ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Since the idea that Possessors might arrive soon has been mooted in General Discussion, and since I loved the class in Tome 2, here are some ideas:

Resource: Control. Does not regenerate, and can only be regained when you possess a new body. Being hit impacts your hitpoints, but also costs you some Control. Using your special abilities costs Control. Using the possessed body's abilities also costs Control as well as whatever resource would normally be used. Running out of Control kills you.

Stat points: You gain half as many stat points per level, since you don't have to (and can't) invest in physical stats.

Class trees:

Possessor/Possessor

Seize Body: Pins melee-range target in place. After X turns, if you are still within melee range of the target, it is below X hitpoints, and they fail a will save, you take control of the target. Your physical stats (HP, con, str, dex) are set to a percentage of those of the target. You move onto the target's square, and your character sprite changes to that of the target.

Remembered Strengths: Your physical stats are set to a value of x if they would otherwise be below that point when you take over a body.

Control Abilities: You obtain the use of X of the target's talents (randomly selected), at an efficiency of Y, when you take over a body. The level of the talent is capped at Z. Some talents (e.g. Command Staff) do not carry over, because they are too weak or powerful.

Possessor/Blend

Blend In: For a few turns after seizing a body, you gain the Blend ability, causing enemies to ignore you. Attacking breaks the ability. At level 5, applies when you enter a new level as well.

Betray: Can only be used when Blended. Strike for extra crit multiplier.

Mislead: Can only be used when Blended. Cause enemies to target another enemy. Does not break Blend. AoE, with X% chance of success for each target. Effect ends when you cease to be Blended.

Treacherous Possession: Can only be used when Blended. All the advantages of Brutal Possession, none of the disadvantages. Resulting entity is not Blended.

Possessor/Brutal Possession

Brutal Possession: Seize a melee-range opponent's body by force. Damages opponent. Still checks mental save and enemy HP level, but takes only one turn. All Control costs for the resulting entity are greatly increased.

Suicide Bomber: Expend massive quantities of control, damaging yourself and opponents for a large amount. Survivors are dazed and have mental save lowered considerably.

Override Pain: Increase physical stats, but attacks drain your HP.

Quick Switch: Using Brutal Possession to transfer to a new body reduces the cooldown on all Brutal Possession talents.

Possessor/Advanced Brutal Possession (locked)

Disarmed: Rip off your own arm and beat the target with it for massive damage, disarming yourself until you gain a new body.

Receed: Receed into the depths of your hapless victim's mind for a turn. They will be controlled by the AI and will attempt to close to melee range with (but will not attack) your foes. Your opponents have X chance of being persuaded that you are genuinely gone, giving you the Blended status (whereupon you regain control of your character).

This talent has no cooldown and no control cost. Your chance of persuading your opponents starts low, but doubles every time you use the talent in succession.

Brutal Subjugation: Sustain. When you run out of Control, instead of dying, you fight on for a short time and the ability goes on cooldown.

Possessor/Gentle Possession

Gentle Possession: Instead of brutally overriding your target's wishes, lure them with hopes of ultimate power. Like Seize Body, but the resulting entity does not cost Control to use abilities, and the takeover does not check will save. However, it has a chance of being taken over by the AI in battle. Also, this ability cannot be used against uniques. If it is used against normal-rank, the resulting entity does not use Control at all (but can still die in the normal way).

Dull Pain: Cure physical ailments and heal "your" body.

Closer to Ultimate Power: Regenerate some Control when you kill an opponent.

Enhanced Blend: If you also have Level 5 Blend, your Blend upon entering a level lasts much longer. At Level 3, the AI will never take control of your body when you are Blended. At Level 6, you obtain an indefinite-duration Blend any time that no enemy has LoS of, or is targeting, you.

Possessor/Advanced Gentle Possession (locked)

Persuade: Your "companion" will not attempt to take control of its body (i.e. the AI is guaranteed not to take control) for X turns.

Remembered Abilities: A small number of your previous target's abilities carry over when you Gently Possess a new body. The number is doubled if your new body is normal-rank.

Enhance Talent: Select one of your Gently Possessed body's abilities and cooperate with your body to improve it by X. Can only affect one talent at a time.

Part Ways: Peacefully leave your Gently Possessed body when you use a different Possession ability. Your former body fights alongside you, and if your new body dies or you lose control of it, you return to the former body instead of dying. However, maintaining the psychic link cuts your max Control in half until your old body dies or you return to it.

