ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Add-on: http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/doombringer-class-b41

"Weapon in hand and sheathed in flame, a Doombringer is a terrifying force in combat.
Imbuing themselves with demonic powers, they achieve strength far greater than most mortals.
Some Doombringers even call in lesser demons to fight under them as soldiers."
Their most important stats are: Strength and Magic"

The Doombringer is a heavily armored defiler subclass focused on melee damage and demonic magic. They utilize various vim sustains to enhance their physical abilities, with a bit of fire magic on the side.

Existing Trees:

Cunning/Survival - Unlocked, 1.1 Mastery
---Corruptions---
Shadowflame - Unlocked, 1.3 Mastery
Vim - Locked, 1.2 Mastery
Hexes - Locked, 1.1 Mastery
Curses - Locked, 1.1 Mastery
---Techniques---
Combat Techniques - Active - Unlocked, 1.1 Mastery
Combat Techniques - Passive - Unlocked, 1.3 Mastery
Combat Training - Unlocked, 1.3 Mastery

New Trees/Ideas:

Demonic Strength - "Infuse your body with powerful demonic energy."

1. Diabolic Force: (Sustained) Imbue yourself with the power of the Fearscape, increasing your damage by %d and armor penetration by %d.
Your melee attacks will also deal %d fire damage, spread over 3 turns.
Damage and penetration increase with your Strength stat, the fire damage with your spellpower.

2. Surge of Power: (Active) Use your stored vim to supercharge your body, recovering %d%% of your maximum stamina and taking up to %d technique(s) off of cooldown.

3. Demonic Blood (Passive) Demonic Blood flows through your veins, increasing your spellpower by %d and fire resistance by %d%%. Additionally, you will recieve a bonus to all damage equal to %d%% of your current vim (Currently %d%%).

4. Abyssal Shield (Sustain) Surround yourself with a defensive aura, increasing armor by %d, and inflicting %d fire and blight damage to all attacking foes.
Additionally, your vim will enhance your defences, reducing all damage by %d%% of your current vim (currently %d), but never reducing by more than half of the original damage.

Infernal Combat - Various active attack talents, not sure what.

1. Vampiric Assault (Active) Hits the target doing %d%% weapon damage as blight damage, and draining 20%% of it as Vim. If the attack hits, you strike the target again, dealing another %d%% weapon damage as blight damage and restoring 40%% of it as life.

2. Incendiary Slash (Active) Hits the target doing %d%% weapon damage as fire damage over 3 turns. If the attack hits, your strike will explode into a cone of fire in radius %d, dealing %d fire damage over 3 turns.
The fire damage will increase with your spellpower.

3. Fiery Grasp (Active) Send out a devastating claw of fire, striking in a line doing %0.2f fire damage leading to a target. The target is caught in the claw's grasp and is unable to move for %d turns, while also taking %0.2f damage per turn.
The damage will increase with the Magic stat.

4. Destroyer (sustain) Your body overflows with the power of the Fearscape, increasing your physical crit chance and multiplier by %d%%, reducing all stamina talent cooldowns by %d%%, and negating all stamina costs. Maintaining this power requires intense effort, and drains %d vim per turn.

AND

Infernal Destruction - High level active talents (locked, 10+)

1. Abduction (Active) Grab a target and launch yourself backwards %d tiles, pulling them with you, and, if the target is hostile, dealing %d fire damage.

2. Detonating Charge (Active) Launch yourself toward a target. If the target is reached you get a free attack doing %d%% weapon damage. If the attack hits you release a massive burst of demon fire in radius %d, knocking away everyone but you and your target, and healing demons and hurting all others for %d and an additional %d per turn for %d turns. You must charge from at least 2 tiles away.

3. Obliterating Smash (Active) Infuse your weapon with incredible force, striking all enemies in a radius 4 cone, dealing %d%% weapon damage to the closest target and decreasing in damage for each afterwards.
This attack can not miss.

4. Blazing Whirl (Active) Spin yourself around, infusing your weapon with mighty fire and striking all enemies in radius %d for %d%% weapon damage as fire damage.

Fearfire (Locked, 10+) - Fire based magic tree, deals heavily in Demon Fire (heals demons, burns others)

1. ???? (Offensive Active)

2. ????

3. Fearscape Portal - Step through a portal to the fearscape, exiting through another up to X spaces away; releases a burst of demon fire on both ends, lasting Y turns.

4. Infernal Breath, as per the General of Urh'Rok Special.

Blighted Arms - Chant-esque sustains, give bonuses on hit, with a special effect on the first hit after activation.

