ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I love hate so much! I thought I would take a stab at bringing more into the world.

Afflicted/Betrayed

The evil forces which inflict themselves on the Betrayed delight in the misery of the Betrayed character. The evil is amused by watching the Betrayed get torn to shreds repeatedly only to be brought back from the edge of death for more pain. The offense and defense of the Betrayed class is proportional to how much damage they have taken.

Design goals:
Betrayed won't be good at planning ambushes and destroying enemies before they have a chance to react. Like a Bulwark or Sun Paladin, they will need to be resilient and react to enemy action. Like a Berserker, they will need to eat a lot of damage.
Betrayed will not be good at hate generation. Their primary form of hate generation will come from getting hit.
No built-in detection, as it will be too easy to hurt oneself on traps until one can generate enough hurt to ambush a detected enemy.
Negative timed effects should give the Betrayed more tactical options while still inflicting the effect as normal.
Low cooldowns so Betrayed can end a fight decisively once they get "angry".
It isn’t a design goal for Betrayed to generate stalemates, but I think it is okay if this occurs as long as there was a tactic or strategy by which the situation could have been resolved.
Betrayed should be playable without wild infusions or immunities (though playing with either should be OK, too).

Birth options:
100HP
+5 Constitution
+3 Willpower
+2 HP per level
Gets Unnatural Body, Weapons Mastery, Weapon Combat, and Neverending Torment at birth.

I have worked on some trees and coded up Neverending Torment to playtest it (as originally conceived it was too powerful), but I need some more input.

Cursed/Neverending Torment (generic)
Neverending Torment - Heal over time
passive
The forces that abhor you will not let you find peace. Each time you are hit, your body regenerates health at a rate of %d%% of the damage taken (rounded down) for the next %d turns. This healing cannot be reduced by your hatred levels. Your body will not not regenerate from hits smaller than %d life.
This talent cannot be unlearned.

Another Turn Of The Screw - Prolongs duration of negative effects
instant
Increase the duration of negative timed effects on you by %d turns. Duration increases with Mind Power.

Temporary Reprieve - heal not affected by hate
Long cooldown.
1 turn
Immediately regain all the health your neverending torment has stored for you. This healing cannot be reduced by your hatred levels.

Betrayed Second Life - back from dead at 1HP
sustain with large hate cost
Come back to life with 1 HP. You retain the health your neverending torment has stored for you.

Cursed/Sadomasochism (class)
Ecstasy of Pain - AoE weapon damage
large hate cost, low cooldown
1 turn
Attack all enemies adjacent to you for 100% weapon damage with a %d bonus to Physical Power for every 10 HP you are down from your maximum life.

no name 2 - single target weapon damage
medium hate cost, low cooldown
1 turn
Attack a single target for %d weapon damage with a %d bonus to Physical Power for every 10 HP you are down from your maximum life. At level 3, your attack inflicts a cursed wound on the target which reduces healing by %d%% for %d turns. This effect stacks.

Jolt - quick single target weapon damage
low hate cost, no cooldown
%f turn
Attack a single target for 100% weapon damage with a %d bonus to Physical Power for every 10 HP you are down from your maximum life. The amount of time this attack takes scales based on how low your life is.

no name 4 - single target weapon damage
medium hate cost, low cooldown
1 turn
Attack a single target for 100% weapon damage with a %d bonus to Physical Power for every 10 HP you are down from you maximum life. This attack has %d armor penetration, %d damage shield penetration, and %d physical resistance penetration. The penetration scales based on how low your life is.

Cursed/Ill-starred (class)
no name 1 - temp Mindpower boost
passive
Gain %d Mindpower for every negative effect on you.

no name 2 - resistance boost
low hate cost, low cooldown
1 turn
Gain %d%% resist all for %d turns. The effect scales based on your Mindpower.

no name 3 - armor boost
low hate cost, low cooldown
1 turn
Gain %d armor and %d armor hardiness for %d turns. The effect scales based on your Mindpower.

no name 4 - damage reduction
medium hate cost, medium cooldown
1 turn
All damage you receive is reduced by %d%% for %d turns. The effect scales based on your Mindpower.

Open questions:
I had originally thought that Betrayed could have a myriad of trees for all the different types of timed effects. However, I really dislike the idea of trying to face an enemy which inflicts a status you did not build for, so I am leaning against this idea. Class talent trees are supposed to be about choices, not demands. I am very wary of talents based on specific effects for this reason. On the other hand, I do think Stun in particular should give the Betrayed the ability to inflict Stun in a large AoE, and Daze should give a controlled phase door effect. I am not sure how to resolve this. Concentrate on the common timed effects (Confused, Stun, Daze) with special effects and then have a generic tree for other random timed effects (perhaps by spreading them around)? Other ideas?
Any ideas on other class talent trees? I think the class needs some more offensive options and some more defensive options. Some ideas I was kicking around: sustain makes knockback have a chance for earthquake, something to do with mobility, a tree to inflict specific negative effects against yourself plus additional (likely tanky) benefits, a bonus to physical damage scaled on HP lost and visible enemies, effects from your gear you inflict with melee attacks are inflicted on you, bonus to hate generation from life loss. I probably specifically need ideas for tanking diseases, doom, curses, and hexes as these effects can be killer.
Any talent name suggestions?
Talent requirements are going to be Constitution for damage or Willpower for durability. Most likely, players of Betrayed will wind up pumping Strength to get some damage out of their weapons, but clearly one will pump Con early and often to get more HP for the Sadomasochism (and additional buffer). Should I make some gear-specific talents, or let 2H vs. dual-wield vs. shield be independent of talent choice?

