ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So I know this has been tried before but I had an idea for a take on it and ran with it. I start to lose steam on the descriptions towards the end and most values are left blank as I have no idea about balancing.

Wilder - Shapeshifter +4 willpower, +3 strength, +2 dex

These savage warriors were born in the wild and are able to take on the aspects of savage creatures, giving them superhuman strength and speed, but this comes at a cost, too much time spent in these forms can take away their sanity and leave them as northing more than snarling beasts. At higher levels, they can enhance their aspects further through their connection to nature and even become an avatar of Eyal.

Ok so class mechanic is a “sanity”(maybe “focus”) bar, it starts at 100 and decreases each turn you are in an animal form, also using your abilities decreases it as well. This has two effects, firstly the lower your sanity, the more you have to concentrate to use abilities and the higher their costs in stamina and equilibrium( lets say 3% per point under 100), secondly as your sanity decreases you gain a chance of losing your grip completely, greying out all your abilities for 10 turns and then dumping you back into your original form. (maybe also a chance of confusion before you get to this point) You regain sanity quite simply by shifting forms (forcing your mind into a different shape snaps you back to reality). Initially the aspects cannot use equipment and they only have access to their trees. Your original form cannot lose sanity.

edit*** your chance of going insane scales with edit** mental save, also your phys power increases slightly as you lose sanity

Class abilities
All the abilities are willpower unlocks.

Wild Gift - Tiger 1.3

Tiger Form – 1 turn, sustain, 20 eq, 10cd
class levels available at level 0/3/6/9/12
-2/2/3/3/4 sanity per turn
Your body morphs to take on the aspect of a monstrous tiger, your muscles bunch and swell, fine striped fur grows from your skin and your teeth and nails extend and hone themselves to deadly keenness.
You gain:
x/y/z/a/b strength and dex
+8/16/24/32/40% attack speed
x/y/z/a/b phys power
+1/2/2/3/4 infravision range
Weapon - claws...(not sure what to do about these, maybe just give them a base damage value kinda like dream hammer, improve with class level and then another skill comes into play later to improve them further, you'll see) claws acc/crit pwr

edit ****-3/6/9/12/15 mental save

Wild Assault - 1 turn 20 sta, 10 san 3cd
you launch a frenzied attack at your opponent, striking and tearing at their flesh, you hit 4 times for x/y/z/a/b% damage
and inflicting bleed damage of x/y/z/a/b
scales with strength
Roar – 1 turn 5 sta, 6 san
A blood curdling roar that freezes your foes in their tracks, dazing opponents in a radius 4/5/6/7/8 for 2/3/4/5/6 turns

Whirling Dervish – 1 turn 25sta 15 san 5cd
Spinning, leaping and slashing in a whirlwind of destruction you attack all around you for x/y/z/a/b% damage in a radius of 1/1/1/2/2
damage scales with strength, radius with dex(maybe)


Wild Gift - Rhino

Rhino form – 1 turn sustain
(costs same as tiger)
Your body morphs to take on the aspect of an invincible rhino. You grow massive in bulk. Your skin thickens and hardens into a tough grey armour. A huge and brutal horn thrusts from the centre of your face. Your hands change into powerful clubbing hooves.
You gain
+1 size category
x/y/z/a/b strength and con
x/y/z/a/b*strength armour and 4/8/12/16/20% hardiness
x/y/z/a/b phys power
40/45/50/55/60% stun and pin res
Weapon, hooves and horn (hooves acc/dam) (horn acc/crit%)

edit**** -2/4/6/8/10% mental speed

Unstoppable charge – 1 turn (30 sta, 8 san) 10cd
You charge forward with terrible momentum sending opponents flying.
You charge forward for 3 /4/5/6/7 spaces dealing x/y/z/a/b% damage to all enemies in your path and pushing them to one side, if they cannot be moved the charge stops and the enemy is gored, dealing x/y/z/a/b damage with 100 apr.
If you encounter a wall the wall is destroyed and you stop, otherwise you always go full distance.
Damage scales with distance travelled

Fast Recovery – 1 turn (12 sta, 3 san) 12cd
You concentrate on your formidable metabolism to aid recovery.
For 5/6/6/7/7 turns you gain x/y/z/a/b health and x/y/z/a/b stamina regeneration
regeneration scales with con duration with mindpower.

