ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I really want to see the Necro re-worked for a number of reasons but my Lichform http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=42431 idea got no traction, fair enough. I'm back though with another idea!

Forgive my names though as they kind of suck. Also UPDATE: Had to tone these down a bit and add some limits by making an undead feature. That's later in this thread.

First off, get rid of Conveyance because the Necro would have his own means of travel.

Phantom Life:

1. Harvest of Life:

Use: Activated
Range: N/A
Cost: 40 mana
Use speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 24

This spell immediately reduces your HPs to 1 in exchange for removing up to 5 status effects, gaining absolute immunity to all new status effects and damage for 1 turn at lvl 1 and 2 turns at lvl 4. A category point will make this work for a 3rd turn.

This ability does not work if you're already below 1 HPs.

At lvl 3, this grants a temporary global speed boost.

At lvl 5, this grants a significant bonus to crit rate and crit multiplier.

The lvl 3 bonus scales to constitution and the lvl 5 bonus scales to cunning.

2. Phased Soul

Use: Activated
Range: 1-20
Cost: 25/50 mana
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 8/1

This is a perfect, intermediate teleport, albeit an expensive one. It can teleport through walls with a 0% fail-rate. It's range is 8 at lvl 1 and 20 at lvl 5.

In addition:

If you're below 0 life (either with equipment, Blurred Mortality, or Heroism infusion, etc.), then this teleport's cool-down is reduced to one although the mana cost doubles.

3. Will to Power:

Use: Sustain
Range: N/A
Cost: 0
Use speed: Instant
Cool-down: 30

A sustain akin to disruption shield… available only when you're at or below 0 life.

Creates a damage shield equal to 50% of your available store of life below 0. This includes Blurred mortality, Heroism infusion, and gear… so long as it's all active. This shield has a 3 turn duration.

In addition, it grants between 100% and 300% additional movement speed, the ability to not need to breathe, see invisible and stealth +50, and reduces all damage by up to 15%.

Should your health increase above 0 then the sustain immediately collapses although you retain the benefits for up to 3 turns, including the shield which can be refreshed by Bathe in Light, etc.

4. Chance of Life

Use: Sustain
Range: 15-51
Cost: 150 mana
Use speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 50

As long as this sustain is active, if you're dropped to or below 0 life (whether or not it kills you), there is an "x%" chance that you'll be "resurrected" at up to half-life, mana, and with your cool-downs half-restored, somewhere randomly in the level. Should you be resurrected, the skill will immediately go on cool-down. This counts as a teleport for the purposes to post-teleport evade bonuses.

The range grows with talent point investment and tops out at 51.
The chance of resurrection scales to Willpower an tops out at 51%, at around 110 Willpower.
The amount of life scales to constitution and tops out at 51% of life, mana, and cool-downs at around 100 constitution.



So… these are generics that would work with the adventurer class as well. They seem suitable for the generic talent situation and effectively replace the Conveyance category by addressing mobility, albeit in an unorthodox way.

Thoughts?

What does Harvest of Life do at TL 2? You get it at 1, speed boost at 3, extra turn at 4, and crit bonus at 5. TL 2 should give something. Perhaps a mana regen boost? I think adding a soul cost would also help, because this is an insanely powerful status remover and all around "Oh shit" button. Necromancers will have -250 or better HP by level four, and it only gets better if you add on Heroism Infusions, shields of any kind, etc. etc. Combine it with your Will To Power and suddenly, so long as you can survive one hit at almost zero hit points, you get a full status heal and a few nice bonuses, then a powerful shield.

The Phased Soul perfect teleport seems like it should cost a soul as well. Make that price really high, especially because it can go through walls and has range 20 at TL 5. Temporal Wardens might start the game with a perfect teleport, but it doesn't go past range 10 and can't go through walls, so yours is a lot more powerful and the cost should reflect that.

