ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The main concept:
Warlock is the man who in pact with the demonic Eldritch Flame. The Flame have their own will, they want to BURN. Warlock is both the master and the slave of the Flame. As a warlock, you have to feed your flame. If you failed to satisfy the Flame, then your own life will be consumed.

Class Background
Warlock are the poeple who manipulate the demonic power, but stand with demons is not necessary. Their power could come from either trade with Arch Demons or defeat and absorb the power from the corpse (and even living demons).

New Resource: Flame
Almost all of talents' power and cost will scale with the amount of flame. Flame will cost your health every turn, and the consume rate scale with the amount of flame as well. So the growth rate of the flame will be an exponential function. If failed to contorl your flame, you will be burned out. A passive will also flame to absorb incoming damage into flame, and using talent to burn things will consume the flame. A sustain will allow you gradually distinguish the flame, however, any usage of flame will disrupt this process and put it into cooldown. There will be a con based safe zone for the flame

Talents
Invocation [MOSTLY DONE]
t1:Demonic Flame(passive): improve the base power of your flame, demonfire will heal demons and harm everyone else
t2:Corrosive Flame (sustain): convert the eldritch flame into a corrosive flame (currently will blind enemy, may change)
t3:Blooy Flame (sustain): convert the eldritch flame into a bloody flame (currently will drain life, may change)
t4:Abyssal Flame (sustain): convert the eldritch flame into a abyssal flame (will cause some mind debuff, not decided yet)
note:only one sustain can be turned on
note:those talents does change damage type

Evocation [DONE]
t1: Eldritch Spear (passive): allow you concentrate your flame and shot your enemy (give you a talent called Evoke Flame), the spear will penetrate target's resistance (this hit only)
t2: Eldritch Chain (sustain): allow your Evoke Flame jump between enemies (similar to Spit Slime)
t3: Eldritch Spray(sustain): allow your Evoke Flame do a cone shape attack
t4: Eldritch Doom (sustain): allow your Evoke Flame do a ball shape attack
note:only one sustain can be turned on, the damage type depends on the Flame Invocation sustains

Flame Control(need better name)
t1: Quench(sustain)allow you gradually extinguish the Flame, will auto deactived when you anything other then move
t2: Temper(passive)your flame will absorb portion of the incoming damage and convert it into flame. your flame will also have chance to clear the debuff on you, and increase your flame. will also damage nearby enemy if you have Stoke turned on.
t3: Stoke(sustain)increase the growth rate of flame, and allows spells to cost extra flame proportional to the total amount of flame. will also allow the flame types have further special effects.
t4: Sinter(active)draw a large amount of flame from your flame pool and condense them (those flame will not grow and harm you), those flame will gradually flow back to your flame pool. Your next spell will consume all of the condensed flame (and inprove the power of the spell). If you use Evoke Flame with condensed flame, the flame will turn into a more powerful shape.

Demonization (need better name)
t1: (need name)(passive)grant you some con based life regen bouns.
t2: (need name)TBD
t3: (need name)TBD
t4: Demon Form(need name)(active)imbue all your flame into yourself, will consume all the flame. You become an arch demon for several turns and get str, con, dex, max life bouns. All of durtion, bouns and cooldown depends on how much flame is sonsumed. You cannot use any flame talents while demon form.

Conjuration (summon demon)
t1: Tear the Veil (active)create a fearscape rift, demons will randomly appears near the rift, those demons belong to fearscape (faction)
t2: Call Minions (active)summon a group of minor demons from the rift as your servents
t3: Destabilize Rift (active)detonate the target fearscape rift and release a huge blast of flame
t4: Call Lieutennant (active)summon a major demon from the rift as your servent

Pentagrams (demon control)
t1: True Names(active)try to control the target demon
t2: Exile(active)try to banish the demons in the target area, if the banish failed, then try to stun them.
t3: Unclock(active)imbue your flame into target demon, greatly buff its str, dex, con; target will be killed after the effect expire. During the effect, target will loose mind and randomly attack everything nearby. If the target isn't your minion, then the spell have to pass target's all three saves. If the target dead before the effect expired, then the rest of flame will cause an explosion.
t4: Emancipate(active)send out a lunatic psychic wave, put all the demons in your radius X in to frenzy

