New class idea: Trickster

[martinuzz]

Sometimes I fantasize about creating a character that has skills and talents from different character classes mixed together into new combinations.
With the Trickster class, it is possible to let loose your imagination, and create a custom-built class, if you please.

Basically, the Trickster is able to steal talents used by npc's.

It has the following talent trees:

existing:Cunning/Survival

new: Cunning/Tricksters Trade (class) (mastery:1.00)

1) Observe
Caster has a chance to learn the next talent the targeted creature uses. At skill level 5, there is a chance to learn passive talents as well. Chance to learn scales with Cunning.
2) Escape route
increase movement speed for 1 game turn. Scales with level and cunning. High level should be as good as a decent movement infusion, lower levels significantly worse.
3) Roll dice
(1d6+x) of the target's talents/infusions/runes are put on cooldown for (1d6+x) turns.
x= -2 at level 1, x= +2 at level 5
4) Wildcard
Dazes target. Has a chance to confuse, blind, silence, stun or pin targeted creature as well. Also, resets all the caster's rescource bars to zero (except paradox, and equilibrium). At level 3 it becomes a ball, radius 1. At level 5, affected creatures have a chance of being killed instantly. Chances scale with Cunning.

Tricks (class) (mastery:0.80)
This tree starts out empty. When a skill is stolen with Observe, which requires class points to advance, it will be added to this talent tree, at skill level 0

Rouses (generic) (mastery:0.80)
This tree starts out empty. When a talent is stolen with Observe, which requires generic points to advance, it will be added to this talent tree at skill level 0

I guess I need not say much more about the idea, as it is pretty self-explanatory. Please, discuss

[Aquillion]

This has been brought up before (I recall some discussion of a "blue mage" based class in the Tome chat a while back.) The basic implementation you suggest is interesting, but I'd recommend having a more concrete and narrowly-defined list of what they can learn -- broader and bigger than any one other class gets, yes (to compensate for the unpredictable nature of having to witness a talent before you can learn it), but not infinite, since there are probably some talents that will lead to broken combinations when learned together, and since otherwise I could see them easily becoming overpowered in the late game. (If you didn't require that you specifically whitelist every talent they can learn while designing them, they'd also potentially become more powerful with every new monster-introducing release, which is probably undesirable.)

Dazes target. Has a chance to confuse, blind, silence, stun or pin targeted creature as well. Also, resets all the caster's rescource bars to zero (except paradox). At level 3 it becomes a ball, radius 1. At level 5, affected creatures have a chance of being killed instantly. Chances scale with Cunning.

Is this meant to be beneficial with Equilibrium and harmful with everything else? Or did you just forget to exclude that in addition to Paradox? The cost seems a bit extreme, in any case.

Also, I believe they're supposed to start with more than one talent point already invested, so they'd need more talent trees unique to themselves.

[martinuzz]

Is this meant to be beneficial with Equilibrium and harmful with everything else? Or did you just forget to exclude that in addition to Paradox?

Good point. Forgot Equilibrium. Will edit OP

The cost seems a bit extreme, in any case.

Well. It's a wildcard. Mostly meant to get out of a tight situation. The high cost somewhat fits the name. And at level 5, with it's possible multiple instakills if you're lucky, the cost isn't that high.

Also, I believe they're supposed to start with more than one talent point already invested, so they'd need more talent trees unique to themselves.

Hmm. Is that hardcoded and unchangeable? In that case, the class does have the cunning/survival tree available to put a point in. If that isn't enough, the generic combat tree could be added, with a point in knife skill or something like that.

Thinking about your point about restricting talents to prevent too powerful combinations, I must say I disagree, at least for now.
Thinking on it did get me to see a flaw in my design, which I will correct in the OP.
When a stolen talent starts at skill level 1, this would mean the Trickster gets a free class or generic point for everything he steals. This would be greatly unbalancing. It would be better to have a stolen skill start at level zero.
When that is the case, the Trickster class will be limited in how powerful it can become by the same factor as any other class, being the amount of stat, class and generic points.
I do believe that that factor will prevent any combination from becoming too powerful. Or at least, not any more powerful than some of the existing classes can already be.

[lukep]

Some combinations would still be extremely powerful, because of the added redundancy that access to equivalent skills for different classes would give. For example, they could (I think) get Relaxed Shot, Second Wind, Bloodbath, Quick Recovery, Unending Frenzy, Breath Control, Resolve, Invigorate, and Highborn's Bloom, all nine of which recover Stamina. This can also be done with armour, healing, stuns, knockbacks, spellpower, or others.

[pander]

Yeah, I've been chattering about a Blue Mage type for a while now. After observing some of your ideas, I may pilfer them. I'll create a thread of my own once I have all of my disparate plans sorted, as they differ quite a bit from where you're headed.

