ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The Skeleton and Ghoul trees are pretty awful. The stat bonuses are nice, and obviously the Skeletal equivalent of Blood of Life has its advantages, but everything else is just... well, useless. The biggest problem is that they scale horribly in comparison with class abilities and runes. None of the abilities are worth wasting a turn on, even if they are free to use.

I think the trees need a bit more thought. I personally think they're best off turned into all passives. For example:

Ghoul
1. As exists
2. Vitalising flesh - +0.6 HP regen per turn per talent level
3. Retching breath - +8 blight damage on hit per talent level
4. Beyond cursing - +10% curse resistance per talent level

Skeleton
1. As exists
2. Steady Bones - +8 phys save per talent level
3. Empty sockets - +10% light resistance and +20% blind resistance per talent level
4. Unhexable - +10% hex resistance per talent level

I really think Ghoulish Leap should stay - it's the best movement ability in the game, better than both disengage and rush.

Gnaw is also really good - it's a Dirty Fighting without a stamina cost.

Though, I do like Empty Sockets, and Vitalizing Flesh.

I would agree that some of them are not that useful, but quite a few of them are, sharp bones, ghoulish leap, etc can be used quite effectively...

Grey wrote: Ghoul
1. As exists
2. Vitalising flesh - +0.6 HP regen per turn per talent level
3. Retching breath - +8 blight damage on hit per talent level
4. Beyond cursing - +10% curse resistance per talent level

I haven't played Skeletons, but I played a few Ghoul Cursed. I would say that only Retch is bad. I mean, the leap ability is obviously quite useful, although the effect of increasing its level is quite minimal (maybe it should reduce the cooldown too, instead of just the range). Gnaw can also be interesting, even at level 1.

As for your suggestions, 2 and 4 are even less useful than what is currently there, as infusions make HP regen talents pretty much obsolete, and a curse resistance would be very rarely useful. As for retching breath, it seems way to powerful to me, although this could always be balanced down.

I think the undead talent trees should just be scrapped. They're bad enough that they're not worth trying to fix. Just give them racial talents like the other races have.

If we're going to have racial talent trees, though, I think they should use a new category of "race" points rather than generic points.

With regards to the ghoul talents, I'll admit I haven't played with them much. They looked very poor to me though - too many classes are short on generic talents points and they seemed like a waste, especially in the long-run.

The skeleton talents I really can't understand anyone using. The Heal ability does around 60 healing when maxed out - worse than a starting infusion. Sharp Bones just seems... silly, not to mention hard to use effectively and not particularly damaging. And Bone Armour absorbs so little damage it seems like a joke. The shielding rune skeletons start with will always *always* be better.

Even if they scaled better, who would be excited about spending that many generic points to get a healing infusion?

Mechanically, racial talent trees either need to be one of:

1. competitive with other generic trees on most characters
2. better than other generic trees on most characters, but requiring a category point to open up
3. an unrelated resource pool, but one limited in order to maintain the need to make choices (say, 3 racial talent trees, and you only get 16 racial points in a game - that is, just enough to max 1 completely, or to max only the top-tier abilities of 2.)

Personally I prefer 3 so that all undead characters emphasize their undeath, but have options to do that in many different combinations. However, 1 is easiest to set up.

Flavor-wise, undead racial talents should emphasize undeath. So, what do I think of in that case?

-They are enemies to life itself, and are strange and unnatural
-They spread some form of their inner darkness, often with their attacks, but sometimes just by their presence
-They have bodies no longer fueled by life processes, and gain both power and resilience from this state
-They have hidden knowledge of death or magic because they have passed beyond life's limitations

I don't think the current abilities do that well. One that I think would is the ability to carve runes into your bones. This could give you arcane damage when hit, or spellpower, or magical save, or something similar - and at 5, give you an extra infusion slot.

Problem is that it's a little too easy to make racial talent trees too good. In attempting to avoid this, they were made a bit too weak. Now, I *like* the idea of racial talent trees, and the idea that undead should be more strongly distinct than other races, but it *does* need balance. So.... Why not steal Marcotte's idea from General? We make the undead not able to use infusions. That gives plenty of balance to either buff up their skills significantly or give them an entirely new pool of racial skill points to play with without making them overpowered, and it means that whatever healign powers they do have are rather more useful to them. It fits the flavor, too - infusions are all about interacting with the life energies and the natural world.

Actually, I think I'd prefer for all races to have talent trees. Keep them generic - no racial points. We already have 4, and that's enough. Along with that, it would help shove difference between the races. This would also make race choice matter more with reference to the class. Right now, honestly, there's almost no difference when looking at races.

I would have no qualms about coding up the trees myself - if someone who knows would give me more lore on the various races so that I can make them flavorful trees.

If every race had racial generic talents it would make class design a bit easier. Coming up with enough generic trees for every class can be hard sometimes.

I mean you're building a class and you have to make abilities that aren't class defining and won't break other classes if they learn them.

I like the idea of all races having their own distinct generic tree. However the talents would need to be carefully chosen to be balanced, distinct and still competitive. I think the stat dependancies would also have to be removed, or toned down at least. Obviously the first talent in each tree would be the existing racial talents. And Cornac would have nothing, giving them more generic points to spend on other areas, which fits well with their race.

