Runic Mastery tree (analogue to Fungus)

[SageAcrin]

Teleport Mastery is, again, an idea that fails to bring more to a physical fighter than mages.

For mages, it represents boosted control to unique teleports to their skillset, which in turn can mean savings on points and unique advantages.

For physical fighters, it...represents a semi-controlled Teleport. Controlled Phase Door Runes already exist, and controlled Teleport, while nice(I certainly tend to get it myself), usually isn't that necessary. Or used, if you'll look at the vaults. The concept doesn't do much that much to those without class-based teleports, otherwise; Certainly, nothing fighters of any type that could have gone AM will consider a notable deal.

[Doctornull]

C: It needs to not massively raise the power of those that couldn't go AM(Undead, mages). So it needs some kind of disproportionate bonus to physical or mind playstyles-and, again, to not be too powerful. Mind's probably a lost cause; Most of AM runs off Mind. But it'd be nice if it could be pulled off without massively buffing Mind classes.

This actually succeeds in a few respects-it's a weaker tree than Fungus and it's semi-indirect.

Thanks for the analysis!

It sounds like I've partially succeeded, but ideally the buffs would be LESS applicable to an Archmage or an Undead. I think this is possible to achieve.

But it strengthens the hell out of undead, and strengthens Archmages heavily. And the elemental strengthening from Runes still tends more towards mages than physical fighters. And the one skill that really disproportionately helps non-mages(the last) is, as has been mentioned, questionable for theme.

Well, here's the thing about Skeletons and Archmages: they have a lot of good stuff to sink their General points into already. It would be a proportionately huge commitment for a Skeleton or Archmage to 20/20 this tree, relative to what a Cornac or Alchemist could do with it.

I'll update the top post with my design notes.

The idea's interesting, but ultimately anything that focuses heavily on Runes will boost the heck out of Undead. Ghouls are fine with this, they're not all that strong anyways. But Skeletons, not so much-this removes the majority of a Skeleton's downsides, leaving only the EXP issue.
(...)
And I just can't imagine a lot of fighters (Undead aside, obviously.) thinking this is a major benefit to them. It's not useless, but its advantages all definitely have a mage tilt.

Okay. More perks relevant to physical & mental classes, ideally also (partially) excluding the Undead.

I think this is doable.

Thanks again!

[SageAcrin]

Well, here's the thing about Skeletons and Archmages: they have a lot of good stuff to sink their General points into already. It would be a proportionately huge commitment for a Skeleton or Archmage to 20/20 this tree, relative to what a Cornac or Alchemist could do with it.

Archmages...actually don't as much as you'd think-you don't need big investments in Conveyance or Combat Training, and while they do invest heavily in Aegis, it's just one category. The Category Point is a better argument for them, but it's still a very validly good category for them as it stands.

Skeletons have no real issue springing for an extra category point, though, and this actually makes Resilient Bones no longer heavily required-so they can reassign Generic to a degree for that cost, if they want. I don't agree at all with the assessment that it's better on a Cornac.

[Doctornull]

1.) Add a stat requirement. Fungus needs willpower, which makes it less tempting for classes that don't pump willpower. Adding a stat would not only 'weaken' the tree altogether, but also focus it more. Making the stat Magic may seem natural, but biases this even more toward mage-types than it already would be. I'd suggest a 'everyone needs some' stat like Con for this. Since the runes are inscribed on the body, that's also a reasonable option. If the requirements aren't too high, this won't be too bad for glass cannon types.

If it's a stat everyone has anyway, why bother requiring it? All you'd do is exclude some niche builds.

This isn't the first tree to eschew stat requirements: the Accuracy talent is based purely on level, and the Cursed/Predator tree is also statless (and one of my favorite trees in the game).

2.) Buffing shielding runes a whole lot may seen natural and tempting, but it can easily OP this tree. A shielding rule that lasts 7 turns (5 natural +2 from this) can make permashields fairly easy to get, something which was previously only possible with Aegis+Light+2 shielding runes of low cooldown. I'd rather see the runes that are less commonly used buffed, like vision and the attack runes, though phase door/teleport removing status effects is a good idea.

