ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm thinking about writing a version of the Corruptor, but not as a separate class: rather, as a "Dark Side" into which an Archmage can buy talents after certain events.

It would ideally be a couple of talent trees which modify existing spells in a similar way (but an eeeeeeviler way) as Wildfire and Uttercold. Ideally, they'd end up around as powerful as Wildfire or Uttercold, but with a different focus... an eeeeeeevil focus.


Here's what I'm thinking so far:

Vile Harvest
Life is just another power source.
Level 10
Sustain 50 Mana
- Provides a way to gain Vim (death of "natural" creatures? not undead or horrors)
- Modifies level 1 spells: Glacial Vapor gains bonus Acid damage, Flame can infect with a Blight disease, Lightning gains bonus Darkness damage. Casting these spells now consumes Vim as well as Mana, but it spends your Life points if you don't have Vim.

Vile Invigoration
You spread misery to empower yourself.
Level 14
Sustain 150 Mana
- Chance to inflict Blight diseases with some level 2 and 3 spells (Chain Lightning, Inferno, Freeze).
- Inflict bonus Acid damage with some level 2 and 3 spells (Fireflash, Tidal Wave).
- Manabolt, Illuminate and Phantasmal Shield now deal Darkness damage.
(Casting any of the above spells now consumes Vim as well as Mana, but it spends your Life points if you don't have Vim.)
- Gain 1 Mana and 0.25 Vim every time a "natural" creature suffers Blight damage from at least one of your diseases.

Soul Rot
You are a master of stealing life force.
Level 18
Activated 40 Mana
- Inflict a bunch of Blight damage on anything (even undead / horror) and gain Vim.

Soul Shield
You selfishly use the life force you've stolen to guard your own.
Level 22
Activated 30 Vim, instant cast
- Works like Bone Shield in that it blocks any attack, but it's not sustained. To refresh it, you need to go kill more losers. Long duration.
Passive benefit
- Gain +X% penetration for your Acid, Darkness and Blight damage.



Also, taking this path might open up the Hexes and Curses trees. Those effects would still cost pure Vim to cast, so the fallen mage is encouraged to go spread misery & kill some losers to fuel his new powers.



For Reavers, I'm thinking that they'd be fallen Arcane Blade characters. Reaving Combat could grant a free attack with any spell cast (as the current Reaving Combat talent does), and give Vim if you kill eligible losers in melee. Maybe they'd gain the ability to spread disease with their Fiery Hands & Shock Hands sustains from the Enchantment tree? Also the Mana gain from diseases could be a fun incentive.


- - -


For triggering events, I'm thinking:
- Killing a Blight-corrupted boss ("what a disturbing yet fascinating phenomenon").
- Taking Blight damage ("interesting energy, I bet I can use this...").
- What else? Ideally before level 10, for obvious reasons.


In terms of specific numbers, what kind of damage totals should I be targeting? I'd like this path to have appeal to the default unfocused Archmage, a tempting quick power boost which ends up consuming him utterly, but ends up on par with more disciplined "pure" builds.

With this setup, is there any need to put a cap on harvested Vim? This game seems pretty good about not allowing grinding / scumming / farming, so there ought to be a fixed limit on "natural" targets from which you could drain.

Thoughts?

You realize the name "soul rot" is already taken, right?
I do like the idea though; nobody is born a corruptor, I imagine they all started as normal mages before being "corrupted". Unsure what you mean by capping vim, obviously you can't collect more vim than your vim bar can hold, and it looks like picking up these skills would give them a vim bar.

Amphouse wrote:You realize the name "soul rot" is already taken, right?

Yep! That's on purpose. Since this is a replacement for the guys who usually get that talent.

Amphouse wrote:I do like the idea though; nobody is born a corruptor, I imagine they all started as normal mages before being "corrupted".

Thanks!

(The other side is that it makes you think "huh, those Zigur guys might have a point...", since any Mage can fall to the dark side.)

Amphouse wrote:Unsure what you mean by capping vim, obviously you can't collect more vim than your vim bar can hold, and it looks like picking up these skills would give them a vim bar.

I'm wondering whether the Vim bar actually needs a limit.

Guess I'll try coding this up and see if the current Vim limit makes sense in context or not.

