ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I know we already have an Arcane Blade. But I what I have in mind would be a subclass of the mage class, rather than a subclass of the warrior class.

The Warlock. This class would be a combat-oriented mage, using enchantments on his staff and armor to stand his ground in melee.
Main stats: Magic, and Willpower. To some extent, Strenght.
It would start the game with a staff, and iron mail armor, with enough points in armor proficiency to be able to wear it.

It would use the following pre-existing trees:

unlocked at start:
Techniques: Combat techniques (Precise strikes, Rush, Perfect Strike, Blinding Speed)
Techniques: Combat training: (Thick Skin, Armor Training, Weapons proficiencies etc.)
Techniques: Staff Combat (Channel staff, Staff Mastery, Defensive Posture, Blunt Thrust)
Spells: Water (Corrosive Vapor, Freeze, Tidal Wave, Ice Storm)
Spells: Fire (Flame, Flameshock, Fireflash, Inferno)
Spells: Air (Lightning, Chain Lightning, Featherwind, Thunderstorm)
Spells: Meta (Disperse Magic, Spellcraft, Quicken Spells, Metaflow)

locked at start:
Techniques: Battle Tactics (Greater Wpn Focus, Step up, Bleeding Edge, True Grit)
Techniques: Bloodthirst (Bloodbath, Mortal Terror, Bloodrage, Unstoppable)
Spells: Arcane (Arcane Power, Manathrust, Manaflow, Disruption Shield)
Spells: Storm (if birth option is unlocked)
Spells: Wildfire (if birth option is unlocked)
Spells: Cold (if birth option is unlocked)

New trees: (EDIT: updated, to incorporate suggestions made in this thread)
Spells: Staff enhancements (Ofcourse, you need to wield a staff to use those). Starts unlocked. Every point spent in any talent of this tree increases your Physical Power by 3

1) Life Ward (passive)
- when you damage creatures with your Staff (Melee and Channel Staff), you are healed for x% of the damage done. x increases with talent level and Spellpower
- increases your defense by x. Increases with Physical power
2) Hot Rod (sustain, 80 mana)
- when you hit in melee, there is a x% chance to cast a level 1/2/3/4/5/6/7 Flame in the direction of attack. Chance increases with Spellpower. Firing a spell this way drains 10 mana.
- if you are wielding a Staff with damage type: fire, there is a chance Blastwave will be cast on hit instead of Flame
- increases your physical crit chance by y%. Effect increases with Physical power
3) Lightning Rod (sustain, 80 mana)
- when you hit in melee, there is a x% chance to cast a level 1/2/3/4/5/6/7 Lightning in the direction of the attack. Chance increases with Spellpower. Firing a spell this way drains 10 mana.
- if you are wielding a staff with lightning damage type, there is a chance Shock will be cast on hit instead of Lightning
- decreases your weapon speed by x% (thus increasing speed of attack). Effect increases with Physical power
4) Break Staff (activation, 50 mana)
- destroys your currently equipped staff
- puts all your spells on cooldown. Deactivates any sustains from this talent tree.
- temporarily increases your mana pool by 200/400/600/800/1000/1200/1400 (and fills it to the max)
- casts a level 3/3/4/4/5 disruption shield on you. This is determined by the material tier of the staff broken.
- when the disruption shield ends, mana pool will be restored to it's normal value

Spells: Armored Arcana. For all talents in this tree, you need to wear metal body armor. Starts unlocked. Every point spent in any talent of this tree increases your armor and defense values by 0.5

