Prodigy ideas

[supermini]

One for each stat:

Str

Vicious strikes - Your daze effects have (str/3) chances not to break on damage. Critical
chance on dazed targets increased by (str/4)%

Note: This is made with changes to daze in the svn in mind.

Dex

Ambidexterity - You gain ability to wield one handed weapons in offhand, but suffer 20%
additional offhand damage penalty.

Con

Through clenched teeth - Gain 0.1 physical, spellpower and mindpower for every 10
hp you are missing, up to (con/2).

Mag

Elemental mastery - sustain - All your damage is converted to 30% fire, 30% cold, 30%
lightning, 30% arcane.

Wil

Fear my power - Gain chance to ignore fear resistance of opponents equal to your willpower
(up to 100%). Every time you attack or use a talent on a target suffering
from a fear effect you gain 3 hate and 6 psi.

Cun

Flamboyant defense - Every time you move you gain 5 defense up to (cun/2). This defensive
bonus stays for 4 turns after you stop moving, after which it is reset to zero.

What do you guys think?

[King Gainer]

I like them, particularly Ambidexterity.

Fear my power seems a little weak though, if only because fear effects are kinda lame to begin with.

[supermini]

I like them, particularly Ambidexterity.

Fear my power seems a little weak though, if only because fear effects are kinda lame to begin with.

Well...It would make fear tree of cursed and doomed work on everything, at least most of the time, and I thought hate restore would be kind of a neat effect. Solipsists focusing on nightmares gain some psi regain and insurance (in case victim is confusion immune, since sleep checks confusion immunity in the svn). This is a side-build prodigy but...if you think it needs more oomph I'm open for ideas.

[5k17]

I like them, mostly.

Str

Vicious strikes - Your daze effects have (str/3) chances not to break on damage. Critical
chance on dazed targets increased by (str/4)%

Note: This is made with changes to daze in the svn in mind.

This would surely make an awesome combination with Steamroller.

Dex

Ambidexterity - You gain ability to wield one handed weapons in offhand, but suffer 20%
additional offhand damage penalty.

Meh. Characters intending to dual wield will either have put some points into dagger mastery by the time they get this prodigy, which are then wasted, or have fought rather inefficiently up to then.

Con

Through clenched teeth - Gain 0.1 physical, spellpower and mindpower for every 10
hp you are missing, up to (con/2).

The description is unclear as to whether the con/2 refers to the powers or the missing health, though it is quite obvious what is meant.

Mag

Elemental mastery - sustain - All your damage is converted to 30% fire, 30% cold, 30%
lightning, 30% arcane.

Now that's novel: a magic-based prodigy that is actually useful for mages.

Wil

Fear my power - Gain chance to ignore fear resistance of opponents equal to your willpower
(up to 100%). Every time you attack or use a talent on a target suffering
from a fear effect you gain 3 hate and 6 psi.

Rather specialized, but why not. In order to not make enemies' fear resistance completely useless, though, I'd prefer it to run off mindpower rather than willpower.

Cun

Flamboyant defense - Every time you move you gain 5 defense up to (cun/2). This defensive
bonus stays for 4 turns after you stop moving, after which it is reset to zero.

A way to further boost one's defense in the late game is definitely very useful, but I'd find it more interesting tactically to have it decay by 5/turn when standing rather than just be reset to 0 after a few turns.

[supermini]

Dex

Ambidexterity - You gain ability to wield one handed weapons in offhand, but suffer 20%
additional offhand damage penalty.

Meh. Characters intending to dual wield will either have put some points into dagger mastery by the time they get this prodigy, which are then wasted, or have fought rather inefficiently up to then.

Hmm, you're right. I don't have an elegant solution for this. I guess if you shuffle 3 points all the way to level 40 you can only have 2 generic points wasted, but it's really tedious.

Maybe add "your dagger and weapon masteries are equalized" (so if you had 5 in one you have 5 in both now).

Wil

Fear my power - Gain chance to ignore fear resistance of opponents equal to your willpower
(up to 100%). Every time you attack or use a talent on a target suffering
from a fear effect you gain 3 hate and 6 psi.

Rather specialized, but why not. In order to not make enemies' fear resistance completely useless, though, I'd prefer it to run off mindpower rather than willpower.

It is the intention to do exactly that if you have high enough willpower. Solipsists pretty much ignore fear immunity on sleeping targets so it is not without precedent.