Will To Power seems a bit much. Disruption Shield doesn't grant any huge bonuses alongside being an awesome shield, other than an attack at the very end. Fully leveled, this ability will give you a hhuge movement speed, equivalent to a low level movement infusion and an extra 15% resist all. That's pretty damn powerful. I'd say either make it a lot weaker, or, to bring a dead horse back to life, make it cost souls. If it costs one soul a turn, then you might get a really powerful shield that grants huge buffs, but it'll be a pretty big tax on your resources in boss fights or against non-summoning rares. Against trash mobs and summoners, though, you can likely sustain it forever.

Chance of Life seems like a more powerful, but significantly more expensive Second Life. I've got no real commentary on this one, and am not even going to recommend adding a soul cost to it. (Well, maybe have it drain souls based on how much it heals you and limit healing if you don't have enough souls.)

I appreciate the thought but I wanted to make a generic category that didn't have a soul cost such that it was more viable for adventurer.

Having said that, perhaps Will to Power is too much. Maybe it shouldn't have the movement bonus and instead should focus on damage reduction.

That's kind of my strategic goal: get low on HP and have to survive one turn before getting a series of nifty bonuses… it's a high-wire act that can be crippled by an untimely status-effect or whatnot.

Everything here is way, way too strong in practically every facet. The concept is cool though and I see nothing wrong with the fundamental mechanics except Will to Power which sounds like you tried to think of every effect in the game and jam it all into one talent. Sometimes less is more.

Also everything is worse with Lichform due to lack of heroism. Not sure if that was intentional or not.

donkatsu wrote:Everything here is way, way too strong in practically every facet. The concept is cool though and I see nothing wrong with the fundamental mechanics except Will to Power which sounds like you tried to think of every effect in the game and jam it all into one talent. Sometimes less is more.

Also everything is worse with Lichform due to lack of heroism. Not sure if that was intentional or not.

I'm inclined to agree with all of this… it is too strong and it is worse with Lichform or as undead.

Mostly, it's the concept I like and I was thinking of going back to the well and adding a second generic with Lichform or I can just add a "treated as undead" requirement to most skills and a feature to Harvest of Life.

Take #2:

Phantom Life:

1. Harvest of Life:

Use: Activated
Range: N/A
Cost: 40 mana
Use speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 24

This spell immediately reduces your HPs to 1 in exchange for removing up to 5 status effects (at lv 5), gaining absolute immunity to all new status effects AND damage for 1 turn at lvl 1 and 2 turns at lvl 4. A category point will make this work for a 3rd turn at lvl 5.

This ability does not work if you're already below 1 HPs.

At lvl 3, this treats the character as undead for up to 10 turns.

2. Phased Soul

Use: Activated
Range: 9
Cost: 25/50 mana
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 8/1

This is a perfect, intermediate teleport, albeit an expensive one. If you're considered undead then the fail-rate is 0%, even through walls and outside of line of sight.

It's targetable at lv 5, i.e. able to target an enemy.

In addition:

If you're below 0 life (either with equipment, Blurred Mortality, or Heroism infusion, etc.), then this teleport's cool-down is reduced to 1 although the mana cost doubles and the range is reduced by half.

Update: I added the range reduction and range penalty when below 0 life.

3. Will to Power:

Use: Sustain
Range: N/A
Cost: 0
Use speed: Instant
Cool-down: 30

A sustain akin to disruption shield… available only when you're at or below 0 life. If you're classified as undead (gear, race, or lichform) then an additional bonus appears.

Provides a movement speed bonus up to 300%. Scales to Strength and maxes around 110.

Provides a combat speed bonus up to 200%. Scales to Dexterity and maxes around 110.

Provides a damage resistance shield that reduces all incoming damage by up to 25%. Scales to Constitution and maxes around 120.

If you're undead then this provides a bonus to darkness and cold affinity equal to 15%. Scales to Willpower and maxes around 100.

As soon as you recover above 0 life, this sustain collapses. All benefits linger for an additional 3 turns.

