ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello

A new class is coming, the Alchemist, a mage subclass available from start (no unlock).
Alchemists are dabblers in magic without a formal training like Archmages, they use gemstones and herbs and imbue them with raw mana to create spell effects.
They are known for their mastery of gemstones that they can infuse to use them as thrown elemental "bombs" and their golem craft.
An alchemist starts with a golem companion which they can improve later on.
The golem is unique, it requires years to craft, so if it is destroyed you need to locate and secure it's remains to revive him, you dont get a replacement.

Talents:
Alchemy (class talent)
(Free) Create Alchemist Gems: turns normal gems into many smaller alchemist gems to use with other powers
Throw Bomb: Throws an alchemist gem, infusing it with raw mana to make a small fire explosion
Explosion Expert: Improves the radius of your infusion
Alchemist Protection: Protects against the effects of your own infusions and to a lesser degree against other elemental damage
????: ideas welcome
Infusion (class talent)
Fire Infusion: passive, improves infusion fire damage
Acid Infusion: sustain, turns infusion into acid damage
Lightning Infusion: sustain, turns infusion into lightning damage
Frost Infusion: sustain, turns infusion into ice damage
Golemancy (class talent)
Golem: Taunt: makes your golem taunt enemies to attack it
Golem: Knockback: knocks back a foe
Golem: Crush: pin down a foe
Invoke Golem: teleport golem to you, granting it temporary buffs
(free)Refit Golem: revive the golem, takes many turns
Advanced Golemancy (class talent)
Golem Power: improves golem melee power
Golem Resilience: improves golem armour/def
Golem: Pound: dazes all in a radius around the golem
Mount Golem: the alchemist enters the golem, taking direct control, much like a mech

Herbalism (generic talent)
Herbal Balm: not sure
Herbal Smoke: not sure
????
????

Gemology (generic talent)
Extract Gems: extract gems from metal items
Insert Gem: imbue a gem power into an item (like +resists, + stats, ....)
Gem Vision: see a distant area thought a gem (kinda like a palantir)
Gem Portal: crush a gem into dust at a target, you can later teleport to it

Each gem will have some powers when infused or imbued

I still need some more ideas but this gives the general feel of the class.
Feel free to provide ideas/comments!

Potion mastery

- Create healing potion (Costs gems and stamina): Shopkeepers get them from *somewhere* right? At level 3, potions may have an ego
Possible potions:
1/5: cure poison, cure disease
2/5: also lesser healing
3/5: also healing
4/5: also greater healing
5/5: also full healing

- Enhance potion (sustained): Gives a potion effect equivalent to having level*6 more MAG points
- Potion field (activated): Causes a potion effect to occur over a radius of 1. Healing potions damage wights? (Allows you to repair your golem) Power increases with level.
- Water bomb (activated): Select a potion to produce an explosion of force. The damage is increased by the value/ego of the potion, MAG, WIL (?) and level.

Staff wielding (the trainer in Minas Tirith will never train someone who hangs around a pot-head.... )

- Staff mastery (passive): A weaker form of [weapon] mastery, only up to 5/5.
- Defensive posture (sustained): Reduces the damage of the staff by 10 but increases defense by ().
- Channel weapon (activated): Projects a bolt of 10*level of the staff's element (if any). That is, a magma staff produces fire.
- Blunt thrust (activated): Gives a chance at a stunning blow while doing 50-150% damage (based on level)

Taxorgian wrote: - Create healing potion (Costs gems and stamina): Shopkeepers get them from *somewhere* right?

They're in the dungeons. They're found scattered all over the ground. Clearly the shopkeepers go out and scum^H^H^H^H harvest them just like you do.

One theory is that they are the waste product of monsters....

darkgod wrote: An alchemist starts with a golem companion which they can improve later on.
The golem is unique, it requires years to craft, so if it is destroyed you need to locate and secure it's remains to revive him, you dont get a replacement.