Flame Combat
t1:(name)(sustain)cover your weapon with flame, deal extra damage in each hit. damage type depends on flame invocation. at level 5 you will gain ability to create Flame Weapon.
(name)(active)Create a Flame weapon, only usable with empty hand. You can create 2 hands weapon only (sword, axe, mace, trident, whip(2hd version)). If you use it while already have a Flame Weapon in hand, you can change the shape of it. The stat of the Flame Weapon depends on the spellpower. The flame weapon will disappear when t1 deactived.
t2:(name)(passive)Cover your body with Flame to gain finer control. you use mag to replace (raw talent level*20%) of the str modifier on the weapon. and you will also gain a technique if you are wielding the right weapon type.
great-sword:(similar to Temporal Awake)
great-axe:(similar to Death Dance)
great-mace:massive blow+knockback
trident:rush
whip:drag the target toward you
t3:(name)(passive)reduce the energy (time) cost of Forge Flame, and reduce cd of t2 techniques on kill
t4:(name)(active)you imbue the flame deep into your body, in a short period of time

Cinder
t1
t2
t3
t4

Flame Utility
t1
t2
t3
t4

Are you mostly just looking for names and good words?

Demonize: Take this from the point of view of the Warlock-- call the tree Deification, individual talents Martyr, Beatify, Prophecize, Ascend. That twists it a little bit, but nicely, I think.

Flame Control: How about a metallurgy theme? Quench, Temper, Bellow, Sinter. Not sure what tree name would go nicely with this, but there are tons of metallurgy words.

Demon Summoning: Maybe a Dante theme: Limbo, Minos, City of Dis, Abandon All Hope. Call the tree "Nine Circles".

Demon Control: True Names, Dismissal, Uncloak, Emancipate. Call the lines "Pentagrams".

nate wrote:Are you mostly just looking for names and good words?

Demonize: Take this from the point of view of the Warlock-- call the tree Deification, individual talents Martyr, Beatify, Prophecize, Ascend. That twists it a little bit, but nicely, I think.

Flame Control: How about a metallurgy theme? Quench, Temper, Bellow, Sinter. Not sure what tree name would go nicely with this, but there are tons of metallurgy words.

Demon Summoning: Maybe a Dante theme: Limbo, Minos, City of Dis, Abandon All Hope. Call the tree "Nine Circles".

Demon Control: True Names, Dismissal, Uncloak, Emancipate. Call the lines "Pentagrams".

Nice names! Thanks Nate
And I also need ideas to full fill this class. Any idea is welcome.
And any better names to the first two trees?

Evocation would be a good name for Flame Transformation.

wow, quoting dante in here...who would have thought

There's lots of great names--

Paradise Lost: Red Right Hand (can use this for just about any talent), Serve in Heaven (intended ironically, give mental resist or clear status), Song of Chaos, Sin to Know, Mind's Own Place, Hail Horrors Hail

Emo Enlightenment: Gaze Into The Abyss, Lest Monsters We Become, Sleep of Reason-- and check out Faust, I'm not familiar with it but could be great source

Recent mythology: Black Dog, Crossroads, Deal with the Devil

Greek mythology: Waters of Lethe, Boatman's Fare

other stuff: Moth to the Flame (have been told this is a metaphor for the relationship of fallen angels to God), Lord of Lies, Lord of Saturdays (read about voodoo and baron samedi, very cool idea, also evocative of Saturn which is evocative of the scariest painting ever)

As far as abilities: It looks like you've got a lot of fire-based offense, and the demon control stuff, but not much else. I'd try and get some other damage types in, and maybe some kind of escape/status clear/status resist.

You could have a wave Ice effect, in keeping with Dante's vision of a lake of ice
Passive, random-ish replacement of tiles in the level with tiles from Fearscape or Demon world, would be useful to improve LOS while denying melee access, would be cool looking
Detection would be keeping with many visions of warlocks-- probably active, maybe centered on a semi-random area like a poorly controlled phase door
Reduced light radius, vision range, infravision range in radius might be interesting (then again might be too all-or-nothing)
Fear based effects, like Paranoia or Panic in Fears tree (or hopefully more interesting and original than that)
Abilities that used up humanoid-based craft items to become more powerful might be cool; maybe just talents that required a craft item to learn? Mm fresh baby fat

It seems to me that once you've got the talents that you need in, you can flesh the rest out with talents that you made because you liked the name-- any names you pick tend to determine the talent in question!