Thunderous Stamp – 1 turn (23 sta, 6 san) 7cd
You strike the floor with brutish power, sending shock-waves in all directions.
Enemies in radius 1/1/2/2/3 suffer x/y/z/a/b% damage and are stunned for 2/2/3/3/3 turns. Nearer enemies take more damage and are stunned for longer.
values scale with strength.


Wild Gift -Raptor 1.3

Raptor Form – 1 turn sustain
same costs as tiger
Your body morphs to take on the aspect of a Lightning-fast raptor. Wings sprout from your back, your limbs grow lithe and quick and your hands turn into vicious talons.
You gain
+1/1/2/2/3 Sight radius
x/y/z/a/b dex and cun
x/y/z/a/b phys power
x/y/z/a/b apr
+60/80/100/120/140 movement speed
x/y/z/a/b crit multiplier
x/y/z/a/b defence
Weapon- talons acc/apr

edit*** -2/4/6/8/10% phys res (too much?)

Pinpoint strike – 1 turn, 15 sta, 10 san, 6cd
With deadly precision you slash at your target's throat and eyes.
You deal two attacks at +100 acc for x/y/z/a/b% damage with 50+% chance to inflict blind and silence for 2/3/3/4/4 turns.
Chance scales with dex.

Screeching dive 1- turn, 25 sta, 15 san, 5cd
With great effort you force yourself into the air before swooping down on your prey with a terrifying screech, disorienting your foes.
Rushes (ignoring in between enemies) up to 7/8/9/10/12 squares and deals x/y/z/a/b% damage with a x/y/z/a/b% chance to inflict confusion in radius 1/1/1/2/2.

Evasive Manoeuvres – instant 15 sta, 8 san, 15 cd
Your heightened reflexes enable you to see attacks coming long before they land.
For 3 /4/5/6/7 turns you gain x/y/z/a/b% evasion.

edit***evasion scales with dex

Wild Gift - Mastery of Form 1.3

Blended form - passive

edit**** edit****
Available at levels 0/3/6/9/12
Your weapons and armour now meld into your aspects, allowing you to gain their benefits. Your pelt/hide/feathers are emablazoned with patterns from absorbed jewellery and you glow softly. You are studded and crisscrossed by armour and your claws, talons, hooves and horn take on the edge of your weapons, giving a bonus to apr and damage based on the weapon and activating on hit effects. As you grow more powerful you become able to better absorb these unnatural materials into your body.
At level 1 you gain access to all your equipment, but your armour and shield only give a x/y/z/a/b% bonus to armour and defence and your weapons give a x/y/z/a/b % bonus to damage and apr

Natural Weapons – Sustain, 10 eq
While Transformed your tigers claws gain an edit** 8/16/24/32/40% chance to inflict bleed for 3 turns, Rhino's gain a 5/10/15/20/25% chance to hit with an additional strike for 120% damage with 100 apr, Hawks talons have a 3/6/9/12/15% extra chance to inflict critical hits.

Rigid Control - passive
Long training allows you to shift faster and more often. When you shift to a different form you gain back 60/70/80/90/100% of a turn and aspect cooldowns are reduced by 1 /2/3/4/5

Dire Form – 1 turn 10 eq
For 3/3/4/4/5 turns your aspects are enhanced, giving you +0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 mastery of the base forms when transformed.
edit**duration scales with mindpower


Wild Gift Tiger – Rage 1.3

Hunger Rage – 1 turn 15 sta, 8 eq, 15 san, 5cd
Imbuing your claws with power, you make two raking sweeps in an arc that hit the three spaces in front of you. Each hit does x/y/z/a/b% damage and drains x/y/z/a/b% health and equilibrium.

