ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

New Class: Gambit

Metaclass: Psionic
Starting Life: 100
Life per level: 2

Starting Stats
Strength: 0
Dexterity: +5
Constitution: 0
Magic: 0
Willpower: +1
Cunning: +4

Description
Gambits are a special type of psionic- they have no formal training, and are very flexible fighters. They are people with the talent for psionics who, with a combination of force of will and circumstance, have learned to control their own destinies. They are usually brigands or outlaws and they learn to manipulate luck to survive and thrive where others would have failed.

Class Talents


Destiny Daggers (only usable with dagger, scales with cunning)

Wild Strike
Make a normal melee attack on an enemy. If it crits, stun it for 5 turns and deal triple damage as mind damage. If it doesn't crit, your accuracy is lowered by 10% for 3 turns (stacks to 50%).

Twist Fate
Deal mind damage to adjacent enemy. If you're suffering from a condition, you have a 20% chance per condition to transfer one of those conditions to damaged enemy. If chance goes above 100%, further conditions can be transferred. This is also increased by the Fate skill. For each condition transferred, deal extra mind damage. If used while not suffering from a condition, you have a 5% chance to be blinded.

Mind Storm
Deal 3/5/7/9/12 melee attacks (as mind damage) to all enemies in range 3. Each enemy can only be struck up to 2/3/3/4/4 times by one of the first attacks. If an attack strikes critically, do 2 more attacks to different enemies. These can trigger further attacks. If none of the attacks crit, you take damage equal to half of your base melee attack.

Fate Bond
(Speed: Instant)
Mark target adjacent enemy. For 1/2/3/4/5 turns, having negative health will not kill you as long as targeted enemy lives. If target enemy dies, take 50% of your current health as mind damage.

Dreamforged Daggers (only usable with dagger, scales with dexterity)

Sly Swipe
Deal damage to your opponent and then move Flicker back 1 space. Flicker leaves a dreamforged image of your character for a turn. Enemies may attack it instead of you- if it's attacks, it explodes dealing dreamforge damage to all enemies around it.

Evasive Spin
Deal mind and fire damage to enemies around you. If it strikes at least 2 enemies, you may Flicker within 6 spaces. Flicker leaves a dreamforged image of your character for a turn. Enemies may attack it instead of you- if it's attacks, it explodes dealing dreamforge damage to all enemies around it.

Dance of Death
Passive

While dance of death is active, when struck you have a 1/2/3/4/5% chance of deflecting enemy melee attacks (reducing damage by 50%), and causing a Dreamforged weapon to appear that is a clone of the weapon you were attacked with, which attacks the enemy for 1/2/3/4/5 turns for 5/10/15/20/25% of that weapon's normal damage.

Lucky Strikes
Strike target 5 times, each with an additional 10% miss chance. First strike deals fire damage, second mind damage, third silences, fourth blinds, fifth stuns. (Effects last 1/2/3/4/5 turns)

Gambler’s Folly (Require’s Mindstars, scales with cunning)

Roll...

Changes your mindstars into dice. Each stat on each mindstar is multiplied by 1.2 to 2, at random, depending on the attack part of Roll. Rolls of 1 cause the mindstart to lose 50% of stats instead. For the purpose of Gambler's Folly skills, when dual wielding mindstars, their stats get an extra .5 multiplier (changing the min and max to 1.7 and 2.5).

Roll also deals a bolt of damage to target foe. A random value from 1 to 20 is chosen. A roll of 1 heals the target. A roll of 20 is a guaranteed critical. Values in between change the damage and what values your mindstars get. This talent is not effected by normal crit chance.

Gambit
Roll the dice for a random effect.

1) Heal all enemies in aoe
2) Deal manaburn damage
3) Deal cold damage
4) Deal arcane damage
5) Deal blight damage
6) Deal physical damage
7) Deal nature damage
8 ) Deal mind damage
9) Deal darkness damage
10) Deal light damage
11) Deal temporal damage
12) Deal lightning damage
13) Deal fire damage
14) Deal double fire burn damage
15) Deal double ice damage
16) Deal double lightning daze damage
17) Deal double blinding light damage
18) Deal double corrupted blood damage
19) Deal triple acid damage
20) Deal quadruple void damage

Lucky Break
Sustain

While Lucky Break is active, roll a dice each turn.

1) Take 10% of your current health as damage
2) No effect
3-18) Heal for varying amounts
19) Gain a shield equal to 10% of your maximum health
Gain a shield for 25% of your maximum health"

Fate
Sustain

While Fate is active, all “random” gambit class abilities have their chances for a favorable result increased by 5/10/15/20/25%.

