ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

**WARNING: LONG POST**

As your character levels up, so do the game's monsters. This is one aspect that makes Tome4 very different from it's predecessors.

However, why not create a class, that has a talent that reduces the character's EXP gain when activated.
This class should have weak melee, and no magic. Instead it relies on scumming the dungeons for powerful items, to prepare for the endgame.
An archeologist sounds appropriate, but is not really compatible with the Middle Earth setting. So let's make that.. an adventurer

Please hear me out, since I gave this quite some thought.
Here's what I came up with:

New rogue subclass: Adventurer. Main stats: Cunning, Dexterity, (Willpower)

Basic talent trees available from start:

Technique/Combat training
Cunning/Survival mastery
Cunning/Packing

Inactive talent trees available to put a category point in:

Technique/Archery - common
Technique/Combat techniques (1)
Technique/Combat techniques (2)
Technique/Field control
Cunning/Stealth
Cunning/Dirty Fighting
Cunning/Trapping

Proposed new talent trees available from start:

Talent tree: Whipping.(class) Main stat: Dexterity. These skills need a whip equipped to be used. These skills cost stamina. All these skills gain +1 range per skill level.
- Disarm: Disarms target. Chance to disarm increases with level. At level 5, becomes area effect (+1)
- Ankle swipe: Stuns the target and does 25% damage. Damage increases with level. At level 5, becomes area-effect (+1)
- Item grab: works like telekinesis.
- Pocket swipe: Has a chance of stealing an item from the target. With each point in this stat, the item generated will be OOD +1 level.

Talent tree: Lore.(class) Main stat: Cunning
- Adventurer's Guide for Beginners: Reduces experience gained from killing monsters by 20%. per level, reduction is increased by 20%, up to 100% (no experience at all) at level 5. Sustained skill, no activation cost.
- Encyclopedia Breetannica: 20% chance to identify an item. +20% per level, up to 100%. No activation cost.
- Survival Handbook: increases HP gain per character level-up(!). At level 5, makes character immune to level-drain.
- Monstrous Compendium: Increases damage and critical hit chance. More increase with higher levels.

New inactive talent trees available to put a category point in:

Talent tree: Adventuring.(class) Main stat: Cunning. These skills cost stamina to activate/sustain.
- Treasure hunter: increases the chance of corpses dropping gold. Sustained skill.
- Item hunter: increases the chance of corpses dropping items. Sustained skill.
- Find secret passage: Teleports the user to a random location in the same level. Range increases with level. At level 5, grants control of destination.
- Find way out: Teleports the user up one level. at level 5, can also teleport down.

Talent tree: Lucky charms.(generic) Main stat: Dexterity. These skills cost no stamina to activate, but should have a rather long cooldown.
- Charm of Endurance: Increases your willpower stat, and your armor for a while. Duration and amount increases with level. At level 5, gain a permanent +5 to willpower.
- Charm of Strenght: Increases your strenght and constitution stat for a while. Duration and amount increases with level. At level 5, gain a permanent +5 to strenght and constitution.
- Charm of Grace: Increases your dexterity and cunning stat for a while. Duration and amount increase with level. At level 5, gain a permanent +5 to Cunning and dexterity
- Charm of the Lady: Adds to all your resistances. At level 5, provides immunity to stun and knockback, and an additional permanent +5 to willpower.

Talent tree: Dungeon mastery.(class) Main stat: Willpower. These skills cost stamina to activate.
- Map: maps the level in a radius around you. Radius increases with level. At level 5, also detects items.
- Safe passage: At level 1, allows you to pass trees. at level 3, walk safely over magma, level 5, pass through walls. Sustained skill, high stamina cost.
- Fortify: Similar to Stone prison, except that this spell also heals you as an added bonus. Can only be cast on self. More hitpoints healed with higher skill levels.
- Genocide: kills all mosters of a specific type in sight. At level 5, it kills all monsters in sight regardless of type. SHould cost a lot of stamina, and have a very long cooldown. Bosses, and perhaps some other monsters (undead?) should be immune.