Cun

Flamboyant defense - Every time you move you gain 5 defense up to (cun/2). This defensive
bonus stays for 4 turns after you stop moving, after which it is reset to zero.

A way to further boost one's defense in the late game is definitely very useful, but I'd find it more interesting tactically to have it decay by 5/turn when standing rather than just be reset to 0 after a few turns.

That works as well.

Thank you for the feedback.

[eliotn]

Ok, more prodigies:

Between the ribs
Requires 50 Cunning
Sustain
Instant
No CD

You gain +25% resistance penetration against any enemy affected by a cross-tier effect

Epic Reloading
Requires 50 Dexterity, dealt over 50,000 damage with a bow or sling, have 20+ archery talents.

Your arrow or sling pouch is always reloading, without having to use the reload talent.


Talented Learner
Requires 50 Cunning, and unlocking/improving 3 existing talent tree, or enchance an existing one.

All trees that you unlock/improve gain an additional x0.2 mastery. The mastery can exceed x1.50 with this prodigy.



A "twin paradox" sort of prodigy where time subjectively seems to go slower for you when moving really fast would be cool.

[SageAcrin]

Okay, here's my ideas.

I'm kinda hoping to code these up at some point-or at least, as much as my meager skills allow-but we'll see there, I've been feeling pretty sick lately... In the meantime, I'm curious about feedback.

These were taken from a big spreadsheet that DarkGod had a lot of the chatroom brainstorm. He italicized ideas he liked, but that he hadn't implemented-I took those and merged other skills on the list into them if they seem underpowered. A few of them mutated quite a bit, but I think it's a neat list.

(There's four Magic skills and two Cunning because I was thinking Mystical Cunning should be moved to Cunning and have a spells cast addition. Since runes cast as spells, that's an easier requirement to reach and fits better.)

Str:


Mighty Power (Gain the ability to dualwield mainhand weapons, similar to Reaver. Passive. Gain a base 70% Dual Weapon mult, too. Characters with any level of Reaving Combat can mainhand a twohander and still dualwield, as their bonus. Also grants L5 Weapon Mastery? 50 base strength before equipment required.)

Edit: DarkGod mentioned that he doesn't really like the idea of universal dualwield skills, so this one's out.

Superpower (Even in your dreams, your might still matters. Passive. Gain a bonus to your Mindpower equal to 25% of your Strength. All of your weapons gain a bonus 40% Willpower modifier as well. Gained by having either Solipsist skills(From betraying a Chronomancer) or experiencing a dream in the Caldera.) Done!

Unstoppable Strike (Active, 25 CD, instant. Gain 100% Physical Resistance and 100 APR for five turns. 100k weapon damage?) Done!

Reckless Abandon (Sustain, 20 CD, instant. Gain a (5+Str/10) chance to repel incoming physicals, nulling them fully. Also gain a (20+Str/3) chance to hit an enemy adjacent to any enemies you hit, for 70% weapon damage, on any attack. Finally, gain (10+Willpower/2)% Movement speed. Your luck is greatly reduced, however (-10 Luck).

These effects can stack with Surge, Repel and Cleave. However, the cleave rate on Reckless Abandon is reduced to 1/3rd normal when Cleave is active, to compensate for the fact that it can proc off normal Cleaves. Ten levels of curse skills required? Done!

Dex:

Blighted Combat (Passive. All incoming attacks gain a 40% chance to be countered with a 70% damage Blight elemental physical that diseases the enemy. Additionally, all normal physicals gain a 20% chance to disease the enemy on hit, and all critical hits gain a 20% chance to trigger an L1 Epidemic spell. Must have triggered the Shasshhiy'Kaish event.)

Quick Cast (Active. Magic speed gains a 100% bonus(halving casting time) for four turns. Instant. Must have cast 1k spells.) Done!

Sonic Gale (Sustain. Create sonic blasts as your arrows strike their targets. Deal 70% weapon power damage on hitting with an arrow, to your target and all enemies in a 2 Radius area around the target, in addition to the arrow's normal damage. Does not friendly fire. Consumes 10 Stamina per shot. 100k ranged damage unlock?) Done!

Vital Shot (Active, 12 CD. Shoot a 300% multiplier arrow shot at your enemy's weakpoint. This shot attempts to both Stun and Confuse the target for six turns, using Accuracy for the apply strength on both. Enemies of Normal or lesser rank are far less able to defend themselves from this shot, and take tripled damage from it. 100k ranged unlock?)