In my experience, a Shield rune without Aegis will fall to damage WAY before its duration expires. If you have access to Aegis, it's frankly better than this tree anyway, and if you're buying this tree AND you're buying Aegis, you won't have enough points for the best stuff in Celestial/Light.

3.) Maybe make this cause nature powered items to have a magic disrupting effect? They'd still be equippable, like magic disrupting gear, but add that chance. I was going to suggest making magic disrupting gear unequippable, but between the lack of uniques that do so and the fact that most people using a lot of runes won't equip them anyway, that may be a weak option.

Nah, the whole point of going Pro-Magic is to have more choices.

I guess that means that I ought to buff Infusions as well as Runes, since that emphasizes the "more choice" thing.

4.) Somewhere give Firebeam runes a 50% conversion to Arcane damage. Similarly, give Lightning runes some % life draining. Maybe give Ice Lance runes the ability to either dispel positive effects on the target or to put some talents in cooldown? Or maybe give it some damage shield penetration?

The 50% resistance penetration is intended to be basically this.

6.) For Runic Harmony, I'd limit it to only officially magical sources: mana, positive, negative, paradox, vim, souls. I agree to banning vim/souls, or maybe allow vim at a very low level (1/turn), and negative should definitely be low. Paradox is also iffy as the mage may WANT high/low paradox. I could also see hate charging as the hater realizes the uselessness of this waste.

Without Vim, Souls & Paradox, that's just Mana, Positive & Negative. Positive is already not a resource most people have trouble with, so it's really just Negative, and that might spoil the resource mini game for one class... and mean nothing to anyone else.

Psi and Equilibrium were the two resources which I'm still thinking might be interesting and not useless to buff, since there are some Escort trees which can grant Psi talents, and there are plenty of ways to get Equilibrium trees.

The nice thing about Equilibrium is it buffs the living but not the undead, so that may help with SageAcrin's balance issue.

As for balancing against AM, while AM has some high costs to that path, it also grants access to several otherwise inaccessible trees. Mindstar Mastery may be bought without going AM, but you still need to at least access Zigur. The titular AM tree and the Fungus tree can only be gotten this way (outside of classes that start with them), and it gives you access to other generic trees you may not already have through escorts.

Agree, AM is very strong, and providing a viable alternative without over-powering spellcasters & the Undead is not a trivial problem.

Thanks for your input!

[Doctornull]

Archmages...actually don't as much as you'd think-you don't need big investments in Conveyance or Combat Training, and while they do invest heavily in Aegis, it's just one category. The Category Point is a better argument for them, but it's still a very validly good category for them as it stands.

Skeletons have no real issue springing for an extra category point, though, and this actually makes Resilient Bones no longer heavily required-so they can reassign Generic to a degree for that cost, if they want. I don't agree at all with the assessment that it's better on a Cornac.

Hmm. Let me lay out my thinking, maybe you can tell me where I'm going wrong:

Aegis: solid 16/20
Conveyance: minimum 5/1/5/0 or 1/5/5/0
Divinations: useful but not mandatory
Combat: 5/1/0/0/0

That's 16 + 11 + 6 = 33 general points minimum. That's out of 43 (up to 47 if you get all the quest rewards), so you have 10 free points (up to 14 free points).

Other things which people seem to want are:

Celestial/Light: 12 to 16/20, worth spending a Prodigy to obtain, combos very well with Aegis.
Racial trees: varies by race, of course.
Harmony: not applicable to the Undead, but 1/5/0/0 is sweeeeeeet on a Wildfire dude.
Stone Alchemy: 5/5/0/0 is quite solid.
Staff Combat: 5/5/1/1 makes my Reavers happy. Archmage use varies, of course.


... so that's what this tree is up against. IMHO it's weaker than Celestial/Light even at 0.80, do you think that's correct?

Thanks!

[SageAcrin]

A1: All classes start with some Generic points, invested in talents. Just one on Archmage, but.

A2: The Sandworm Queen's Heart is +1 Generic.

B: There is very little reason to 5 Teleport(4 is sufficient for controlled teleport), and 5ing Phase Door is questionable(4 is sufficient for controllable Phase Door, 5 just lowers the fuzz radius from 3 to 2).

