ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=43678 It was a bit of a discussion that came up here, but I wanted to discuss it as a good idea.

Presently, there's significant hoarding incentive for Stat Up items, because they can be used to unlock additional prodigies or unlock additional talents (Thick Skin being the classic one on my part). I find myself constantly sticking little stat up items away for getting at unlocks sooner (or without much investment in the relevant stat at all, as Thick Skin is often the case). This would probably strengthen variety of builds across the board, especially for con, since you wouldn't be able to magic item dip your way into talents. It'd also help discourage grabbing loot just for the stat ups, but otherwise just carting it around.

It'd remove one way that we all minmax, but it's a way that's basically just a lot of inventory shuffling right now.

anyhow random thought.

Alternatively (but more complicated): make talents only work if you CURRENTLY satisfy their talent requirements.

This becomes particularly complicated (code wise) if you satisfy the requirements for level 1 of the talent, but not levels 2+ (for example).

ok so if we remove the ability to get tallents with items... whats left?

what would a +3mag on an item actually do? add spell power? why not just change it to +SP instead?
pretty sure the entire existence of +stat items is based on that ability.

Zonk wrote:Alternatively (but more complicated): make talents only work if you CURRENTLY satisfy their talent requirements.

This becomes particularly complicated (code wise) if you satisfy the requirements for level 1 of the talent, but not levels 2+ (for example).

Also note that classes that start with armour training to be able to equip their items usually don't satisfy the strength requirements, so that would have to be addressed as well.

Radon26 wrote:ok so if we remove the ability to get tallents with items... whats left?

what would a +3mag on an item actually do? add spell power? why not just change it to +SP instead?
pretty sure the entire existence of +stat items is based on that ability.

There are a decent number of talents that use raw stat scores instead of actual powers - particularly for stuff like cunning which doesn't really have an associated power.

Mag also gives spell save.

Well, this could be done together with making most talent (and equipment) requirements much lower. After all most talents that require a stat also SCALE with that stat so... One instance of not quite being that is Thick Skin I suppose.

I really hope that this doesn't happen.

I think that most of us agree that the hoarding of stat items to fulfill requirements adds nothing enjoyable to the game, but the ability to choose from a wider variety of talents and prodigies than your raw ability scores would allow for destroys the ability to find unusual and interesting combinations of mechanics for unconventional builds.

For example, I have been experimenting with having a dual-staff mindslayer build which avoids using attack skills until very, very late in the game. If I were forced to level up my magic stat in order to gain my late levels of staff mastery, the build would go from being fun and challenging to being a total waste of time and energy.

Flexible mechanics create additional replay value. Limiting player options because they don't fit in with a pre-established line of thought is generally detrimental to gameplay.

I find item hoarding to fulfill stat requirements an annoying necessity, like talent point floating used to be, and much like it I would prefer to see it removed altogether. But simply removing it would probably not be ideal.

The solution I agree with is to decrease stat requirements for skills significantly and make it use just base stat values.

So something like 26 for a level 12 skill seems reasonable, which is about 1/2 of all your stats at level 12 (including the 10 you start with).

Weapons stats would also have to receive a cut back.

Talents that confer stats could indicate that these are added to the base stat.

Currently stat requirements are largely an early game issue and as far as I'm concerned only really hurt classes that need about 3 different stats to function. Classes such as Archmage who only need MAG do not care about the stat juggling for example.

Plus, this would give adventurers a serious nerf. Gems are a pivotal part of increasing your stats to be able to get that one talent you absolutely need.

I strongly support this idea as long as the requirements themselves are readjusted. Prodigies should only require 30 in a stat instead, for example. Also you didn't mention it in the title but I assume equipment requirements would also be changed as well.

Alternative: Instead of having stat requirements to unlock things, change it to a soft requirement.
The benefit is reduced if you don't meet the soft requirement. (You get the benefit of the lowest level you qualify for, plus some scaled partial benefit if you have more stat than that, but not quite enough for the next level.)

E.g., if you have 2 points in thick skin (4% & 7.2% I think?), and have 32+ con, you get the full benefit.
If you have 23 con, you only get the benefit of 1 point.
If you have less than 23 con, you get a partial benefit of 1 point (scaling from 0 to 2.5 or something at 22 con, then you get the full bump at 23).

If you have between 24 and 31 con, you get some but not all the benefit of the 2nd point.


This would be more work than just disqualifying you from using a talent if you don't meet the requirements. But it would allow those who start with armor training, for instance, to still use it without having enough stats.

Stat requirements could start lower and end higher.
Maxing out categories seems to happen a bit too quickly. (Maybe because the game used to end at Dreadfell.)

I don't think the Prodigy requirements should be changed. A prodigy should take a decent investment. 40 stat points out of 150 isn't a huge amount.
This might also make the alchemist quest choices more interesting.

Using raw numbers for unlocks without dramatically reducing* thresholds locks out unfocused stat distributions. The most obvious cases are the arcane blade with strength, cunning, and magic trees and the shadowblade with dex, cunning, and magic trees, but anyone with combat techniques has a dex based skill and any crit leveraging class needs cunning even if they lack a cunning tree. Forcing these classes to build one stat at a time in order to have the stats for third and fourth tier talents (and possibly even second on some races) delays the synergistic functioning of their various trees and makes the early game unpleasant.

Using raw numbers also doesn't make any more sense than using adjusted. Some classes have permanent or sustained stat boosting skills and every single race except Cornac has permanent stat adjustments that are not part of the raw stat. They have to be not part of the raw stat or the racial stat differences would be quickly erased by the stat investment cap.

Using current and disabling talents is obviously a no go so long as armor training has stat requirements because it breaks bulwarks.

HousePet wrote:Stat requirements could start lower and end higher.
Maxing out categories seems to happen a bit too quickly. (Maybe because the game used to end at Dreadfell.)

Then the solution is to increase the level requirements, not to force all classes into a single stat array. If you're going to do that you may as well get rid of the option to select stats.

i agree that its rather easy to unlock the last talents of a category, and probably should be somehow slowed (shocker! i agree with something) but if you take away the ability to upgrade the skills with items, it will kind of happen automatically.
i think that those two solutions should not be applied at the same time.

another way to delay, is instead of changing stats, to change lvl required.
currently you get new talent every 4 lvls (assuming you have previous ones in the category) what if we change it to 5?
well, i guess that would "automatically" add 2, 4 and 6 to the stat req.

Atarlost wrote:Using raw numbers for unlocks without dramatically reducing* thresholds locks out unfocused stat distributions. The most obvious cases are the arcane blade with strength, cunning, and magic trees and the shadowblade with dex, cunning, and magic trees, but anyone with combat techniques has a dex based skill and any crit leveraging class needs cunning even if they lack a cunning tree. Forcing these classes to build one stat at a time in order to have the stats for third and fourth tier talents (and possibly even second on some races) delays the synergistic functioning of their various trees and makes the early game unpleasant.

I can think of any examples of third or forth slot talents that are needed for good synergistic functioning of early talents. Could you give any? Anyway, those should be changed anyway as having a slot 1 talent require a slot 3/4 talent to function properly is bad.

Atarlost wrote: Using raw numbers also doesn't make any more sense than using adjusted. Some classes have permanent or sustained stat boosting skills and every single race except Cornac has permanent stat adjustments that are not part of the raw stat. They have to be not part of the raw stat or the racial stat differences would be quickly erased by the stat investment cap.

Racial stat differences are already quickly erased by stat gain, so no difference there.
There is no reason that racial stats couldn't be included as raw.