It also makes sense for undead not to be able to use infusions, but at the same time it severerly limits them from the main healing source in the game. Giving them equivalent talents just seems silly.

I personally don't like the idea of all races having their own tree. Consider.

- We'd have to come up with a unique tree for every race we have (apparently except for Cornac). Once we've done that, every new race we add would also require a unique tree.

- You'd have to make each tree worth investing in, or the entire thing turns into a bad joke. Preferably, you'd have the trees be at least reasonably on par with one another, and not overwhelmingly good. Note that we're currently working through a discussion of how to do that with *two* races, and not coming up with an easy conclusions.

- Cornacs would go from actually kind of cool (hey, they get a free category point - more options!) to fairly lame (they're missing an entire tree. Fewer options.) I'd like people to be able to say "oh, my build really wants that extra category point. I guess I'll go Cornac." without having to sacrifice something as nifty as a racial talent tree.

- More to the point, here, undead are different and strange. Undead *should* be different and strange. If we get pixies or Ents or sentient fire elementals later on, those should be different and strange too. As it stands, most of the non-undead races are pretty much like Cornacs - which is appropriate, since all of the non-undead races are pretty much like Cornacs. If everyone gets racial trees, that makes it so that people who don't get them (Cornacs) are lame, rather than making it so that people who do get them (undead) are interesting.

On the other hand, it looks like the weight of opinion may be against me, so let me throw a few thoughts out there on some fixes.

- Cornacs would be made lame: Just give them a few more points to play with - an extra generic every 5 or 10 levels, and possibly a freebie at level 1. This could be combined with the idea of racial points (in which case they'd be a replacement for said racial points) or not (in which case they'd be bonus - and probably fewer). You could mix and match to a degree, too. If you want to give everyone else a racial point at 1 and then every 5th level, give the Cornacs a generic at level 1 and every 10th level, and an extra class point at levels 5, 15, 25, 35, and 45. Cornacs gain 5 racials and 6 generics over the course of their careers (useful - certainly useful, but not game-breaking) while everyone else gets those same points as racial points. Cornacs also get a category point, so the racial trees wind up wanting to be about as cool overall as one of the unlocked trees out of one of the classes.

- Undead would be made lame: Don't force the racial trees into the format of the other trees. Rather than insisting that they all be 4 skills of 5 levels each, with strict requirements on opening, let them be a variable number of skills of variable size. If you're going with 10 racial points, you might have a race or that only had two skills - five deep each. You might have a race that only had one skill, ten deep. Another race might have a set of 6 independent skills. Undead would then be notable not for having a racial skill tree, but because their racial skill tree would have more heft/power/options to it - and if we made it juicy enough, it might still be viable to leave them uninfused without having that gimp them.

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Side note on the infusion/healing thing - I'm not suggesting that undead be denied infusions and then given healing powers to somehow make up for it. That would indeed be a bit on the perverse side. Undead who are denied infusions make up the difference with runes. Things like runes of shielding, while not the *same* sure do help. I'm saying that as it is, we tend to give the undead healing powers anyway, but that those healing powers are, all too often, rather pathetic when runes are available for comparison (in much the same way that Arcane Feed is a bit pathetic when one can just strap on a manasurge rune). My thought is, then, that if we do prevent the undead from taking infusions, and possibly improve the healing talents to a degree, those healing talents become actually potentially useful, rather than just laughable.

I like a talent tree per race yes. Go on throw up (or .. retch ? ideas !
And I agree with sirocco that undead should feel very different, this is why they have talent trees currently and others do not

As for not using infusions I agree it's utterly silly.
Now the inscription system is planned to expand to include "????" (unnamed yet as I cant find a good name).
Basically I see each kind of power "source" to have its inscriptions, except techniques.
So:
- wild gifts => infusions
- spells => runes
- corruptions => ??? (mark ?)
- psionics => foci ?

In this scheme undeads would be able to use runes & corruption stuff but not infusions are foci

darkgod wrote:- corruptions => ??? (mark ?)

Pact or ritual would work too.

darkgod wrote:As for not using infusions I agree it's utterly silly.
Now the inscription system is planned to expand to include "????" (unnamed yet as I cant find a good name).
(...)
In this scheme undeads would be able to use runes & corruption stuff but not infusions are foci

This seems to contradict itself... (although I guess you simply mean that they should be allowed to use infusions at least until corruptions are added to the game).

Anyway, just some random brainstorming for racial tree, for the Higher (all based on their racial purity ideas):
1 - Advanced Learning (passive): Increase experience gain by 1%, and randomly increases 3 stats by +1.
2 - Gift of the Pureborn (active): fairly good regeneration, but long cooldown. Scale with CON.
3 - Purity of Flesh and Soul (sustained): while active, prevent all detrimental status effect. However, when blocking a status effect, the talent has a random chance (50/40/30/20/10 depending on the level) of being desactivated. Long cooldown too.
4 - Domination (passive): whenever you damage (but don't kill) a non-elite, non-boss enemy, there is a chance that the enemy will switch faction to yours. The odds are proportional to the ratio of damage dealt to remaining health of the target. Odds scale with talent level, WIL and CUN.

Hum... these may be a little too powerful...