Mag:

Archlich's Majesty (Must have cast 1000 spells. Passive. Liches become Archliches, boosting their Magic by 10, all damage% by 10, +5% spell critical rate, unlocking the Cursed/Shadows with a free point in the first skill, at 1.1, boosting the Star Fury category by +0.2, and granting +1 Hate Regeneration (and raising the Necrotic limit to 15 from 10?). Skeletons become Liches, with the same bonuses as a L6 Lichform spell would grant. Non-undead become Liches, with the same bonuses as an L5 Lichform spell would grant.

Ghouls become Ghoulkings, gaining +4 Life Modifier, 10% Global Speed, +10 Strength/Cunning/Constitution, +10 Armor, +15 Mental/Magic Saves, +.2 to the Ghoul category, and +5% to all resistance caps, or can choose to become a Lich (as L6) instead.) Done!

Remembered Life (Undead only, must have cast 100 spells. Invoke arcane mysteries to recall your old life. You get a popup menu giving you a vague choice("You remember that your old life..." Option A: "...was one full of close combat." Option B: "...was one of the mastery of the mind." Option C: "...was one of spells and sorcery."). These choices divide up into melee/magic/mind skills, and will give you one random Class category and one random Generic category from a short list of non-specific(no specific weapon skills, for instance) categories based on what tendancy you chose. I'll elaborate on this idea a bit later after going over the talent lists.)

Edit: DarkGod doesn't like the idea of class skills being passed out in universal form. If I can think of a good way to make this not be effectively similar to Worldly Knowledge(maybe the Racial generic idea?), I'll work on it, but otherwise...

Blue Moon (Passive. Regain 50% of the resources spent on a spell, if it was a critical hit.) Done, by supermini!

Negative Etching (Passive, must have done 50k damage with weapons and 50k damage in one of Fire, Cold, Lightning or Acid. Deal an additional 20% normal weapon damage with all physical attacks, in one of four random elements: Fire, Cold, Lightning or Acid.)

Edit: Altered, since DarkGod suggested that the status stuff was too much.

Magic Fist (Active. Strike with an incredible, magically-imbued, blow. Triggers an unarmed melee attack for 400% multiplier, and deal an additional (Magic*3) arcane damage, over radius 5. (Melee ranged, but can't self-harm.) Can critical hit, checks spellcrit for the arcane burst, cannot miss. Enemies caught in this massive explosion are dazed for 5 turns. Requires 100 spells to have been cast.) Done!

Edit: Probably moving this to Mag, since DarkGod likes it there better.

Will:

Mental Tyranny (Free, short CD(10?) sustain, must have dealt 100k Mind Damage or have the Beyond the Flesh skill. All dealt damage is converted fully to Mind damage. Gain 30% Mind Resistance penetration and +10% Mind Damage while it's on.) Done!

Cursewielder (Passive, must have 10 levels in an Afflicted related skill-note that reasonable investment in the Cursed Aura tree accomplishes this, so it's universal. Removes all negatives from Cursed Aura, and functions as two additional levels in every curse type. You gain the Cursed Body skill at L1, if you lack it. Your Healing Modifier is permanently raised by 20%, as your mastery of your curse allows you to heal naturally far more easily than most so afflicted. Finally, your curse stretches beyond death-every time you kill an enemy, they will be raised temporarily as a full power shade of themselves, for six turns, before they finally leave this world.)

Edit: I like the strength-oriented Cursed skill more. Feels less forced than this.

Crushing Will (Free, short CD(12) sustain, must have used 100 Mind-based talents. Smash the enemies around you into the dirt with your will. Deal (Mindpower*2+10) physical damage to every enemy in radius 5(Not allies, mostly for convenience reasons), every turn. This has no cost to maintain.) Done!

Walls of the Mind (Passive. Gain 20+Wil/4 Defense and 50% slow projectiles permanently. Save the Yeek Wayist for the unlock?) Done!

Cun:

Mental Melee (Sustain, short cooldown, must have dealt 25k damage with Mindstars or 100k Mind Damage. All of your physical attacks now use the Willpower/Cunning formula that mindheld weapons do, have their Strength/Dexterity multipliers converted to Willpower/Cunning multipliers, and have a 25% chance of attempting to Brainlock on hit. Enemy physical attacks are 33% converted to Mind damage.)

