ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The Dreamwalker is a highly mobile caster/fighter with two states: Asleep and Awake. When Awake, the Dreamwalker is a melee fighter; when Asleep, a caster. She changes state every 9 turns unless something adds to her Insomnia (see below). Talents do not cool down while in the opposite state. After 9 turns, a Nightmare (a random boss combination set at the start of the game, and unkillable) emerges to hunt her down. Nightmare is generated randomly in LoS and will teleport to the player if she breaks LoS. He disappears when she changes state.

AI Dreamwalkers are generated in one state or the other and do not have to deal with Nightmare.

UNLOCK: Kill Miranda. The Nightmare (see below) has Miranda's sprite.

RESOURCES: Horror and Insomnia. Horror counts up and increases Nightmare's damage. Horror is set to 0 (or the minimum after sustains) when the Awake/Asleep cycle flips. Higher Willpower reduces the effects of Horror.

Insomnia delay the Awake/Asleep shift. Any amount of Horror above the minimum used for sustains counts as +1 to Insomnia. This means that the Nightmare never appears while resting, but does appear if you use any ability while fighting. Bump attacks do not generate Horror, so very trivial encounters can be handled with no turns of Nightmare, mid-level encounters involve a little Nightmare, and boss fights will have lots of Nightmare turns.

She has access to the following talents (Dreamwalker trees are generic unless stated otherwise):

AWAKE (uses Horror as a resource):

Awake/Angel of Death (unlocked, class points, physical damage):

1. Mark of Cain (passive): Any weapon wielded by the Dreamwalker becomes a two-handed scythe. It retains its previous egos, but damage is now related to a combination of Strength, Dexterity and Willpower. The percentage of Willpower that is translated into damage increases with points invested.

2. Sweep (sustain): Bump attack becomes a two-square cone in front of the Dreamwalker. Percentage of regular damage increases with points invested. Instant cast, 15-turn cooldown.

3. Fell Hand: Touch a melee foe for massive damage and daze. 30-turn cooldown.

4. Deadly Gaze (sustain): Adds armor penetration and accuracy.

Awake/Time Is Running Out (locked, class points, temporal damage)

1. Steal Dream: Hit an opponent for no damage. A percentage of the damage you would have dealt is instead returned to you as health.

2. Insomniac: Gain damage resistance as your Insomnia rises.

3. Time's Up: Touch a dazed foe in melee for a chance to kill it outright. Does not work on bosses, reduced chance to work on elites. 30-turn cooldown.

4. Wailing of the Clocks: A [talent_level] long clock hand sweeps clockwise around the battlefield, centered on the caster. This appears as a cone which attacks each quadrant around the caster in turn. On the fifth turn, a voice is heard saying "Hurry up please, it's time," and all opponents in range are dazed. Can only be cast in an open area and follows the caster.

Dreamwalker/Awake (generic points):

1. Awakened Eye (sustain): Improves seeing through stealth, invisibility, and melee critical hit chance. 30 cooldown.

2. Yawn: Enemies in a 2/4/6/8/10 cone are dazed for 1/1/2/2/3 turns with no saving throw. 30 cooldown.

3. Prick (sustain) : Blows have a 4x[talent level]% chance to daze the opponent if hit.

4. Sleep is Death (sustain): Instead of killing the player, fatal blows sustained while Awake have a 20x[talent level]% chance to put her to Sleep with 4x[talent level]% of health remaining and the sustain deactivated. 50 cooldown.

ASLEEP (uses Horror as a resource)

Air and Storm trees (the former is locked). Uses Willpower and Horror instead of Magic and Mana.

The Dreamwalker/Asleep tree (all passives):

1. Lightning Rod: Raises resistances to lightning damage by 20x[talent level] while Asleep. Investing points in this tree disables use of movement infusions. Raises resistance cap by 6x[talent level].
2. Warm Bed: As above, but for cold damage, and disables use of sun infusions.
3. Nightcap: As above, but for blight damage, and disables the use of regeneration infusions.
4. Hot Toddy: The Dreamwalker cannot be killed by physical damage while Asleep, instead being Awakened with 10x[talent level]% health. Disables use of shield runes.