1. Incinerating (Fire) - Gives AoE fire attacks on hit; first hit is larger, more powerful, and inflicts burn

2. Cursed Strikes (Darkness) inflicts a random curse, as per the curse tree. First hit blinds.

3. Sanguine Edge (Blight) Inflicts random diseases, first strike drains life/vim

4 ???? (Some sort of special mastery talent)

Demonic Soldiers - Demon summoning tree. Considering allegiance as a mechanic (They eventually become hostile, and you have to keep them loyal. By killing their peers.)

--------------------------

Currently working on building out the class; any talent ideas would be highly appreciated, etc etc!

Just a little idea, based off of the idea that they are "stronger than most mortals"

Some sort of sustain, that is based upon your Vim. Depending on your Vim, you gain x Phys Power/Spellpower and Crit Chance. You can have it based on if your vim is high, or you get the bonuses when its low, depending on how you want to reward Vim management.

Since it seems like a fiery force of evil, why not bonuses when in demon fire? Sounds like you have some talents already that would create fire, make it so that the Doombringer is at home. Maybe some passives that apply buffs/debuffs to enemies when in fire, or some actives that become more potent in fire?

Power boost based on current vim; now that is an interesting idea...

Ok, me and Pure brainstormed how Blighted Arms would work. Not sure as to how final this is, Pure has the final word on how everything works.

In effect, currently:

Blighted Arms - Sustained talents. Like chants, you can only have one active at a time. Activating a sustain gives you an extra effect on the next attack.


1. Incinerating (Fire) - Gives AoE fire damage on attacks. First hit deals even larger amount of fire damage in the AoE.

2. Cursed Strikes (Darkness) - Deals shadow damage that reduces all (except physical) resistances with each strike (down to a cap). First hit blinds the target and adjacent enemies.

3. Sanguine Edge (Blight) - Attacks stack your hp regeneration and deal minor blight damage which returns back as vim. First hit deals large amount of blight damage that steals life.

4. Unholy Union - This sustain is tricky. It allows you to mix 2 Blighted Arms sustains for a combined effect. You can even combine two of the same sustains to amplify their effects.



Fire-Darkness: Combines their persistant effect and first-strike effect (Secondary element deals percentage of original damage). Resistance reduction buff/blindness applies to all enemies hit by the AoE fire.

Darkness-Blight: Combines their persistant effect and first-strike effect (Secondary element deals percentage of original damage). Regeneration stack and vim drain increase for every enemy hit with Cursed Strike's first hit.

Fire-Blight: Combines their persistant effect and first-strike effect (Secondary element deals percentage of original damage). Regeneration stack increases for every enemy hit by the AoE fires, persistent and first-strike blight damage is spread over the AoE.

Fire-Fire: Intensifies persistant fire damage and increases the AoE by 1. First Strike effect now ignites all target with demonfire for extra damage.

Darkness-Darkness: Intensifies persistent darkness damage. First-strikes apply max stacks of resistance debuff. Persistent attacks on fully stacked targets may inflict short curses.

Blight-Blight: Moderately increases the persistant blight damage and increases your healing modifier. Blight damage is now a persistant aura that affects adjacent enemies. First-strike is now AoE (Matching aura range) and applies disease to all targets hit.

Scrapping weapon specific trees in favour of an extra class combat tree. (OP edited)

Sorry for the poorly organized thoughts...

I like the idea of a demon-general class, especially if it's more focused on keeping up a few nice summons, instead of a single minion (Alchemist), a lot of temporary minions (Summoner), or a lot of permanent, stupid minions (Necromancer). I'm not so sure about having the demons go hostile, conceptually it makes sense but I've never seen it implemented in a fun way. The fire theme is cool, too, since that's only mildly explored with Corruptors. Introducing another strength/magic class in the same meta-class seems like a bad idea, though, and I'm not sure if functioning off stamina is great, either. Reavers feel right with just Vim.

Blighted arms sounds interesting, especially with Unholy Union. The concept of effects-on-hit and the ability to "enchant" weapons makes me feel like duel-wielding would be more suited for the class. I don't think there is anything wrong with reducing physical resistance, unless you intend the talent to push resists below 0%, which doesn't happen with plain resist penetration. Sanguine Edge sounds really powerful, vim and life regen in one effect? If I could suggest a small rework - get rid of Unholy Union, add a new sustain (maybe splitting up Sanguine Edge), and make the raw talent level 5 effect of each sustain "You can sustain (this talent) with another Blighted Arms talent." Then the player, if interested in going that route, can max their favorite Blighted Arms talent, and then invest in and use the others as needed.