Update: added the willpower based undead bonus and ditched the cunning-based bonus.

4. Chance of Life

Use: Sustain
Range: 10/20-26/51
Cost: 150 mana
Use speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 50

As long as this sustain is active, if you're dropped to or below 0 life (whether or not it kills you - it'll save you from death, if it triggers), there is an "x%" chance that you'll be "resurrected" at up to 26/51% life, cool-down, and mana, and teleported randomly within "x" range.

The max life, cool-down, and mana recovery scale with magic. For living characters, the max is 26% but for undead characters (gear or race or Lichform), the max is 51%.

The chance to trigger is tied to talent point investment. This will not trigger if you're currently below 0 life.

Update: Changed Chance of Life bonus while undead as per Red's suggestion.

Commentary, take two.

Harvest of Life-what does leveling this skill do at level 2 and 3? If it scales debuff removal with level (1 at 1, 2 at 2, etc.) then I'd actually bump the scaling up a bit more. Perhaps 4-8 debuffs, since this does cost a some mana and every last shred of HP above 1. The main thing it to find a way to make 2 and 3 not be empty levels, since then you're basically wasting two class points just to get a duration buff and undead bonus.

Phased Soul-not sure a CD of 1 is balanced. I do like how once you drop below 0 HP it turns into an extra powerful "Oh shit" teleport, but that will let you move 20 spaces every turn if you have the mana for it. Maybe just make it drop to 2 turns, so you have to wait at least a little bit, as well as giving people who stack Spell CD Reuction gear gain a serious benefit for it from this skill.

Will To Power-nice nerf you put in there. While you did add combat speed, combat speed is also not the most useful for Necromancer, and since it all scales with stats you won't be dropping many points into (except Cunning), it means you have to really try to get the bonuses, and it'll cost you elsewhere. It's much more likely to pass an actual playtest with the nerf.

Chance Of Life-I liked it before, and I think you went a little far in downgrading it. Perhaps halve the effects, both chance and HP, mana, etc. restore if you happen to be alive?

Red,

I like your points.

Harvest of Life: I pretty much only want the benefit to be improved # of effects eliminated and the undead bonus. I was trying to make a skill that COULD justify 5 points, but also 3 or even 1, depending on style.

I think this skill is strong enough as you can use a Heroism infusion, cast this spell, heal, and make use of the other skills in this category.

Phased Soul: yeah, I went back and forth on this one and you're probably right… it's probably not balanced.

WtP: Thanks… I thought scaling the bonuses to stats would make for a very interesting play-style as you could tailor it to your gear. Maybe you don't find good crit multiplier gear but lots of cunning… bam, easy fix. There's no way to realistically max all of the bonuses so I don't think it's OP. However, I did kind of think that maybe it should have a willpower based bonus as well but I didn't find one.

Chance of Life: You're probably right… maybe cutting the bonus in half for the living is better.

Then make Harvest of Life cure more than debuff at level 1. Dropping HP to 1 is not worth curing a single debuff.

I actually don't think it should have Willpower scaling, since Willpower is a useful stat for Necromancers. Even Cunning crit bonuses will need to be carefully balanced, since those are stats that a Necromancer will usually be pumping. I like the rest, though, since it gives scaling to stats that usually aren't used at all. And as for getting stats that high, there was this one Adventurer build I saw that had those stats. But then again, it was an Adventurer.

Red wrote:Then make Harvest of Life cure more than debuff at level 1. Dropping HP to 1 is not worth curing a single debuff.

I actually don't think it should have Willpower scaling, since Willpower is a useful stat for Necromancers. Even Cunning crit bonuses will need to be carefully balanced, since those are stats that a Necromancer will usually be pumping. I like the rest, though, since it gives scaling to stats that usually aren't used at all. And as for getting stats that high, there was this one Adventurer build I saw that had those stats. But then again, it was an Adventurer.