Shadow Beacon (Active, 50 Cooldown, must have dealt 100k Darkness damage. Creates a 15 turn lasting Shadow Beacon. Shadow Beacons gain turns incredibly fast, Beckon enemies in sight towards them, spawn Shadows and use Unseen Force on enemies that have gotten close to them, but don't move.)

Con:

Transcending Flesh (Active, 40 CD, undead only. Turn into a Dread for 10 turns. Dreads gain 50% status resistance to all status categories, can move through walls, and don't have to breathe. They also gain 10% All Resistance, but have -50% resistance to Light.)

Corrupted Shell (Passive, must have sided with the Grand Corruptor and obtained Anti-Antimagic. Your body is corrupted enough to toughen greatly-and your natural toughness now has many advantages it didn't before. Gain 150 Life, permanently. Also grants a Con/3 bonus to all three saves, and to Defense.) Done!

Nature's Grace (Sustain, must have betrayed at least one Arcane using escort to Zigur. You now have healing affinity to all non-Nature/Physical/Mind elements equal to (1+Con/25)%. You also gain (1+Con/15) passive Life Regeneration. You permanently gain, on learning this talent, either +.2 to the Fungus tree(If unlocked) or Level 3 Fungal Growth(If not unlocked). Done!

Edit: It occurs to me I posted this without commenting on the ideas already up. How selfish, sorry.

Ambidexterity is similar enough to Mighty Power so that commentary probably isn't needed-obviously if I made a fairly similar skill, I like it. Feels like the dualwield penalty isn't needed, though.

Vicious Strikes seems interesting enough. I'm not sure of the value overall at those particular percents, but it's a neat idea.

Clenched Teeth is interesting, but in the end it's 50~ powers when you're very close to death. Seems kinda risky at levels where it's more than 20-25 free Powers. Maybe defensive bonuses, or higher scaling? The potential synergy with True Grit's kinda neat though.

Elemental Mastery is cool. Up your damage, but make it harder to strengthen.

Fear My Power's nice, but not very strong. I'm not sure how you strengthen a Fear based Prodigy, though, and with Benli intending on retooling one of the biggest sources of fears, it might be best to wait until how that works out.

Flamboyant Defense is interesting, but I do question how often it's going to be better than the SVN Armor of Shadows. There's not a lot of requirements for a big armor bonus there. This is more conditional and finnicky. The concept is neat, though, maybe with some other bonuses to sidegrade it more away from "Move and get defenses" alone, it could be pretty strong. Counterstrike chances while you have the beneficial status on, maybe?

Between the Ribs seems interesting enough. Simple but reasonably effective. The main problem I can think of is that it makes Spellcraft really insanely good at degrading resists, but some synergy like that helps Prodigies in general.

Epic Reloading doesn't need the Archery talents req. I also wonder if people would actually use a skill for nothing but near infinite ammo, but it'd be worth trying in theory anyways. There's a few artifact quivers that would benefit from it.

I'm not sure who'd benefit from Talented Learner besides Adventurer. You pay a Prodigy point for +.2 to the last category point you have? Kinda weak. Maybe if it retroactively impacted categories you have improved or unlocked it'd be okay, but I still feel like it'd only be okay.

Maybe it could boost all categories below 1.3x by +.2 instead?

[bricks]

My blunt-force commentary:

Magic Fist seems all over the place; it's a brawler talent that requires strength and spell casts.

Mighty Power kind of steps all over class distinctions. "Ambidexterity" and "Monkey Grip" are also two of the most overused skills in RPGs.

Blighted Combat is just yet another +blight damage/disease on melee effect for Reavers. There's gotta be something more creative in the Defiler theme. The blight damage requirement is very restrictive.

The description for Sonic Gale is weird, is it just an AoE melee attack sustain?

For Archlich; I'd like to see two effects. One is upgrading Lichform for Necromancers, and the other is to let any class become a Lich. The undead requirement is a little strict; maybe make it "Defeat two masters of undeath" and include bosses like the undead starter dungeon boss, Celia, the Master, and the Mummy.

Random rewards for Remembered Life are silly, you'll have people scumming to get the reward they want.

Negative Etching is pretty imbalanced. Also, I think the fireburn would interrupt the daze. Maybe let the player change the effect?

Mental Tyranny is pretty boring.

Gravitational Flux is also fairly dull. I'd add immunity to gravity effects (would be great for a Gravity PM build) and get rid of the stun/daze/pin stuff; gravity damage should already pin.