C: It isn't required to 5 out most of Aegis. Shielding has a high baseline and low upwards scaling, Arcane Reconstruction and Arcane Shield can definitely be used without 5ing them, and it's questionable to raise Aegis above 2-they all have diminishing returns. 16 is the high end, IMO, not the low end. 10-16 is more accurate, if you're paying attention to payoff. (Many people don't, but even then 5/4/5/2 is the most common thing I tend to see for heavy invests.)

D: Similarly, a 5 on Displacement Shield isn't required; It gets pretty good mileage at 3.

E: Celestial/Light is not a fair comparison; It, if anything, is the Arcane equivalent of Fungus(this is why they don't need a second equivalent, in part.). And you can easily 3/1/3/1 the tree to get decent mileage. Having said that, yes, this category point-and the bunch of others Archmages get-is why I said it would only compete, rather than crush the competition. Still, it can easily be stacked, and provides undead Archmages, specifically, with a unique advantage(unsilenceable Runes; This is a huge deal, this is one of the ways you can be rendered fully powerless). It can be worth going down to four Runes for that, funny enough.

(Projected build; 4/1/3/0 Conveyance, 3/4/3/2 Aegis, 1/1/1/5 Runes, 3/1/3/1 Light, 1/5/1/5 Skeleton, 5/1/0/0/0 Combat. 54, probably would drop Bone Shield to 1 since it functions still at L1 and I'm getting more bonuses to my Shielding that make up for it. 50 is one point off; I'd probably drop one off Aegis, or maybe just do some point juggling by this stage. Done!

So I'm losing maybe 30-40 damage off most of my shields, a few hundred off my heal-based barriers, a hundred off my Barrier, and a lot off Bone Shield...in exchange for longer, harder to stop Shielding Runes, the ability to heal Silence off myself with a Frozen Spear-huge deal, believe me-Rune resetting-also a huge deal, lets me get more Shields up to make up for the losses I have-and some nice bonuses.

Yeah this looks like a really good deal-Limits you to something simple like Wildfire only for Class unlocks and four slots, but very worth it. Even better, let's skip Celestial/Light and use it with the obvious Meta/Temporal build; We can get away with it since we have status cure options now, it gives you plenty of points, and suddenly all of your shields last forever and can be reset insanely fast-I mean, moreso than usual with Meta/Temporal. This is rather sickeningly hard to kill if done right.)

For undead in general, well, mage undead want Celestial/Light first(and maybe only), but physical undead get terrible mileage out of it and not this. And Conditioning is a weird substitute that many players do not like.

F: +2 Shield duration and unsilenceable Runes is, for undead, alone better than Stone Alchemy's resistance benefit to me(many lategame enemies have Skirmisher or another form of resistance penetration, Stone Alchemy is good but won't redefine your playstyle). Making Phase Door/Teleport into a status heal is also really good for the undead. And then there's making all your status cures into super-Wilds and all of your Shielding gain some status curing.

Short answer: For Archmages, it can definitely be leveraged, but as mentioned, the category point is a bit of a hurdle, and you have to make some sacrifices.

For undead, it's basically a non-issue and every single one will be taking this, unless they have heavy category point constraints.

[HousePet]

I'm thinking about allowing the player to take some study classes in Angolwen.
Allow one class upon entry into Angolwen and another after defeating Urkis.
Have a range of subjects available so that there is something useful for total laypeople to archmages.

After all the place is about keeping and teaching arcane knowledge.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

LOVE THIS IDEA. Angolwen certainly serves as a valid repository of knowledge. And plenty of knowledge beyond just 'magic' is shunned. Wouldn't be hard at all to imagine it as a source of knowledge preserved for the day it was needed again.

[SageAcrin]

Make 'em cost a ton of money too.

[HousePet]

Wouldn't be hard at all to imagine it as a source of knowledge preserved for the day it was needed again.

Well that is what it is...

[Planetus]

If it's a stat everyone has anyway, why bother requiring it? All you'd do is exclude some niche builds.

This isn't the first tree to eschew stat requirements: the Accuracy talent is based purely on level, and the Cursed/Predator tree is also statless (and one of my favorite trees in the game).

