ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Why I'm struggling with Beholders

Beholders, in the ToME addon as well as in D&D, embody a contradictory physiology. Their multiple eyestalks draw from arcane powers, and have the ability to cast usually quite direct, single-target spells, whereas their large, central eye continuously channels antimagic or psionic abilities.

Indeed, in most D&D renditions, beholders are unable to cast spells within the range of their central eye's antimagic gaze, and must close their eye temporarily to be able to attack enemies within its view radius. Some beholder archmages even blind their central eye intentionally, so as to unfetter the arcane prowess of their eyestalks.

What this means for me is that, while eyestalk abilities are relatively easy to create and to code as they target individual enemies with fairly overt damage-dealing effects, central eye psionic powers are far harder to craft, as a contiually-channelled status-damaging effect can become quickly either too powerful or lacking in any noticeable outcome.

What are Beholder Gazes?

The blueprint I have drawn up is this:

• Gazes are area attacks which project a standard cone-shaped area of effect in front of the beholder. The range for all gazes is 5 but can be enhanced by the telekinetical wielding of gems.
• Gazes feature lovely, pretty gradient effects which I shall release into the wild for all to use once I've got them working with shaders.
• The direction of the gaze will change with the beholder's movement, and even in cases such as the usage of bump attacks. In the beholder addon, all actors are given a "facing" direction so that the direction they are facing can be determined.
• Gazes are sustained talents that, unusually, have a duration; the duration appears on the sustained talent icon in the same way that it does for timed effects. Gazes tend to have a medium cooldown term and a fairly long sustain duration, increased by additional talent levels.
• While they create a short-term passive area of effect, gazes are activated abilities and thus they can have interesting effects on activation and deactivation. An example would be a Devouring Gaze which drains enemies while active and then gives the beholder a berserker power boost based on how many enemies have been drained before it is deactivated.
• Beholders have a default gaze, which is called "Antimagic Gaze". Antimagic Gaze provides an arcane spell failure chance and an arcane spell cooldown increase on all entities within the gaze. The Beholder itself is spared from this condition, to make playing the arcane caster members of this race less tedious for players, but there are talents in certain Mage Eye trees that increase Beholders' spellcasting while the central eye is closed (after using certain activated psionic abilities, the central eye goes on cooldown). Other gaze talents overlap with and share an area of effect with Antimagic Gaze, but do not cancel its effect (the central eye being closed, however, does).
• There is code in place so that an enemy can be given a timed effect when subjected to the gaze - i.e, paralysis - but immediately remove it if it should escape the beholder's gaze (usually if the beholder moves away). If the beholder redirects the gaze so as to cover the enemy again, the timed effect will be restored to its original activity.

What I have so far

Currently I am working on having two main gaze talent categories, with individual, more highly-specialized gazes available in their own distinct categories. I've posted an example of how the basic gazes may end up, along with an example of a category featuring a more specialized gaze for good measure:

Psionic/Gazes (Offensive)
Devouring Gaze - an ability that deals additional mind damage to enemies attacked by the beholder within its gaze (procs on each attack). drains all enemy resources, both arcane and non-arcane (while dealing damage), and replenishes non-Psi resources of the Beholder. Enemies that are depleted of bonuses suffer a penalty to the attack power while inside the gaze. Once deactivated, the beholder gains a short-term power bonus based on the amount of resources drained.
Improved Focus - increases power of criticals dealt to enemies within the gaze, provides additional crit chance bonus to active Offensive gazes
Overcharge: Gaze - provides an activated, offensive, single-target ability that changes depending on gaze active. For example, Devouring Gaze provides a pull at range, Paralyzing Gaze lets you eat the mind of enemies you paralyze, etc.
Refracting Gaze - summons a single allied thought-form clone (which must stay within the gaze) for each enemy and each real ally in the gaze. Entities leaving the gaze will have their clones destroyed.