[Aquillion]

Some combinations would still be extremely powerful, because of the added redundancy that access to equivalent skills for different classes would give. For example, they could (I think) get Relaxed Shot, Second Wind, Bloodbath, Quick Recovery, Unending Frenzy, Breath Control, Resolve, Invigorate, and Highborn's Bloom, all nine of which recover Stamina. This can also be done with armour, healing, stuns, knockbacks, spellpower, or others.

Probably the most extreme would be stacking global speed boosting effects. From a technical standpoint, some skills may not be designed to play with each other, too.

I can also see balance problems stemming from the fact that they have so many different resource bars -- you could, say, sustain a bunch of stuff in one bar, then use the others for actived effects (though, will they be able to learn passives or sustained talents? There are going to be other odd holes in their knowledge, too... can they make alchemist gems to use alchemist talents they learn? Do they get a golem if they witness an enemy alchemist using golem talents, or what? Do they get the necessary talents to manage their Paradox and Equilibrium? Can they use mindslayer talents that require a focus slot? Etc. A lot of talents just don't work well if you randomly slot them into a character who isn't designed around them.)

[edge2054]

From both a balance and thematic perspective something like this would make the most sense if it worked off one or two resource bars and either had abilities limited to those bars or if the copied talents where pseudo talents.

As an example, take a class that uses only mana to copy powers. It might copy Stunning Blow and Fire Breath, neither of which are mana based powers. So instead of actually learning these talents the character learns magical spells that basically copies them; Trickster's Stunning Blow and Trickster's Fire Breath. Both of these talents would work similarly to their base talents but might substitute spellpower for the talents normal damage modifiers, have a flavorful description that describes how the trickster copies the ability (Stunning Blow for instance might summon a semi-tangible weapon the Trickster attacks the opponent with), and would cost mana to use rather then stamina or equilibrium.

Thematically the above makes more sense then just a mismatch of powers or a class that says, I see you do it now I can do it... that's all well and good BUT HOW?!? From a game balance perspective it also allows whoever builds the class to pick and choose which powers are copyable and to what extent.

To take your original idea and run with it though I would consider fake slots. So your Tricks talent tree for instance might follow the standard progression, 4 slots up to 5 points in each. You'd pre-invest in these slots and fill them up with talents as you use observe (which under this system I would make a free action to use). The catch is that each observed talent is a one shot ability, it costs no resources to use but once you use it the slot reverts back to it's blank state. You're not really 'learning' the abilities (because I don't care what talent you give a class, they shouldn't be able to watch someone who's studied something for years and do it as well as them without some kinda magic involved), you're just mimicking the motions and firing off your talent slots.

What you get with the second idea is a class that fills up it's empty talent slots as it watches monsters and then decides if they want to use them on the current fight or save them for later. You get a constant flow of new talents and abilities and are constantly burning through them, often in the middle of the fight, making the class feel much more like a final fantasy mimic. Also because you can't 'keep' a talent forever there's much less worry about wrecking game balance. While you lose out on the 'build your own class' idea you where shooting for, I think this last idea would be a lot of fun in practice.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

A mage type that used magic to copy other abilities could be a cool concept, using mana to imitate things as edge described.

There may be an interesting concept here, it will just be hard to get just right.

[hamrkveldulfr]

I have been thinking about something similar....
My idea was a weirdling birth option, where you would get one of a few sets of mixed abilities.
I like trickster though, but like most people here i think there are some little hiccups.
The one that gives me greatest pause is that you do not see good variation of skill sets till you get to higher levels. I would hate to waste time and points gathering little skills just to try and get through the early levels, and then not any time to grab good skills from adventurers and orcs.
Another is worms... could i grab multiply and make a constant high powered army?

[martinuzz]

The one that gives me greatest pause is that you do not see good variation of skill sets till you get to higher levels. I would hate to waste time and points gathering little skills just to try and get through the early levels, and then not any time to grab good skills from adventurers and orcs.

Well, it would definitly be a class that needs to be planned out carefully, and this would probably even mean not spending skill points until you have acquired the right skills for your taste. This would make the class pretty difficult to play in the early to mid-game, but that's a price to pay for a lot of fun building your own custom classes.


Good to see so many replies. I admit that there might indeed arise balancing issues. Still, I would imagine it being really hard to acquire just the right combination of skills. And also, going with the global speed stack example mentioned, you could go for that. But all the skill points invested in there, would mean skill points not invested in say, damage skills. You'd be amazingly fast, but lacking in other areas.
I purposedly set the tricks and rouses trees to mastery 0.80, to compensate for seemingly overpowered combinations. With only one talent category point investable per tree, this would keep acquired skills below the efficiency a specialist class would have. Perhaps even 0.60 mastery would be in order.

I posted the class idea, because I think the "build your own class" thing will add a lot of fun to the game, and possibly extra replayability as well, for the endless possible combinations.
I think the best way to find out if there really are gamebreaking balance issues with the class, by implementing it. Perhaps as a try-out, only in the infinite dungeon? It seems especially fit for that