ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

There's a thread already on fixing the Mindslayer, but it's mostly focused on fixing what's already there.

I'm going to tackle the problem from a different angle, which is to look at the fundamental vision for the class, and re-work it from scratch based on that vision, without limiting myself to keeping any particular talent or mechanic.

In my opinion, the central traits of the Mindslayer are:
- Shields: absorb attacks and generate Psi, picking which shield is up should be a tactical issue.
- TK Weapon Slot: gain bonus attacks or do something special with a gemstone.
- Attack talents: these cost Psi and use Mindpower.

For attack talents:
- Generally Physical, Fire and Lightning damage
- Short range
- Area effects have relatively long cooldowns
- Some are melee attacks, some are more like spells

The TK weapon slot has some problems:
- Weapons and Mindstars grant bonus attacks
- Gems and Mindstars give 'spell' talent bonuses
- TK Mindstars benefit from Mindstar Mastery which allows you to ignore Str + Dex and just build Will + Cun
... so as it stands, Mindstars give all the bonuses instead of only one bonus, and that sucks. Thus, for me an explicit design goal is going to be to make Mindstars a valid choice but NOT the only optimal choice. That means gems and weapons must be equally viable.

The best way I see to make this happen is to split the class into two related classes: one focused on 'spells' which benefit from two Mindstars and a TK gem (or Mindstar), an the other focused on melee attacks which benefit from a TK weapon (or Mindstar).


Mind Knight
The “melee” version of the Mindslayer.
Primary Stats: Willpower, plus either Str or Dex
Secondary Stats: Constitution, plus either Str or Dex (whichever isn't primary)

Class Talents
- Absorption (changed, see below)
- Mind-Body Unity
- Mind-Weapon Tactics
- Telekinetic Mobility
- Shield Synergy (level 10, locked)
- Advanced Unity (level 10, locked)
- Advanced Telekinesis (level 10, locked)

Generic Talents
- Combat Training
- Psychic Warfare


Telekinetic
The “caster” version of the Mindslayer.
Primary Stats: Willpower + Cunning
Secondary Stat: Constitution + Dexterity

Class Talents
- Absorption (changed, see below)
- Telekinetic Mobility
- Bioelectricity - lightning stuff, melee and ranged
- Pyrokinesis - fire stuff, melee and ranged
- Crystalline Synergy (locked) - ranged & area attacks which use your TK gem damage type
- Advanced Telekinesis (level 10, locked)
- Mindblade Warrior (level 10, locked) - more melee goodness

Generic Talents
- Dreaming (minor changes; see below)
- Psychic Warfare
- Mindblade Mastery



Tree Descriptions

Psi / Absorption

• requires Willpower
• Shield Absorption: grants use of 3 shield talents, and improves their base absorption and improves psi generated.
  - Thermal Shield: Mind, Physical, Fire, Cold
  - Biogenic Shield: Mind, Physical, Nature, Blight
  - Ionic Shield: Mind, Physical, Lightning, Acid
  You may have ONE shield active at a time. These don’t “spike”, and have no cool down. They’re instant-activation and easy to switch in a fight. (Note the holes in their defense: Arcane, Darkness, Light, Temporal. Note the synergy with AM Shield.)
• Shield Conduit: improves base absorption; your melee & ranged attacks inflict bonus fire, physical, or lightning damage based on your currently active shield
• Shield Discipline: improves base absorption and increases maximum % absorbed (from 30% to ~60%).
• Shield Gestalt (passive): when you suffer an attack which would kill you or deal more than 20% of your life, this talent triggers automatically, putting itself on cool down ~15 and your current shield on a shorter cool down, in order to create a damage shield for 4 turns. The damage shield’s strength depends on your base absorption and Mindpower. More ranks in this talent act like a reduced Aegis / Shielding, improving the strength of all damage shields, and at talent level 5 increases the duration of all damage shields by +1. (Note the synergy with Arcane runes and gear.)

Telekinetic Mobility

• low-level tree; requires Willpower
• Mind Hook: active, range 7 pull, at level 2+ also pins target for 2-7 turns
• Quick as Thought: instant-use, start at +50% move speed, otherwise it’s mostly fine
• TK Leap: active, always range 7, cool down decreases with talent points from 35 to ~12
• Shattering Charge: active, always range 7, requires and triggers Shield Gestalt instead of a specific spiked shield

