ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hi, I wouldn't it be cool if beams and/ or bolts could reflect on walls?

* Basic reflection against flat wall, ie. beams roll 2 times over a line of enemies.
* Cool reflection diagonally. Imagine a beam/ bolt reflecting inside a vault...

Many combinations come to mind;
* Item (ring/ amulet/ etc...) enable reflection.
* Today seldom used/ ignored spells could be made more attractive with this feature. (example at skill lvl. >3)
* Possible "Evil Mode" - it will hurt the caster too - watch out!
* Possible "Nerf Mode" - xy% damage reduction after reflection.

What do you think?
Happy killing!

Could.be a special wall type. It would be evil in vaults if you taught the AI how to use it. I also like it as a feature if some spells, but again you need to teach the AI how to use it.

It's okay if heavily controlled.

Even Dungeon Crawl eventually disallowed bouncing a bolt more than twice, with its version of the mechanic. There was a reason; Enemies, even by Crawl's nasty and uncaring tendencies, simply would do too much damage sometimes by lucky situation, while the player had to go to really annoying/boring lengths to strategize bolt bouncing. Wallbouncing indefinitely is dangerous.

Within that, a certain kind of surface that bounces bolts is okay enough, or a spell that does it without allowing it to happen too much.

+1 if this can be managed sanely, but let's not let it get out of hand. And remember that bolts that bounce directly are going to come right back at you. How would you feel hitting yourself with that crit manathrust, or firebeam, or whatever.

On the subject of unique physics I'd like to see, I'd also like to see some sort of prism that 'spread' the effect of your spell when hit by it. For instance, manathrust a prism and everything in radius X gets hit by the manathrust. (Though whether this would just diffuse the area of effect, or also diffuse the damage is up for debate.)

In both these instances, getting the AI to recognize and use them seems like a challenge though.

The current system would not allow generic reflection of beams, but bolts it does (and I've made skills that do so, go check out empyreal). The problem is that the graphical effects for the beams are set as particle emitters inside each individual talent. It's certainly possible to have it for specific skills with proper changes to targeting though.

Thanx, yes, I see how it can be too powerful/deadly etc. Either nerf after reflection - or make "Xxx of reflection" rare - or make chance of reflection low% - or make it a prodigy - or a skill.
Anyhow - just an idea.

also, what makes it harder to set up is that bolts and beams can be cast in other directions than a simple compass rose, so its a diagonal or straight line ... it would demand embedding a fair share of math into it so all angles on a wall is reflected

That's actually absolutely trivial and doesn't change a thing because the walls are always parallel with the axes.