Will they get a talent that lets them pull enemies into the fearscape? Maybe they could get the shadowflame tree, but somehow use flame for it instead(not sure if possible)? If not, just make a custom version of fearscape that uses flame instead.

I think you need to decide if you're going to work this into the Maj'Eyal demon lore (blight, Fearscape, Urh'Rok, etc.) or branch off on your own. If you're trying to work it into the Maj'Eyal lore, I'd limit names dealing with heaven, Lethe, and other items of Earth's myth, lore, or beliefs. Other names, like Sin to Know, Song of Chaos, etc would still be good. Also, decide exactly what the Warlock's relation to the demons is. Does he deify them, try to bargain with them, serve them without deifying them, or something else?

As for damage, I'd say make the Flame Invocation talents effect damage types. Corrosive Flame would do 50/50 fire and acid, Bloody Flame would be fire and blight (or maybe drain life), Abyssal Flame would be fire and darkness.

Rename Flame Transformation to Flame Shaping and replace the 'Eldritch' in each talent name with Fell. I think Eldritch is already associated with arcane power in TOME.

For the Flame Control, I'd say:
Quench(active/sustain): Flame power stops feeding on your life for X turns, does not regenerate, and drops Y points each turn. (maybe make it a sustain, in which case no turn restriction)
Temper(active): Consumes flame power to overcome negative effects, reducing the duration of all negative effects by X turns. Effects dropped to 0 or below are ended.
Stoke(active): Activate a shield of consuming flames that deals additional damage to all melee attackers, completely blocks arrow and bullet attacks, and drains additional damage from spell or mind attacks. All these effects boost your flame power. Shield lasts for 5 turns.
Sinter(active): Carefully control flame power to heal yourself. For 5 turns, max flame is limited to X (based on max HP) and flame power heals you instead of consuming you, proportional to the amount of power you have (so the closer you are to max, the more you're healed each turn).

Demonization - rename to Fell Persona:
Burning Heart (passive): The flames of Urh'Rok burning in your heart won't let you go so easily. They regenerate your body for X HP every turn.
Burning Blood (active): The flames of Urh'Rok burn through your blood. For X turns, any damage you take sends out a gout of demonic flame to a random target in radius (1/1/2/2/3), doing Y damage to that target.
Burning Bones (active): The flames of Urh'Rok burn through your very bones. For X turns, you gain Y resistance to stun/freeze, disarm, pin, confuse, maybe some more status effects? Maybe a bonus to Str or damage resistance?
Burning Manifestation (active): The flames of Urh'Rok completely transform you. You become an arch demon for several turns and get str, con, dex, max life bouns. All of durtion, bouns and cooldown depends on how much flame is consumed. You cannot use any flame talents while in demon form.


How's that?

Well if it sounds right, it seems like the higher your "Flame" resource is the more powerful you are, but the faster your health drains away.

That could be really cool for Fearscape and would be the opposite of how a Corruptor does it.

Corruptors in the fearscape become weaker over time, as their Vim is drained away they can fuel less powers and eventually can no longer keep them there and are banished.

Warlock would be the opposite, I think they should GAIN very large Flame generation while in the fearscape. The longer they stay in the Fearscape the more powerful they become, to the point they are so powerful their Flames burn them out and pretty much self explode. It's a nice balance of power act, do you stay in longer and completely obliterate your opponent as your powers surge, or do you play it safe and leave early?

Reminds me a lot of Ignus from Planescape: Torment.

Since you are already drawing heavy inspiration from DND for the class, why not look to the Planescape campaign for inspiration? I think merging planescape + ToME demons could work well.

just get infrastructure of summoning tree done.

thanks for the ideas.

The name of demon control tree looks good, but I'm still looking for names of demon summoning tree, because I want my addon fit in ToME style better.

I'm still need more ideas for other flame trees, and I will start them after I get summon demon and control demon trees mostly done.

And I added some background information about warlock.

bump