ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The shaman (tentative title) is nature's answer to the archmage. The raw elements of the world are channeled through totems, and can be combined to yield complex effects.

Ok, so this idea is still in its infancy but I wanted to share it to get feedback, etc. The idea for this project started from (a) the desire to see more nature classes and (b) liking the seeded/combinatorial style of Magicka.

The Elements

• Fire (opposite of Water)
• Earth (opposite of Air)
• Air (opposite of Earth)
• Water (opposite of Fire)

Each of the elements will have a different talent tree (similar to archmage talent separation). The first talent in each tree will grant the ability to summon a totem of the corresponding element. Totems will be temporary, immovable actors added to the game (think jellies, or honey trees). They will also have a radius of effect. Within this radius they will:

• Buff the summoner
• Do something bad against enemies
• Be "detonated" or released early
• Combine with other totems

The additional talents in the totem trees will add/scale these different effects. For example, the default effect of the fire totem will be to set any enemies within its range burning.

Fire

1. Fire Totem: sets enemies burning within radius.
2. ?
3. Firestorm: ball of flames, should keep DG happy
4. Fire Mastery: lowers the cooldown of the Fire totem. This will allow multiple totems to be placed at a time. Placing two fire totems within each other's radii will...

Earth

1. Earth Totem: buffs the summoners armor while within radius.
2. Earthen grasp: tries to pin enemies within radius.
3. Earthquake: detonate the totem, stunning and causing physical damage.
4. Earth Mastery: lowers the cooldown of the Earth totem. This will allow multiple totems to be placed at a time. Placing two earth totems within each other's radii will create a stone wall between the two totems.

Air

1. Air Totem: reduces the movement speed of enemies within radius.
2. Favorable winds: increases movement speed of summoner.
3. Storm: detonate the totem, causing a chain lightning to strike X enemies within radius
4. Air Mastery: lowers the cooldown of the Air totem. This will allow multiple totems to be placed at a time. Placing two air totems within each other's radii will create an air wall and reflect projectiles.

Water

1. Water Totem: drown enemies within radius, reducing their air level.
2. Water shield: increases lightning and fire resistance? Not too crazy about this one.
3. Tsunami: detonate the totem pushing everyone (including summoner) away from the totem.
4. Water Mastery: lowers the cooldown of the Water totem. This will allow multiple totems to be placed at a time. Placing two water totems within each other's radii creates a pool that heals all within it. Name ideas?

Casting totem on another totem type (but not the opposite type) will create a totem pole that mixes the two effects. For example, fire+air would create a totem pole that fires flame beams. Air+water would shoot ice projectiles. I definitely need more ideas here.

What do you guys think?

I would love to see a class with more complex mechanics than what we have now, so make it happen!

Fire2 could increase your life/mana regeneration.

This is a unique take on the nature mage concept. I say go for it.

Would these totems become a temporary obstacle or merely just be a spell effect centered on a chosen square that anyone can walk through?

From what I can see the central idea here is a caster centred around area of effect spells. This is definitely a very cool idea, and could come off very differently from the ray-focused archmage, especially with combining field effects. However I do worry about some of the thematic implementation.

My personal opinion is that it's too magey, and should have more individual effects. Many of the spells are direct clones of archmage spells. What I really don't see here is a coherent theme for how the class should play, beyond simply archmages with a different resource and some element combining (which seems suboptimal anyway, since it means maxing several trees and spreading yourself thin).

Also, I dislike the elemental theme - it's dull and overused in RPGs, including certain ToME4 classes. Consider instead something like Mountain, Forest, Ocean, Sun, Storm instead perhaps. Or different animals. Something more thematic and potentially allowing more interesting ideas than fireball. Totems don't give off much of a wilder theme when simply attached to the elements in the way a mage taps into those elements. The Shaman should have a more natural route that shows greater communion with nature.

I agree, the four element system is super dull, not to diminish the overall scheme. Grey's suggested "elements" remind me of the I Ching, could be a good source of inspiration. Not sure what the historical RPG influence is, but "Shaman" suggests communion with and utilization of spirits. I'd like to see more of that.

The "buffs-from-totems" thing would be more interesting if this was a multiplayer game; practically, it will probably just feel like a chore. The combining sounds cool, though, especially if it was a little more open-ended. Perhaps you summon a general totem, and then start modifying/buffing it with other skills, making it more powerful or more suited to a particular situation. Kind of like a wilder golem.

The division of skills in terms of elements threatens to make this class's builds as frustrating as Wyrmic's. I'd rather see skills grouped by utility, instead of elemental association.

What's this "Magicka" thing I keep hearing about? Lots of games have something called Magicka, so I guess I'm missing something.

bricks wrote:What's this "Magicka" thing I keep hearing about? Lots of games have something called Magicka, so I guess I'm missing something.

It's a single player or co-op game that focuses on combining several different elements/spell components together, making big explosions and killing everything. Link to their website.

haha.. and here I was going to say, it's how the elder scrolls series spells mana (Been watching my wife play skyrim all day).

But yeah, I've wanted to do a seeded caster as well. Goblinz and I have discussed this idea in depth a few times. What about making this more of a Druidish class though, focus on nature style elements and mix in some other trees. Because four trees isn't enough really.

Could have the totems modify spell trees too. For instance you could take Sun as an 'element' and have both sun totems and sun spells. Sun Spells could gain bonuses if cast near sun totems or the druid could get bonuses after calling a sun totem.

lukep wrote:

bricks wrote:What's this "Magicka" thing I keep hearing about? Lots of games have something called Magicka, so I guess I'm missing something.

It's a single player or co-op game that focuses on combining several different elements/spell components together, making big explosions and killing everything. Link to their website.