Sounds cool...but I'd hate to be "forced" to jump from host to host just because my "Control" runs low by using talents / being hit.

How about a talent like "Receed" or "Recession" or something, where for X number of turns you "lose control" of your character / host, but during that time you regenerate Control.

The gimick on this is that you dont actually leave the host, you just feign it. You go into recession, hiding within their mind / soul. When the time is right, you will show yourself again, regaining control of your host.


We need an exorcist!

First post edited.

The idea is that you can either go for Brutal Possession, where you jump from host to host with reckless disregard for their safety, or Gentle Possession, where you try to sustain your host for as long as possible. All Brutal Possession talents only apply when your body was Brutally Possessed in the first place, and all Gentle Possession talents do the same for Gentle Possession.

Edit: And I used your Receed idea in another guise

Why would it not work on Unique enemies? A failed Will-save against a Mind-parasite is a failed Will-save...

Although perhaps have the Player immune to it... Maybe. Otherwise, there's a good reason to build Willpower.

The idea of Brutal vs Gentle possession is a good one, I think.

Perhaps have a way to sacrifice Health for Control, unless you don't think it'll be an issue.

Are Possessed bodies functionally similar to a Player, or more like a Husk, with no healing?

I think they should be able to heal. Non-recharging Control is enough of an incentive to switch bodies frequently (unless you're focused on Gentle Possession). After all, Control functions as a second "health" bar.

Health for Control? Only if there's non-recharging Health.

I think that the basic Possession talent should work on bosses (you wouldn't be able to keep them for very long anyway) but Brutal Possession probably shouldn't, and Gentle definitely shouldn't.

I've got a design drawn up at home that uses Hate and slowly poisons whatever body you have possessed.
The decay rate is based on xp gained, so that resting or travelling doesn't cause hassles.
Also has some talents that warp the possessed body into something stronger, but increase decay rate.
I'll post full details when I get home.

You refuse to die. You want life and hate the living for having it.
Can possess other creatures, but their hatred poisons their host bodies and they slowly wither.

Possession
Take Possession: active. Target adjacent creature takes x mind damage. If this kills the target, you take possession of their body. This gives you 50% of their str/dex/con/resists. You are healed by x as well. Every 1% xp you gain while possessing a creature causes the host to gain 0.2% decay. This decay reduces your max life by the same %. If your host dies, you are restored to 10% of your max life (which is also reset).
Physical Possession: passive. When possessing a creature, you gain an additional 0-50% of their str/dex/con, gain all of their techniques and wild gifts at +5-0 cooldown. Grants increased life/stamina/equilibrium regeneration.
Mental Possession: passive. When possessing a creature, you gain 0-100% of their wil/cun and gain all of their cunning/psi/hate talents at +5-0 cooldown. Grants increased psi/hate regeneration.
Magical Possession: passive. When possessing a creature, you gain 0-100% of their mag and gain all of their spell/celestial/corruption/chronomancy talents. Grants increased mana/vim/positive/negative/paradox regeneration.

Warped Body
Warped Strength: sustain. Increases strength, constitution and size, at the cost of dexterity, magic and increased decay gain.
Warped Speed: sustain. Increases dexterity, global speed and defence at the cost of constitution, cunning and increased decay gain.
Warped Thoughts: sustain. Increases willpower, cunning and magic at the cost of strength, accuracy and increased decay rate.
Chimeric Possession: passive. Allows you to possess two creatures at once. However, this causes 50%-0% decay to the existing host and doubles decay gain rate.
Consume Host: active. Destroys your host body to heal you for 50-100% of your current max life, and causes an explosion around you doing the same amount of damage as blight.
Grow Spikes: sustain. Does physical+bleed damage to melee attacks and attackers.
Carapace: sustain. Increases armour, hardiness and physical save.
Venom?
Regeneration?

Dark Discorporation
Shadowy Form: passive. While disincarnate you gain increased movement speed. Weapon damage is halved and converted into darkness damage.
Poltergeist: sustain. Deflects incoming projectiles and randomy knocks enemies away from you while disincarnate.
Leeching Miasma: active. Tidal Wave shaped darkness cloud that does darkness damage and heals you for the damage done. Also weakens enemies.
Formless: passive. While disincarnate, you gain flat damage reduction and resist all.