Mental Melee should treat any wielded weapon as a mindstar while active, so it can be used with mindstar-related talents. The incoming damage conversion seems tacked-on.

Transcending Flesh: I like the idea of a "spirit form," but tying it to constitution and making it undead only is weird.

Reinforced shielding: Characters that pump constitution rely less on shielding than anyone else, and shielding effects aren't related to constitution at all.

Nature's Grace: Affinity to almost all elements will just result in serious healing spam. Making it into more of a fungus-themed prodigy would be neat; maybe steal some ideas from the unfinished oozemancer class?

I like the others. I noticed that nothing on here is italicized, which ones did DarkGod like?

[SageAcrin]

Magic Fist is meant to be an AoE physical tech that can be used by mages.

It's sorta an amusement skill designed to be usable in multiple situations-the main draw for anyone using it is the big AoE, and the multiplier/damage is meant to be good enough so that it's worth considering for a wide variety of people. It's not meant to be getting full damage from any class.

That's your privilege, on Mighty Power. Personally I find Reavers to have their own distinctive gameplay now, above and beyond the dualwielding-which they never did well anyways, one of their best endgame weapons is a knife anyways. I feel like this allows Reavers to actually leverage that more-Staff and onehander, anyone? Or just heavy damage builds?-and allows other classes, like Cursed, to leverage in double-onehander builds what Reavers often didn't bother to, at endgame.

Blighted Combat could have something along the lines of defensive/armor/healing bonuses as well(Defense meshes most with it being a Dex skill). I certainly don't object to changing the requirement-maybe just making it a dualwielder thing, or perhaps linking it to one of the events(S...Sh...I cannot spell her name. The cultists event.) works better.

The idea with Sonic Gale is basically ranged Shattering Impacts, yeah.

If people scum for an L40 skill, the answer is to just have it save after the decision. If people still scum for the L40 skill, let 'em repeatedly get characters up for 40 for it, if they want.

Regardless, it's easy enough to create similar rewards and to be verbose about the options possible in the description(even if that does make the thematics somewhat weaker). For example, Fire/Nightfall/Matter(You'd want to assign Spacetime Tuning at the same time for this). It's not hard to make the skill always useful, but not specifically predictable. If that's not to the player's tastes...they don't need to take the skill.

Maybe Negative Etching should just be standard fire damage. Regardless, if it's too powerful, lowering the damage works. If it's still too powerful-which I kinda doubt-my initial idea was to have it do some heavy conversion to those elements instead. You could also have it still be bonus damage, but RNG a random element out of those four on hits, instead of using all four.

Mental Tyranny is pretty simple, but sometimes you need simple skills. Mindpower doesn't have a lot of simple skills right now.

Gravity damage does not pin. It does extra damage to the pinned. You're thinking of GravityPin. I'm kinda amazed that you'd find a permanent Storm effect boring, but maybe I find weird things interesting...regardless, see above about how Mindpower lacks on simple options right now.

Mental Melee's incoming damage conversion is tacked on. That's because I'm almost certain no one will use it over a straight up damage bonus skill with just the basic abilities it has and I'm afraid that strengthening those much more will lead to some easily broken trick I'm missing. It's still thematically fitting and useful this way.

I'm not against it having the Mindstar conversions too, though.

Transcending Flesh makes perfect sense. Constitution can't possibly mean the same thing for the undead it does for the living, and Dreads are some of the toughest undead in existence. And Dreads are cool.

Plenty of characters-including Archmages and Mindslayers-pump Con and still use shields. I've seen DarkGod himself defend pumping Con on Archmages, and I sure as heck do it.

Edit: Having said that, DarkGod brought up to me that the value would be insanely good with Aegis/Shielding. I think I agree.

Maybe a skill that grants a 2*Con shield effect whenever you use a healing? Or vice-versa? Or maybe even both, hmmm.

Affinity to elements at the 5% (at best) level shouldn't be busted, and it's an interesting twist to a standard tanking formula. Fungal Blood already is a very Fungus themed Prodigy-I'd rather that be more of a secondary to this.

[supermini]

Magic Fist (Active. Strike with an incredible, magically-imbued, blow. Triggers an unarmed melee attack for 500% multiplier, and deal an additional (Magic*3) arcane damage, over radius 5. (Melee ranged, but can't self-harm.) Can critical hit, checks spellcrit. Enemies caught in this massive explosion are dazed for 5 turns. Requires 1000 spells to have been cast.)