I like the concept, however this could be made into something else than replacing corruptors IMO

The idea is interesting, at least you interested me .
About triggering: in Scintillating caves, there can be found a lore about discovering and harvesting blight. I vote triggering event to be killing spellblaze crystal with all that lore discovered (optionally, of course). It can certainly be achieved before lvl10, because it's a starter dungeon, and it makes sense.
About talents: I think that Vile Invigoration cost is a bit too high. At least +Mana +Vim needs to scale with level and/or Spellpower.
I vote against Soul Rot, because having an extra bolt in any form is the thing Archmage needs the least. I also vote against current form of Soul Shield, because it can be overpowered in certain situations. What I'd like too see is a shield returning damage and/or spreading diseases, obviously affected by Aegis tree. I like it being non-sustainable, though.
I understand that Soul Rot fills the role of mana->vim almost-direct conversion, and despite I cannot think of substitute, it is clearly necessary, if only because of name similarity.

make it a 'gift' from siding with the Grand Corruptor so there's another reason not to kill her other than the satisfaction to kill the self-righteous Zigur Protector

darkgod wrote:I like the concept, however this could be made into something else than replacing corruptors IMO

Glad you like it!

IMHO the current Corruptor / Reaver is an awesome idea, but the mechanics aren't really my thing, so I'm looking for a way to use the concept which suits my taste. Obviously if you do like the current Corruptor / Reaver mechanics then there's no reason to throw it away!

Should we talk about the current Corruptor / Reaver stuff in a different thread?

0player wrote:The idea is interesting, at least you interested me .
About triggering: in Scintillating caves, there can be found a lore about discovering and harvesting blight. I vote triggering event to be killing spellblaze crystal with all that lore discovered (optionally, of course). It can certainly be achieved before lvl10, because it's a starter dungeon, and it makes sense.

Yes, that's a great idea. Lots of the 2nd starter dungeon bosses could qualify: Spellblaze Crystal, Withering Thing, and the Mouth.

Maybe being hit with Blight damage could be another trigger, since that's a thing which can crop up all over the place.

0player wrote:About talents: I think that Vile Invigoration cost is a bit too high. At least +Mana +Vim needs to scale with level and/or Spellpower.

I'm eyeballing based on similar Archmage sustains. What do you think is a fair cost?

Maybe the gains should scale with talent level? That's an inducement to go DEEEEEP into corruption or not go there at all. Also the talent levels are level-locked so you can't scale faster than expected using overpowered equipment drops.

0player wrote:I vote against Soul Rot, because having an extra bolt in any form is the thing Archmage needs the least. I also vote against current form of Soul Shield, because it can be overpowered in certain situations. What I'd like too see is a shield returning damage and/or spreading diseases, obviously affected by Aegis tree. I like it being non-sustainable, though.
I understand that Soul Rot fills the role of mana->vim almost-direct conversion, and despite I cannot think of substitute, it is clearly necessary, if only because of name similarity.

Soul Rot is there for two reasons:
1 - To give the corrupt mage a way to get Vim when he's surrounded by undead / horrors / whatever.
2 - To give the player a thing where he can say, oh, that's what those jerks kept hitting me with.

Regarding Soul Shield, my idea is that it's similar to the current Bone Shield - stupidly good, to the point that you will want to 5/5 it just like you'd want to 5/5 Wildfire or Uttercold. The current Bone Shield is a Sustain which recharges over time, so the current Bone Shield is still much better than my proposed Soul Shield, AND the current Bone Shield is available earlier, but yeah - my Soul Shield is supposed to be a powerful inducement.


@Sianist - Siding with the Grand Corruptor should totally be the global unlock, and should be the final opportunity to pick up the tree if you somehow missed all the others. Good call on that.

Siding with the GC already unlocks corruptors you know

A whole new quest would be better

I'm not sure about the whole mana<->vim thing, I think I'll have to see this in action; but yeah Soul Rot sounds wrong to me too. Archmages are way beyond the simple bolts of other classes

Beware about "natural" creatures restrictions, it may be thematic but it's super annoying for gameplay (IE: dreadfell)

darkgod wrote:Siding with the GC already unlocks corruptors you know

It could unlock both, since my intent is to use this addon in place of the current Corruptors (and maybe Reavers).

darkgod wrote:A whole new quest would be better

I'm not up to coding that, but it could be a cool idea

darkgod wrote:I'm not sure about the whole mana<->vim thing, I think I'll have to see this in action; but yeah Soul Rot sounds wrong to me too. Archmages are way beyond the simple bolts of other classes

Beware about "natural" creatures restrictions, it may be thematic but it's super annoying for gameplay (IE: dreadfell)

I'll have to give it a try and let you know if it sucks or not.

