ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Currently, I only have used the +stat, +resist all, and very rarely the +stun resist gems. Here are a few ideas for new gems to add to the existing ones to add more diversity to imbuing etc... Effects (mostly) scale based on gem tier.

luck gems: +2-10 luck
saving gems: +2-10 to all saves.
armour gems: +1-5 armour and 3-15% hardiness
life gems: +0.1-0.5 life regen, +5-25% healing mod
recovery gems: 0.5-2.5 mana, stamina, and equilibrium recovered on hit.
power gems: +5-25 physical and spell power
projecting gems: adds some damage of some type on melee/ranged hit. Needs more thought.
carrying gems: -2-10% fatigue, +5-25 encumbrance.
Activation gems: activates for rush, disengage, phase door, teleport, or illuminate. Cannot be used by mindslayers in their focus slot, and two cannot be combined in an amulet of the moon. Cannot be used on armour with an activation already on it.

Some of these would be very powerful if stacked with more of themselves, but probably not as much as +58% resist all, or +29 to all stats. (with two rings, ideal amulet of the moon, and body armour. Does not count mindslayer slot.)

Care to come up with new gem names for them all? ;)

I do think you have some nice ideas in there. Would be good to see one of these replacing the Defence gems, which are otherwise underused. I think Life should have a higher regen though.

Yeah, coming up with up to 50 new names, along with their alchemist's bomb effects is a lot more work, but the ideas should be presented and balanced before that happens.

projecting gems:

Fractured (gemname): Does damage of the type an alchemist gem of the same type would do. All tiers of fractured gems above the first tier carry a small risk of destroying themselves (1% at second tier, 4% at 5th tier).

life gems: Maybe higher regen, maybe +max_hp or +con.

Lifebound (gemname): Basically, it's the same as the alchy quest reward, but because some random alchemist made these things it's not as nice as the Lifebinding Emerald.

Here's some names:

luck gems: aventurine (green)
saving gems: +2-10 to all saves. heliodor (yellow)
armour gems: +1-5 armour and 3-15% hardiness tourmaline/shorl (black)
life gems: +0.1-0.5 life regen, +5-25% healing mod carnelian/sard (red)
recovery gems: 0.5-2.5 mana, stamina, and equilibrium recovered on hit. malachite (green)
power gems: +5-25 physical and spell power moonstone/hecatolite (white)
carrying gems: -2-10% fatigue, +5-25 encumbrance. chrysoberyl (yellow)

If you need a bunch of gem names, you might check out Dwarf Fortress. The DF wiki has a big list.

As someone else said, we'd also need new alchemist gem effects to go with them. Some thoughts (matching these up with the above could come later):

Recovering a small amount of HP when fired, either a flat amount or a percentage drain.

Increased spell critical chance on throw gem.

Sometimes knocks damaged victims back.

There is already a knockback gem (quartz) and life recovery (garnet, bloodstone), but it could certainly be expanded to five gems from the current one each. For your consideration:

+ Spell crit (Aquillion's idea)
+ Critical damage multiplier
+ Blight, Cold, Lightning, temporal, physical, mind, or other damages (~10-50 damage added on hit)
+ resist penetration (useful vs. GMHWs)
+ Blind, confusion, paralysis, pinning, and other status effects (similar to moonstone, zircon, and amber)
+ Chance to cure one of your status effects on hit?

I still think that we should decide if the base effects are a benefit to the game, or needless complexity before we put too much effort into names and alchemist effects, although it will make implementing them easier when the decision is made.

life gems: Change to +0.5-2.5 life regen?

Fractured Gems: would they be imbued, then have a chance of breaking in the armor? If so, I don't think that it is consistent with the rest of ToME to balance their power against either using a new gem, or blocking the slot to new imbues after it breaks.

+ Spell crit (Aquillion's idea)

Sounds nice. How about 3 to 15%, depending at what material level they'd end up? Or only 2 to 10%? The latter would be more in line with the current gem effects, but the former I'd like better - gem effects in general could stand to be a bit more pronounced, I think.

+ Critical damage multiplier

Also nice. Would go well with Shaloren and Halfling alchemists Dunno typical values off the bat, but could maybe be somewhat similar to what you'd get with a mighty staff of the same material grade.

+ Blight, Cold, Lightning, temporal, physical, mind, or other damages (~10-50 damage added on hit)

There's so many possibilities, and alchemists already are plenty flexible with damage types, I'm not sure the added complexity is worth it. Maybe one line of gems that do blight, darkness, nature, light, mind (in ascending order of material) to represent a progress from the gross and physical to the sublime and spiritual. But maybe that theme should get an extra tree...

+ resist penetration (useful vs. GMHWs)

Isn't that the Archmages' shtick? And needing the highest talent on locked and hidden trees, to boot. On the other hand, it kind of fits thematically, like the acid that will dissolve everything. But I'd rather see that added to the infusion talents to make them a it more attractive to max out.

+ Blind, confusion, paralysis, pinning, and other status effects

For alchemist, they get plenty of that already. That means it'd fit thematically, of course, but also it wouldn't add much, IMHO. Although I do think the daze effect on gems, whichever those were, could be replaced with one of the above, so they can be used with fire effectively. Pinning (from some kind of gloop) or confusion (fumes) would make most sense and aren't achievable otherwise, AFAIK.

+ Chance to cure one of your status effects on hit?

That'd be quite powerful, potentially. But it really is something alchemists should be able to do, now that I think about it. Since it's mostly useful once past the beginning of the game, maybe a 10% per target hit at material level 2 or 15% at 3, and maybe another one higher?

life gems: Change to +0.5-2.5 life regen?

I'd prefer a straight heal, similar to the mana regen type.