Diabolic Force seems way too good, something you'd want to max and leave on in all circumstances. It is kind of interesting how it reduces the amount of dexterity/magic/strength you need, since those bonuses are scaled up. I think you could either drop this talent, make it passive (since it seems core to the class), or make it a temporary buff instead of a sustain. Instead of relying on Dexterity + Diabolic Force for accuracy, I suspect most players would just take the Combat Accuracy talent. Demonic Blood also seems like a no-brainer for all players, and it overlaps/overshadows the similar talent in the passive Combat Techniques category.

In general, I'd expect something like the Demonic Strength category to be mostly passive talents, which would grant significant bonuses in addition to penalties for taking on more and more of a "demonic" nature. However, I know talents with negative effects can be hard to balance, so I can't blame you if you don't want to go that route.

THE IDEA ZONE

OK, this twists the class pretty far from the way you have it right now. Feel free to cherry-pick any of these ideas. First, the class is a true hybrid class (physical, spell, and mindpower), and uses Vim. Magic is used for talents based on demonic fire - creating it, walking through it, spreading it, etc. In a sense you are bringing a little of the Fearscape to Maj'Eyal. Being in and around fire gives you special powers; for example, you can teleport from any burning tile to any other burning tile (but otherwise the talent can't be used). The physical power side of things lets you improve your melee attacks, which, along with magic, may let you enhance your weapons with blight and fire or perform powerful demonic attacks. Mindpower, along with spellpower, gives you the ability to summon and control demons. The demons are very powerful, but will slowly escape your control (and consequentially unsummon) unless you have a lot of mind-power, and they aren't cheap to summon, unlike the Summoner's pets or the Necromancer's minions. Having multiple demons on the field will strain your mindpower, meaning there is a scaling limit on how many demons you can keep afield. Just for kicks, there is a talent that lets you refresh the summon duration on a target in exchange for Vim, which can also be used on hostile demons to attempt to enslave them. Finally, there is a generic category or two that lets you take on more and more demonic aspects, which make you more powerful but also more fragile. Anyone who takes this route will need to be careful to keep up a few demons to soak up attacks, or to stay deep in demonic fire to gain defensive bonuses. Naturally no single iteration of the class could hope to play as a caster, a warrior, and summoner all at once, so you'd focus on one or two aspects.

The Allegiance effect/resource you mentioned could be a good way to communicate some aspects of the demonic control; every controlled demon will increase the strain on your Allegiance, like a sustained skill. After exceeding some threshold, determined by your mindpower, the Allegiance bar begins showing the number of turns before your demons are unsummoned. This countdown is reset if the strain on your Allegiance drops back below the threshold.

Demonic Strength is indeed a passive/sustain tree. I might yet add a temporary status buff talent as well.

Just a few weeks ago, I came up with a similar concept (as an anti-wyrmic though, which only undead characters can be). Mind if I dump some of those ideas here? Perhaps they can help.

XLambda, I was honestly thinking something similar. I'd rather have a melee-necromancy class than a second melee vim class (nothing against your idea, Pure, but we already have reavers).

Actually I was originally going to make a melee necromancer, but a couple of people are planning those...

And that said, Doombringers won't play much like Reavers

I planned one too, but it's been gathering dust in disuse anyway. Pure has my full approval to dissect it for useful skill ideas.

Completed Demonic Strength Tree:

Demonic Strength - "Infuse your body with powerful demonic energy."

1. Diabolic Force: (Sustained) Imbue yourself with the power of the Fearscape, increasing your damage by %d and armor penetration by %d.
Your melee attacks will also deal %d fire damage, spread over 3 turns.
Damage and penetration increase with your Strength stat, the fire damage with your spellpower.

2. Surge of Power: (Active) Use your stored vim to supercharge your body, recovering %d%% of your maximum stamina and taking up to %d technique(s) off of cooldown.

3. Demonic Blood (Passive) Demonic Blood flows through your veins, increasing your spellpower by %d and fire resistance by %d%%. Additionally, you will recieve a bonus to all damage equal to %d%% of your current vim (Currently %d%%).

4. Destroyer (sustain) Your body overflows with the power of the fearscape, increasing your physical crit chance and multiplier by %d%%, reducing all talent cooldowns by %d%%, and negating all stamina costs. Maintaining this power requires intense effort, and drains %d vim per turn.

OP updated with new/finished Demonic Strength and Infernal Combat trees.

Man, that's cool.