ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I suggest preventing damage from projectiles you create. While, I understand if you can kill yourself with AoE effects (it would be nice if the skill tooltips explicitly stated if the skill can hurt you, a warning that you will be affected before you use the ability would be nice as well).

Mainly, I am worried about incorrectly targeting myself with an ability. If you are an explicit target, I think it asks to confirm, but this just reduces the chance that you will kill yourself. The popup should be a warning (where cancel is the only option). More importantly, I discovered that enemies with a pull (or push I guess) can move you into your own in flight projectile. I play an archer, and my own arrows will almost always 1-shot me if they crit. Playing with only 1 life makes killing yourself with your own arrow less amusing than it might otherwise be. Appeals to realism (heh...) aside, I think that pulling a player into their own shot makes push/pull attacks a lot more dangerous than they probably should be.

Also could somebody explain how Rain of Arrows works? I think that I killed myself with that one also.

Regardless, the game is excellent. I am a gamer programmer, so I would be happy to implement a fix for this if I get the all clear.

ezerek wrote:it would be nice if the skill tooltips explicitly stated if the skill can hurt you

I agree; skill descriptions need to be clear about whether skills can hurt yourself and your allies.

ezerek wrote:The popup should be a warning (where cancel is the only option).

There are some talents that will only hurt you (or anyone at all) under certain circumstances. It would not make sense to be forced to not target yourself with an ability that will not hurt you. Also, sometimes you may actually intend to hurt yourself; necromancers intending to become liches come to mind.

ezerek wrote:More importantly, I discovered that enemies with a pull (or push I guess) can move you into your own in flight projectile.

I think it's intended that way. I find it gives the game more tactical depth.

ezerek wrote:Also could somebody explain how Rain of Arrows works? I think that I killed myself with that one also.

Do you mean Volley of Arrows? I think it fires a shot at each (hostile?) creature in the target area.

Yeah, self damage from most projectiles is pretty much explicitly intended. It makes push and pull (character repositioning in general, really) more dangerous, as the OP says, which makes them more interesting, and of considerably more tactical use than your average roguelike with knockback and related mechanics. There's at least two melee classes (Reaver and mindslayer, possibly more; there's an AoE pull in one of the fairly large access stamnia trees, iirc) that can (and should) use pull effects to block enemy projectiles with the enemy. There's several swap-type talents that can and should be used similarly. Non-instant and self-damaging projectiles open up a fair number of possibilities.

I wouldn't mind an explicit mention on the tooltips about the friendly fire status of the talent; not killing allies (and generally by extension yourself, though there's some exceptions there -- shattering impact, ferex.) is a pretty big thing for certain classes or in certain situations.

Definitely don't prevent self-targetting or, at most, make it a togglable option akin to active and passive mode. There's at least two common situations (elemental harmony, resolve) where self-flagellation is quite useful.

All that said, it is something that archers in particular (and temporal wardens, to a less degree, as well as the various caster classes with slower moving projectiles) have to be careful about. It might be interesting to have certain quivers or bows/slings make friendly fire/self harm impossible, or remove projectile transit time entirely.

There's several tactical ways to deal with it currently, though; slow motion, or whatever that is, is an obvious one. Using the projectile speed increasing egos and fighting from closer range (so there's no projectile transit time) is another possibility. Just paying attention to what can grab you (it's a fairly small list, honestly) and letting them expend the grab before you open up on 'em is also one of the methods for dealing with the risk of pull. There's likely more, as well.

There's also some naturally slow projectiles that are designed around slow, self-damaging projectiles not being a great thing-You can't use movement skills if you would get into their way, and if they're slow enough and you're fast enough you could even ram them.

Turn Back The Clock and that void blast ability on charms come to mind. They'd have to be rebalanced for that.

But yeah, I'd say self-hitting projectiles is more something the game needs an improved tutorial for, not something that needs changing.