Luck of the Draw (requires mindstars, scales with dexterity)

Shuffle
Turns your mindstars into a deck of cards. The deck doubles the speed of your mindstars, attacks made with them, and skills in the Luck of the Draw category. For the purpose of Luck of the Draw skills, when dual wielding mindstars, Shuffle's speed is doubled (meaning it can be cast up to four times per turn).

Shuffle also damages target enemy.

Prestidigitation
Sustain

A constant stream of cards flutters around you, occasionally intercepting attacks.

Prestidigitation may be activated again to (cancel the sustain and) release the damage it intercepted in a flurry of cards in cone aoe. (Damage caps at a reasonable amount)

All In
Deal massive physical damage to an enemy. If the enemy dies, lower the cooldown of all Gambit class skills by 1. If the enemy does not die, you become vulnerable to a counterattack, causing you to take extra damage the next time you are attacked.

Thaumaturgy
Enter a thaumaturgical trance for 3/4/5/6/7 turns.

During this time, any time an enemy deals direct damage to you, swap places with them and launch a volley of cards at all enemies within 7 spaces. Using an ability during this time cancels the effect early.


Generic Talents

Evasion (scale with dexterity)

Force of Will
Passive

Mindstars now use cunning for hit and damage calculations.

You have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to reroll any rolls of '1' on Gambler's Folly talents.
Hitting the same enemy with Shuffle repeatedly causes crit chance to increase by 5/10/15/20/25% for one turn.
Your targeted Dreamforged Dagger talents can now be used from 1/2/3/4/5 spaces away and Flicker you to the target, leaving an image behind.
Your Destiny Daggers talents now have any self-inflicted negative effects reduced by 10/20/30/40/50%.


Nimbleness
Passive

When 6/5/4/3/2 turns go by without you receiving an attack or using an ability, gain a 20/40/60/80/100% bonus to global speed lasting until you take damage or use an ability.

Dexterousness
Swapping weapons is now instant.
In addition, you gain a 2/4/6/8/10% chance to deflect ranged attacks.

Brevity
For each point in Brevity, when you would move with a talent, you may move an additional space.

Legerdemain (scale with cunning)

Bedazzlement
When changing your mindstar into a different weapon than it already is, daze foes within 1/2/3/4/5 spaces.

Flash
Blinds enemies in radius 4 ball. Has a different effect depending on your mainhand weapon:

Dagger: Teleports you to the location of the attack

Dice: Also causes a random elemental damage

Deck: Cause bleeding in targets

Fortune
Sustain/Passive

Sustain:
For every point of luck, gain an additional 1% crit chance.

Grants 1/3/5/7/10 luck.

Passive:
When the sustain is turned off, grants Misfortune effect which gives nearby enemies a 7/10/13/16/19% chance to miss.

Dramatis Personae
Passive

When you perform a single target critical strike, you create a clone of yourself nearby. This clone counts as a “party member,” but does not act unless you take control. You make take control of any clone at any time and perform actions as normal, changing your old self into a clone. If you take damage and you have a clone nearby, your places are swapped and the clone is destroyed instead of you taking damage.

Spent about 60 hours in ToME so far and was really loving it, and thought psionics could use a little love (and flair) so I came up with this. I like doing this for games; let me know what you guys think about it. I didn't include psi costs or cooldowns, as those would need to be balanced and that's better left to DarkGod. Thanks for reading!

First off... Already a talent called Celerity.

Beyond that... Are you intending it to be a mindstar or staff class? Some awesome hybrid? I saw talents for both.

I like the idea. I really think it has an interesting concept. Namely, beg the RNG of Death and Misfortune for mercy. Or perhaps the Darkgod?

I wonder... Will you make a "sleight of hand" ability/sustain/passive that let's you switch equipped weapon sets on command? It would make staffs and mindstars viable! Incidentally, that's more or less the function of the Celerity talent.

That's what I get for making a class without having played all of them first, will have to change celerity XD

The idea is that you can either go staff, mindstar, or mindstar/staff depending on what playstyle you like. Being able to wield a staff in the the offhand allows you to hold onto the movement talents at the cost of a little bit of damage and still be able to perform deck/dice attacks with the mainhand. For more pure damage, you go mindstar/mindstar, and for melee you go with pure staff. Probably needs some tweaks to make pure staff a little more powerful.

It happens to everyone. Everyone that volunteers, anyway.

That seems solid enough. Mindstars give you the potential for far greater payloads... But at the cost of near-certain death if you mess up. Staves would have less maximum use, but be a far "safer" bet.

