ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I love the Zigurath anti-magic plot line, and the lore behind it, but I feel that, at the moment, it's kind of short. It needs more fleshing out. Most specifically, if there's a whole city of anti-magic specialists, dedicated to the complete eradication of magic from all of Maj'Eyal, and it's not a small city at that, where are all the mage hunters? Where are all the people they raise up and train, not just recruited from the outside and given a few pointers, but people raised up from small children to hate magic?

Enter the Mage Hunter, who's primary stats will be Willpower and something physical, player's choice based on weapon tree they take.

Talent Trees:
-Combat Training
-Two-handed Mastery
-Shield Mastery
-Two-weapon Mastery

Disruption:
-Disrupting Blow (activated): The mage hunter infuses his weapon with natural magic-disrupting energies, dealing X additional slime damage and causing magic disruption on the target (should magic disruption deal additional turn damage to undead?).
-Resist Magic (passive): The mage hunter has learned to resist the effects of magic better. Gain X resistance to any magic-sourced damage, as well as Y spell save.
-Cone of Silence (activated): The mage hunter projects natural magic-disturbing energies forward in a cone of X radius, silencing all in it for Y turns.
-Repel Magic (sustained): While active, the mage hunter has a (mindpower-based) chance of repelling any magic spells cast at them, turning them back on the caster instead (AoE effects that don't specifically target the mage hunter are excluded).

Slime (I know there was an old Slime tree, is that still around?):
-Spit Slime (activated): The mage hunter spits slime at an enemy, dealing X damage and having a chance to cause magic disruption.
-Slime Coat (sustained): The mage hunter coats himself in a layer of slime. Any target attacking him in melee takes X slime damage. Additionally, the mage hunter gains Y resistance to fire, ice, and electricity. (should it also grant resistance to other magic damage types, like time, gravity, light, darkness?)
-Slimeball (activated): The mage hunter projects a ball of slime at the target, doing X slime damage to it and anything within radius (small), and dealing an additional Y damage a turn for Z turns. Additionally, there is a chance every turn for the magic disruption status to be inflicted.
-Mage-hunting Slime (sustained): The mage hunter infuses some slime with natural magic-hunting instincts for X turns, creating a mage-seeking ooze which is highly resistant to magic. This ooze will seek out and hunt any targets using magical energies (equipment or spells) and deal slime damage to them, possibly inflicting magic disruption. The ooze will not attack anything without magical energies.

Magic Hunting:
-Mage Rush (activated): The mage hunter rushes at the target, covering up to X tiles in only one turn (can be activated if more than X tiles from target). If he reaches the target, he also attacks them dealing normal weapon damage plus additional damage proportional to the target's spellpower. (or should the rush range be proportional to spellpower?)
-Magic Sense (passive): The mage hunter can sense magical energies. Magic-using enemies and magical traps can be sensed within X tiles (maybe mages can be sensed from further than those only using magical items?), even through walls and doors. (Maybe the tile the magic is in is simply illuminated empty if not in LoS, if so, it should also grant significant see invisible)
-Magical Concealment (sustained): The mage hunter sheathes himself in natural energies which shield him from detection by mages (magic users only, not those with magical items). Grants X stealth vs mages. (would this be too hard to implement?)
-Mage-killer (activated): The mage hunter hits the target with an attack that causes their magical energies to collapse on themselves. Deals normal melee damage, drains mana, vim, and positive or negative energy, and deals (elemental-appropriate?) damage to the target proportional to the energy drained. Even those with magical items are affected, taking X damage for every arcane-powered item they have equipped.


Starter area:
I figure the Mage Hunter has to be a Zigurath, so he should start out there, maybe given a 'final graduation trial' or the like. This would be different from the battle test that people taking the AM path face. I'm thinking a dungeon filled with magic-themed enemies that have been captured by the Zigurath for training purposes. At the end of it, a mage (boss) has taken captive a young woman. When you beat him, the young woman tells you her story, how she is an alchemist (mage) who has spent her life trying to help people. The Zigurath found her and brought her here. Will you free her? If you do, the Zigurath fail you and expel you from their city (starter dungeon complete, AM path and Zigurath sealed). If you kill her, you pass the Zigurath test and are sent out into the world to hunt mages (starter dungeon complete, AM path taken and Zigurath open).