The Dreamwalker also has three trees that can be used in either state. Using these talents adds to the Dreamwalker's Insomnia, such that they will remain in their current state for a number of additional turns equal to the rank of the talent. Thus, the price of using these talents is additional turns spent dealing with Nightmare. Of course, you might actually want to spend extra turns in one state or the other if you've invested more heavily in one tree or if your opponent is more vulnerable to one state's abilities.

The Dreamwalker/Dream Whispers tree:

1. Roll Over: If awake, sleep; if asleep, wake up. Instant cast, no cost, can only be cast when Horror is at the minimum after sustains. Designed to allow players to select how they wish to start a battle. 60-turn cooldown.

2. Dream Logic (sustain): Increases defense, slows enemy projectiles, allows instant swapping of weapons. When activated, counts as a permanent +1 to Insomnia.

3. Flight: Movement speed increase and evasion for a number of turns scaling with willpower and talent level.

4. Enter the Dream: Control the mind of a dazed opponent for a number of turns depending on talent level: 1 for bosses, 1/1/2/2/3 for elites and 2/4/6/8/permanent for mundane foes. If you control an enemy permanently, their Strength and Dexterity are drained and transferred to you by an amount depending on your Willpower. Only one enemy can be controlled at a time. 50 cooldown.


The Dreamwalker/Dream Mastery tree:

1. Swap: Change places with a dazed opponent in LoS. 10 range, 4/3/2/1/0 cooldown.

2. Somnambulance: Targeted teleport up to 6/7/8/9/10 squares away with 4/3/2/1/0 cooldown.

3. Dream Sight: Telepathy 2/4/6/8/10 squares away for 1/2/3/4/5 turns. 5 cooldown.

4. Lucid Dream: Take control of an enemy's dream. Sends the targeted enemy to a parallel dimension, which is a small trap-filled maze with the enemy in the center. Auto-explore does not work here. The player begins at one edge of the map and must find and kill the enemy (whose resistances are all reduced by 150%) before a timer runs out. If she succeeds, she is returned to the time before the Lucid Dream and the enemy will be dead. If she fails, she is returned to the same time, all damage dealt to the enemy during the Dream is ignored and she is dazed for 5 rounds. More points increase the timer. 50 cooldown.

The Dreamwalker/Dreamreading tree (class):

Access to a random race tree (set at character creation).

I like the general idea. I don't quite see how the lightning and storm trees fit with dreams, though. Should it be a mana based class at all? Since it borrows a lot of paradox talents, why not make it a paradox class right away?

It looks like with Sleep Is Death at TL 5 and Hot Toddy you cannot be killed at all without non physical damage, at worst you'd bounce back and forth between the states.

The Asleep tree probably should get a different drawback than infusion use - for undead that would be a no-brainer, since they can't use infusions anyway.

About the Hot Toddy and Sleep is Death, does this mean that if you're on 1hp and then killed, you get healded back to 20% or 50% (at maxed points) of your maximum health? Or is it 20/50% of remainging health before the final blow?
I can already see dreamusers hitting themselves to get back to health.

Perhaps to encourage players to avoid relying too much on hot toddy, you can make it so that if the dreamuser switches states this way, the nightmare counter is not reset and the nightmare does not disappear. So if you've got 4 turns left until the nightmare when you switch states this way, you still have 4 turns left, but it'll take 10 turns before you can make the nightmare disappear.

All trees are generic? Good god, what do you use class points on?

I think Celestial is a more appropriate metaclass, given the awake/asleep dichotomy. It's a fun idea, one that reminded me of Zelda/Sheik in the Smash Bros games. It could also be a Wilder or a Psionic.