Psionic/Gazes (Defensive)
Auguring Gaze - disarms attackers, teleports away from enemies using Rush, and confuses shooters / spellcasters. Provides a counter attack against every enemy thus hindered once deactivated.
Improved Foresight - enemies in the gaze have a lesser chance to critically hit you, provides addition save bonus against enemies in active Defensive gazes
Circumspection - gain 1-turn defensive effect after activating any gaze, depending on the gaze.
Paralyzing Gaze - progressively slows, then paralyzes enemies within the gaze. Damage dealt to them will remove the effect.

Psionic/Spellmirror Gaze
Spellmirror Gaze - activated gaze, deals retributive damage to spellcasters within the gaze. also, all following effects can only be used while Spellmirror Gaze is active:
Transfer Magic - transfer a beneficial effect from an enemy within the gaze to an ally, or transfer a detrimental effect from yourself to an enemy.
Reimage Magery - grants a spell slot which lets you cast variations of the spells cast by enemies within your gaze.
Mirror Universe - create a reflection of the universe as it exists within your gaze. Allows you to become one enemy within the gaze, while the enemy takes your place and becomes a beholder, and a proportion (capped) of the enemy's allies become your own allies.

Mage Eyes start with Gazes (Offensive) unlocked at category level 0.7 and have the chance to unlock Gazes (Defensive) at 0.7 and Spellmirror Gaze at 1.2 later.
Gauth start with both Gazes (Offensive) and Gazes (Defensive) unlocked at 1.3 and have the chance to unlock Spellmirror Gaze at 1.0 and Mindeater Gaze (unlisted) at 1.3 later.
Unseeing Eyes and Wrecking Eyes both get gazes, while the Death Tyrant and Eye Tyrant access different power sources and have a different set of gazes, for examples: Nullifying Gaze, that removes enemies in your gaze from existence, or Thanatic Gaze, that allows you to control undead within the region of your gaze.

What I need from you

Sadly, this is roughly as far as I have got. I am stuck for effects that are powerful, distinct, and have an undeniably "psionic" flavour, yet without being game-breakingly imbalanced. And this is where you come in, loyal fans! In addition to the above talent trees, I am going to create an additional Gazes (Experimental) talent category, for testing only, and in this category I'm going to create four additional gazes, which, if I like them and if I like the synergies they bring to the Beholder classes, I'll bring them into the game under one of the other talent trees.

Once I have a good array of gazes on the go, I'll be able to release the Gauth psionic warrior class!

So, although there are no promises being made here, I'm giving the community a chance to bring something cool to a fairly popular addon.

And as a developer's note, I like to innovate and prefer crafting bold, original interactions as opposed to rehashing older ones. So go wild!

Now post your gazes!

I'm better at ideas then coding, so I'll give this a try! :3

Mindeater Gaze

Eye of Madness: Enemies in the gaze have a chance of going Insane(Currently thinking confusion+some sustains going on cooldown. Not sure if that's fitting, though. Does ToME have an existing effect for this sort of thing?).
Shatter Mind: The minds of those killed shatter like glass. Enemies killed with the Insane effect explode in a small AoE of mind damage.
Horrific Realization: Enemies driven Insane by Eye Of Madness with this active gain the Creeping Madness effect: In X turns, they're effected by the Insanity effect once more.
Devour Mind: Devour the mind of a psionic foe. Kills if below a certain percentage, and if it kills, the psionic foe is turned into a mindless thrall for X turns, while you gain boosted power for the duration.(Might be too specific for good use. Perhaps have it work on all targets, but require a psionic for the buff part?)

Edit

A possible idea for an Insanity-like effect. Perhaps have it work on a stacking system? Here's a crude example:

Eye of Madness would inflict 10 stacks of Insanity a turn. Once the enemy hits the Insanity threshold(lets say 50 Insanity), they get hit with the effect. Horrific Realization would cause them to gain extra Insanity while the Creeping Madness effect is up(possibly even when not within the Beholder's gaze). I feel like it'd be an interesting way of doing it.

It came out more like a cursed than a psionic but anyway...

Psionic/Fury Gaze:
Fury Gaze: activated gaze that randomly ignites enemies.
Boiling Blood: target burning creature becomes enraged. Increasing their damage, but lowering their saves and resistances.
Focussed Fury: target burning creature explodes.
Burnout: All burning creatures in gaze area take all remaining burning damage instantly.