This sounds VERY interesting, but there's a problem...assuming the 'golem remains' are an item, you'd have to disable decay for it. Otherwise, you could lose your golem in a dungeon, escape..and after a while, you could return and NOT find the remains, thus having ruined your character permanently

greycat wrote:One theory is that they are the waste product of monsters....

great now you got my current character thinking that potions of healing are really filled with troll urine :/ *shudders*

but yeah, back on track now

one herbalism skill could be like ammo creation, but with 100% success, the number of herbs you get depends on the zone, and the level of the talent/skill (whichever it is), better herbs are found in "deeper" zones.

Ahh staff mastery is nicely fitting

Zonk wrote:

darkgod wrote: An alchemist starts with a golem companion which they can improve later on.
The golem is unique, it requires years to craft, so if it is destroyed you need to locate and secure it's remains to revive him, you dont get a replacement.

This sounds VERY interesting, but there's a problem...assuming the 'golem remains' are an item, you'd have to disable decay for it. Otherwise, you could lose your golem in a dungeon, escape..and after a while, you could return and NOT find the remains, thus having ruined your character permanently

My thought exactly. Perhaps the "remains" could spawn a percentage of the time on the dungeon level that the golem died. It would blow to permanently lose a character feature, but OTOH it should probably be difficult to get back if you abandon the actual remains.

I'm looking forward to the next Beta! Any ETA?

Ahh staff mastery is nicely fitting

Glad there's a gem in all my lousy suggestions!

You dont need to collect an item but to resurrect it you need to spend many turns undisturbed

Random Herbalism idea or so: Aside from having them be ultra low-weight cures for afflictions or some such, what about some that serve as Stimulants/Poisons/etc perhaps to ingest or apply to a weapon/Breathe a Short Range Cloud as appropriate? At the least then, the Herbalism to increase the damage/duration/among harvested/etc as it makes any sense.

A few thoughts on the class. I've made the Big Ideas bolded, just to possibly help out with reading.

Channel Staff doesn't require a line-of-effect, it just damages the creature. Not sure if this is intentional.

Identify really should be a skill for them. Historically, alchemy was all about figuring out the occult properties of material, so it works very well with this class.

Imbue Item's description needs to make it clear that increased levels in the skill will allow you to imbue higher level gems. And maybe have the gems show their "gem level" as well. It took me a bit to figure out why I couldn't imbue my robe with the Opal gem I bought for 2 gold, when I put 1 rank into Imbue Item.

Being able to see the stats / current weapons / current armor of your golem would be nice. Perhaps there's a way already, but I'm not seeing it.

I think the talent categories should be changed around a bit: Drop Herbalism, merge it with Alchemy. Here are some possible skills for my new Alchemy:

* Create Potions (higher ranks = better potions. Have these potions have no sell value, perhaps.)
* Identify (Identify items, maybe make it slightly different from the real Identify.)
* Philosopher's Stone / Transmute (Target items in adjacent square of yours. Turns them into gold, but at maybe 1/10th their sell price. Make sure their's no synergy with Create Potions!)
* ???

Possibly a salve that increases the resistances and armor of target friendly as the 4th ability. Could put it on your golem or yourself.

Or maybe something like the Skeleton's talents to permanently increase strength / dex, but it increases some other attributes. Magic and Willpower? Basically, you've made a potion that will increase your stats permanently. The question is which stats, and how to make sure it doesn't synergize with the Skeleton / Ghoul abilities too much.

Or finally, make a talent that increases the number of alchemist gems you get from Create Alch Gems, as well as some other effect since just creating more alchemist gems is kinda boring.

This new Alchemy would be pretty damn useful due to the coverage you get from it (turn items into gold, healing, and identify all in one tree? Awesome!), so maybe restrict it just to Alchemists.

The old Alchemy would be renamed to Explosive Admixtures. If there are no changes to Explosion Expert, switch the order of Explosion Expert and Alchemist's Protection.

Let Alchemist's Protection protect your golem instead of giving +resistances to elemental damage from external sources.

