Rogue Tweaks Ideas, now with testable plugin

[SageAcrin]

I recently cleared my own Rogue, with not too many deaths(nearly half of them to Explosion Traps, as I have commented on in another place. Sigh.).

Now, granted, I was pretty okay with this run. It was the hardest class I've cleared-and by now I've cleared around a dozen, I think?-but, it wasn't too awful or anything. There was a lot of interesting tools, and while they were unreliable, they did work. Stealth is quite good and very unique, if you do the heavy investment it requires.

Unfortunately, what I found myself increasingly thinking was that the class was empty. A full 16 class points and a category point on that build are devoted to a skill that is, in the end, a single mobility skill(Stealth). Poisons are another tree devoted entirely to support-and are, in the end, two support skills at a time, and one attack skill(I like Poisons as a tree). Traps are neat, but ultimately your only ranged option...and generally, especially late in the game, they can't drop enemies alone, making for a frantic, slow attempt to attrition down enemies that generally isn't practical in areas like the Prides, not alone. Then you have some fairly universal trees(Dualwielding trees, Dirty Combat) and Lethality.

The net result feels very much like a blank slate with Stealth on top of it. Shadowblades get a ton of flexible spells, Marauders get a strong defensive game, more rare trees, and several uniques(well, other people can get Mobility, but it takes both AM and an Escort). Rogues just feel overly simple.

On top of that, Rogues have quite a low clear rate(I believe the statistics are around 23000 Rogues in the vault, with 8 clears? With half of them being the highly synergistic Skeleton.), so there's safe room for expansion without making them too good.

So, here's my ideas-with a plugin that basically enacts them.

-Unlock the Field Control skillset. Rogue mobility is weirdly lacking compared to the other two classes within its metaclass(Which get Field Control and Mobility, and which get Phase Door and Teleport, respectively), and this adds some harmless extra bonuses for them, as well as a Generic sink. This is secondary, though-most people don't heavily sink into Field Control. This is also the bonus I'm least sure on them needing. Having said that, they have tons to do with Category Points-Combat Techniques, Poisons, adding one to Dual Weapons or to Stealth, both of which have great impact for a point-that they don't really need this locked.

-Add Techniques/Slings at 1.0. Slings have such excellent synergy with Rogues that people generally use them to some degree anyways, but towards the lategame, they lack any stopping power with slings. Initially, I considered a dagger/sling category, but ultimately the fact that nearly no one uses Slings, a rather interesting weapon, and that only one class gets the category for them, makes me think that this is probably is a simpler and more elegant answer(less work, too.).

-Adds the Cunning/Scoundrel Generic category, at 1.3 on Rogue and 1.2 on Brawler. Cunning/Scoundrel provides four new skills.

The passive Lacerating Strikes, that allows you to add (0.15, 0.35) damage in Bleeding damage, divided up over 10 turns, (10+your modified talent level*10)% of the time with any hit.

The second passive, Scoundrel's Strategies, which allows you to add additional Disabling or Anguishing statuses to bleeding enemies at a moderately low rate, as well as drastically lowering their critical rate, as you take advantage of their injuries to make them less effective. Disabled enemies lose accuracy and movement rate, while anguished enemies gain the simplified AI tag and lose Cunning/Willpower(While the former won't work against the player, the latter has more of an impact on the player than it does on enemies, hopefully ensuring a well rounded overall status.).

The third, Nimble Movements, functions essentially like Rush without an attack attached, but with the ability to target empty squares. Unlike other physical movement skills, like Ghoulish Leap, it won't go through enemies, but it provides a Rogue with a good mobility skill for both getting to and away from enemies. It also can't break Stealth, which makes it a uniquely good way to reach an enemy you want to kill before they detect you.