Is granting AM at the beginning too much? This class would bypass a rather difficult trial most characters have to take to become AM. Do any of the above abilities clash too much with the AM path talents? I know most people take AM for the Silence spell, and I've tried to limit silencing in these abilities, as the mage hunter generally has to close to melee or cone range to silence a foe. Should the mage hunter be given any choice about taking the AM path, or should they be forced along it? Would the above abilities be over powered with access to runes and arcane equipment? Should the mage hunter have a permanent magic disruption effect on himself? Maybe generate one any time he uses any of his mage hunter talents?

I'm thinking that, as a whole, this class would be quite powerful against mages (as it should be), and maybe undead (magic dependent), but would be far more vulnerable to natural enemies. A minotaur or wyrm would be a big problem.

That seems almost preposterously anti-mage. I like the idea of mage-hunter NPCs, but taking Antimagic to the extreme of encompassing an entire class just seems kind of flat. You are right about the difficulty of implementing some of those talents, too. Apart from going through and flagging various enemies as "mages," I don't know of a good way to distinguish what is and isn't a mage. For example, Wrathroot's talents are predominantly mana-based spells, but I don't think you'd want to consider him a mage. I'm also leery of talents that specifically target undead - there are lots of undead, and the mechanic is largely unprecedented (I think Retch is the only talent that affects certain creatures in a unique way).

Further, the concept seems kind of uninspired. A berserker/bulwark/wyrmic with Antimagic would probably play and feel roughly the same. I think there was an Antimagic class proposal a while back that had a lot of cool headsman/executioner-themed talents. Personally, I'd rather see Magehunters use bows or slings, and I could see the stealth concept expanded to make it more of a hit-and-run mage killer, instead of an automatic-win mage killer.

If you are open to reworking it, I'd suggest adding no more than a single new anti-mage tree, perhaps a mindstar-based tree (for a Willpower-heavy Mage Hunter), and access to some Archer and maybe even Rogue talents.

My big problem with making the class ranged is that it would make killing mages MUCH easier. I intentionally limited the range for most of these abilities so that the player would have to close on mages to kill them. Mage Rush and Magical Concealment would allow the player to close with mages safely/quickly, but that's only two talents. Unless you made the class an archer class, but made the anti-magic talents still pretty short ranged, I think a ranged mage hunter would be TOO overpowered against mages.

As for the difficulty of identifying mages, I imagine it could be done the same way the AM path is banned/allowed for players: do they have mana, vim, etc. Of course, this wouldn't work for arcane-powered items. Anything affecting that would have to check the target's inventory (do monsters truly have an inventory?).

I DO consider Wrathroot magic-based, and thus subject to anti-magic attacks. Does silencing it keep it from activating it's abilities? Does mana clash, or whatever the AM path talent that reduces the targets magic fuel and deals damage based on that, work on it? If so, so should these.

I was only vaguely considering that magic disruption, as a whole, should deal damage to undead. It's far from certain that it should at all. Does magic disruption disrupt magic within the subject, or only around it? As implemented now, it would suggest that it only impacts magic around the target, and thus wouldn't damage undead. I think it would be an interesting mechanic, especially for undead players, if it did damage undead, however. That would require a change in the basic concept of magic disruption, however. It would then be reasonable that magic disruption also had a chance of placing runes or any spell talents on cooldown. This is, as a whole, a secondary suggestion which would significantly impact balance as a whole for much of the game, which means it's very iffy if it's even reasonable.