Explosion Expert makes Gem Bomb less useful since it increases the harm done to you if you have to do it in close boundaries. At 0 ranks, you're safe from being hit if you drop it 2 squares away. At 1 rank, it's 3 squares away. Let's say there's an enemy 7 squares away, and you want to hit him twice with Gem Bomb. Your golem starts next to you. You drop one on him, and have to wait 4 turns. By this time, he's still safe to hit without hitting yourself, but your golem will be hit by the blast. Not exactly the best case. Alchemist's Protection guarding your golem makes this not so bad, but it still sucks. I'd recommend changing Explosion Expert to being either a Sustained, or an activated ability that throws a gem bomb that has increased radius. That way you can do the normal 3x3 bomb, or a very large one. The problem with this is sometimes you want a certain bomb radius, and there isn't that much granularity for the radius. It'd be either all or nothing. I think adding a dialogue box to ask what radius you want is a bit clunky.

Instead of Stone Touch, have an ability called Enhanced Gem Bomb. This Gem Bomb will cost more than the normal one mana / gem-wise, but it will have an additional chance of effects based on talent rank *and* current damage type of the bombs. This has obvious synergy with the the Infusion line!

Acid could Poison, Fire could burn, Cold could Slow, Electricity could Stun. 20% chance of this happening per rank?

Make this always the 3x3 grid radius. A wide range ability to drop effects on enemies could be disastrous for balance!

That's all I can think of right now, but I think they're all good changes for the alchemist. Balance would be required, especially the new Alchemy line. Stone Touch is out of place, and the whole thing with Bombs is a bit strange under the category called "Alchemy".

* Philosopher's Stone / Transmute (Target items in adjacent square of yours. Turns them into gold, but at maybe 1/10th their sell price. Make sure their's no synergy with Create Potions!)

Alchemists should definitely have a philosopher's stone or some sort, although I would like it to be something a bit more exciting than this (no offense, I liked a lot of your points ). Perhaps in tribute to the great old DOS game Darklands you could build up the stone over time by spending (copious amounts of) gold and it would increase your spellpower and potency of your brews.

[edit] alternatively "The Philosopher's Stone" could just be a really great artifact for alchemists.

I have been trying to think about how to make The Philosopher's Stone into a good artifact as well with little luck. I think it does make sense though, if implemented, that if sold to an alchemist store (by a non-alchemist) some alchemist powers should be a reward in addition to the money. [Joke example: "Hey thanks! There's this piece of pottery that will not leave me alone, want to take him off my hands?" More seriously, maybe alchemist gems and the basic throwing school.]

Well, the philosopher's stone was something that was supposed to turn stuff into gold, so that's what I was going for. The game Dungeon Siege had a spell called Transmute which turned stuff on the ground into gold at a lower price than they'd be worth at a merchant, hence the other name being "Transmute".

I like the idea of an artifact called the Philosopher's Stone though.

CheapyPipe wrote:Well, the philosopher's stone was something that was supposed to turn stuff into gold, so that's what I was going for. The game Dungeon Siege had a spell called Transmute which turned stuff on the ground into gold at a lower price than they'd be worth at a merchant, hence the other name being "Transmute".

I like the idea of an artifact called the Philosopher's Stone though.

Totally. You're completely right in terms of the function of the Philosopher's Stone, I just think that something so much (pseudo)historical flavor should have a cool function even if it's not as "accurate" as a more mundane one.

Taxorgian wrote:I have been trying to think about how to make The Philosopher's Stone into a good artifact as well with little luck. I think it does make sense though, if implemented, that if sold to an alchemist store (by a non-alchemist) some alchemist powers should be a reward in addition to the money. [Joke example: "Hey thanks! There's this piece of pottery that will not leave me alone, want to take him off my hands?" More seriously, maybe alchemist gems and the basic throwing school.]

I agree that boosting Alchemist powers is a good starting point. Maybe you could use the Philosopher's Stone, like the Sandworm Queen's heart, to open up new and powerful Alchemy skills? Maybe a meta-alchemy group that boost other alchemy powers? Just some random thoughts