ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

At the moment this is a pretty poor tree, especially now we have some powerful healing infusions. Not that it should be an immensely powerful tree, but it should be functional. Currently we have:

1. Regeneration - Okay early game, but it maxes out too low.
2. Heal - Low effects, high cost, redundant compared with Regeneration and the infusions.
3. Restoration - Pathetic compared to a decent Wild infusion.
4. Nature's Call - Sounds like it means going to the loo. End result isn't much more useful.

I would suggest the whole tree be changed to something like the following:

1. Regeneration
Same as currently, but increase cooldown to 20 and have duration scale with talent level and magic.

2. Slimeskin
Turn your skin to slime for 8 turns, giving +x% nature resistance and y on hit slime damage. You will also suffer -10% movement speed for the duration.
(instant activation, slime damage should scale well enough to remain useful)

3. Restoration
Remove status effects as per original, but give a decent amount of instant healing too - around half of the existing Heal talent.

4. Barkskin
Turn your skin to bark for 8 turns, giving +x% nature resistance and +y% physical damage resistance. You will also suffer -25% fire resistance for the duration.
(instant activation, nature resistance should be fairly high, phys a bit more limited but enough to be useful at times)


Any other suggestions?

I note that this removes the last summoning the archmage has. That's fine, by the way. It actually seems pretty reasonable to say that part of the schtick of mana is that it doesn't get any summons. I simply consider it worthy of note.

I note that you're suggesting two spells that both buff nature resist, in the same tree. That seems excessive, especially as nature damage isn't all that common or threatening.

Honestly, I wouldn't be opposed to removing the nature tree entirely. It seems to mesh oddly with the whole wider and mage being directly opposed to one another thing. There's no runes of healing, why should there be healing spells? If we do want to include healing, it seems like we could either create a water-based tree around it or a spirit-based tree around it, rather than having a nature-based one.

Water version:
- Heal. Active. Moderate strength, moderate-to-long cooldown (ie, 30-50 turns or so). Balance as needed. Should be somewhere between half and full heal on default high-level archmage with max magic and decent spellpower boosts at max talent level.
- Cleanse the Blood. Active. Removes negative effects (starts out removing 1 poison or disease effect, up to 5 poison/disease/curse/hex/magical/physical effects at talent level 5 ) and gives a short buff to physical and magical saves.
- Water Shield. Sustain. Gives a bit of armor and some fire/lightning/cold resist. Every time you are hit (ie, take more than 0.0 damage from something other than ongoing damage or field effect), has a chance to unsustain, exploding outward, dealing physical damage and knockback to everyone within 1 or 2 squares, and possibly a small chance to daze. Moderate to high cooldown (50ish or so).
- Watery Prison. Sustain. moderately cooldown (20 or so). Target creature is dazed and begins suffocating (if it needs to breathe). The creature has a small chance to break free of the effect each turn, and also breaks free if the daze breaks. Generates a clear message if the target does not need to breathe. Chance of breaking free should be calibrated so that this is not terribly reliable as a boss-killer, but a well-built mage should be able to stick an elite in the prison and figure on a decent chance that said elite will eventually suffocate if left undisturbed.

I actually like the bear though I think it needs some work.

First of all it should appear where it's targeted (even if the range is short or even 1) instead of a random grid next to the caster. Second of all it's armor or hit points need to scale with talent level and spellpower. At level 50 it lasted about two turns against a single orc. Thirdly it's level should be based on the player level and not the zone level. Finally, it could use a (single target) taunt.

In short, it needs better targeting, better survivability, and the ability to force creatures to attack it. It should be a tank but it doesn't live long enough to do that and has no way to force retargeting.

On the good side the bear stays for 66 turns at 100 spellpower and 5/5 talent level which is a long time. If only he had a chance of living that long.

Other then that, I like DGrey's suggestions aside from slime skin.

I'd do Regen, Heal (w/suggested status removal), Barkskin, Nature's Ally.

I really don't like the bear myself. Seems at odds with the rest of the class.

Maybe summon a nature spirit instead? Something with some functional use that isn't just a meatshield. Perhaps something like a sprite, with high speed and evasion, the ability to heal the caster and debuff the enemies, but no direct combat skills.

Here's some ideas I have on the nature tree:

1) Close to Nature (sustained)
this spell makes you regenerate health faster when you are on grass / trees.
Effects scale with skill level / magic.
Grants treewalking ability when active. Would make investing a point here a nice starting choice, for the Trollmire.
Replaces other types of healing spells for the nature tree.

