Custom Classes

[Emetivore]

It would be killer if, at some point mid-game, the player unlocked the ability to make custom classes.

ToME classes are made up of 4-skill categories. We can purchase access to new category with a Category Point. It makes sense that the player should, at character creation, choose "Custom" as their class and simply have access to all of the categories and a bunch of Category Points to choose which to invest in. Then I could make an invisible, shadowstriking, minion raising healer with a two-handed axe if I want.

Since this could be imbalanced, achievements/unlocks should be disabled. Perhaps it should only be available in Arena and Infinite Dungeon.

Lots of games have done this extremely well (Elder Scrolls pre-Skyrim, Rift, Dungeons of Dredmor, many more). It seems like ToME's character system is already mostly set up to do this, and it would add a whole lot of replayability and customizability.

[PureQuestion]

It'd be an incredibly interesting thing for the alternate campaigns, yes...

[eliotn]

Yeah this is a good idea. It would be nice to allow class crafting, but there has to be a countermeasures for gaming the system. Force the player to invest category points in order to unlock different groups of trees, that will use a particular resource. This will help to mitigate abuse from the player simply dabbling in everything.

[Zonk]

It's such a good idea...DarkGod already thought of it An 'Adventurer'class is planned already.

[bricks]

The broad resource spread will make any of these custom classes a powerhouse, since they can just switch over to whatever talents that use a topped-off resource while another recovers. I think it's a fun idea for an addon, but I don't really see any need for it in regular play. I'd probably try it once and never again; much like cheat mode/the console, it really kills the part of the game that is compelling.

[PureQuestion]

I don't know about that; I think it'd be a lot of fun for the side campaigns purely for the element of experimentation.

[Emetivore]

I'm one of those types that makes characters with a focus on theme rather than on power. For guys like me, Adventurer class provides a lot of freedom to do that. However, I do totally agree that it could make overpowered characters, like Bricks said.

The class could just have some sort of (non-category restrictive) penalty associated with it, such as an exp penalty, finds 10% less gold, whatever.

But hey, if achievements are disabled, and the tournament director is nowhere to be found (ha), what's wrong with making an overpowered guy in a single player game?

[edge2054]

From the adventurer birth file.

Code: Select all

"#{bold}#This is a bonus class for winning the game, it is by no means balanced.#{normal}#",

The class is already in the game it's just not unlockable (and thus not yet playable) because of a technical limitation (or at least that's what I heard was the reason).

[Emetivore]

Yikes having to win the game to gain access is pretty harsh. This would cut off access except for the most die-hard ToME players, making it more of an easter egg and less of a feature.

A better idea would to make your adventurer class only have access to categories from classes that you have already unlocked. That way, to really make use of it, you'll have to play in regular mode to unlock stuff. If you want the Marauder skills, you'll have to play a Rogue and do 600 damage; afterwards you can use Thuggery et al with your Adventurer.

Heck, make it available at first install! It wouldn't be that great unless you put a bunch of time into making it versatile, and it would add more excitement to unlocking things in the first place.

[donkatsu]

Can't you do this already with cheat mode?

[Goblinz]

Can't you do this already with cheat mode?

Yes you can. However I suspect the idea is to be able to share your cool and wacky combos with everyone else on the online vault. I think currently the best approach is an addon. Its easy to make a class with all the trees and extra talent points when starting but navigating the level up screen would be a pain. The adventurer class in quasi-development gives you only 10 random skill trees. So the question is what is a good way to make a easy UI with all the functionality for creating your classes

[Emetivore]

No no no, 10 random trees is completely different than crafting your own personalized class. I wouldn't play 10 random trees.

Do this:

- Have all of the trees in the game (or all the trees that player has previously unlocked in normal play) on the first screen.

- If they use a resource of any kind (Vim, Mana, etc), perhaps adding that as a highest-tier sorting option would make sense (so the player could make more easily informed decisions about their resource management); for example, Stamina -> Technique -> Archery Prowess. This will sort all the Stamina/Vim/etc abils next to each other.

- Give the player a bunch of category points and let them dive in. No points should be pre-spent.

- Once the player accept his choices, simply remove all of the unchosen talents from the skill screen. Whenever the player has zero category points, hide them completely! This way the skill screen remains completely clutter-free (actually, even more so than the regular classes!).

[Dude892]

So what about leveling up and get category points? Would you just upgrade trees or buy rune and infusion slots? Could have them choose 5 major categories and then 3 minor ones. The minor ones they would have to unlock with the category points.

[Emetivore]

Just make all the categories reappear whenever the player has an unspent category point.

[Strongpoint]

IMO, this will create way to overpowered characters... Random ones may be more balanced, but... startscumming all the way is bad


Maybe some kind of "amnesia" class? Character start with 2-4 predetermined talent trees ( To prevent startscumming) and gets new random talent trees every X character levels