ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Zany idea, I'm sure, but... how about a semi-hidden late-game detour just for archmages? When you have done the backup guardians, and the maze got destroyed by creepy things, and you haven't taken the light tree from escorts, generate a new quest there if you talk to some dwarves and halflings in Last Hope. They want you to escort them all through the labyrinth, see, and you are glad to get them to their portal since it sounds like they have an important mission. If you succeed in getting them all to the goal zone (probably a region of larger radius than the typical escort-portal) a major boss appears. If you can deal enough damage to it while not letting any splash kill your party members (who try to flee from the fight, wisely) you blast the ground with your staff, fall down into the depths of the earth, and fight the boss for real, in a timed fight because you have a death countdown (you are in free-fall). If you kill the boss in time you 'die', perhaps seeing some faintly visible beings behind the Eidolon, who sends you back and says that you have done very well for the Balance of Realities or whatever.

You get sent back, with the following passive changes:

• 1. You lose at least one prodigy (probably should be both)
  2. The aegis tree is closed completely, barring use of the talents.
  3. The light tree is unlocked at mastery equivalent to that in aegis. Your points in aegis are added to the corresponding slots in the light tree. Perhaps you get access to chants, as well.
  4. You get light conversion on all spells, to some degree, with light damage and penetration equal to greatest damage and penetration in the basic arcane elements. Perhaps also a small chance to blind on sufficiently large chunks of light damage, either in the style of Elemental Surge or that of Endless woes.

Where are you sent back to? The bottom of the Deep Bellow, of course. You come up through it backwards.

As everyone knows, sometimes Archmages need a way to show that they are hard-core in getting to the mystical depths from which all Being springs.

Someone re-watched the LOTR movies, didn't they....

...why would anyone want to do this? Sorry, but the Aegis tree is one of the strongest in the game (and the defining generic tree for Archmages). Losing a prodigy in addition is waaaayyy over the top-- Cauterize alone is worth more than all the benefits you listed.

Other than that, I love this idea Just change the rewards.

azrael wrote:...why would anyone want to do this? Sorry, but the Aegis tree is one of the strongest in the game (and the defining generic tree for Archmages). Losing a prodigy in addition is waaaayyy over the top-- Cauterize alone is worth more than all the benefits you listed.

Other than that, I love this idea Just change the rewards.

Yeah, if it seems weak you can give better mastery in light and maybe some other thematic goodies which would take a little brainstorming to get out. Blind on absolutely every attack is not to be sneezed at if the effect is strong enough, but to keep it interesting while still making sense as a sidegrade for the class that is the king of diversity to begin with, it makes a lot of sense to look at other neat ways to reward. For instance, some abilities with high-level anti-caster potential would make good sense from the perspective of the allusion and are appropriate rewards for targeting the final bosses, if not a certain golem...

Make that one of two optional, mutually exclusive quests. The second quest would have you fight an uber-boss with nightmare/corruption skills who summons you to the Dreamscape, and if you lose, then:

1) You get -100 to mental saves
2) You can't use Celestial skills anymore
3) You get an annoying sidekick who... can't do much besides Taunt
4) You get 5 extra levels to Arcane Eye
5) You get all the Unflinching Eye (the artifact amulet) bonuses for free
6) You get the ability to summon 3 Orc archers and/or berserkers (same mechanics as the Wayist talent)
7) You inflict 100% more damage to Treants, but they inflict 200% more damage to you and your sidekicks
8 ) Obviously you can't summon Treants anymore if you're a Thalore
9) You lose the Fortress (but can get the same functionality out of Tannen's Tower after you beat him)

If you beat the boss, then you get an achievement and an artifact ring you shouldn't equip (if you do, a goblin materializes, bites the ring off of your hand, and disappears in a fiery chasm - your missing finger nets you -5 Dex, unless you're a troll or another race with regenerative powers.)

Or you could have a quest where you and 200 giant eagles eat popcorn while watching halflings trudge across the landscape at 3 mph! See, I can make LoTR references too!

Seriously though, although the rewards involved in this particular mission are clearly completely out of whack and I don't see any non-reference-based reasons for limiting it to archmages, the idea of a fight in freefall is quite interesting. It could involve mechanics (radically increased movement speed, collisions with debris, etc) not seen elsewhere in the game. Maybe a possible replacement for the Charred Scar?

Okay. So, the explicit LotR reference aspect is... not preferred. Let's see what's salvageable.

- Doing quests for the Eidolon and/or including the Eidolon more fully in the plot: potentially interesting, except that the Eidolon doesn't actually *exist* for roguelike players. That doesn't completely invalidate it as a possibility, but it does mean that this part is likely not worth pursuing.

- Combat in free-fall: potentially interesting in some ways, but we already have that to some degree in the Temporal Rift, and going much more than that would likely be pretty ugly to program.

- An apotheosis quest: this actually has some potential. Making it class-specific (or at least skill-tree specific) is also not a terrible idea. The necromancers have theirs already, for example. Having wyrmics actually transform either into dragons, or into a more explicitly draconic form could be interesting, for example, and oozemancers as well (lose standard walk, but dramatically improve CDs?). Likewise, I'm sure something interesting could be managed with Corrupters (and possibly reavers). Archmages I'd see more as embracing their element - transitioning to gwel*s or shiv*s or whatever. You could extend that to chronomancers and have it replace the applicable prodigy as well.

Actually, the interesting thing here would be in digging into what made the horrors what they are - since there are horrors for a great many class types, a horror form apotheosis quest could fit in pretty well.

Sirrocco wrote: Actually, the interesting thing here would be in digging into what made the horrors what they are - since there are horrors for a great many class types, a horror form apotheosis quest could fit in pretty well.

This was actually a major rationale from my perspective, too, since I don't think that something should exist in the game simply as a joke -- a joke or two, actually, since the proposed quest would function as a kind of capstone for the amusingly cruel escort quests. I was not just interested in horrors as such, that broad class of beings on the perimeter of the world in general, but also in what exactly the hate-powered afflictions of the Afflicted meta-class might stem from. The horrors are quite diverse in the way they function, but the Deep Bellow shows signs of the power to afflict by altering both body and mind, and the east of the Thaloren forest is waking up (when not sleeping) to something along the line of a Doomed ecology. If there is a segment of horrors that grow more potent in the world the more they hate it, it makes sense that recent events like the Spellblaze and dwarven digging are responsible for their growing power/presence. Before, when buried deep below and nearly dormant, they simply weren't aware of anything to hate, and had neither the will, the motivation, nor the power to try to move closer to the surface. But now that some clear signals of unafflicted beings are present, their hate is making them move.

Playing around with an afflicted boss of the deep could be good for more than the lore, too. This could be a testbed for new afflicted talents, or potentially even a new class, depending on how quickly development is taking us to a norm of 3 classes per meta-class at a minimum.