These guys have Mana spells to fall back on, so if their Corruption powers fail, they're not totally helpless -- but without their Corruption powers they ARE underpowered compared to a straight Archmage, and that's the point. Vim-fueled powers like Hexes are awesome, the Blight diseases are awesome, and the Soul Shield ought to be awesome. But selling out to dark powers has a price, and the price is that you don't have an easy time fighting against dark powers.

If it is too annoying for gameplay, then maybe a REDUCED amount of Vim is generated from unnatural targets. There's plenty of room in this design space for tweaking.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm eager to try it

I say, don't worry about Vim at all.

You get (Will/10) Vim when you kill a target with anything, right now.

As such, make that the main way you get Vim.

Make it so that Vim is a very limited resource that powers some of your strongest skills, then make your normal combat work off Mana. That way, you're a true dual resource character, with each resource having defined roles.

Some kind of emergency Vim(Something like Bloodcasting, perhaps) would be good, but I think you can get a strong dynamic going just from this.

Doctornull wrote:I'm eyeballing based on similar Archmage sustains. What do you think is a fair cost?

Maybe the gains should scale with talent level? That's an inducement to go DEEEEEP into corruption or not go there at all. Also the talent levels are level-locked so you can't scale faster than expected using overpowered equipment drops.

For current benefits, 100-120 looks like more fair cost than 150. Scaling with talent level is good enough, though, and then it'd be worth it.

Doctornull wrote:Yes, that's a great idea. Lots of the 2nd starter dungeon bosses could qualify: Spellblaze Crystal, Withering Thing, and the Mouth.

Maybe being hit with Blight damage could be another trigger, since that's a thing which can crop up all over the place.

I'm a bit unsure about the Mouth. This thing is corrupted by a god, it's not something that an Archmage can use on his own purposes. After reading the lore, you'll think that using blight this way will most likely turn you into brecklorn .
The Withering thing and the Heart of Gloom in general... is it even blight-themed? It is more like hate, gloom and dark tendrils all the way, isn't it? I may be mixing things up, though.

Doctornull wrote:Regarding Soul Shield, my idea is that it's similar to the current Bone Shield - stupidly good, to the point that you will want to 5/5 it just like you'd want to 5/5 Wildfire or Uttercold. The current Bone Shield is a Sustain which recharges over time, so the current Bone Shield is still much better than my proposed Soul Shield, AND the current Bone Shield is available earlier, but yeah - my Soul Shield is supposed to be a powerful inducement.

Well, make it like old Bone Shield then: unlimited durability, off when at zero charges, but make it recharge not over time, but for kills, and no more than one per turn. The last one is necessary in some form because sometimes you get the opportunity to insta- or two-hit-kill quite a bit of vermin simultaneously.
About whole undead/horror thing: there could be a skill, named, say, Snatch Corruption, in form of current soul rot (bolt for mana), that would gather vim from undead/horrors (as they are twisted, corrupted creatures on their own), and significantly less amount from other things; and make vim gathering via Vile sustains such that it is vice versa.

I'm actually more interested in this concept the more I think about it, so I'm thinking more about it than just the little comment I made earlier. Some thoughts...

-Optimally, you want this to feel somewhere between a new tree and an alternate playstyle. I think you've got the right idea on base, with the alternate spell versions, but I suggest trying to not make all the spells play as combo Vim/Mana. As mentioned, you have a good trick here, for using Mana for weaker enemies and Vim as more of your heavy artillery. I would suggest having most spells combo a little Vim/Mana, and have some spells change more extremely and use more Vim than most, but no Mana.

-With that in mind, you probably want the sustains to be expensive, so that you have less Mana, and a bit more of a Vim reliance. This also keeps players from just dipping into it for a bunch of options with little cost beyond a category point-they have to run expensive sustains for those options. I'd suggest 100 for the first skill and 200 for the second; It's a lot, but if you make some skills run entirely off Vim and make them all properly refund Vim on kills(not too hard, I'd imagine), that's going to be quite worth it.

-Why not, instead of Soul Rot, have a talent that actually grants unlocked categories(Like Hexes/Curses; Diseases might make a good third), and levels their categories up? Even at cap, the category rankings should be relatively low(1.0) for both balance and thematic reasons, but it still would be interesting.

I concur on the vim thing

I've done started something similar to this in my Arcanum addon.
Elementists can learn a Blight category, which will also unlock some corrupted versions of the standard elemental talents.

I think this is an interesting idea, but there is no need to replace the existing Corruptor, and you seem to be making things overly coplicated with regard to Vim.