1) Relief of Burden (passive). Reduces the penalty for wearing heavy armor.
- reduces fatigue by x%. Effect increases with talent level and Spellpower
2) Shiny Polish (sustain, 60(?) mana). Your armor shines unbelievably bright!
- any creature that attacks the wearer in melee will be hit for x light damage, and must pass a spellpower vs spell save check, or be blinded for 2/2/3/3/4/4/5 turns. Damage increases with Spellpower
3) Shell (sustain, 60(?) mana). Your armor will magically grow to protect you!
When you take damage that is more than 25% of your max health, your armor will project a damage shield that negates x*(characters total armor value) damage for 4/5/6/7/8/9/10 turns. x increases with Spellpower. The effect can only trigger once every 20 turns.
4) Armored Arcana (sustain, 70(?) mana). Your armor acts as a conduit for magical energies, and reacts to being hit in melee as well.
- Whenever you are hit by a spell doing fire, cold/ice, electrical, arcane, or acid damage, you will be granted +x% resistance, +y% damage (talent level 3+) and +z% damage penetration (talent level 5+) for the damage type recieved for 2/3/4/5/6/7/8 turns. Only one type of damage can be affected at the same time. resistance, damage bonus and damage penetration will increase with spellpower.
- Whenever you are hit in melee, the attacker must pass a Physical power vs Physical save check, or be knocked back for 1/2/3/4/5/6/7 tiles

I really like the staff combat class idea, and the setup is very coherent and thematic. Some comments about the balance of the class:

The class will likely be quite low on accuracy, as it will be pumping Magic as opposed to STR or DEX. Although Channel Staff is unaffected, the class could become very starved for Generic points with the required investment in combat accuracy.

Hot Rod: Chance of Flameshock on hit could be quite overpowered (which is why it was removed from Arcane Combat), as it is a huge AoE stun (+ damage), making stunlocks very easy.

Break Staff: I don't like the idea of consumable items. This could be made more palatable to me if it was one staff from inventory instead of the one that is wielded.

Shiny Polish/Armored Arcana: 100% chance of blinding (or knockback) is far, far too powerful. I would knock it down to (10 + 2 * talent)% chance at the most.

All that being said, I really like how this class fits together, with fatigue reduction, melee boosts, and Armored Arcana for specific damage types.

What about substituting other stat for accuracy, like willpower? Or make it Mag/Dex hybrid?

I had a similar idea to this - we might even have talked in chat about it, not sure - though I wanted to use a different name and have the class wear robes rather than heavy armor. Oh, and they'd get the Aegis tree. Someone jokingly referred to this idea as being like Jedis.

Anyway...I lost /deleted my notes but still remember some stuff, mainly about staves:

I had thought about staff breaking too, it's a cool concept but we're trying to move away from consumable resources so what about Imbue Staff(lets you imbue a gem in a staff, obviously) and a talent that lets your staff recover energy faster so they can be activated more often?

Oh, and as for Strength as a stat - staff ONLY Mag based, so you'd want a passive that lets you also add some Str to it.

Also, a Staff Twirl talent that lets you deflect projectiles AND spells back to the enemy by twirling your staff but has a heavy stamina/mana cost(maybe deflecting non magical projectiles should only cost stamina)

Might be boring, but I think a passive that granted passive +% damage based on your staff damage type could be nice too. So with a fire staff you get up to +10% fire damage. Alternatively/in addition, at TL 5 'upgrade'your staff damage type if possible, so for example blight becomes drainlife(too powerful?), lightning becomes lightning and shock, physical becomes physical+knockback...as some of these upgrades aren't always useful, might be better to make this a cheap sustain instead.

lukep wrote:I really like the staff combat class idea, and the setup is very coherent and thematic.

Thanks!

lukep wrote: The class will likely be quite low on accuracy, as it will be pumping Magic as opposed to STR or DEX. Although Channel Staff is unaffected, the class could become very starved for Generic points with the required investment in combat accuracy.

That's why I gave the class the Precise/Perfect Strike tree. I don't know about generic points, I think it wouldn't be a problem. Also, a lot of your damage will be coming from spells, which don't use accuracy.

lukep wrote:Hot Rod: Chance of Flameshock on hit could be quite overpowered (which is why it was removed from Arcane Combat), as it is a huge AoE stun (+ damage), making stunlocks very easy.

I was under the impression that since then, Flameshock has been nerfed somewhat. If it is too overpowered, perhaps add to the Hot Rod and Lightning Rod: - spells cast this way cost mana, will only go off if you have enough mana to cast them.

lukep wrote:Break Staff: I don't like the idea of consumable items. This could be made more palatable to me if it was one staff from inventory instead of the one that is wielded.