I'm highly tempted to suggest making it use whips.

Some damage reflection abilities would be theme with the spreading of pain.

Getting buffs from debuffs sound great. Build on it some more.

How about a skill/skilltree wich focuses on spreading your negative buffs. Your weapon attacks have % chance to spread x (depending on level) of your debuffs to your victim.

You could also make it so that also positive buffs gets transfered. The betrayed will therefor need serious amount of pain to deliver damage.

Also, adjust it so that +% weapondamage starts at 80% or something like that. For the betrayed this would translate into needing less than max life to give damage with those attack skills, or maybe all attacks could be like this (baked into the generic tree you described), so that the massive survivability boost from that tree also has some negative sideeffects (positive if you can balance your hp).

Great class though!

I like the idea of this class, some suggestions:

Have another turn of the screw increase all detremental effect durations by 1. This is more thematic with the name, and allows the player fine control over how much longer of the detremental effects they want. Needs a cost if the class can benefit, perhaps it could drain energy from neverending torment?

Temporary Reprieve and Back from the dead don't fit well with the idea of this class, and are too generic.

I like the idea of Sadomasochism, but this sounds way too good for bosses/rares, as they will typically have more hp then players. Perhaps have it be a % of the player's health, with Constitution reducing the %.

For Ill-stared, I like the idea of the first ability. The others feel too generic. Maybe have them get additional effects for more detremental effects?

Maybe the class can have some abilities that apply detremental effects on the self and enemies. Of course, there is always Silence...

HousePet wrote:I'm highly tempted to suggest making it use whips.

Well, Exotic Weapon Mastery at birth is easy enough, but the game would need to drop more whips to really focus around those weapons. I think that call is above my pay grade. I imagine it would run into the same sorts of issues that plagued Cursed when they were axe-based. One (locked) whip tree might be interesting, though.

HousePet wrote:Some damage reflection abilities would be theme with the spreading of pain.

Damage reflection sounds like a good idea to me as well. I think this should be Mindpower based so the Betrayed can be killed (if you start reflecting based on your low HP you'll never die). It needs to be mechanically different from a Displacement Shield, though. I think I would split the damage between the Betrayed and the source of damage, with the fraction reflected based on Mindpower.

eliotn wrote:Have another turn of the screw increase all detremental effect durations by 1. This is more thematic with the name, and allows the player fine control over how much longer of the detremental effects they want. Needs a cost if the class can benefit, perhaps it could drain energy from neverending torment?

eliotn wrote:Temporary Reprieve and Back from the dead don't fit well with the idea of this class, and are too generic.

Do you mean the names? The dead name is especially just a placeholder. Do you mean the effects? I think in the prides, particularly, the odds are that the player is not going to be able to perfectly manage incoming damage and will eat more than he could bite off in a single round. An Unstoppable-type effect would give no benefit from the additional HP you can lose through a Heroism infusion. A Blurred Mortality effect is reasonable, though I think the Betrayed version would look exactly like Blurred Mortality, which is kind of boring. I was trying to come up with something more original which still gets the job done. Temporary Reprieve could be more of a inverse-Blood Lock effect, I suppose, but the Neverending tree has really got to give the players tools to manage their HP totals.

eliotn wrote:I like the idea of Sadomasochism, but this sounds way too good for bosses/rares, as they will typically have more hp then players. Perhaps have it be a % of the player's health, with Constitution reducing the %.

Sadomasochism triggers off the Betrayed's current life total, not the targets'. Also, it's a physical power boost and not a weapon damage boost (like most melee talents, except 'no name 2' which will scale weapon damage slightly) because weapon damage stacks really well but physical power is stacking nerfed (kind of twice, once with the power/save tiers, and again in the damage calculation).

eliotn wrote:For Ill-stared, I like the idea of the first ability. The others feel too generic. Maybe have them get additional effects for more detremental effects?

Well, they become more powerful with additional negative effects, but I think you mean something else.

eliotn wrote:Maybe the class can have some abilities that apply detremental effects on the self and enemies. Of course, there is always Silence...

Yes, I have considered this. I might work on this a bit.

Dwindlehop wrote:Do you mean the names? The dead name is especially just a placeholder. Do you mean the effects? I think in the prides, particularly, the odds are that the player is not going to be able to perfectly manage incoming damage and will eat more than he could bite off in a single round. An Unstoppable-type effect would give no benefit from the additional HP you can lose through a Heroism infusion.

I think the effects need to be more interesting, but that doesn't mean ditching the theme of the class.

For temporary reprive, how about having it consume all your energy, heal you for much more, but you get a temporary effect where you pay the price as damage.

Revive on death was already done, and is much more thematic for the paladin. Again, what role do you want the ability to fulfill?

Dwindlehop wrote: Sadomasochism triggers off the Betrayed's current life total, not the targets'. Also, it's a physical power boost and not a weapon damage boost (like most melee talents, except 'no name 2' which will scale weapon damage slightly) because weapon damage stacks really well but physical power is stacking nerfed (kind of twice, once with the power/save tiers, and again in the damage calculation).

I meant that if these talents are on monsters, they pretty much mean really high physical power, as some of them have lots of health. It could work for players though.

Dwindlehop wrote: Well, they become more powerful with additional negative effects, but I think you mean something else.

I get the mindpower synergy, but the effects themselves need to be more interesting.

Nah, don't reduce any damage with a damage reflection. Just give enemies a taste of the pain they are inflicting.
Thematically, this class should be taking damage, and using that against everyone.
Could do the same with debuffs.