Blood Rage - passive
The smell of blood sends you into a frenzy, each time you hit a bleeding foe you gain 1/2/3/4/5 phys power up to a maximum of 10/20/30/40/50 that lasts 4/4/5/5/6 turns

Silent Rage – 1 turn – 7 sta, 10 eq, 5 san, 9 cd
Your natural stealth is enhanced to the point that you seem to merge with the environment, gain invisibility power x/y/z/a/b for 5 turns.
edit*** power scales with mindpower

Eyal's Rage – Sustain Instant 20eq, 10 san, 5 eq per turn
Your rage become so pure that you ignite everything around you, burning at an ever increasing intensity, your attacks deal fire damage and cause explosions of radius 1 that deal x/y/z/a/b stacking burning damage for 3 turns, you also gain 6/12/18/24/30 % fire damage and 6/12/18/24/30 % fire pen.


Wild Gift Rhino – Hide 1.3

Chromatic Hide - Passive
Your power infused hide becomes resistant to the elements, you gain 6/12/18/24/30 % resistance to fire, lightning, cold, acid, nature and blight.

Spiked Hide – instant Sustain 12 eq
Your hide grows spikes that deal x/y/z/a/b retaliation damage to all hits and poison the target for x/y/z/a/b damage over 5 turns

Slough Hide -1 turn 10eq 9/8/7/6/5 cd
Your hide sheds itself of detrimental effects. Remove 1 /2/2/3/3 negative spell or physical effects.

Eyal's Armour - sustain, instant 20eq 10san 5eq per turn
Become immovable, every turn your enhanced hide shoots 1 / 2/2/3/3 spikes at enemies in radius 4/4/5/5/5, each spike deals x/y/z/a/b nature damage and leeches x/y/z/a/b % health, you also gain 6/12/18/24/30% nature damage and pen


Wild Gift Raptor – Wing 1.3

Razorwing - passive
You gain phys pen of 7/14/21/28/35

Stormwing – 1 turn 15 sta, 15 eq, 10 san 15cd
You whip up a whirlwind for 3 /4/5/6/7 turns that surrounds you at radius 1/1/2/2/2, with an x/y/z/a/b% chance to knock back targets and deflect projectiles.
edit*** chance scales with dex

Bloodwing – 1 turn 25 sta, 24 eq, 15 san 6cd
Your feathers gain a cutting edge and shoot out in a cone of range 4/5/6/7/8 dealing x/y/z/a/b damage and inflicting bleed. Damage scales with dex

Wing of Eyal – sustain 20 eq, 10 san, 5eq per turn
Your wings crackle and buzz as your connection to the elements fuses, when you attack it is as a thunderbolt from the sky.
Your normal attack changes to a range 5/6/7/8/9 teleport attack that deals lightning damage with a daze chance, if the hit is a critical the damage arcs between 2/ 3/ 4/5/6 enemies for x/y/z/a/b% damage
You also gain 6/12/18/24/30 % lightning damage and pen


Wild Gift Child of Eyal 1.3

Natural Balance 1 turn 0 cost
Your connection to nature is nigh unshakeable.
edit***
For 3/4/4/5/5 turns you regenerate x/y/z/a/b equilibrium, values scale with mindpower can only be activated in original form.

Animal Instincts - passive
Long exposure to the animal world has allowed you to develop your natural senses to an extraordinary degree.
Gain x/y/z/a/b stealth and invisibility detection
scales with mindpower

Nature's Ally 1 turn 20 eq
Your cry for help will always be heeded.
Every turn for 4/5/5/6/7 turns 1/1/2/2/2 natural animals will arrive to help, they are player level – 10/8/6/4/2 and stay for 10 turns.

Sword of Eyal 1 turn
Edit ***, edit***
Your connection to nature has grown so strong that you are chosen to be one of Eyal's champions, when you switch form you blur the lines for longer. For 4/5/5/6/6 turns Every time you switch forms you gain a bonus for 2 turns from the previous form
when switching from tiger 4/8/12/16/20 % damage bonus
from rhino damage reduction of 5/10/15/20/25 points
From raptor 50/60/70/80/90%movement speed
duration scales with mindpower
(this doesn't quite fit in this the tree now though)

Lets also give them Combat veteran unlocked at 1.1 and combat techniques locked at 1.1

For generics, lets say combat training at 1.2, survival at 1.3 call of the wild at 1.3 (meditation should also regenerate sanity), harmony at 1.3 conditioning locked at 1.0, and field control locked at 1.0

Wow that was long and I cannot even think any more. Thoughts, feelings? Anyone actually get this far?