Defense in general seems low...

Updated:

Force of Will now increases melee damage when wielding a two handed staff (to make pure staff more viable).

The old Dexterousness replaces Celerity and now allows instant weapon swaps.

The old Celerity is now Brevity.

Changed Shuffle description to be clearer.

Defense comes mainly from these talents:

Prestidigitation works like bone shield, completely nullifying damage. Would happen with about a 10% chance base, but it's also increased by the Fate talent.

Fortune can be used defensively when needed to allow yourself a high chance to avoid enemy attacks.

Dramatis Personae would be by far the number one defensive talent- a high cunning build would crit often (especially using deck attacks, which would allow multiple attacks per turn) meaning you spawn multiple clones each turn. To be clear, it's like you share a location with all clones simultaneously, and the clones just pop if hit. As such, you can't take any damage while a clone is up except for dots.

Similarly, Thaumaturgy, while on a long cooldown, could be used to avoid all direct damage for up to 7 turns.

Rathlord wrote:Fortune
Sustain/Passive

Sustain:
The effect of luck on your character is multiplied by 1/2/3/4/5.

Grants 1/3/5/7/10 luck.

Passive:
When the sustain is turned off, grants Misfortune effect which gives nearby enemies a 3/6/9/12/15% chance to miss.

That at level 5 plus Lucky Day (+40 luck Prodigy) would give the effect of 250 luck. 100 accuracy, 100 defense, 43.75 to all saves, 75% crit rate, 50% chance to not break Stealth, and 50% chance to avoid your own AoE attacks.

Rathlord wrote:Being able to wield a staff in the the offhand allows you to hold onto the movement talents at the cost of a little bit of damage and still be able to perform deck/dice attacks with the mainhand.

Is there any reason I shouldn't go shortstaff in mainhand, mindstar in offhand? Mindstars have the unique property of doing 100% damage from offhand instead of 50%.

lukep wrote:

Rathlord wrote:Fortune
Sustain/Passive

Sustain:
The effect of luck on your character is multiplied by 1/2/3/4/5.

Grants 1/3/5/7/10 luck.

Passive:
When the sustain is turned off, grants Misfortune effect which gives nearby enemies a 3/6/9/12/15% chance to miss.

That at level 5 plus Lucky Day (+40 luck Prodigy) would give the effect of 250 luck. 100 accuracy, 100 defense, 43.75 to all saves, 75% crit rate, 50% chance to not break Stealth, and 50% chance to avoid your own AoE attacks.

Well shit I had forgotten about that. Any suggestions on a way to make Luck relevant without being gamebreaking?

Rathlord wrote:Being able to wield a staff in the the offhand allows you to hold onto the movement talents at the cost of a little bit of damage and still be able to perform deck/dice attacks with the mainhand.

Is there any reason I shouldn't go shortstaff in mainhand, mindstar in offhand? Mindstars have the unique property of doing 100% damage from offhand instead of 50%.[/quote]

I suppose not, there's not really any harm in that. I think I will make a change to make dual wielding mindstars better, though.

Thanks for the feedback!

Update:

Changed Shuffle to allow it to be cast up to 4 times per turn while dual wielding decks, and changed Roll to add even more stat boosts to dice when dual wielded.

You could just modify Fortune to be 10 points of luck per talent level. That's a substantial boost, but not near as obscene as it is with the 5x multiplier. Comes out to the same final luck by itself but without modifying other things.

Aye, that may be the way to go. I'll sleep on it. I kinda wanted luck to be something that gets crazy if you manage to get enough, but definitely not to the extent that it would with Lucky Day. I suppose it could just not count the luck from Lucky Day, but that feels like punishment for a class that should love the talent. I think I'm going to find another way for it to interact with luck that has synergy with Lucky Day but doesn't break it.

Rathlord wrote:Aye, that may be the way to go. I'll sleep on it. I kinda wanted luck to be something that gets crazy if you manage to get enough, but definitely not to the extent that it would with Lucky Day. I suppose it could just not count the luck from Lucky Day, but that feels like punishment for a class that should love the talent. I think I'm going to find another way for it to interact with luck that has synergy with Lucky Day but doesn't break it.

You could do this by applying tier scaling to the bonus, or making the bonus a logarithmic or sigmoidal function.

Just skimmed through this, but remember you could also give them existing Rogue (or even Marauder)talents if appropriate. In fact my first thought upon reading the class name(well, after the X-Man of the same name ) was 'psionic rogue'...

FYI...

Pretty much already existed as another addon already, cards, dice, luck, everything:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=5 ... 30#p152030