As for it needing a wider range of regular abilities, I was thinking of expanding the non-mage-hunter abilities, but the one major drawback of this class is that it's so focused on mages. Mages, and magic-using monsters as a whole, are a major challenge in this game, and mage characters are commonly considered the most powerful (anorthil, corruptor, archmage, necromancer, alchemist, any others?). I frequently hear about them being OP, or at least the easiest classes to play. Considering this as it is in the game today, a class that could easily dispose of them needs a significant weakness to make up for removing most of that threat. Likewise, if this class could make it into the random elites system, such a powerfully anti-magic class needs a weakness you can hit. If you think it's justifiable to give them more routine abilities anyway, I could see picking one or two of the listed talent trees and then giving them the secondary talent trees for each melee type, or maybe some of the odd melee skills from the bulwark, berserk, marauder classes, or maybe stealth. I don't want to pin the class down to a single build type stat-wise, except for willpower. I'd like to see the heavy armor, quick and agile, or massive damage mage-hunter all be viable paths to take.

If you had to get rid of one or two of the talent trees, which would you choose?
-Disruption is the true main anti-mage tree, but in many ways doubles with the actual anti-magic tree.
-Slime is themed to fit with an anti-magic nature in the game lore, but I think the last two talents are rather poorly done.
-Magic Hunting is primarily utility based, with only the last ability doing actual damage above a simple melee attack (if Mage Rush uses the target's spellpower to modify range rather than damage).

Or would you mix and match somewhat? Maybe:
-Slime Coat
-Magic Sense (though it may be hard to implement beyond creature abilities checks, you'd have to flag each magic-based trap type, for example) or Mage Rush
-Mage Killer or Resist Magic
-Disrupting Blow

I'd still like some more abilities themed around not just the nature focus (fungus, harmony, etc), but specifically mage hunting.

Also, it should be considered that such a character would probably, or maybe necessarily if no choice is given in the initial dungeon, take the Anti-Magic path, which means they'd automatically get the AM tree and have rather easy access to the Fungus and Mindstar Mastery trees. Of course, those need to be unlocked with category points.

Seems like this character would be pretty badly crippled when dealing with archers/doomed/wilders/mindslayers I'm not opposed to the idea of a Zig-themes class - I think it's a pretty cool one. The problem is that if you go with the "all mage-slaying, all the time" plan, you wind up with a class that is by nature painfully overspecialized. I think the more interesting structure might be the idea that the Zig figured a few things out while developing antimagic, and now there's a class that exploits their new understanding - but that the understanding isn't necessarily tied to mage-hunting directly. I had a concept from some time ago (back when arrows ran out, and you could get the slime tree by chugging potions) for an archery wilder (slime-based bow trees and spore-based sling trees) that would actually fit that pretty well - what with slime damage being antimagic, and the antimagic quest giving you the fungus healing tree.

For that matter, a fully slime-based wilder might work out pretty well here, too. You seem to be partway there, but basically, take out almost all of the specifically anti-magic aspects, and just go with slime.

I'm not sure what talents I would suggest keeping, Planetus. Probably those based around weapon attacks, opposed to the talents that overlap with the current Antimagic and Slime trees.

Another thought: I think the Antimagic lore mentions that the ability is granted through drinking the blood of a certain dragon; perhaps this class could have a drake-aspect tree to go along with this? Add in a summoning tree, and now you've got a jack-of-all-trades wilder, which I think would be appropriate for someone born and trained in Zigur. Along with some torture-themed talents.

I don't think the summoning tree works, not unless there's some other lore I'm not aware of. Of course, I wasn't aware of the dragon's blood thing. I am also starting to think this is over-specialized.

What if we gave the class the Magic Hunting tree basically as is (open to change, but I like the theme), then change the disruption tree to focus on confusion, dazing, and stunning. Those are potent anti-magic status effects which, I seem to recall, are called for in the lore, and are also quite useful in normal combat. I am worried that a whole tree of them might make the class overpowered in melee. Stunlocking the opponent is potent enough, stun/daze/confuse-locking them would be catastrophic.

As for the dragon's blood, I could see a tree of passives/sustains that give boosts to physical stats, elemental resists, global speed, maybe armor. It would also be cool if the boss in the starter area was changed to a multi-hued hatchling, which you got the blood from to unlock this tree (no Cat point needed, but can't invest in it before then).

I could also see the idea of a slime-based wilder-like tree. I was kind of going there with the slime tree as is, but I think it could be better tailored to that idea.