Its the best designed shapeshifter class I seen designed so far.

I'm concerned about Sword of Eyal though. It looks like it will just allow you to bypass most of the interesting restriction mechanics of the class.
Maybe make it allow you to activate a second shape and have the first shape benefits and abilities linger for a duration based on this talent level.

I have to agree with housepet there, best designed shapeshifter I've seen, might even steal it someday
Also agreeing on sword of eyal

darkgod wrote:I have to agree with housepet

*dies of shock*

looks interesting - not sure about how you've done the sanity mechanic though.

I'd make it give you a bonus, as well as a penalty, as it decreases, as you descend into 'animal rage'. So something like a damage bonus, to make skirting the edges a bit more interesting.

Also Blended form looks way too mandatory - every build ever would 5 it, and the fact that weapons are gated behind level 5 means it will be a max by level 5 every character thing.

This does look like a pretty interesting class.

haven't been around to see other shapeshifter proposals, so...

Perhaps, though this is just conjecture, each form should have (in addition to their strengths) a specific drawbak? The Rhino might have a slightly reduced global speed (except when charging), while the Hawk is physically frail (and therefore not altogether wise against crouds of enemies), and the Tiger would have... something*.

*off the top of my head, decreased resistance to arcane talents springs to mind...

Sounds fun.

Get coding!

Yeah restricting equipped items is a pain to balance and tends to cause the unlocking talents to be required.

Restricting items and/or abilities tends to be the main downfall of shapeshifting classes everywhere.

The Revanchist wrote:This does look like a pretty interesting class.

haven't been around to see other shapeshifter proposals, so...

Perhaps, though this is just conjecture, each form should have (in addition to their strengths) a specific drawbak? The Rhino might have a slightly reduced global speed (except when charging), while the Hawk is physically frail (and therefore not altogether wise against crouds of enemies), and the Tiger would have... something*.

*off the top of my head, decreased resistance to arcane talents springs to mind...

I like this proposal. I think that the main tactical attraction of shapeshifting should be reading the situation to know which form is appropriate. For example, each form might have increased resistances to some elements and reduced resistances to others.

Edit: Also, thirding the point on Sword of Eyal. Perhaps it could speed up shifting, so that at level 5 it is instant.

I like this idea, but I'd love to see each transformation give you some temporary bonus from the transformation itself. Something like movement speed for raptor, HP regen for the rhino, and maybe status removal (good and bad?) for tiger? Just ballparking, but I'd love to see something to encourage rapid transformations mid-battle. In combination with Theyleon's sanity suggestion (which I like), it would force you to choose between staying in one form to skirt the edge of sanity for power (PM build) or staying in the safe zone and being a whirling dervish of transformation (zerker build).

Also, if transformation power is at all based on mindpower, that would encourage people to use mindstar builds. If not, then Will only becomes a requirements and resource stat, which encourages more of a melee build. I don't know which you want, or if you want to try to balance it, but something to consider.

I love this class!

Good Suggestions all

@DG and Housepet, yeah in the cold light of day an ability taking away the core mechanic of a class does not sound like a good idea, i was looking for another option for builds but i'll have another think. (say no to symetrical design)

@theyleon, hmm, interesting, something to make you roll the dice (other than having invested too much in one aspect). With the blended form, i know that mandatory stuff is generally sucky, but couldn't you say the same for armour training and combat mastery on loads of melee classes. I could also spread out the levels you can get it at so at 0/3/6/9/12, maybe even swap armour to level 5 and weapons earlier, or heavier armour to later levels and lighter armour to earlier, or by tiers, so many options. basically i liked the idea that the incorporation of equipment was something they learn how to do, not naturally. (plus i think they might be a little OP in early game with the form bonuses and this is a counter)

@revanchist maaybe, it is wierd that at the moment the raptor is a little more tanky than the tiger ( maybe have tiger have -mental save, raptor -little phys res (or save), rhino - mental speed (or spell save))

