ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Have a suggestion to make runes and infusions a bit more interesting.

First of all remove the existing egos, as all they really do is make half of inscriptions found from being worthless if they don't match your stats.

Add a selection of new egos, which then also allows generation of random rare and artefact runes. It should also allow much easier creation of custom artefact runes.

As a balance point this does increase the power of runes and inscriptions a bit, but the trade-off is that you are unlikely to have a backpack full of almost identical replacement meaning swapping out an inscription for a particular encounter/dungeon is a much harder decision.

Thoughts on the concept?

Some initial ideas for egos.

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Egos

Remove the existing egos (warrior, physic etc)
Note: replaced with Powerful and Greater egos

Powerful
add power (equivalent to warriors with 40 strength)
condition: not Greater

Lasting
add duration

Charging/of charging
reduce cool-down

Of projection
Allows the targeting of npc
condition: self target
E.g. allows use on golems, escorts, summoned creatures. For phase door and teleport on enemies.

Of reach
Add (1 + baseRadius/5) rounded down (1-4=+1, 5-9=+2, 10-14=+3) to radius
condition: has radius (e.g. light, acid wave, vision)
Note: base +1 is so still gives a bonus to small radius acid waves etc.

Soothing/of soothing
Remove one poison on use
condition: regen or healing infusion

Crippling/Of crippling
-20% movement speed for duration
condition: insidious poison

Deadly
Remove a single heal effect (or damage reduction?) effect on target when used.
condition: insidious poison

Controlled
Allows the targeting of destination
condition: phase door, teleport

Of balance
Use of ability only has 50% chance of cancelling fast movement (rather than the normal 100%)
condition: moment infusion

Shining/of shining
Radius 4 light on target when used
condition: rune
Note: for acid wave, lightning etc. 4 radius light around each hit npc

Shadowed/of shadows
Radius 4 remove light on target when used
condition: rune
Note: for acid wave, lightning etc 4 radius remove light from each hit npc
More interesting when used by monsters, but could be useful for stealth player.


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Greater Egos

Greater
add power (equivalent to warriors with 80 strength)
condition: not Powerful or Greater

Of Eternity
add duration
reduce cool-down
Note: can combine with Charging of Lasting for double effect.

Swift
Change cast time to instant
condition: cast time>0

Of Reflection
Make the damage shield reflect the damage
condition: damage shield

Cleaning/Of Cleaning
Southing
Remove one condition on use
condition: regen or healing infusion

Warding/Of Warding
As well as removing condition(s) on use, will also ward against an first condition (of the appropiate type) for the duration.
condition: wild

Of blasting
Adds knockback
condition: rune of cold, fire, lighting, acid wave

Penetrating
Ignore target damage resist, damage shield, wards and bone shield
condition: rune of cold, fire, lighting, acid wave
Note: none of these are particularly high damage

Of the void
Same as staff ego (bonus saves, defence, reduced condition duration for a short period after a phase door or teleport
condition: phase door, teleport

Of spores
All units in radius 1 also gain this infusion at half power, radius 2 at quarter power (half/quarter duration if no power e.g. movement infusion?)
condition: infusion
Note: Something for those with summons (particularly projecting xxx of spores), also nice for insidious poison for all that use it.
Note: Wild infusion effect remove count also halved, quartered but will also remove one effect.
Note: Will affect enemy and friend.

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Other

Change Rune of Cold
Make it a small radius Frozen Ground effect (affected units can't move for duration)
Note: this will stop npc/golems from walking into the slow ice projectile, and make it a bit different from the fire and lightning runes.

Remove Controlled phase door
Controlled is now just an ego.

Add Spellstore
Contains a random (chosen from a list) spell (e.g. isSpell=true).
Cool-down of the rune gets half the base spell duration added to it, no resource cost for use.
condition: rune


Edit: Fix spelling

Those are some interesting ideas, imo.

While I can approve of maybe some rares/randarts, I think spreading the ego's out this badly would make it even more difficult to find the right set of runes/infusions for your character. I also don't see anything that would increase the healing on a regen rune, and that's critical for fighters. Finally, adding power grants 40 extra str? Isn't that a bit excessive?

Crim, The Red Thunder wrote:While I can approve of maybe some rares/randarts, I think spreading the ego's out this badly would make it even more difficult to find the right set of runes/infusions for your character. I also don't see anything that would increase the healing on a regen rune, and that's critical for fighters. Finally, adding power grants 40 extra str? Isn't that a bit excessive?

The "powerful" ego adds power to all inscriptions. It works just like a Wizard's rune, or anything similar to that. The "40 STR" was just a baseline, so that you would know how much the inscription is being boosted by. (and yes, this could apply to a regen infusion).

Crim, The Red Thunder wrote:While I can approve of maybe some rares/randarts, I think spreading the ego's out this badly would make it even more difficult to find the right set of runes/infusions for your character.

This could be fixed by just reducing the variety in inscription power so you don't end up with all of those useless 50 life heal infusions that nobody would even consider. Soothing heal infusion vs. charging heal infusion is a much more interesting choice than 50 life heal infusion vs. 500 life heal infusion anyway.

This is a great idea, and I liked lukep's inscription addon from a while back as well. Inscriptions have potential to be far more interesting than they are now.

Most of these aren't really egos so much as new/improved versions of old inscriptions. Not that that's bad. Some like "soothing" and "penetrating" are a little too niche, but not bad as far as minor bonuses go. "Of balance" is way too unreliable, might make more sense to just allow one action to not break the effect. "Shadowed" is 100% useless if I understand monster line-of-sight properly. "Of spores" is something I'd never want on an emergency use ability, much more practical if it just applies to allies (although in general I think this should be a wild gift/summoner talent, since infusions shouldn't affect necromancer summons anyway).

I'm not sure what "Add Spellstore" is trying to express. Just setting any active talent as a rune? Fun idea, but I'm worried that a lot of the possible choices would be totally useless. Talents would probably need a special can_be_rune = True designation to keep it interesting.

Of Reflection
Make the damage shield reflect the damage
condition: damage shield
Swift
Change cast time to instant
condition: cast time>0
Deadly
Remove a single heal effect (or damage reduction?) effect on target when used.
condition: insidious poison
Penetrating
Ignore target damage resist, damage shield, wards and bone shield
condition: rune of cold, fire, lighting, acid wave
Note: none of these are particularly high damage

Too overpowered.

If any of those appear on enemies then how am i supposed to survive?

It's a good point. Inscriptions on monsters are already a little confusing. It's a little gamey, but maybe monsters shouldn't get ego'ed inscriptions.

donkatsu wrote:This is a great idea, and I liked lukep's inscription addon from a while back as well. Inscriptions have potential to be far more interesting than they are now.

Yeah, that addon kind of died...

That being said, some of the ideas I had while working on it could be useful for this discussion.

(Note, most of these ideas never got past the planning stage)
- Do the equivalent of Soothing, Deadly, Crippling, Reflection, Cleaning, Warding, Blasting, and Penetrating with a " of superior effects" ego. This would limit you to one extra for every inscription type (no more, no less)
- Add passive bonuses, (my idea was for all, though as an ego would work too). Something like +20% healing mod for a healing infusion and +30 see invisible/stealth for a Vision rune.
- Changing cooldowns and power with egos is fairly straightforward, and duration isn't bad either, anything else is a bit more work.

I think that inscriptions need a rework, and this is a good idea in general, though I'm not sure about allowing double egos or randarts.