ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The 'Lucky Day' prodigy may be the least used one. (Unless it's Wordly Knoweldge, I don't know who uses that.)

Lucky Day gives +40 Luck. According to the wiki, each point in Luck gives:

Accuracy: .40
Defense: .40
Critical hit chance: .30
Physical save: .175
Mental save: .175
Spell save: .175
In addition, each point gives 0.2% chance to not break stealth (same as Unseen Actions), and 0.2% chance to avoid your own AoE effects (similar to Spellcraft).

At +40 Luck, this works out to a total bonus of:

Accuracy: +16
Defense: +16
Critical hit chance: +12
Physical/Mental/Spell Save: +7
Stealth Bonus: +8%
Self-AoE Avoidance: +8%

For a prodigy, this seems underwhelming. The Saves in particularly are low, given the stacking penalties you will hit by level 30.

I'd like to see Lucky Day turned into a prodigy that really does feel like I got Lucky. My suggestion on this is the following:

Lucky Day
Passive, Cooldown: 10
When you would be reduced below 0 life, you have a 25% chance for the damage to be entirely negated. Only works once per turn.

I would love to have Lucky Day work like the luck perks from GURPS, way-back-when. Maybe an activated talent with 10 turns duration and 25-turn cooldown. When activated, any damage rolls made by the player get rolled twice, and the higher of the two is used. Any damage rolls made by enemies get rolled twice, and the lower of the two is used. While on cooldown, the opposite is true.

The crit isn't too bad. But everything else isn't great, since most of it, like you said, is affected by diminishing returns. Maybe have lucky day give you random power spikes? I mean, I hate the prodigy because it's called lucky day and is thus, based off "luck", my least favorite mechanic in any tactical game.

Luck is a bit like Con, in that very little scales with it. If more things scaled with Luck, the prodigy would be more interesting.

A 25% chance of negating a death hit each turn sounds more like a talent (one that could scale with luck...) than a prodigy.

I think two things need to happen. First, 40 is not much. ICCTW gives 50 of a stat and eliminates fatigue. Second, luck itself could do with some help. The saves, accuracy, and defense per point may need to stay below the rate for the real stats that boost them, but the self AoE avoidance is about an order of magnitude too small to be noticeable and the stealth bonus should possibly also be larger and probably weigh in on the perception side.

Maybe we could make luck apply after scaling?

is it posible to apply a non diminishing bonus to a diminishing number?
...
would like to see this, seriously. there are a few talents that could gain a LOT from it. like the archmage's arcane power or solipsists MP from items talent.

That would make the scaling even more confusing though.

but those 2 talents really need a change to be relevant in the late game... i mean.. 5 points for 1 or 2 effective power difference?

Do they need to change?
They are no different from any other source of increased power.
Nobody complains that the bonus from increasing Magic becomes meaningless or that a staff with more spellpower is pointless.

you pick up a staff for the +%, and for egos that can have non diminishing bonuses.
there is no investment in staff (unless you got it from the shop) and you REPLACE it it as soon as you find a better one.
adding S.P. on it is a nice topping, which is appreciated, but it always comes with a better staff.
S.P on a staff is a given.

those 2 talents however you invest in. you put points into them and they will be there with you forever. the points, that could be spent elsewhere. you have a choice, and why would you pick it? cause apparently you have to... both of them are t1 of their categories.

Radon26 wrote:you pick up a staff for the +%, and for egos that can have non diminishing bonuses.
there is no investment in staff (unless you got it from the shop) and you REPLACE it it as soon as you find a better one.
adding S.P. on it is a nice topping, which is appreciated, but it always comes with a better staff.
S.P on a staff is a given.

those 2 talents however you invest in. you put points into them and they will be there with you forever. the points, that could be spent elsewhere. you have a choice, and why would you pick it? cause apparently you have to... both of them are t1 of their categories.

To add on to your comment on staves, crit chance >>> spellpower. To me at least, it doesn't matter how much spellpower a staff has if it also gives substantially less spell crit chance.

If Arcane Power and Psychometry are useless at high level the solution is to make them scale geometrically with investment, not to overcomplicate the system.

I was thinking on it, and there are 2 more talents that also have the power issue.
arcane feed and shadow feed (hope got the names right) give spell power equal to the x% of cunning.
it seem fine as it scales up, but... i think it caps at 22%... so at 100 cunning you get 22 power which is... +2 or 3 power if you put it at the end of the equation...
and its not easy to get much higher than 100.

psychometry caps at 35(+2.5 if tk slot) power, not sure if mastery affects it.
arcane power goes up to around 20.

Yeah, arcane power and such you just want to scale with magic or another stat.

I suggested luck be applied after scaling because it's relatively hard to raise.