Well, it's more than just a debuff at lvl 1. It also grants a 1 turn total immunity. At lvl 1, it's mostly an escape option. Assuming you're low on life then this lets you drop to 1 life and cure any status effects while granting you 1 turn of total immunity. If you have a teleport or movement infusion or just need one turn to heal, it's a pretty powerful assist to an escape.

As for Adventurer, yeah… I'm not worried about balance with the Adventurer.

Will to Power… You can max four stats in general. However, you'll only get around half to two-thirds of the max bonus for any one stat as beyond 60, it's gear dependent and it's fairly unlikely that you'll be able to buff up all four of the stats. Thus, I'm not worried about the max limit really.

Remember, it's also a sustain that only holds up for 3 turns if you heal, otherwise you're walking a tight-rope while having less than zero life. Even with a Heroism infusion, it's a dangerous situation to be in.

I changed the Chance to Life skill to reflect your suggestion as I thought it was a good one.

*Looks at -1000 HP Heroism Infusion, plus any possible equipment, plus blurred mortality* Being a fan of Yeekromancers myself (Blurred Mortality makes their horrible life so much more bearable), I'm pretty used to looking at my "real" HP as basically a shield and relying almost entirely on -HP. It's not as much of a risk as you might think, and in the places where it is that much of a risk, you should probably be running away anyway.

Though as a side note, you can't actually use Infusions if you're undead. I don't believe this applies if you're undead through equipment, but if you take Lichform or start off as a Ghoul/Skeleton, this will seriously up the risk factor. That's actually not a bad thing, I think, since it makes Lichform a more offensive build with a few passive defenses, but weakens your active defense options considerably, while staying mortal puts you at a disadvantage normally, but with much greater leeway on how you actively handle your survival.

That's the goal.

A player who is undead would only need on point in Harvest and would use it as a pure escape tool. However, a non-undead character could use a heroism infusion and then cast Harvest which would make the two sustains really potent. If Chance triggered then you'd get an instant cure but you'd also get the damage reduction from Will to Power…

I think it's well-placed as a Generic category and it offers a really powerful teleport.

I suppose a better nerf might be to reduce the range considerably, rather than the cool-down issue. I updated it such that it has a 12 range but when you're below 0 life, the range is reduced to 6 but the cool-down is only 1.

Just as a reminder: Dimensional Step, the Temporal Warden perfect teleport, has a CD of 10, a range of 3-7, and must be in line of sight. Admittedly, it also only costs 5 Paradox, which is basically nothing.

Red wrote:Just as a reminder: Dimensional Step, the Temporal Warden perfect teleport, has a CD of 10, a range of 3-7, and must be in line of sight. Admittedly, it also only costs 5 Paradox, which is basically nothing.

Aye, but the Temporal Warden has other defensive tools.

The Necro is a mage and is a fairly fragile accordingly, especially without Aegis and immobile without Conveyance. The idea here is to give it some situational buffs/escapes and a great mobility tool.

Also, I added an undead-only bonus that scales to willpower to Will to Power. It's darkness/cold affinity (which should transfer with Dark Empathy, which would be awesome!). In addition, I changed the stats required to hit the max. Some were raised and some were dropped by 10.

There is no difference between a range 11 perfect teleport and a range 99 perfect teleport. Both get you out of line of sight regardless of terrain. Range numbers only matter below 10.

Necros already have defensive tools on par with Temporal Wardens.

donkatsu wrote:There is no difference between a range 11 perfect teleport and a range 99 perfect teleport. Both get you out of line of sight regardless of terrain. Range numbers only matter below 10.

Necros already have defensive tools on par with Temporal Wardens.

Good feedback.

I reduced its range to 9... Remember, I'd be eliminating the Conveyance tree so the class would lose a defensive shield and three mobility options. I also tweaked the range on Chance of Life to make it a minimum of 10 when alive and 20 when undead and 26/51 on the max.

Also, I got rid of the cunning-based bonus on Will to Power to streamline the function a bit. It seemed bloated.