I like those ideas, especially the discorporation talents. That said:

1. Most importantly, I think that the talents and stats you gain from enemies need to be limited in some way. Even a very high cap, such as would rarely be reached on Normal, would be helpful. We don't need PCs on Madness running around with 200 magic and level 20 Freeze.

2. I could see the "% of experience" mechanic creating problems either in the early game, when every kill nets you lots of experience, or in the late game, when most gain you very little. That said, the numbers you posted look fine.

3. I don't think that most of these ideas are mutually exclusive with the ones I posted above. Without being wedded to any particular idea or mechanic, I think that the basic ideas of Blending, Brutal and Gentle Possession (perhaps Subtle Possession would be a better name) are good ones.

4. One thing that your talents and mine have in common is that they're all class talents. Is it even possible for this class to get generic trees? By definition, such trees are likely to present the problem of whether you make them stack with or replace talents from your enemies, while any unique trees would be unable to use the class's central mechanic. Possessors might need to be a class/race that only gets class points. I guess it ultimately depends on how flexible DG is willing to be with the definition of "generic."

Oh, and 5. I think Formless should be an invisibility or permastealth talent rather than a damage-tanking one.

HYPE INTENSIFIES

Generics would depend on what resource it ends up using.

Experience based decay could be a little unbalanced, yes. But it would be less unbalanced than making it turn based.
Could add extra decay based on your level, or just more talents that accelerate decay.

I had the same basic idea as your Brutal/Gentle aspects, but I hadn't got around to filling in the Gentler side of things. (was having fun with the nasty stuff )
The Blend aspect I hadn't considered at all. Its interesting.

I like the Blend / Recede thing. Sure, sometimes if someone gets possessed it would be a huge, sudden, giant outburst of "insanity"

But sometimes...sometimes its more subtle. Like a clawing at the back of your mind. There's something there...you think? Who said that? Is this my sub-conscious?..Why would I do that? He's my friend. Why would I even think about hurting him? What is wrong with me?! I just need to rest.

Oh man I must be getting sick, I just blacked out. Wait...wait...did I do that? Why did...why did I just kill my best friend?!..Hello? Can anyone hear me? Why am I walking...I dont want to be walking. I'm not telling my body to walk! What is happening???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I like the idea of dying when you run out of Control, instead of when you run out of hp.
What if, when a body dies, you lose some control and become a nearly invulnerable wisp that loses control every turn, and has no hp stat.
This would fit really well with being some kind of presence that possesses people, while still leaving a way to die (namely, running out of control before finding another host).

I'd suggest that when you possess, you leave your body behind as you control the host, able to be damaged of course.

Additionally, over time your consciousness melds with that of the possessed creature, and there is a risk of losing your own identity, ie game over if you run into that limit.

Perhaps it could be represented by a small health drain on your own body as it slumbers, making extended possessions riskier as you go on...

Matanui3 wrote:I like the idea of dying when you run out of Control, instead of when you run out of hp.
What if, when a body dies, you lose some control and become a nearly invulnerable wisp that loses control every turn, and has no hp stat.
This would fit really well with being some kind of presence that possesses people, while still leaving a way to die (namely, running out of control before finding another host).

How about, when your body is reduced to zero HP, you:

1. Have HP set to 10%, and cannot heal unless you find a new body. Regain some Control as you are no longer trying to control someone else and are only trying to keep your own consciousness together.
2. Cannot lose HP
3. Control costs from being hit are increased. I don't know if you should necessarily lose Control every turn as well.
4. Can only deal Mind damage (and all weapons gain 50% mind damage conversion)

If you run out of Control, whether you're in a body or out of one, you die. Period.

Obviously this presupposes that we're using the Control mechanic in the first place. Housepet, what do you think? Also, does this sound like something you would be willing to code? I would be happy to help but my previous experiments with LUA have not been encouraging.

Darkgod, if we get a working Possessor going in this thread, would you consider incorporating it into the game?

One other thing - I like the idea of mental powers/physical powers/spells all being separate talents, but I think that we should go further and provide incentives for choosing between them. Ideally, you should be able to specialize as caster, melee, or mind-centered Possessor, with each one being stronger but less flexible than a hybrid. For example, technique possession, spell possession and mental power possession could all be at the end of separate locked trees.

To be honest, I'm not keen on adding new resources to the game.

Loosing Control over time will not be a fun mechanic if you will die from it. There is frequently not someone else around to possess.