Mind-Body Unity

• requires Str or Dex
• Unified Aggression: add 15-35% of your max(Str,Dex) to your Mindpower, and 15-35% of your max(Will,Cun) to your Physpower
• Unified Defense: add 20-50% of max(Will,Cun) to Defense; add 15-35% of max(Str,Dex) to mental and spell saves
• Unified Edge: add 20-50% of your max(Str,Dex) to your effective Cunning for determining all crits; add 20-50% of your max(Will,Cun) to your effective Dexterity for determining crit shrug off
• Unified Mind-Body: gain +10 max Psi; activate to gain life and resource regeneration for 10 turns

Mind-Weapon Tactics

• requires Willpower
• Telekinetic Lunge: cool down 3, range 7 attack with TK weapon for 70-150% damage
• Telekinetic Smash: cool down 4, melee attack with all weapons for 120-200% damage + cripple
• Telekinetic Voracity: cool down 4, melee attack twice with all weapons for 50-110% damage; if you hit, target is Slowed
• Telekinetic Frenzy: instant use; same effect as Frenzied Psi-Fighting

Weapon Augmentation

• level 10; requires Str or Dex
• TK Adaptation - Improve % of stats used for TK weapon attacks.
• TK Consumption - When your TK weapon hits, you either gain Psi (low % psi) or you deal extra damage (high % psi)
• TK Enervation - When you crit with a melee attack, you have a 10-50% chance to Pin, Implode or Slow your target.
• TK Reach - If there are no targets adjacent to you, your TK weapon will attack a target at range 2-6, hitting closer targets in preference to farther targets.

Shield Synergy

• level 10; requires Strength
• When you hit an opponent who is suffering from Counterstrike, gain a free shield bash; improve base absorption and Counterstrike duration (0, 1, 1, 2, 2)
• Add your wielded shield’s Defense value to your max damage absorption; increase number of Counterstrike attacks (0, 1, 1, 2, 2)
• You can Block your Absorption shield’s damage types; Increase crit chance on Counterstrike
• Add 20-100% of your shield’s Block value to your Shield Gestalt damage shield

Perfected Unity

• level 10; requires Str or Dex
• Perfect Control
• Reshape Weapon - applies to any weapon you wield, goes away when you unequip it
• Reshape Armor - applies to any armor you wear, goes away when you unequip it
• Supreme Unity - passive;

Advanced Telekinesis

• level 10; requires Willpower
• Deflect Projectiles
• Pyrokinesis - Fire cone attack; causes Slowness
• Electrokinesis - Chain lightning; causes Confusion
• Macrokinesis - Physical attack against all enemies in radius 7; removes floor effects; insta-kill weak enemies below 20% life

Psychic Warfare

• generic; requires Willpower or Cunning
• Intellect Fortress - ???
• Mind Blank - 10-50% chance each turn to recover from a hostile mental effect
• Tower of Iron Will - +6-30 mental save, +10-50% stun immunity
• Mental Barrier - Telepathy range 2-6, +10-50% knock back immunity

Dreaming

• generic; requires Willpower
• Basically the same, just swap Sandman and Dream Prison

Mindblade Mastery

• generic; requires Willpower
• Mindblades - sorta like Psiblades but not as OP; creates new temporary weapons based on Mindstar stats which deal Physical damage instead of the usual Mindstar type
• Mindblade Dancer - +Defense bonus when Mindblades are active
• Mindblade Tactics -
• Mindblade Voracity - when your Mindblade hits in melee, gain Equilibrium and improve your Damage shield (if any)

TBD:
- Bioelectricity
- Pyrokinesis
- Crystalline Synergy (locked)
- Mindblade Warrior (level 10, locked)

Two quick ideas regarding shields:

What if, instead of blocking specific damage types, all shields blocked all damage types, and which one you had up instead affected resistances? Like having the thermal shield up would give +10%-30% fire/cold resistance, and maybe +2%-10% resist cap. You could even add rersist penalties for certain types, to make deciding which shield to have up more of a choice.

To further distinguish shields, what about changing what they give when they block damage? I could easily see a fire/lightning shield giving energy instead of psi. Another shield could decrease a random cooldown every turn it absorbs at least X damage.

Resistances are not as good as what Absorption shields provide, and resistances stack with Absorption shields, so changing that would be a strict nerf to Absorption ... which IMHO this version does not need, since with this version the perma-spike cheese issue is removed.

grayswandir wrote:To further distinguish shields, what about changing what they give when they block damage? I could easily see a fire/lightning shield giving energy instead of psi. Another shield could decrease a random cooldown every turn it absorbs at least X damage.

This sounds interesting, but the one thing that I'm sure of is that Psi users will want Psi, and I kind of like how the Psi ecosystem can work with Absorption.

Giving some alternate rewards IN ADDITION to Psi is totally a thing which can happen in an advanced tree. Weapon Augmentation is where I was planning to do something like this: vary the extra penalty by whichever shield is up.