The class definitely needs more class trees in place of generic trees. If you go the Psionic route, a tree based on putting others to sleep would be good. Also, resource usage should be reevaluated. The class shouldn't use more than two resources, and preferably just one. A few ideas for how you could accomplish this:

As a celestial: Positive constantly increases while you are awake, while Negative drains. The opposite is true while you are asleep. The class gets Sun Paladin and Anorithil talents (Awake = Positive = Melee, Asleep = Negative = Caster) but none of the talents meant to recover Positive/Negative energy, meaning they have to tactically know when to switch.

As a psionic: Switching (Awake to Asleep/Asleep to Awake) causes you to gain a burst of Psi. Psi can also be recovered through the Somnambulation category, talents based on debuffing targets to regain Psi (Deep Sleep causes Daze-like paralysis, Nightmare causes Mental Shadows to spawn at the target (hostile to the target), Sleepwalker causes Confusion).

Since Stamina + Mana + actual class talent resource is too complicated and a little self-defeating, I suggest custom spell and melee trees for the class. It'll give it a more unique feel, too.

Edit: typo

I'm planning to do a Psion based somewhat on the concept of what is the self, what is reality, the interaction of the subconsciousness on the conscience, and other such philosophical questions.

Some of the talent will be heavily dream based.

Not trying to derail the thread Just wanted to say that a concept with similar thematic elements is in the works.

Thanks so much for all the feedback, and please keep it coming! I was worried that people would think that the idea was overly complicated. Some responses:

1. I've changed all the Paradox talents to class-specific talents that fit better with the general theme. I kind of stole one of them from NEHZ and may need to change it if his Dimensionalist idea gets accepted! I feel like the class needs some way of sapping stats from enemies, since it'll be spread a bit thin otherwise, but it doesn't have to be through mind control necessarily.

2. Lightning and Storm are there partly because they involve a lot of dazing (=sleep) but mainly because Asleep is supposed to have a connection to night, storms, witches' sabbaths, etc. Hence all the Asleep defensive talents being connected to staying indoors. Night is dangerous!

3. I wanted it to be very difficult for this class to be killed by physical means (since it doesn't really exist in the physical world at high levels), but not impossible, so I changed Death is Sleep to a sustain that deactivates when used.

4. Changed the tier 4 penalty to an inability to use shield runes.

5. Yes, Hot Toddy can be used tactically to heal at the cost of a turn and switching states (meaning it can't be chain-used). If you have Hot Toddy, you've probably invested quite a lot in Asleep, so switching to Awake is a significant penalty.

6. The "all generic" point was deliberate, designed to give players a plethora of points to spend on both their Sleeping and Waking selves while making them choose carefully among talents that can be used in both states. I went a bit overboard, though, and will change at least one tree to Class.

7. Bricks, I love your ideas! So much so, in fact, that I don't know which one to adopt. I'll think about it more, but in the meantime, here's an idea for a unique resource:

Horror: Counts up, like Paradox, and increases the chance that Nightmare will randomly appear (he doesn't have a set time to appear as above). Also increases effectiveness of all skills. Resets to zero when you Wake/Sleep.

8. Edge, I look forward to seeing your idea in practice. We certainly need more psionic classes.

Extensively edited the OP. There are now two new custom trees for Awake and the class now uses Horror and Circadian Rhythms as resources. I also added an unlock and changed a few miscellaneous skills. The intermediate rest state is now gone, since Nightmare only appears when you use Horror and should therefore not bother players who are resting or exploring. Some talents still need to be changed to use Class points.

Still eager for suggestions, especially ones for the still-blank Awake talents!

Edit: I am especially eager for feedback regarding Horror. It might be a bit difficult to balance.

Edit2: Changed Horror again, added new Awake talents (one is still blank), changed Circadian Rhythms to Insomnia.

Edit3: Filled in last blank Awake talent. Still eager for advice.