2) Slimeskin, as per Grey's suggestion. I like that one, except maybe the movement penalty, which kinda beats the purpose of slowing your enemies down with slime. This is where the player can get the nature resistance in this tree.

3) Nature's Call. I like the bear. It could do with some decent beefing up though.

4) Grow trees. At level 1, you can grow a single tree, range 1.
At level 3, you can grow a trees around where you stand (like stone prison). At level 5, you can target enemies with it. Combines well with Close to Nature. Perhaps, in some special levels, it should not be possible to grow trees. ('this area seems devoid of life')

I didn't add the remove status effect to the tree. Wild infusions should be able to handle that.

I'd have to say that "druid" makes a lot more sense in this world as a wilder (some healing, some summons, transformation sustains for durability/mobility/melee, and possibly a few wide area ranged attacks) than it does as mage.

Druid when it comes will certainly be a wilder yes

The druid idea Darkgod and I have discussed will be a wilder. It's more of a typical fantasy game druid then a classical celtic druid whom I agree are more mages then 'fantasy druid'.

As to mages using nature magic Darkgod has described it as them using mana to manipulate another element. They manipulate fire, earth, air, water, time, space (conveyance), the essence of magic itself. I see no reason to exclude nature from that list because it feels to 'druidy'.

Druids will have their owns spells and take on things Don't worry about mages stepping on their toes.

Gandolfo: It's true that in a number of universes, communing with nature and the wielding of magic go hand in hand. That is explicitly not the case here.

I guess my tweak about mages manupulating "nature" with mana is that it's not like the other elements. Ice, water, fire, arcane, and stone are simple. You create some, and you throw it at your enemies (or wrap yourself in it, or attune yourself to it or whatever.) Time and conveyance are a little trickier to get your hands on, but the effects that the mage does with them are relatively straightforward. "I will move from one place to another. I will speed up my own time. I will slow down your time." They're potent, but fairly straightforward. The mental stuff is a bit more subtle, but could be explained as basically a form of modified telepathy, where the mage was using mana to buff up his own natural persona for a will-war with specific intention - yes, the end effects are complicated, but you have a basic working copy of the thing you're trying to mess with helping out, and that lets you simplify things out on the magic side a fair amount. The storm stuff is a bit more complicated too, but the idea of studying lightning, thunder, wind, and a bit of rain all at the same time is not so difficult to grasp. They go together reasonably well. This idea of nature, though...

- You're healing yourself.
- You're regenerating yourself
- You're cleansing unpleasant things from yourself.

These are fine, and make sense as part of one tree, but the tree they make sense as part of is "body".

- You're summoning a bear.

This could be done with some mind-control, or possibly some arcane summon-and-bind magic, but the sorts of ways a mage would think to do this have absolutely nothing in common with the sorts of ways a mage would thing to heal/regenerate/cleanse themselves. Likewise, throwing bolts of poison is not unimaginable, and having an entire poison tree might be cool. Reinforcing your skin as skin would actually fit right into the "body" tree. Reinforcing it with bark? seems a bit odd, but you could probably come up with some sort of a "plant" tree and make it make sense. The only way that you're going to shoehorn any of that into the same tree with bear-summoning, though, is if it's a tree specifically designed around finding the door that the wilders get their power through and doing inappropriate things to it. I suppose it makes sense that mages might do that, but it seems that there should be some sort of backlash there.

...although, that does start to make sense as a source for antimagic. As far as I can tell in the backstory, wilders only take what nature offers - they can discover new and interesting ways to use it, but they can't discover entirely new things to do. In that light, it makes sense that nature would have crafted a space of antimagic within itself as a sort of immune reaction to what mages were doing to it... and, in turn, that there should be actual animals running around with skills off of the antimagic tree. It might also be cool to let wilders regen small amounts of equilibrium for killing monsters with mana and vim bars. If you wanted to split things even more, say that no one who takes a mana/vim bar can ever get an equilibrium bar (or the skills necessary to use one) and vice versa. It actually kind of makes sense that a wyrmic who encounters a lost seer in the woods might decide that it was too much trouble to help the tainted will-worker. Of course, that would take a bit of balancing, as the two best escort quests these days are arguably the seer and the alchemist. Perhaps somethign to consider for a bit down the road - after you've gone a bit deeper into the "antimagic is a lifestyle choice, not just a hazing ritual" stuff.