ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Usually when i play an archmage, i usually specialise into an element instead of taking lots of them.

I was wondering if it could be interesting then to offer the player the choice of playing a regular Archmage or taking a specialisation into it.

Specialisation into an element would then lead the mastery level of the related tree to be increased to 1.6 by example instead of 1.3
And to follow up on this, the non-specialised trees will then move from 1.3 to 1.0

Additionally, when taking a specialisation, your character would not be named the generic Archmage class, but the specialised one :
Cryomancer for Water/Cold specialists
Pyromancer for Fire/Wildfire specialsits
Tempest for Air/Storm specialists
??? for Earth/Stone specialists
??? for Arcane/Aether specialists

Of course those Archmage specialisations would require their appropriate unlock before the player could take them (Ice/Wildfire/Storm/Stone requiring being unlocked to appear)

Geomancer (Earth) - Technically Vor, the Old Orc in Vor's Pride is a Grand Geomancer but traditionally Geomancy revolves around the earth; ie the tossing of soil, rocks, and sand and understanding markings on the ground. Not sure what Vor would be called though for a class though

Aeromancer (Air) by the way is associated with Air and Lightning if were to go with the Renaissance Magic forbidden arts names.

Arcane or something akin to it really isn't in the seven forbidden magics of divination and in game Arcane is pretty powerful so maybe it would be better forgoing it.

Anyhow, the idea of a specialization doesn't seem like a bad idea but maybe there should be some sort of trade off - kind of like how they have it in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup that Air conflicts with Earth and Fire conflicts with Ice (and in this game, Anti-magic conflicts with Magic).

We already have specialisation in form of locked trees.

I personally like that I can combine 2 different specializations, like I could go Temporal + Wildfire or I could go Wildfire + Storm, and they're both Wildfire but they'll play differently.

So IMHO your idea has merit as additional options for specialist mages rather than as a replacement for the current Archmage.

Cheers!

I'm pretty sure the Archmage actually used to be multiple classes that got merged into one, though that would have been before my time.

You can specialise already. The current system just allows for some flexibility if you want it.

And since he's too humble to plug himself, HousePet here has already partially split the archmage into two classes in the arcanum addon (creating arcanist for arcane/aether and some new stuff with some old stuff; and the elementalist with no arcane or aether, but gaining all the elemental trees, plus some new stuff.)

Might be worth a look, though it's not the full blown specialization in individual elements mentioned here.

Subclasses for Archmage would be nice. e.g. pyromancer for earth+fire, loses arcane/air/water trees but gains 1-2 extra trees that combine the elements, such as lava etc.

With 5 elements, that would mean making 10 subclasses.
The current system works.

Also, Elemental Fusion.

Razakai wrote:Subclasses for Archmage would be nice. e.g. pyromancer for earth+fire, loses arcane/air/water trees but gains 1-2 extra trees that combine the elements, such as lava etc.

I think the issue with Archmages is that there are really only two viable elements to focus in: Fire and Arcane/aether.

For one, they have the best equipment (although version 1.1.5 does have some decent lighting equipment). They're also much more powerful than the other elements, which act as support.

If you buff the other elements then you're taking the most powerful character and making it more powerful… no go. However, your idea is not without merit.

My suggestion is to make two specialized categories that can only be unlocked if you've added "x" skill points into two of the subpar elements. That would be: lighting-earth. I'd say they're incompatible so no go. Then there's lightning-water… I like that. Then there's water-earth… I also like that.

I like the idea of water-earth tree. This would be a good place for the Hailstorm spell I suggested.

Water-lightning could be hyper-offensive… perhaps predicated on casting area effect water/ice spells and then hitting it with things like chain-lightning for enhanced damage… just a thought but I love the synergy idea.

What I would suggest is that IF you make those categories necessitate a point investment then, once you choose that ability, it changes your class. So you start as an Archmage but then, you turn into something else.

The water-earth tree and water-lightning tree would have their own name.

Also, I'd suggest that once you make that choice, you lose access to one of the other elements. For water-earth, I'd suggest losing access to arcane/aether and for lightning-water, I'd suggest losing access to fire/wildfire.

It'd be a unique way to get a class and it'd be fun because it would add a choice later in the game that might be made easier if, say, you find amazing gear for that build. You could change your plan.

Thoughts?

You don't need to do any restrictions like requiring certain amounts of talent points spent, or locking out other categories.
You only get around 60 class points and the synergies inside each category mean that there is no point spreading your abilities everywhere.
And why shouldn't it be possible to play an arcane/mud archmage?

I considered making 6 new dual element categories for my Elementist class. But that would mean that there would be 5 categories for each element pair. 6 if you count the Elementalism category. 12 points per category is starting to get quite thin.
That is why I went with one crazy talent per element pair.
The only way I can see dual element categories working, is if they were good enough to forgo the high level single element categories. Then you could focus in the two low level single elements you wanted then go with the dual element high level category. It should be doable. But making them unique, interesting and have useful synergies would be hard.

I'm thinking about making an Elemental Fusion equivalent for the base Archmage class, which has a fire/arcane, water/arcane, air/arcane and earth/arcane talent. Would that be of interest to anyone?

HousePet wrote:You don't need to do any restrictions like requiring certain amounts of talent points spent, or locking out other categories.
You only get around 60 class points and the synergies inside each category mean that there is no point spreading your abilities everywhere.
And why shouldn't it be possible to play an arcane/mud archmage?

I considered making 6 new dual element categories for my Elementist class. But that would mean that there would be 5 categories for each element pair. 6 if you count the Elementalism category. 12 points per category is starting to get quite thin.
That is why I went with one crazy talent per element pair.
The only way I can see dual element categories working, is if they were good enough to forgo the high level single element categories. Then you could focus in the two low level single elements you wanted then go with the dual element high level category. It should be doable. But making them unique, interesting and have useful synergies would be hard.

I'm thinking about making an Elemental Fusion equivalent for the base Archmage class, which has a fire/arcane, water/arcane, air/arcane and earth/arcane talent. Would that be of interest to anyone?

That would be of great interest to me.

-_-
You didn't need to quote the entire thing.