Well, I don't really think staves are 'consumable items', even with this skill. They're just weapons that happen to get used up with this skill. I've never played a game so far where there weren't enough staves to be found in dungeons and shops to make this skill feasible. Carry a few extra staves, swap to them when you need to break, so you don't break your favourite staff of awesomeness of power.

lukep wrote:Shiny Polish/Armored Arcana: 100% chance of blinding (or knockback) is far, far too powerful. I would knock it down to (10 + 2 * talent)% chance at the most.

I did give this some thought, but seing the class does not have the Phantasm school (Illuminate, blind everyone within radius 12 for a lot of turns, low cooldown), I did not think it overpowered at all. The knockback might be too powerful in it's current form, seeing the class also already has Tidal Wave to knock stuff back. On the other hand, it would activate against melee opponents only. Perhaps, make it a physical effect, that does a physical power vs physical save check would make it more balanced?

Zonk wrote:I had a similar idea to this - we might even have talked in chat about it, not sure - though I wanted to use a different name and have the class wear robes rather than heavy armor.

Nope, wasn't me. Great minds just think alike

Zonk wrote:Oh, and they'd get the Aegis tree.

I intentionally left it out, to make this class feel really different from a mage. Your healing is going to have to come from Life Ward and Bloodbath. Which should be more than enough, with all the synergies there. The Shell sustain should provide a decent replacement for the Aegis shields (said spells's "x" shouldn't be too low, it should give a decent shield, and you can boost it by wearing metal boots/gloves/helms (shield, if you can find Telos' half staff) Getting the Light tree off an Anorithil escort will boost healing even further.

Zonk wrote:Oh, and as for Strength as a stat - staff ONLY Mag based, so you'd want a passive that lets you also add some Str to it.

I mentioned this class would need some strenght, but I didn't intend that to be for melee damage output. It's intended to be able to carry/wear all the heavy armor you are going to want to wear, to boost the damage shield value of Shell. And some spare staves to break.

Zonk wrote: Also, a Staff Twirl talent that lets you deflect projectiles AND spells back to the enemy by twirling your staff but has a heavy stamina/mana cost(maybe deflecting non magical projectiles should only cost stamina)

Might be boring, but I think a passive that granted passive +% damage based on your staff damage type could be nice too. So with a fire staff you get up to +10% fire damage. Alternatively/in addition, at TL 5 'upgrade'your staff damage type if possible, so for example blight becomes drainlife(too powerful?), lightning becomes lightning and shock, physical becomes physical+knockback...as some of these upgrades aren't always useful, might be better to make this a cheap sustain instead.

Both interesting ideas there. Staff Twirl could maybe replace Break Staff. But I really like the concept of staff-breaking, it seems very thematically fitting.

Thanks for your input!

I think it seems a little too sustain heavy. If the intention is to force the player to choose between the sustains, then there isn't much motivation to invest heavily in the new trees. I would absolutely never invest in Break Staff, unless I knew I had a reliable source of staves (like alchemists and gem extraction). Even then, I'd be worried about accidentally breaking my good staff. Plus, the effect isn't very good - you get a disruption shield, which is OK; you get an increased mana pool (I'm assuming you actually recover that much mana, too), which does nothing with your spells all on cooldown; and you have to spend a turn switching to a new staff, for which you will have none of your sustained skills active. Alternatively, I could invest a category point in Arcane, and get a manasurge talent and a more controlled disruption shield.