Ah, nifty. The whole notion of spellcrafting/mixing/whatever has always interested me. Would make for a cool module on its own.

Hum, to edge, how about instead of sun spells and sun totems, have something like seasonal or aspect totems (Fall/winter/etc, birth/growth/death, whatever) and a separate set of directed talents (/spells) dedicated to something more active, like animals, geographies, or weather conditions. So say a winter totem would cause appropriately thematic adjustments to storm tree talents in its radius, causing ice and snow effects to come into play. A mountain tree talent would instead get knockback and enhanced physical damage (or perhaps suffocation) from a winter totem, channeling avalanches.

Definitely more trees, though. The Ink Sage concept I wrote up a while back had seven planned unique trees, which I'd say is a good number, along with four-five metaclass-shared ones.

And yeah, Magicka had a 7drl implementation called Magicko. Is pretty neat.

I whipped together a class in b14 or so that operated on a vaguely-similar idea of combined effects and duration AoEs that was quite interesting to play [in my opinion]. The general idea I ran with was that what you did was open portals to various places and, by opening portals on top of each other, the resultant effects were modified. Most of the relevant skills were sustains that were centered on yourself, though you could cast them on an external totem, I suppose.

The main problem I found was that duration AoE-centric classes are kind of annoying, since the general strategy would be to pull them into range, set them off, and escape until you can regen/cooldown and do it all over again.

Example of combos I had:
Blizzard = Slowing cold AoE
Steel = Knockback rays firing off towards random tiles
Blizzard + Steel = Freezing ice+physical projectile.

More interesting example:
Heaven = Illumination, AoE light that heals friendlies, damages hostile and 2x to demons.
Hell = 1radius AoE that does increasing damage (and costs more) the longer it's sustained. 10% chance of spawning a ritch flamespitter every turn of random friendliness. (*I had no idea what a ritch was at the time so something arbitrary that fired flame sounded good. Probably replace it with an imp.)
Heaven + Hell = Spawns various demons that are hostile to everything other than themselves, huge AoE, teleports yourself randomly.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I will definitely move away from linking to the raw elements, and am currently favoring using animals as the new trees although using biomes would be cool, too. Although after writing that I am now leaning towards biomes, so that is definitely something to sort out.

I agree that seeded casting would be pretty cool, but if I go that route I want to make it general and not have a bunch of if/else chains determining what should happen given a specific set of totems. The example I thought of this morning would be for each totem to have a "power" and a "modifier". The powers would be the effect of the totem on its own, as well as the effect of a totem pole if the given totem is at the top. The modifiers would be how the lower totems on a totem pole would affect the top totem's power. Say there were two totems, Bear and Wolf. The Bear totem's power is to increase the player's damage over targets within the radius (akin to the Cursed Dominate talent) and the modifier is to increase the amplitude of the totem (reflecting the bear's raw power). The Wolf totem's power can fill targets with fear and cause them to run away and the modifier is to increase the number of times the totem's effect triggers each turn (reflecting the wolf's tendency to hunt in packs). Putting a Wolf totem under a Bear totem would result in multiple enemies being dominated every turn. Putting a Bear totem under a Wolf totem would increase the chance of enemies becoming fearful. The nice thing about this system is that if made generic enough (on the code side) the combinations are easy to deduce and there is no problem adding new ones.

Finally, to answer Rectifier, I envisioned the totems as being temporary actors. This would mean that they would decay after X turns, and also that they would have Y life. The life is important because it means that enemies (and AoE talents) could damage them and potentially destroy them. Some totem modifiers should probably directly the totem if I end up going that route. An alternative approach would be to allow multiple, permanent totems but each totem increases the minimum equilibrium (similar to Chronomancy sustains). Only be releasing totems would you be able to drop equilibrium and get back to safe failure percentages.

I like it, Yufra. Are you thinking of coding this yourself? Using both animal and natural themes sounds really good, and certainly shamanistic. The totem-generalization system sounds like it will be the biggest challenge and the most distinct element of the class. Coming up with distinct powers and modifiers may be tough, though the community can help with that. Examples: "Hawk" and "Sky" should give larger bonuses if they are on the top of a totem stack. The "Bull" totem should give increased power if hit by a physical attack in the last turn. "Wolf" totems could gain power when there are other totems nearby (but not for those in the stack). Totems like "Storm" and "Sun" could give bonuses when hit by appropriate elements. I hope those are appropriate for what you have in mind.

A few ideas for talents:
A totem teleport (to move around totems)
A "swap" teleport (player and totem switch places)
A talent that combines active totems, and another talent that causes the totems to break apart and fall to the ground randomly. Could also be used offensively.
A knockback-effect ball that requires a totems as a center

yufra wrote:Finally, to answer Rectifier, I envisioned the totems as being temporary actors. This would mean that they would decay after X turns, and also that they would have Y life. The life is important because it means that enemies (and AoE talents) could damage them and potentially destroy them. Some totem modifiers should probably directly the totem if I end up going that route. An alternative approach would be to allow multiple, permanent totems but each totem increases the minimum equilibrium (similar to Chronomancy sustains). Only be releasing totems would you be able to drop equilibrium and get back to safe failure percentages.

Very cool

bricks wrote:I like it, Yufra. Are you thinking of coding this yourself?

Yes, this would be a personal project. I've been tinkering with the AI for a while but would like to get back to something a bit more creative.

bricks wrote:Using both animal and natural themes sounds really good, and certainly shamanistic. The totem-generalization system sounds like it will be the biggest challenge and the most distinct element of the class. Coming up with distinct powers and modifiers may be tough, though the community can help with that.

The totem-generalization will definitely require brainstorming, but once it is solidified I know the community will help out as you did with your suggestions.