason Alchemists are beginner-friendly (though not overwhelmingly strong) is the golem is a nice buffer while the alchemist can hold back and bomb. On the one hand, I think it's important that half the character not be as disposable as a golem, on the other hand a stronger companion which can be played intelligently could be a really effective tank.

Maybe shared status effects too. Or make it "rubber band" - hp of both is averaged each turn, status that one is habing (both good and bad) has chance of be copied or moved to another.

I'm not sure how I feel about adding randomness. Keeping track of two sets of effects that may or may not overlap, and may or may not transfer, and may or may not have different durations...could be a pain. I guess if you look at from the perspective of sharing effects being the default (maybe have it happen if you don't have X ranks in Y talent), and then have a chance to not synchronize the effects it sort of becomes a weird, blanket partial immunity.

The exact way this is handled could have interesting (or frustrating and over-complicated) ties to the exact fluff of the class. If it's one mind in two bodies (or two minds which are jumbled up), mental effects should be shared but not physical effects, magic is a toss-up. If it's someone whose timeline has been folded back on itself, all effects could be shared but they shouldn't transfer right away. If it's multiple timelines interacting, you can justify literally anything.

Implementation-wise, I suspect synchronizing effects between actors would look pretty similar with or without the chance to transfer.

Just a thought, but a lot of temporal talents work out to being really effective, overlapping defenses. Depending on how many unique talent trees are necessary to make the split-character mechanic/concept work, and assuming that multiple bodies are implemented in a way that is fragile and not tanky, a temporal theme might be a good starting point at shoring that up.

[astreoth]

I think the best way to handle the dual body thing would be to keep ai out of it entirely and give both body's a passive that swaps control at the end of their action, like just switch control when you can't make anymore decisions but before you actually do any actions.

example of this would be first half targets an enemy with a melee skill that needs a target in melee range but fires a much stronger temporal cone if that targets not there.
so then the second half fires offensive runes at that target killing it and letting you get the cone effect.

problem is I'm not sure if the codebase has any support for this or how it'd work functionally.
anyone familiar with the code willing to chip in on potential hiccups with a instant switch control on action passive.

[tylor]

Idea 1: Chess. Only one half can act at a time, another is just standing there.
Idea 2: multi-turn actions. Like Shadowblade's Ambuscade. Half you control start some ability that do something specific for several turns, you automatically switch to other half.

I don't think there will be much problems with switching. Alchemists and Summoners handle it fine.

[HousePet]

Actually the Alchemist has had numerous bugs due to the player controlling the Golem at the time something happened.