Generally I feel like this could be alternative development path for archmages or alchemists, perhaps even ABs. I could probably suggest some more talents or better revisions if I knew what sort of feel you want the class to have, including their "motivation" in the ToME universe. When I hear "warlock" I tend to think of something between your stereotypical mage and necromancer - not really evil, just immoral and reckless.

bricks wrote:I think it seems a little too sustain heavy. If the intention is to force the player to choose between the sustains, then there isn't much motivation to invest heavily in the new trees. I would absolutely never invest in Break Staff, unless I knew I had a reliable source of staves (like alchemists and gem extraction). Even then, I'd be worried about accidentally breaking my good staff. Plus, the effect isn't very good - you get a disruption shield, which is OK; you get an increased mana pool (I'm assuming you actually recover that much mana, too), which does nothing with your spells all on cooldown; and you have to spend a turn switching to a new staff, for which you will have none of your sustained skills active. Alternatively, I could invest a category point in Arcane, and get a manasurge talent and a more controlled disruption shield.

Generally I feel like this could be alternative development path for archmages or alchemists, perhaps even ABs. I could probably suggest some more talents or better revisions if I knew what sort of feel you want the class to have, including their "motivation" in the ToME universe. When I hear "warlock" I tend to think of something between your stereotypical mage and necromancer - not really evil, just immoral and reckless.

Well, as for motivation; it seems that we have different ideas of a 'warlock'. For me, a warlock is a 'mage who is not afraid to do some melee as well'. Reckless? Yes. But, not per definition evil, or immoral. Slightly insane, perhaps. Otherwise just a spellcaster in armour that likes to bash stuff with his staff.

The sustains aren't meant to choose between. They're rather meant to have all active, once your mana pool allows it. (They might be a bit too expensive now, but I did put questionmarks behind those values)
Melee attacks and Channel Staff should be this classes' primary, casting spells should come second. Perhaps, for that reason, the masteries of the 4 initial spell trees (Water, Fire, Earth, Meta) should be 1.10 instead of the archmage's 1.30. The new trees, and Staff Combat should have 1.30 though. Building the class should strike a balance between raising magic and willpower, and investing in the Staff enchantments tree and Strenght to raise Physical power, for the synergy with the tree's secundary effects (extra defense, physical crit and attack speed).

As for the break staff talent, I intended it to be mostly a "panic button" skill for the class, so I don't think it would use up more staves than the game's shops and random drops offer you. It would be useful in boss fights, mostly. Putting all spells on cooldown seems thematically fitting. Besides that, you want most of your mana to go into your disruption shield explosion anyways, you can still bash with your staff (albeit without sustains), and most of your combat spells have short cooldowns, so they'll be ready to use soon enough.

And indeed, you could invest in the Arcane tree, and get a more reliable disruption shield. And you should. The Break staff shield is much stronger that what you can cast yourself though (at least that's what I intended it to be. If it's not, it should give an even bigger mana pool, and perhaps change the spell levels to 3/3/4/4/5 for breaking higher tier staves). I think this class should invest in Arcane anyways, and get the disruption shield. Lack of the Aegis tree makes it rather nescessary, unless you favour grabbing the Light tree off an Anorithil escort.

I hope I could make somewhat more clear to you, how I view the class.

Hmm, interesting. I'm still mixed on the class but I'd certainly give it a try! I'd suggest making some of those sustains into passive skills, and not only for convenience - the handful of enemies that can dispel magical effects will really shut your class down.

I updated the OP, to include some of the suggestions made in previous posts.
Changes:

Tweaked overall sustain costs. All sustains together from the 2 new trees now cost 350 mana, instead of 500+
-Staff enhancement tree now gives +3 Physical power per point invested in it's talents, instead of +2, to take the mechanics of power/defense tiers into account. Perhaps it should even be +4.
- Life Ward is now a Passive.
- Hot Rod gains mana drain. Flameshock is removed. Replaced with chance for Blastwave, if you are wielding a fire damage staff.
- Lightning Rod gains mana drain. Chain Lightning is removed, replaced with chance for Shock, if you're wielding a lightning damage staff.
- Break staff has some values tweaked.
- Shiny Polish has it's blind duration nerfed a bit.
- Shell shield duration increases by 1.
- Armored Arcana knockback now does a Physical check instead of a Spell check.

EDIT: a nice new unique artefact for this class would be, a staff that does both fire and lightning melee damage. (and preferably can be wielded one-handed)