ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I have runs literally hundreds of Cursed characters, and one thing I have had fun experimenting with is archery enhanced Cursed.

Now, I have one suggestion, that could be implemented in two ways, either make Cursed Talents work for Archery hits, or make a third Afflicted class as an archer.

Why is archery so much fun for a Cursed?

You set up Sanctuary, which provides long range protection, and dual wield a sling and knife and set up Surge, to get high defense, or just go for a bow and skip surge.

Then you max out Rampage, and get a swiftstrike bow/sling. This is where it rocks. The dramatic increase in attack speed and damage bonuses mean that on Rampage you can pummel things to death without them doing much at all.

And if you use a Warders bow/sling, you can switch to your main weapon(s) when they get too close.

The problem is, though, that Stalk etc don't work for archery.

Predator works in terms of counting for hits, but I don't think the hit and damage and stun of predator works for archery.

So it is a nice extra for a Cursed, but not currently a viable build. And the slings require Dex and Cun, making it an all-stat build, which is too difficult.

So I'd love to see either talents changed to allow for shooting, or a third, archery based afflicted class. I think this would be a fascinating class.

Hope someone picks up my ideas!

I played around with some ideas for an afflicted/ranged class a long time ago. Here are some of the better ideas (note that this was well before the change to quivers):

Twisted visions category: Damned Eyes, sustained skill that blinds self. You gain ESP for a few turns on every opponent that damage you. Also, as a passive bonus you can always see normally within a small radius when blind. You gain additional hate while this is active, and a burst of hate every time a new foe is perceived. Other talents gave increased accuracy/trap detection while blind ("Due Compensation"), a "marked" target ability that gives you guaranteed ESP and damage bonuses against one target ("Marked Man"), and a passive skill that revealed a few enemies near a target you killed ("Betrayal"). Basically, you lose knowledge of the battlefield in return for enhanced combat abilities.

Natural Causes category lets you summon afflicted creatures. Gloomspider (pinning webs + gloom), Deadhound (disease-inflicting bite), and Doomhawk (not sure about abilities, maybe evasive and teleports like Doomed's shadows).

The Genocide category was a mix of abilities. Unceasing increases your damage the closer you are to death. Led to Slaughter was a targeted Banish, attempting to clump enemies together. In Cold Blood was a normal arrow + cold damage that only took a turn if the arrow didn't kill an enemy.

The Apocalypse category had a lot of rogue/scavenger themes. Makshift Traps lets you place 1/1/2/2/3 "makeshift traps" that inflicted physical damage + a random effect (pin, knockback, stun). Jury Rigging took abilities off cooldown but gave you a temporary damage penalty. Scavenger gave a percent chance to remove a negative status effect any time an enemy was killed.

Finally, the Desperado category was a mix of spaghetti-western themed abilities. Quickdraw automatically shot up to N enemies. Throat Shot silenced. Take Cover was basically Ghoulish Leap but required a clear path.

Other ideas: Lob, fire an arrow directly at an enemy but with 75% max range. Incite granted an enemy the ability to switch places with its allies, letting it move to the front for easy killing. Barbed Shot inflicted stacking bleeding, Splintering Shot dealt AoE damage in a small burst on hit, and Grappling Shot was essentially a bow version of Bone Grab.

I called this class "Hunted" for obvious reasons. Feel free to grab any of these ideas.

Wow! Hope someone codes This up