Thanks!

I am still on the side that says that shields need to be removed, and replaced with some kind of floating weapon defensive system.

How about a pounding attack that throws up a directionally oriented shield and recovers psi based on damage dealt? At level 5, it goes from melee to bolt. If you wield a gem it's a beam instead of a bolt, and a bolt instead of a melee.

Parcae2 wrote:I am still on the side that says that shields need to be removed, and replaced with some kind of floating weapon defensive system.

Good shields > TK parry > bad shields.

parcel wrote:How about a pounding attack that throws up a directionally oriented shield and recovers psi based on damage dealt? At level 5, it goes from melee to bolt. If you wield a gem it's a beam instead of a bolt, and a bolt instead of a melee.

Interesting idea. Sounds like a neat effect for the Crystalline Synergy tree.

Question: should I make the Crystalline Synergy tree kinda sorta vaguely magical? Not Zigur approved? Some gems have Arcane damage so that's maybe going to impose some disapproval... or maybe if you join Zigur your Arcane damage becomes Manaburn?

Doctornull wrote: Question: should I make the Crystalline Synergy tree kinda sorta vaguely magical? Not Zigur approved? Some gems have Arcane damage so that's maybe going to impose some disapproval... or maybe if you join Zigur your Arcane damage becomes Manaburn?

My theory is that manaburn is classed as a type of arcane because Nature (the force and emergent Being) is actually magical in a sense. Archmages pluck the elemental strings of M'E, of which arcane is at the root. Nature is an emergent property, a planetary life-based semi-controlled layer on top of the raw elemental forces of local reality. When nature wants to manaburn you, it harnesses arcane directly because that is the way to attack arcane users at the root. Because it is directed at the root of direct elemental manipulation the manaburn reaction also works well against those with skills that cultivate unwanted elements that are foreign to the local fabric, like temporal, blight, light, and dark. Except for blight, these play a subdued role in the local ecology but even at natural levels their deepest aspects are foreign to the ecology and the ecology hates them.

Making arcane into manaburn is potentially good (doesn't one gem give manaburn when thrown by alchemists already?) but I wouldn't worry too much about which side of the great Conflict over Ways of Being in Maj'Eyal gets to use it. Some modest manaburn might be good on mindslayers that stay magical in order to compete with long-range casters and poly-hit silencers like anorithil.

I was thinking about an Electrokinesis tree for Mindslayer too, although I didn't get very far. I'll dump my notes here in case you want to salvage any of the ideas.

Electrokinesis (Locked):
Conductivity - Opens a Conductive Link to the target, reducing their Lightning resistance by X%. Each turn you will fire a beam of eletrokinetic energy through the link, dealing Lightning damage to the target and any within the path.
Bioelectric Field - Expands your bioelectric field, giving a X% chance to form X Conductive Links with random targets within X each turn. Your Electrokinesis now has a chance to shock the target's nervous system, Confusing them.
Electrocute - Amplifies one of your Conductive Links for X turns, causing your Electrokinesis against that target to deal X% increased damage and chain to nearby targets.
Brainstorm - Unleash a pulse of psionic power onto the targeted area, forming a Conductive Link with each target. For X turns a static explosion will be triggered on linked targets, dealing X Lightning Daze damage in a ball. A maximum of X explosions may be triggered each turn.

I was thinking that Lightning would be a near-pure caster tree, then Fire would be a closer range tree. Attacks that leech heat from the target to charge your weapon with Fire damage and the like.

I really like the idea of a "Link" power with electro-magnetic trappings, so you could push / pull one specific dude. Thanks!

Doctornull wrote:I really like the idea of a "Link" power with electro-magnetic trappings, so you could push / pull one specific dude. Thanks!

I like the push-pull option, too. How about creating a tether talent so that each time the length increases beyond the maximum (set by their distance from you when you used the talent), they must save against your mindpower or be pulled back in your direction, possibly taking extra damage in the process? If the save succeeds then you are the one that is pulled. When the tether is active the tethering talent converts into an instant allowing you to gradually pull the tether tighter, while the connective line can also be used for a strong attack or for rapid mobility, probably being destroyed in the process. Meanwhile if something teleports far beyond tethering range in a single action, then the tether snaps free, dealing nasty damage to the victim and recovering psi for you, while providing limited detection because you can track based on the direction in which your tether was forced when it broke. That is, rather than knowing the exact location, you get a semi-random arc and know that the creature teleported somewhere within that arc. You could create a map effect in a wide-radius cone for a limited time, basically just as a mnemonic device to support the tracking.