Overcharge: Gaze would ignite all creatures in the gaze area.

Nice to have two great responses so soon!

Unless we have a lot more later on, these'll definitely be among the ones going into my experimental gaze tree.

NemesisZeru, I was actually thinking of having a gaze tree with an enthrall-mindslave type talent being the capstone. Awesome that we're thinking along the same lines.

As per AuraOfTheDawn's suggestion, I'd definitely look at reusing the mechanics of the Doomed's Fears for such a gaze.

HousePet, Affliction really does feel like the dark side of Psionics, doesn't it? I like the idea of a gaze providing significant elemental damage with nonetheless psionic themes. I might consider adding a (conditional / one-off) ability to jump back away from enraged enemies after they have reached you, making the gaze-user into a true psionic tormentor.

Any comments on these ideas?

That gradient cone is gorgeous!

Enthralling Gaze
Enthralling Gaze: Applies 1-3 enthralled stacks every turn if they fail a mind save(s). Each turn spent outside the gaze will remove one stack. Damage from you will remove a stack if they make a save. Each stack gives a 5% chance to cause them to target a random ally instead of you if they try to use a talent.
Utter Devotion: Single Target Sustain, low cooldown. Has a success chance equal to the targets enthralled redirect chance, no save. While under the effect, target will attempt to move next to you if not already, attacking anything in its way. While adjacent, it will intercept 30%-70% of all damage you take for you (including from itself).
Burning Love: The gaze passively deals fire/mind damage. This never removes enthralled stacks.
Final Sacrifice: When the gaze ends, anything that has a higher enthralled redirect chance than their remaining life percentage must pass a mind save or die, giving you X life per rank.

Awesome stuff!

Enthralling Gaze sounds like something I'd really enjoy both coding and playing with - I'd love to see how this kind of ominously building area-of-effect ability would affect the pace of the game. Plus it's disturbing enough thematically that I could use it for one of the non-Psionic-using classes (Tyrants / Aberrations). And Burning Love is a rather enjoyable name for an ability.

Just a heads up, guys, you have a choice to make either really easy single-talent, single-activation Gazes, or more complicated four-to-a-category type specialized Gazes - either is fantastic!

Plus the ideas you can come up with can be as far out as possible, e.g:

I was working on an "Inward Gaze" earlier today which closes the central eye but acts somewhat like Meditation, with a touch of Solipsism I'd say. I'd had a talent tree called "Introspection" knocking about for a while but nothing truly spectacular to put in it, and anyway the rest of the tree improves your prowess with the central eye closed, so it fits. I was wondering what kind of gaze might suit a Prodigy, too, but more on that later.

Just a couple of examples there of how things could get really crazy (which is how I like them). Normal and good and balanced is also very much welcome, though. Anyway, thanks, and keep 'em coming!

Enlightening Gaze: Illuminates affected tiles and increases your ability to see stealthed/invis creatures.
Dazzling Sight: activate to dazzle all enemies in gaze area. Dazzling reduces their accuracy. At high levels it blinds instead.
Brilliant Rays: activate to fire a few rays of light that do light damage and daze enemies.
Piercing Light: Enlightening Gaze also helps detect traps, lets you see through walls.

Superb! Thanks again, HousePet.

I'm off to make some gazes. I'll report back once I have the categories in working order.

I've just made the first of our collaboratively-designed gazes!




HousePet, thanks for your awesome (and easy-to-code) idea! Other folks, your slightly harder-to-code gaze ideas will follow shortly in being realized!

While HousePet presented a "Fury Gaze" as a 4-talent dedicated category, I've simplified it into a single talent. It's turned out fantastically - fantastic in flavour and fantastic to use. I could easily see this making it into my final designs, as with most of the other suggestions.

I'm not sure whether to call it Enflaming ~ or Inflaming ~ or Inflammatory ~ or whatever, but Enflaming Gaze will do nicely for now.

You can see how gazes end up being quite complicated and having a lot of parameters, unfortunately, so I shall try to simplify that in future. They're generally good fun though and definitely reward getting to know their complexities.

Where do I get this? I want that gradient code so bad!