Pretty cool. I'd add spellshock to daze.

Mighty Power (Gain the ability to dualwield mainhand weapons, similar to Reaver. Passive. Gain a base 70% Dual Weapon mult, too. Characters with any level of Reaving Combat can mainhand a twohander and still dualwield, as their bonus. 50 base strength before equipment required.)

I had the same idea but yours adds that twohander bit. I like it. There was a good point raised about weapon mastery though...This is late to be changing weapons.

Superpower (Even in your dreams, your might still matters. Passive. Gain a 40% bonus to your Mindpower/Mind Save equal to 40% of your Physical Power/Physical Save. All of your weapons gain a bonus 40% Willpower modifier as well. Gained by having either Solipsist skills(From betraying a Chronomancer) or experiencing a dream in the Caldera.)

That would have to be calculated before physical save is set to your mental save from balance (for solipsists), but you can't see your physical save so you wouldn't know the bonus... It's also a bit bland for a prodigy.

Dex:

Blighted Combat (Passive. All incoming attacks gain a 25% chance to be countered with a 70% damage Blight elemental physical that diseases the enemy. Additionally, all normal physicals gain a 10% chance to disease the enemy on hit, and all critical hits gain a 10% chance to trigger an L1 Epidemic spell. Must have dealt 100k Blight Damage.)

Cool.

Quick Cast (Active. Magic casting speed is reduced by 66% for the next five turns, 25 CD. Every spell you cast during this reduces the duration by 1, similar to Frantic Summoning. Must have cast 1k spells.)

Pretty cool, although you'd have to be careful of how quicken spells, aether avatar and this would interact, would you get any 0-turn cooldowns, and for how long?

Sonic Gale (Make blast radius instead of lines-sounds cool but too restrictive. Sustain. Up to 60%, 2 Radius blasts around the target, for 10 Stamina a hit. 100k ranged damage unlock?)

Shattering impact stuff? It's good I suppose.

Mag:

Archlich's Majesty (Undead only, must have cast 1000 spells. Passive. Liches become Archliches, boosting their Magic by 10, all damage% by 10, unlocking the Cursed/Shadows with a free point in the first skill, at 1.0, and granting +1 Hate Regeneration (and raising the Necrotic limit to 15 from 10?). Skeletons become Liches, with the same bonuses that an (L5? L6?) Lichform spell would grant.

Ghouls scavenge enough material to become Bone Giants, gaining 15 Armor, full immunity to cuts and stunning, losing half of their speed penalty(90%) thanks to the higher quality of much of their new body, and learning the Bone Armor talent at L3.

Pretty cool. Superliches, yay.

Remembered Life (Undead only, must have cast 100 spells. Invoke arcane mysteries to recall your old life. You get a popup menu giving you a vague choice("You remember that your old life..." Option A: "...was one full of close combat." Option B: "...was one of the mastery of the mind." Option C: "...was one of spells and sorcery."). These choices divide up into melee/magic/mind skills, and will give you one random Class category and one random Generic category from a short list of non-specific(no specific weapon skills, for instance) categories based on what tendancy you chose. I'll elaborate on this idea a bit later after going over the talent lists.)

Eh...I'm not for giving random stuff on prodigies. I also don't like the undead only bit for this one. If it's in, it should be for everyone, with a different theme (versatility or something like that)

Blue Moon (Passive. Regain 50% of the resources spent on a spell, if it was a critical hit.)

Hmm, it's possible to reach 100% spell crit in the game, so half seems a bit much. Also, why only spells and not all talents?

Negative Etching (Passive, must have done 50k damage with weapons and 50k damage in one of Fire, Cold, Lightning or Acid. Deal an additional 5% of your weapon/unarmed damage in Fireburn, another 5% in Ice, a third 5% in dazing Lightning, and a fourth 5% as blinding Acid.)

20% damage and 4 effects, huh? How about just one of fire/lightning/ice/acid, either randomly chosen on hit, or you pick from the list when you choose the prodigy (maybe even just the type you qualified with).

Will:

Mental Tyranny (Free, short CD(10?) sustain, must have dealt 100k Mind Damage or have the Beyond the Flesh skill. All dealt damage is converted fully to Mind damage. Gain 50% Mind Resistance penetration, +10 Mindpower and +20% Mind Damage while it's on.)

