ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The concept is an equilibrium based mage-like character with limited summoning and a permanent pet in the form of a treant or swamp thing like golem. Some direct attacks and cursing/debuffing as well. I welcome any ideas/suggestions, though I have no clue how to code this...

The Treants abilities would be derived from versions of the alchemist with your standard slams and such, as well as pinning abilities and possibly a stun. I don't think we should be able to 'arm' him so to speak, but have an ability tree devoted to empowering him both passively and directly would be better. Healing spells aimed at restoring your pets and guardian directly as well.

Class Talents

Summoning (Plants)

Poison Vine - (weak, mobile, ignored, and deals poison damage, low cooldown)
Seed Spitter - (Immobile, but shoots that deal physical/nature damage, AoE occasionally?, low cooldown)
Roper - (Immobile melee beast that cleaves multiple models at a time, best if able to be dropped right in the middle of a pack, high cooldown)
Force of Nature - (Elemental like construct, has sprays similar to a Hydra possibly, high cooldown)

Life Channeling (Poisons)

Poison Bolt - Single target ability, poison/nature damage, beaming?
Poison Wind - Spray ability with chance to root?
Corpse Gas - Poison Nova if monster dies while under effect?
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Treant (Combat)

Slam - As Golem
Pound - As Golem
Root (sustained) - Becomes immobile, but gains defensive/regeneration abilities
Razor Leaf - Damage Aura

Treant (Enhancment)

Stat Enhancer
Armor Enhancement/Resistances
Poison Immunity/Nature Resistance/Immunity (to combine with the nature/poison spells)
Speed Buff?

Additional Thoughts
Still working on additional ideas, they would need a healing/self enhancement tree that allows/provides immunity to poison themselves as well as some summon enhancement abilities. As the Treant is a permanent pet, Meditation would need to be able to function when a Treant is out, or give them some sort of equilibrium regenerating abilities that feed off of the interaction with the Treant.

Life Channeling power:

Touch of Balm - Heals a living creature and cures ailments (increasing numbers as the level increases)

- Roper ought to have some sort of restrain attached to their melee, and possible a range 2 or 3 attack that pulled enemies in close.
- Keeping the treant pertinent is going to be a bit on the tricky side. Golems have difficulty remaining significant into the endgame, and they get a weapon, an armor, an imbued gem, and two solid passives to play with.
- Dryad and druid seem rather different ideas, really. For example, the dryad should have at least one tree worth of personal passive buffs to make her more... tree-like. That could actually be pretty cool. You could have a tree focused on passive/sustained boosts to the treant, and another tree that provided buffs to both the dryad and the treant. That might be enough space to fit in appropriate scaling to keep the treant viable - particularly if you included a high-level talent or two that reduced the treant's summoning time and summoning-cooldown time (from "you better be totally safe and able to hang around for a while" to "as long as he doesn't die twice in quick succession, you should be able to bring him back during combat without real problems").
- It could also be cool to have a tree that would make the treant buff your summons (and you). That plus a better pet control tree (which DG has already said he intends to implement) would let you play the endgame treant as either a living buffstack that hangs to the back and makes all of your other allies more potent or a raging, replaceable force who is constantly in the front, regularly dying and being reborn.
- One answer to the meditation thing is to give a "merge with tree" power (similar to "ride golem" in some ways, but distinct in a number of particulars, to keep the feel different) from the beginning (very appropriate with dryad). Having the dryad meditate inside her tree by preference seems entirely in theme, and could allow for a primary-melee playstyle, if tweaked right.
- In some ways (particularly if you make it dryad rather than druid) I don't see this character getting away from fire vuln as something that's going to show up repeatedly, and that'll make certain parts of the endgame searingly difficult.

Though characterful, I want to try and decouple the abilities from terrain features. Geomancy in Tome 2.x.x wasn't all that fun due to the possibility of having the wrong field type to your situation. Most of the dungeons don't have trees either.

I'm leaning more towards druid, and the Treant doesn't have to be a tree man if you don't want, it could be any sort of animal companion. I still think work on it's progression rate, and good passive abilities can offset the need for weapons/armor/gem imbunes, besides which, it's not the only trick up the Druid's sleeve. The support summons would add significant amounts of damage, and with the other spells/abilities, your main character would add significant damage as well. Fire Weakness would be a major issue, and one which may need more of a hack/fix in the form of talents, or not depending upon how you want the guardian to work.

One of the major issues I would like to see is that all of the Druids personal offensive abilities wouldn't affect the golem, even if they splash onto him. I'm fine with having to spend talent points to get this benefit, similar to how Alchemists interact with their golem, but since the majority of the damage would be via poisons and such, it's pretty easy to work.

Skeletons/Ghouls and Undead in general may be a bit of a issue though, being immune to poison which was a central theme to the character. May need some additional abilities, possibly 'Light' or water based, which fits with the whole plant theme.

The idea of treant as permanent pet is kinda interesting.

Here's some other thoughts that have been tossed around as far as druids go.

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... ilit=druid

With respect to decoupling from terrain, a grow trees power would do the trick - particularly if you then made any explicitly tree-based powers optional. Sure, it could mean that the character had major advantages in those few dungeons that *were* tree-based, but there aren't all that many of those, and the highest level one (that I know of) is the spider lair. Every class has some dungeons that it's better at and some that it's worse at.

Mind you, I wasn't specifically suggesting tree-based powers - though dryads would tend to suggest them. Also, geomancy in 2.x.x was *fine*, as soon as you picked up enough ability to generate your own terrain. I rather liked them.

I would encourage you to at least consider going the dryad route - at this point, there are enough different classes in the game that having classes be high-flavor is helpful. Having an interesting and unique classes that does stuff that no one else does brings a lot more to the game than "summoner/archmage hybrid, with the golem stolen from alchemist". What does this character do that no other character does?

Physical, poison, acid, and lightning are all reasonable druidic damage types. Light, darkness and fire are not entirely unreasonable. Going for a more purely plant-based, I'm pretty sure you could do just fine with a straight physical/poison/acid combination