I think there's a point to this in that not everyone normally invests in it, especially CON for the caster types, to the point that they could sink 5 points in the 4th skill. This means a few stat points away from Mag, or Wil, or Cun, or whatever. That means it's slightly more costly for the casters (unfortunately mindcasters as well) and more accessible to meleers. Not much, I know, but a little.

Nah, the whole point of going Pro-Magic is to have more choices.

I guess that means that I ought to buff Infusions as well as Runes, since that emphasizes the "more choice" thing.

I actually really like the idea of including infusions, even if it isn't entirely thematic. The reason is that it's a way to offer a buff to non-undead without flat out saying undead can't get this tree (for no better reason than balancing).

Without Vim, Souls & Paradox, that's just Mana, Positive & Negative. Positive is already not a resource most people have trouble with, so it's really just Negative, and that might spoil the resource mini game for one class... and mean nothing to anyone else.

Psi and Equilibrium were the two resources which I'm still thinking might be interesting and not useless to buff, since there are some Escort trees which can grant Psi talents, and there are plenty of ways to get Equilibrium trees.

The nice thing about Equilibrium is it buffs the living but not the undead, so that may help with SageAcrin's balance issue.

Equilibrium would buff non-undead, true, but it is also expressly counter to lore. If anything, by the lore, I'd expect something like this to increase your equilibrium, not restore it.

I could see psi, possibly, and I could definitely see hate, and maybe vim at a very low level. That gives you a lot more utility without violating any in-game lore.


As for HousePet's idea of classes at Angolwen, I'm fascinated. Are you thinking they'll grant existing magical generic trees (Aegis, conveyance, etc), or new trees (probably still generic), or maybe add a talent point in a talent (like an escort option, but different talents and more selection)? The last one could provide benefit to non-mages even if the particular talents are magic talents. If you do new trees, you could easily do some things that represent knowledge and understanding but aren't necessarily magical in nature. Maybe something like the herbalism tree in the Arcanum mod?

[HousePet]

I'm thinking if the player has no magical aptitude they would be able to learn some of the more fundamental generic spell categories only. If they actually know some sort of magic, they could also learn any generic spell category. If they are a primary arcane spellcaster, I see no reason they couldn't study a class spell category. Obviously not Necromancy though.
Herbalism would be an interesting class to study. Could be quite interesting for Rogues.

[Doctornull]

A B C D

Gotcha, thanks for the corrections.

E: Celestial/Light is not a fair comparison; It, if anything, is the Arcane equivalent of Fungus(this is why they don't need a second equivalent, in part.). And you can easily 3/1/3/1 the tree to get decent mileage. Having said that, yes, this category point-and the bunch of others Archmages get-is why I said it would only compete, rather than crush the competition. Still, it can easily be stacked, and provides undead Archmages, specifically, with a unique advantage(unsilenceable Runes; This is a huge deal, this is one of the ways you can be rendered fully powerless). It can be worth going down to four Runes for that, funny enough.

That's the plan: if you make a significant sacrifice, you gain a decent benefit. Not overpowering, but useful within its niche.

The fact that Undead who are only spellcasters can be utterly shut down by Silence is what's overpowered, since there's currently not many solutions to that. Some Charms can help you escape (Torque of Psychoportation), but people seem to forget about those...

(Projected build; 4/1/3/0 Conveyance, 3/4/3/2 Aegis, 1/1/1/5 Runes, 3/1/3/1 Light, 1/5/1/5 Skeleton, 5/1/0/0/0 Combat. 54, probably would drop Bone Shield to 1 since it functions still at L1 and I'm getting more bonuses to my Shielding that make up for it. 50 is one point off; I'd probably drop one off Aegis, or maybe just do some point juggling by this stage. Done!

So I'm losing maybe 30-40 damage off most of my shields, a few hundred off my heal-based barriers, a hundred off my Barrier, and a lot off Bone Shield...in exchange for longer, harder to stop Shielding Runes, the ability to heal Silence off myself with a Frozen Spear-huge deal, believe me-Rune resetting-also a huge deal, lets me get more Shields up to make up for the losses I have-and some nice bonuses.