Oof. This is extremely powerful. Lower that mind damage to 10%, and it still gives 10 mindpower over a typical 5/5 resistance piercing sustain.

Cursewielder (Passive, must have 10 levels in an Afflicted related skill-note that reasonable investment in the Cursed Aura tree accomplishes this, so it's universal. Removes all negatives from Cursed Aura, and functions as two additional levels in every curse type. You gain the Cursed Body skill at L1, if you lack it. Your Healing Modifier is permanently raised by 25%, as your mastery of your curse allows you to heal naturally far more easily than most so afflicted. Finally, your curse stretches beyond death-every time you kill an enemy, they will be raised temporarily as a full power shade of themselves, for ten turns, before they finally leave this world.)

This does too many good things, and that final shade summoning pushes it way over the limit. My suggestion is to split it into two prodigies.

Gravitational Flux (Free, short CD(10) sustain, must have travelled through time at some point(Same as Revisionist History). Intelligently manipulate local gravity. Deal (Mindpower+(Spellpower/2)) Gravity type physical damage to every enemy in radius 3(Not allies, mostly for convenience reasons). Enemies caught in this field have a 10% chance to be Dazed for two turns, a 10% chance to be Pinned for two turns, and a 10% chance to be Stunned for two turns(all check Mindpower vs target Physical Save). This has no cost to maintain.

Ok.

Cun:

Mental Melee (Sustain, short cooldown, must have dealt 25k damage with Mindstars or 100k Mind Damage. All of your physical attacks now use the Willpower/Cunning formula that mindheld weapons do, and have a 25% chance of attempting to Brainlock on hit. Enemy physical attacks are 33% converted to Mind damage.)

Very interesting, I like it.

Shadow Beacon (Active, 50 Cooldown, must have dealt 100k Darkness damage. Creates a 15 turn lasting Shadow Beacon. Shadow Beacons gain turns incredibly fast, Beckon enemies in sight towards them, spawn Shadows and use Unseen Force on enemies that have gotten close to them, but don't move.)

It's a neat idea, I'd give it short range though.

Transcending Flesh (Active, 40 CD, undead only. Turn into a Dread for 10 turns. Dreads gain 50% status resistance to all status categories, can move through walls, and don't have to breathe. They also gain 10% All Resistance, but have -50% resistance to Light.)

I'm not sure I like this one, simply because it seems very situational in the second part of the game.

Reinforced Shielding (Passive, must have two Shielding Runes on to learn. Increase all temporary damage shielding effects by (Con*2) or 1.5x their initial value, whichever is lower.)

Oof. That's a passive? Stacking this on top of shielding and aegis, and we'll have impenetrable shields again.

Nature's Grace (Passive, must have betrayed at least one Arcane using escort to Zigur. You now have healing affinity to all non-Nature/Physical/Mind elements equal to (Con/20)%. You also gain (Con/10) passive Life Regeneration, and either +.3 to the Fungus tree(If unlocked) or Level 3 Fungal Growth(If not unlocked).

Pretty good, I like it.

[SageAcrin]

I had the same idea but yours adds that twohander bit. I like it. There was a good point raised about weapon mastery though...This is late to be changing weapons.

I don't think that's a big problem for a few strength oriented classes(Marauder, Cursed, and of course Reaver), and a few more had issues affording the Dex for optimal Knives damage anyways.

Sure, you might "waste" a few points earlier on Knife Mastery, but you'll still end up way ahead this way unless you did an early 5/5 of Knives...which doesn't have great payoff compared to 2/5ing it, anyways.

I believe the term I heard for it is "Sunk cost fallacy". Just because you paid something for something doesn't mean it's as good as another option. If you build knives early and get this, you got your value out of having the Knives levels for fourty levels.

Pretty cool, although you'd have to be careful of how quicken spells, aether avatar and this would interact, would you get any 0-turn cooldowns, and for how long?

I don't feel like it needs any fast CDs to be strong enough to be useful.

You almost certainly will get 5% time spells out with certain combos. That's why it has that special clause where the duration goes down a turn every time you cast a spell. This is how Frantic Summoning is kept under control.

Eh...I'm not for giving random stuff on prodigies. I also don't like the undead only bit for this one. If it's in, it should be for everyone, with a different theme (versatility or something like that)

I'm not against trying to think of a way to make it more universal.

Oof. This is extremely powerful. Lower that mind damage to 10%, and it still gives 10 mindpower over a typical 5/5 resistance piercing sustain.

