Wow, Tome 4 is cool. Also, class concept and other stuff

[Sirrocco]

This started out being a "Wow, Tome is nifty" post, and then it fairly quickly turned into an ideas post, so I figured I'd post it here to begin with and save people the trouble of moving it.

the game is delightful. DarkGod, I'm really very happy that you were able to turn it into something that you enjoy putting together again, and I'm really very impressed with how far it's come in such a relatively short time. I'm definitely a fan of the unlockable races/classes - I'd love to see even more of them (and ones that unlock in quirkier ways - possibly half-trolls/half-orcs, gained from dominating a troll or orc? Perhaps a golem race, gained for getting an alchemist to a certain level? If you wished to include other breeds of dwarf, it might be something as easy as talking to some random NPC in a town. Perhaps a merchant class that you could gain by buying out the stock of a store - or a tourist class, from visiting every floor of every dungeon/quest. On the other hand, I think that the current set of initially unlocked characters works just fine.

The degree to which the game is built around difficult, easily failable quests bugs me to a degree, but I suspect that that will subside as I get better at beating them.

For class concepts - well, I haven't unlocked everything, so I can't be quite sure I'm not repeating previous stuff, but I'd love to see a con-based class that ran off of "cast from hit points" abilities (possibly in the "Cursed" group) - or possibly a dual-resource HP/Sacrifice system. They've made pacts with Evil Things, and they pay for their abilities with their blood, but as they cast, and, particularly, as they kill things with spells, the Evil Things pay more attention (their level of Sacrifice goes up) and their powers actually get more effective. There wouldn't be anything that they could use Sacrifice for directly - it would just make their powers more effective, and would decay over time. You'd basically wind up with a caster version of the Cursed character - constantly bulling ahead, trying to scrape together enough HP resources to not slow down too badly, but not interested in taking damage from others or getting into melee at all.

Interesting concepts to play with here
- Some of their powers are more or less affected by the Sacrifice mechanic, and some are more or less efficient at turning HP into Sacrifice points. Thus, there might be some builds that were constantly lurching ahead, trying to stay in front of the power curve, using powers that were (in general) Sacrifice-efficient and highly sacrifice-dependent, and others that paid relatively little attention to Sacrifice, and played more like a traditional caster might if his manabar and HP bar were attached to each other.
- Possibly have one sustain that (among other things) stops Sacrifice decay, but has a significant ongoing HP cost - letting the "high Sacrifice" character guarantee max effect at a cost in health. On the other hand, dropping out of this sustain should set your sacrifice to 0. Likewise, a sustain that buffs your HP regen fairly significantly, but drains your Sacrifice fairly fast.
- leave space for hybrids by putting important powers on both sides of the line. All of the really important debuffs - stuns/freezes/etc - might require reasonably high sacrifice to work properly, while the survivability powers (heals, if any, teleports, and so forth) might cause sacrifice to decay faster. That might lead to a hybrid that was something of a burst character - cranking up his level of Sacrifice to pour pain into the enemy until he hits a point where he feels like he's getting too close to dying, and then switching sides and letting his Sacrifice tank while he keeps himself alive and flees to recover.

Eh. If this seems interesting to people, I'll try to throw some more stuff together on it, but that's the basics.

[Zonk]

Hiya, always happy to see others who love this game

As for your idea: we have something like that already, sort of...the Reaver class(unlockable, in the Afflicted group) uses 'Vim' as a resource.

At lower levels, you have to recover it with the 'Blood Sacrifice' talent, which drains a % of your life to give you back Vim...and can only be used when there are enemies around.
Other 'Afflicted'classes are also already planned, I think...Blood Mage, Necromancer...

[Sirrocco]

Obviously, if the coding team wants to cannibalize some or all of the concept for planned caster types, that's all to the good. I'm just tossing out ideas that I think might be nifty, in the hopes that someone might find a use for one or two of them. I think, though, that there are some differences with the Reaver, from what I've heard about it. (Admittedly, I haven't unlocked Reaver yet.)

- First, you have the Cursed-style "as you fight and kill, you get more powerful. As you rest, you weaken" thing. It's done in a somewhat different way, and built around a ranged playstyle, rather than a melee one, but combined with the fact that the character is casting from HP, it strongly encourages taking more risks than perhaps one should.

- Second, you have a character who's balanced around maxxing con, and still manages to be fragile in a way.

- Third, you have a resource that's not actually being spent - it's just there as a control on the powerlevel of some of your spells and effects. Sure, there are powers that will cause Sacrifice to go down, but you can cast them while at 0 sacrifice without problems.

(alternate idea: single-resource character - "traumamancer" or something. Cast from HP. Certain of your powers power up based on what fraction of HP you have left. If you're at 75%, they're okay. If you're at 50%, they're strong. If you're at 10%, they're amazing - but you're at 10% HP, and just casting the spell will drop you lower. How lucky do you feel?)