ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This arose more from a philosophical line of thought than ideas of mechanics or playstyles. The mind is a fairly complex thing. There are thoughts, there are sensations, there are desires and more. Each person has their own, and their own independance based on these. Each person is also entirely unified within themselves. How might the lines be blurred? What kind of story could be written with that?
...Which is mostly irrelevant in the subject of creating a ToME class, but it is something I'd like to play, and something that I think would fit well enough, given the existence of Cursed and Temporal Wardens.

Class: (Afflicted or Chronomancer or...?) Shattered
Whether by some freak magical accident or an intentional curse, this character has been split in two - mind, body and soul - but not entirely. Not truly. Most would have died - hemorrhaged from their metaphysical wound until nothing was left. Whether bound and sustained by hate, willpower or arcane expertise, this character has lived on, in two parts. Parts neither fully unified, nor truly independent. Each time the player takes an action, the other part acts independently, but the player can switch between parts easily.
The two parts have access to the same skill trees, but invest points separately, wear different equipment and have different infusions.

Core Skill Category: ??? / Shattered

Skill 1: Broken Body (Passive)
Each part has a 0.65 HP multiplier and a 0.6 damage multiplier. If the two are more than 3/+ squares apart they lose 10%/- hp per turn. If one dies, the other takes 40%/- of their max hp in damage, but this skill can be activated to restore them in an adjacent square over 20 turns.
In addition, each one can wear only one ring.

Skill 2: Split Mind (Passive)
If one is affected by a mental effect and the other isn't, the one has a 20%/+ chance to shrug off the mental effect each round.

Skill 3: ...? (something something soul...)

Skill 4: Moment of Unity (Active)
For 5 turns, every time one attacks a target, they gain a debuff that causes them to take 15% more damage from the other, stacking up to 2 and lasting 5 turns. While this ability is active, it can be activated again to cause the two to switch places.

So, thoughts?

Out of curiosity, did you just read the Kingkiller Chronicles?

I like the idea, but feel thematically you'll have to expand on it a bit. Are you envisioning something like 'create clones of self, clones all do different things'? Because that may feel too similar to a Summoner or Oozemancer.

Not to nitpick, but if this is a class, shouldn't it have more than 1 talent tree? And I do think chronomancer would be a good fit, but the name suggests an afflicted. It really depends on what you think the general theme is, but you could make it a hate/paradox split.

"summoner, oozymancer"?
how? 0.o

i would get sollipsist, with his thought form, or stone warden with his tri-sokit, but how can you see this is summoner or oozy?

Radon26 wrote:"summoner, oozymancer"?
how? 0.o

i would get sollipsist, with his thought form, or stone warden with his tri-sokit, but how can you see this is summoner or oozy?

I asked for clarification, because what he described sounds a bit like 'summon additional versions of yourself to do stuff for you'.

but the thing is, oozies and summoners pets are NOT "clone self". it is a separate and entirely different entity, which is subservient to you, not a part of you.

This is a semantic distinction. Calling Bloated Oozespawns 'not part of you' seems like a very moot and nitpicky point.

Thematically OP is talking about making a build that operates via 'summonable pets that do a thing'.

Not really... You have the mind and the body. No other summons. That is a lot closer to stone warden than oozemancer.

Outfitting and speccing two characters could be a bit of a chore.

not every class is for everyone.

Sounds like Alchemist

Sorry for taking a while...

It would be most similar to the Alchemist. The idea is the character is somehow split in two, weaker parts, permanently. So yeah, like alchemist, but a more even split between the two. Rather than a character and his minion, it's two weak characters, except they're also kinda the same character.

Outfitting them might be a bit tedious, true. Still, I think it has merit.

The skill category stuff I listed would be the core category, like the demon-summoning one for the demonologist, or solipsism for the solipsist. It would be the category that most defines the class.

It could be a temporal cloning kind of thing, or it could be a weird curse. I'm not learning toward either one in particular, and there may be other options.

Again, its a very rough idea.

There is a major difference between this design and other pet classes. Right now, all of the pet classes in the game use their pets as disposable meat shields. This one has effects intended to make it rotten for that purpose. It seems designed to explore alternative tactics based on fighting alongside your pet rather than behind it.

With that in mind, let's look at the implications of this concept.

Being in two places obviously affects your tactical position. To make this mechanic shine, I would suggest it go with abilities that make the player care about tactical position. That means close quarters combat and high maneuverability, but not range 10 beams or massive fireballs. That right there should place this concept closer to the Brawler than the Alchemist.

The biggest obstacle to this concept would be the ally's AI. The AI in ToME is okay for disposable enemies, but it doesn't keep up with a human (and I don't expect it to do so anytime soon). The player would be shackled to a suicidal idiot. A pet is okay, but the most interesting part of of this class would be how it avoids using the AI.

Maybe make it a race? Maybe not even starting permanently splitted, but having this effect as one of middle racials?

Then you can combine this with class abilities, or even abilities of two classes.

On the other hand, if you make this a class, you can tailor class abilities around the fact that you have to control two people.

and who would that be? human, elf someone else?
higher and ogres were engineered to have their qualities.
how could someone engineer a race of split people, stable enough to repopulate, and maintain the trait hereditary?