Significant sacrifice, significant benefit. (Note that you've thrown away ALL of Divinations, so good luck walking around corners.) You'll have weaker shields, so your action-limited shields (Celestial/Light and the racial) are less worth using.

That sounds roughly balanced, doesn't it?

Short answer: For Archmages, it can definitely be leveraged, but as mentioned, the category point is a bit of a hurdle, and you have to make some sacrifices.

For undead, it's basically a non-issue and every single one will be taking this, unless they have heavy category point constraints.

Yeah, if you heavily invest in this tree it ought to make up a chunk of your playstyle, same as any other tree would.

Again, it looks like you're getting a benefit in trade for a significant sacrifice. Isn't that what balance is about?

If it's a stat everyone has anyway, why bother requiring it? All you'd do is exclude some niche builds.

This isn't the first tree to eschew stat requirements: the Accuracy talent is based purely on level, and the Cursed/Predator tree is also statless (and one of my favorite trees in the game).

I think there's a point to this in that not everyone normally invests in it, especially CON for the caster types, to the point that they could sink 5 points in the 4th skill. This means a few stat points away from Mag, or Wil, or Cun, or whatever. That means it's slightly more costly for the casters (unfortunately mindcasters as well) and more accessible to meleers. Not much, I know, but a little.

The caster guides I've read all prioritize Con because surprise damage tends to kill casters.
I can't think of any class which explicitly ignores the Con-based 15% resist all talent.

Since having a stat requirement is intended to exclude someone, who would you wish to exclude from this tree? What builds should not get to have access?

I actually really like the idea of including infusions, even if it isn't entirely thematic. The reason is that it's a way to offer a buff to non-undead without flat out saying undead can't get this tree (for no better reason than balancing).

It is thematic! Inscriptions are a form of magic, even if they're not all Arcane magic. The guys who study magic most can get the most out of them.

Equilibrium would buff non-undead, true, but it is also expressly counter to lore. If anything, by the lore, I'd expect something like this to increase your equilibrium, not restore it.

Stone Wardens exist, and they explicitly support this.
Don't trust Zigur propaganda!

[SageAcrin]

The fact that Undead who are only spellcasters can be utterly shut down by Silence is what's overpowered, since there's currently not many solutions to that. Some Charms can help you escape (Torque of Psychoportation), but people seem to forget about those...

The problem with that is, optional categories are a terrible way to fix problems like that.

Providence was removed from Anorithils as an escort reward, because people were feeling it was required for many characters. Celestial/Light still has crazy people using it with no magic, over 50%+ rates Unflinching Resolve, because it's so psychologically appealing to have a simple answer in an optional category. People take Unbreakable Will-which is a questionable answer to Silence-to counter it, right now, and that's a Prodigy skill.

Basically, I agree with the concept but not with making it the focus of a locked category. It's an unfun focus-a linear nullification of a downside-and feels required to those that are worried about the problem.

[Doctornull]

The fact that Undead who are only spellcasters can be utterly shut down by Silence is what's overpowered, since there's currently not many solutions to that. Some Charms can help you escape (Torque of Psychoportation), but people seem to forget about those...

The problem with that is, optional categories are a terrible way to fix problems like that.

You know that that's not what I'm trying to do.

What I'm trying to do is to make a category which is generally useful to all characters, and a reasonably good deal for the talent points if you choose to invest in it.

YOU are highlighting the Skeleton Archmage as the one build which gets a lot of value from this. I think that was a fair argument, and I've removed a chunk of the value they previously got, but fixing Skeletons is not my pitch. I want a tree which is balanced for all races.

The easy fix is to say: If you have any Infusions, your Runes act like Infusions and ignore Silence (i.e. screw you, Skeletons and Golems).

Basically, I agree with the concept but not with making it the focus of a locked category. It's an unfun focus-a linear nullification of a downside-and feels required to those that are worried about the problem.

That has never been "the focus", it's just the one thing some people seem to fixate on.

Propose something to replace it, or we can screw over the races for which it would be too much of a benefit by just saying "not you, Skeleton or Ghoul".

Is that more fun?