Fair enough. I won't argue that a player should be immune to all self-created projectiles (especially if this was indicated in the tooltip). Also abilities that interrupt projectiles in-flight are interesting. However, being moved into your own projectile (destroying it and causing full damage to yourself) is extremely potent, and difficult to predict (until it happens to you). I don't really agree that it makes things more interesting, its just greatly restricts your valid choices. Since named monsters seem to have random abilities (do they have classes?), I will now have to read all the abilities before I fire a shot. That is tedious. The fact that the ability is rare doesn't really matter, since that just means that characters will be higher level before they kill themselves.

Slow motion just effects enemy projectiles, so that definitely won't help. Increased projectile speed and closer range should help, but they won't prevent it (I was killed from 2 or 3 spaces away while using a 200% projectile speed bow). I think the only safe attack is from melee range.

Anyway, it is really annoying to shoot yourself, but I understand if everyone doesn't agree that it shouldn't be a feature.

Yeah, the named critters come in two variates, classed and unique, and the former itself comes in two general groups (farportal bosses and everything else*, more or less). With the classed critters, after a bit of play it becomes fairly trivial to eyeball th'things' tooltips and know what class(es) they're in possession of** -- and, by extension, whether they may have a pull or push talent, or not -- while unique critters (The dungeon bosses, enemies like Burb, Borfast, etc) have set abilities that don't vary between plays. With uniques, well, they don't change (beyond maybe gaining some levels or whatev'.), so once you get a handle on what any of them can do, they stop being particularly able to surprise you.

I will agree that self-damaging projectiles limit ranged combatants choices a bit... but they open up a lot more options for less single-dimension classes than archers than they close off. Several of the more versatile ranged classes have means of exploiting the enemies ability to shoot themselves in the back of the head Being able to do so... it adds quite a bit, imo, but it does kinda' emphasis how limited the archer class is at the moment.

*Farportal bosses distinguished by being multiclassed; always at least two. I'm not sure if they can have more, but I suspect it's at least possible with higher level (very late game) ones. Everything else only has a single class to pull talents from.

**Some examples/a small guide, perhaps. It's generally the case that if you see a enemy with high (relative to its other offensive powers, at least) mindpower, but no sustains, it's a summoner -- the other mindpower primary classes, doomed and solipsist, have highly iconic features, generally their summons which are already out (shadows and thought-forged, respectively). If it's got relatively high phys and mind power but no sustains, it's likely a wyrmic (if it's running icy skin, it's of course obvious); the other hybrid phys/mind classes (mindslayer and cursed) generally always has highly iconic sustains active (auras/shields, gloom).

High physical power and nothing else, but no sustains, may mean any of a few classes, but most likely archer, 'zerker, or bulwark (and the particular sustains those do tend to activate make them pretty obvious) -- brawlers usually have one of their stances going and the rogue subclasses are generally identifiable either by stealth or poison sustains, though marauders are the occasional exception.

If it's got physpower and spellpower, it's probably either warden, sun paladin, arcane blade, or reaver, but the initial trio, again, have highly identifiable sustains. Raw spellpower may mean one of several classes, but they've mostly got strong tells (Golems in the case of alchemists, and then particular sustains in the case of ano-whatsits, necromancers -- who also have their summons -- and archmagi) -- the exception being paradox magi and corruptors, who often come without active sustains and are identifiable because of that, though the latter tends to have a particular few sustains running.

Of those, there's only a few that are pull risks; reavers and mindslayers (bone grab, mind hook) probably being the worst, followed by the chronomancers (gravity tree, swap) and corruptors (bone grab, they've got a ranged swap talent), then rarely the warshout classes (bulwark, 'zerker). And there's probably one or two I'm forgetting, of course

With the single classed enemies, it's pretty easy to tell what they are most of the time. With the multi-classed ones, well... you probably want to be checking their talent list anyway Though you can usually tell what they are, as well, you're just looking for multiple tells -- and more importantly, expecting them; when you don't see 'em, it usually means you're dealing with something with overlapping classes (archmage and arcane blade, multiple physical classes, etc).