And the final skill, Misdirection, grants you a Defense% bonus based on your Cunning(This is roughly 24% at TL5/1.3/60 Cunning, and around 30% at 100 Cunning. With nearly no Cunning, it's closer to 15%. It has a strong baseline, to prevent it from getting out of control.), and a fixed talent level chance to make enemies shoot the wrong direction, functionally the same as Deflect Missiles on the Mindslayer. This gains 3% chance of deflection per level, and 1 square per level, meaning that it can wildly deflect incoming attacks, but not at very high of a rate.

These, between them, grant Rogue a much stronger damage over time game-that still requires them to get up close and personal, but means that they can leave enemies to die if things get too hot, very easily, as well as, thanks to Disabling, giving them an easier time to pull back from single/few enemies to restealth. It grants them an extra mobility skill, one that's not too strong, but uniquely benefits them. And it grants them a bonus to Defense that they, unlike the other two Rogue metaclass characters, lacked, as well as a uniquely chaotic way to slightly defend against magic and projectiles in the times they can't be stealthed. Nearly all of this is useful for Brawler as well, as well as fitting, which is why the category went to them as well(they could use some help with all of these things, too!).

--Two new daggers. This is a more general aid to high end dualwielders than anything. There are exactly two fixedart options at tier 5, for a physical dualwield-Orc Feller, and the Crystal Focus Voratun dagger(which requires two parts, neither of which you may see on a run). Compare this with the massive range of twohanders, or even the modest set of onehanders, and add in the fact that you want two daggers, and the net result is depressing. The two added daggers are the Mandible of Ungolmor, a somewhat defense oriented Cunning-powered dagger(even if you don't have Lethality, it still partially uses Cunning and requires Cunning to equip) with strong bonuses to Nature and Darkness damage and the ability to inflict short term, low damage, pinning Spydric Poison on critical hits, and the Kinetic Spike, a Willpower based dagger with few general bonuses, but 30% physical resistance penetration, high APR, and an invoke that allows it to deal ranged physical damage. Hopefully this will help out endgame dualwielders some on the whole, as it tends to get boring to always use Orc Feller.

As a note, I originally planned on having the category, locked, for Marauders. Unfortunately, the realization hit me that the AI doesn't have to worry about investments, and stacking Mobile Defense with Misdirection could produce a lethally hard amount of Defense to break for an enemy(which can often have moderately high base defense even before Dual Weapon Defense, Mobile Defense and Misdirection). As neat and fitting as it would be, I think it'd be too dangerous.

On the other hand, I think Scoundrel would make an okay unlockable category. While random Rogues do grant Cunning/Survival, every class in the game has this either locked or unlocked, I believe. It doesn't seem too dangerous as an unlock for them to grant, and it doesn't even take stat points, same as Cunning/Survival.

As another note, I was going to make some poison/trap ideas-I have four ideas, a non-physical/mind Resistance sapping Arcane Poison that would be granted at Angolwen and count as a spell(so that AM could not use it), a Choking Poison that would cause Silence on its target randomly, on the lines of Pacification Hex but with two turns of Silence and a Leaf Trap that would essentially be Leaves Tide in triggerable stationary trap form, both of which would be granted by the Zigur Trainer after you get Antimagic, and a Void Trap that would temporarily Time Prison someone(with high cooldown/Stamina cost) obtained along with the Rune of the Rift.

However, I sort of hit burnout, and realized it'd probably be a while before I mustered up the oomph to do those, so I decided to post what I had so far. :)

So yeah, these are my ideas. A simple code pastebin of the unique additions can be found here, and the plugin can be found on the site at http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/rogue- ... -tweaks-v1. These have all been tested to work, weapons and talents(though, given the nature of enemies using talents, I could have missed something-I'm 95% sure they all work right for enemies as well, but I may have missed specific situations where they do not.). I hope these are good enough to at least use some of!

Edit: There is a slight error with this; While you start with Slings as a category, I forgot to put Shoot onto Rogue as a starting talent. Oops. I will fix this fairly shortly, but I'd like to see if anyone reports any more major errors before I put up a fix, as that's fairly minor.