ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, the story. I was toodling along in a farportal, doing my thing. Come up against a 32nd level random snow giant boss. The next thing I know, [LOG] Xybrera the snow giant chieftain hits Jack Friday for 249 physical, 746 physical damage (total 994.20). I was at full health. That was a few dozen more HP than the character had. It came from a single use of Willful Strike.

So yeah. I've noticed the same behavior with Kinetic Aura spikes. The damage incurred from the knockback being considerably higher than the actual main strike. This doesn't seem like something that should be happening, and just shy of 1k damage from the single talent use of a 32nd level enemy seems, just a wee titch, extreme.

Maybe we can get the knockback damage effect reduced, somewhat? Maybe even tied into tlvl or something, I'unno. Getting, in that case, what amounts to a 400% multiplier to talent damage is going just a bit too far, for something outside of deep ID level encounters.

EDIT: For clarity, this is referring to talents whose knockback component also causes damage. About the only two talents I've seen that actually do this is willful strikes and spiked kinetic auras. Thanks to edge for reminding me how rare the effect is, heh.

Push Kick is kinda like this but it doesn't take into account walls just actors. But it could probably have the top end damage nerfed too. (It can hit a target three times if they're like this @@@, though only the middle one takes the triple damage. Probably not such a big deal for the player since monsters don't go around kicking other monsters into the PC.)

Keep in mind that Willful Strike is the very first talent in the "cursed/force-of-will" talent tree. The other talents in that tree are no better. You can't save or defend against the knockback effect and damage, either--I think you need knockback resistance to avoid these one-hit deaths. On the plus side, at least these damages don't crit

"cursed/primal-magic - Vaporize" is another perhaps unfair cursed talent. I've lost a character in one hit due to this. One typically can't do much against 800+ arcane damage

Damage and knock-back distance need re-balancing.

According to the people in IRC yesterday, there are two completely different Knockback implementions -- the regular one, which doesn't do any damage upon impact, and a special one that was written just for Willful Strike, and was then copied for Kinetic wossname spiking. It seems really odd to me that Knockback is handled inconsistently. I'd suggest using the damage-on-impact one for all knockback (including Repulsion, Wing Buffet, ...) but only after nerfing it down to sensible levels.

greycat wrote: It seems really odd to me that Knockback is handled inconsistently. I'd suggest using the damage-on-impact one for all knockback (including Repulsion, Wing Buffet, ...) but only after nerfing it down to sensible levels.

And then we could add some interesting things, like spiked wall tiles that deal extra damage(and conditions such as bleeding) when you're pushed against them

heh, check out what killed this character:

http://te4.org/characters/7239/tome/1d4 ... 25900d6212

More importantly, look at that character's life total, -1836. So willful strike, a talent that can't crit mind you, did at least (1836 * 1.27 to account for Sasha's physical resist) 2331 damage. No chance at a save, just a knockback immunity check.

Something is seriously wrong with that picture. You shouldn't need 100% knockback resistance to avoid being one shot.

And as tiger eye said, this is just one talent in the tree. Blast and Unseen Forces both use this exact same knockback mechanic.

Granted it's a cool mechanic but the numbers need to really be looked at.