Notes:

The Lore talent tree is what really defines this class, by giving the player control of the pace of character-levelling. The Dungeon Mastery tree has much power, but it needs Willpower, which is not this classes' main focus.

Obviously, this class is meant for those players who enjoy a longer game. Equipment is key to this classes' success. Slowly build a character, that makes up for it's lack of combat skills with the best items and artefacts you can find.
The wide variety of skill trees could mean that this class will run into a shortage of skill points / category points. For this reason, perhaps the adventurer class should somehow get a bit more points than other classes. Either incorporated at level-up, or through class-specific items / quests.

Feel free to discuss

martinuzz wrote: As your character levels up, so do the game's monsters. This is one aspect that makes Tome4 very different from it's predecessors.

I thought monster level was purely related to the dungeon environment, apart from in certain special encounters?

Monsters in any particular dungeon have a range. Their place in that range is based on your level.

But they still have a certain minimum and maximum for that specific environment? I mean the Prides aren't going to stay level 1 by controlling your experience level with the Lore skill.

Heh, didn't know about the ranges. Still, the class is a viable way of making sure you can scum each dungeon as safely as possible by deciding when you want to level-up.

Problem is that, in general, facing a dungeon at a higher level is going to be easier than facing it at a lower level. The monsters gain levels that boost their stats a bit. The player gains levels that boost their stats a bit and also gains skills that augment their abilities in other ways. Also, from what I've seen the same level of the same dungeon will drop better gear if you face it with a higher-level adventurer (and are thus high in its bracket) rather than a lower-level adventurer.

Also, the identify ability is underpowered. You'd have to sink in 5 skill points to make it consistent, and basically no one sinks 5 skill into identify. It's easier just to pack scrolls.

Mind you, if you gave the Adventurer's Guide for Beginners some other interesting benefit, with the experience leaching to pay for it, that might be worthwhile, but as it stands, it would basically never be a good idea to turn it on.

I gotta say I'm slightly disappointed by this - when I read the name the name I expected a kind of 'generic'class that was very customizable(say gets extra category points, lots of category trees to unlock but with low mastery).

Instead...well, the whole "slow down your exp gain to scum dungeons" gimmick feels very artificial to me.

Talent-wise:
'get more items/gold to drop' talents are a little weird - items, especially, as right now the only items dropped are egoes and artifacts, so generating new items just to have them drop would be a bit weird.
'identification' : next release will have autoID, so that wouldn't be very useful.

Sorry if I was too harsh - I'm sure with some rework I'm this could be a valid concept.
Maybe I could post my 'vision' of the Adventurer later on if you don't mind me using this same thread?

The one thing I'd take from this is the idea of an Archaeologist class that wields whips :)

I would say that the idea of a class based on lore but not magic is an interesting one. It's not that he has some sort of ancient abilities - he's just studied monsters and tactics to the poitn where he knows exactly where to hit them and how to defeat them. Make him a stamina-based dex/cunning class, give him a talent that will let him add his cunning to his magic for the purpose of using magical items (because he just knows how to use magical items). Give him another talent that lets him augment his cunning boost to crit chances, and a few more that have him inflicting status effects on crit. He basically turns into a non-stealthy form of rogue with less damage and more control (and a small amount of range), built around whips rather than daggers.

Also, and this might be silly, I have an idea for a unique power for the guy. Bank shot. You target an enemy within whip range, and then target a second time from that enemy to a few squares away. If you hit, you send the guy flying. If you hit another enemy with him, both take extra damage.

...and give him a choke power, assuming air is implemented on monsters these days. Range 1, immobilizes both you and the target, disarms you, silences target and starts ticking down their air counter. Target gets a (relatively small) chance to escape every round. You can use this as a way to whale on mage types (if you have any attack forms that don't require your weapon) or just hang on and hope to suffocate them. Relatively rapid cooldown, so that if they escape you've got a chance to reapply the choke before their air recovers.