Yeah, but the average 5/5 resistance piercing sustain can't be saved via Mindsave.

Even though this is piercing most of the resistances, it's still not getting instantly by that check.

The Mindpower's there to help a little with that, but if that's too good, removing it is okay. 10 Mindpower before rescaling isn't a ton, either way.

This does too many good things, and that final shade summoning pushes it way over the limit. My suggestion is to split it into two prodigies.

The original idea was in fact two Prodigies, both of which were seen too weak on their own, IIRC. <_< Maybe the values just need to be toned down a bit.

Oof. That's a passive? Stacking this on top of shielding and aegis, and we'll have impenetrable shields again.

Yeah, the more I think on it, the more I feel this skill's hopeless. Ah well.

[bricks]

Yeah, you are totally right about gravity damage, SageAcrin. My bad. I still think it should just be pin, not pin/stun/daze. I'm not sure why you are tying the gravity-themed prodigy so heavily to mindpower, though. It's a distinctly magical/chronomancer effect. I guess you could rephrase it as telekinesis.

My problem with Mighty Power and damage conversion/affinity is that they just don't do anything interesting. Yeah, personal preference, but I really think prodigies should be more than fancy versions of Combat Training talents.

I don't think anyone would ever take Magic Fist, unless they built themselves specifically towards it. Especially pure mages, since they could never hope to hit with it.

[SageAcrin]

I'm not sure why you are tying the gravity-themed prodigy so heavily to mindpower, though. It's a distinctly magical/chronomancer effect. I guess you could rephrase it as telekinesis.

Oh, yeah. Again, I'm working off and modifying other ideas from a spreadsheet, so sometimes the base idea may have been a little odd, or I altered it into a way that warped it a little somewhere along the lines.

Making it a willpower based mental pinning effect does make more sense.

My problem with Mighty Power and damage conversion/affinity is that they just don't do anything interesting. Yeah, personal preference, but I really think prodigies should be more than fancy versions of Combat Training talents.

Decision paralysis hell is a real place that many players go to.

Not usually a problem I have, but having simple options in a system that is, already, kinda high options, is a good idea.

I don't think anyone would ever take Magic Fist, unless they built themselves specifically towards it. Especially pure mages, since they could never hope to hit with it.

Oh, yeah, it should probably have perfect hit rate, both thematically and for gameplay reasons.

I think it probably just needs some tweaks if no one will use it without building towards it. More Arcane impact or multiplier could easily work. But I'm pretty sure a Brawler on base loves a 500% mult punch skill, even if they can't leverage parts of it well.

(If you're worried about the spells req, it could be made 100. Rune use counts as spells, if you're wondering why that'd matter.)

Edit: Shielding replaced with a very modified version of a few ideas-it's really more or less a new talent idea in practice. (Corrupted Shell.) Magic Fist and the newly renamed Crushing Will modified based on suggestions from Bricks. Not sure how to retheme the categories one yet.

Edit 2: Archlich changed to granting a (weaker) form of Lichform to non-undead, just the spell req now. Ghoul part of it changed to Ghoulkings, which I finally thought of enough interesting boosts to make worth it.

[eliotn]

Ok, my changes based on your feedback.

Epic Reloading - Only requires shoot.

For the other prodigy I like the idea of a boost to all unlocked talent categories, but x0.20 might be too much. My description was too confusing

Other ideas:

Master of Warding
Requirements: Mag 50, Must have blocked at least 20 attacks with wards.
You automatically get the Ward talent and +2 wards for each element.

Unseen Threat
Requirements: Cun 50
When you aren't seen by any enemy, this passive activates, giving you a +40% critical damage multiplier on your next attack, even if you are later seen by another enemy.

[NEHZ]

Dex

Ambidexterity - You gain ability to wield one handed weapons in offhand, but suffer 20%
additional offhand damage penalty.

Meh. Characters intending to dual wield will either have put some points into dagger mastery by the time they get this prodigy, which are then wasted, or have fought rather inefficiently up to then.

Hmm, you're right. I don't have an elegant solution for this. I guess if you shuffle 3 points all the way to level 40 you can only have 2 generic points wasted, but it's really tedious.

Maybe add "your dagger and weapon masteries are equalized" (so if you had 5 in one you have 5 in both now).

Why not just add: "and your points in dagger mastery returned." Would also be nice if the exotic weapons mastery prodigy had that for normal weapons mastery.