@doctornull, this is the ideas page, not the add-on page i have no skill here

@parcae2 it already is instant if you get the rigid control skill

@planetus initially i linked the stat bonus to mindpower but thought this might get a bit ridiculous at high levels. On the stats note, i wanted people to have to choosw which stats to boost, not just will, i should have some other things run off mindpower though, otherwise people will just use items and then forget it.. The bonus from the transformation is the sanity itself, you do not wanna be stuck without any abilities (or runes or infusions) for 10 turns but i did wanna encourage switching as well, hmm. (i don't think this class should be a mindstar class a it's melee and you won't get hardly any damage bonus from the base power of mindstars)

@zirael Thanks!

back to the drawing board

Edit***, now with edits

Maybe base insanity chance on mindsave rather than mindpower?

Blended Form is still a required talent.

Love the mind save idea, makes the tiger slightly less controllable as well, which fits and i was thinking of making it cost more sanity but this sidesteps that neatly.
Fair point about blended form, changed.

Ok and how about this as a final aspect, I may have gone too far this time..

Wild Gift – The Pack 1.3 unlocked

The Pack – Sustain
Same cost as other aspects

You split your essence into 4/4/5/5/6 wolves in a radius 4, each wolf has x/y/z/a/b% of your health, resistances and saves, but with increased willpower and dexterity. The other wolves will be able to use "The Pack" class skills but no others. You take command of the alpha, the wolves will attack their nearest targets, you gain two abilities;
Direct attack, instant– all the pack will focus their attentions on one enemy.
Change alpha, instant – designate the targeted wolf as alpha.
If the alpha dies, you switch to the nearest other wolf and it becomes alpha, when you change to another form, your health, stamina and equilibrium are calculated as a percentage of the total of the pack.
When a member of the pack dies they all lose 15 sanity.

Weapon – fangs (do x/y/z/a/b base damage)

Ankle bite – 1 turn, 25 sta, 10 san, 8cd
The pack is skilled at weakening their prey.
You deal x/y/z/a/b % damage and cripple the target for 3/3/4/4/5 turns

Pack Hunters - passive
Though individually weak, when the pack works in concert they can bring down even the greatest of beasts. For each adjacent member of the pack beyond 1, an enemy gains the status “prey” and loses x/y/z/a/b% defence, accuracy, physical resistance and saves.

Pounce – 1 turn, 30 sta, 10 san, 10 cd
You leap on your foe, going for the throat.
Rush up to 3/3/4/4/5 spaces towards your opponent, dealing x/y/z/a/b% damage with a x/y/z/a/b% increased chance of a critical hit.

Wild Gift – The Hunt 1.3 locked

One Mind passive
The plurality of the pack makes it resistant to mental effects, gives x/y/z/a/b% resistance to confusion and fears for each living wolf. Scales with will.

Howl - 1 turn 15sta, 8 san, 15 eq 8cd
The pack takes up a haunting howl, each enemy within 3 radius of a member of the pack has a x/y/z/a/b % +x/y/z/a/b% for each living wolf chance of succumbing to the “fear of the hunted” for 3/3/4/4/5 turns, these enemies will attempt to flee each turn, moving away from any living wolves. Scales with will.

The Hunt Eternal – 1 turn, sustain 30 eq
Not even death can keep you from the hunt.
If a member of the pack dies, it has a x/y/z/a/b% chance of being immediately resurrected as a ghost for 5 turns, ghost wolves do cold damage, have 50% physical damage resistance and do not count towards howl, pack hunters, one mind and hunters of Eyal.

Hunters of Eyal – 1 turn, 40 sta, 20 san, 25 eq, 25 cd
Bring it down! You designate one enemy suffering the “prey” status and all living wolves are summoned (teleported) around it and all attack for an extra x/y/z/a/b% damage, if it is killed you absorb it's essence and all living wolves are healed for x/y/z/a/b% of the damage done, if this takes them all above full health, wolves are resurrected.



Situational form to be sure (big area effects would destroy them), plus balance issues ahoy.