Embers of Rage Steam Mage/Technomancer

[Planetus]

So, after unlocking everything in Embers of Rage and playing through the Psyshot class, I notice one thing glaringly missing from the expansion: a steam-tech mage hybrid. So, with that in mind, here are my humble ideas for a steam-punk technomancer class. I've tried to include the theme of damage mitigation that's in the other EoR classes, but not the set-up skill to boost damage that Saw Butcher and Gunslinger have.

[edit]
Just to make this clear, I'm hoping to jumpstart a conversation on what such a class would look like, more than field a single suggestion.
[/edit]

Class Skills

Steam Wands - Cun - Staves are old-fashioned - This tree feels a bit like a tack-on, but given the new melee and ranged weapons, I wanted something.

• Steam Wand Handling - Passive - You learn to become proficient with the use of steam wands. Increases your spellpower by steampower for every 10 steam you currently have, and increases your steampower by spellpower for every 10% of your mana remaining.
  
  Pyromantic Wand - Mana and Steam - Active - Launch a quick bolt of fire from each wand, dealing spellpower and steampower based fire damage to a single target in range 5/6/7/8/9/10.
  
  Steam Wand Finesse - Passive - You learn to target your spells more carefully through the mastery of your steam wand. Spells have a 20-100% chance to not impact friendly targets and deal 10-50% more critical damage.
  
  Metal Wand - Mana and Steam - Active - Launch a quick sliver of metal from each wand, dealing spellpower and steampower based physical damage to a single target in range 5/6/7/8/9/10 and causing bleeding.

Pyrotechnics - Cun - Fusion of fire magic and steam tech - I'm not entirely sold on the details of this class, particularly the drone, but the theme of steam power fused with fire magic is the core of this class

• Engine Flare - Mana and Steam - Active - Extract some of the heat from your embedded steam engines and project it as a flare cone in radius 4/5/6/7/8, dealing fire damage based on spellpower and steampower.
  
  Pyrotechnician - Passive - Inscribe small pyromantic runes on your steam engines, enhancing their efficiency by 120-200%, while also harvesting some of the excess heat as mana (.2-1.0) every turn.
  
  Pyrotechnic Drone - Mana and Steam - Active - Craft a small drone inscribed with pyromantic runes and launch it at an enemy. The drone will track the target, however will detonate at the first target encountered. It will explode with radius 2/2/2/3/3/3 and then launch 2/2/3/3/4/4 secondary devices at random enemies in radius 5/5/6/6/7/7, each of which explode with radius 1/1/1/2/2/2.
  
  Forge-Driven - Sustained - Mana and Steam - Focus your magic, technology, prowess, and experience into every attack. Increases spellpower, steampower, fire damage, and fire penetration, while allowing all fire damage you deal to cause burning.

Fumomancy - Mag - Magical manipulation of steam

• Steam Shot - Mana and Steam - Active - Extract some steam from your embedded steam engines and condense it into a tight bolt, firing it out to range 7. When it impacts anything, the bolt will explode in radius 3/4/5/6/7, dealing fire damage based on spellpower and steampower and leaving every target wet.
  
  Mist Shell - Mana and Steam - Sustained - Condense a shield of steam from your engines around you. This shield gives you (large bonus) defense based on spellpower and steampower, while also dealing fire damage to all enemies in radius one every turn. At TL 2 the shield also gives you fire and cold resistance. At TL 3 it also absorbs 30/50% of all non-physical, non-mind damage, converting it into .1 mana per 50 dmg and .1 steam per 100 dmg.
  
  Steam Purge - Mana (low) and Steam - Active - Forcefully purge all but 5 steam from your system, causing a massive blast of hot steam. The blast radius is 1 at 0 steam and expands by 1 for every 20-10 steam purged, capped at 10. The damage is (spellpower and steampower based) fire damage per point of steam. This blast has a chance to blind, confuse, or stun all targets it impacts for 3/3/3/4/4/4 turns. At TL 3, all enemies in range also lose track of you.
  
  Hethugoroth Form - Mana - Active - Immediately purge all but 5 steam from your system and envelope yourself in it, assuming the form of a steam elemental for 4/5/6/7/8/9 turns. This gives you access to new spells (undecided) and allows all your spells to be cast without steam cost, and all Fumomancy spells have their cooldown halved. Casting Steam Purge will instead use 1/2 your current life instead of total steam, using 1 HP as 1 steam. Any steam generated by your steam engines will heal you instead.

Feromancy - Mag - Heavy Metal Magic

• Spark - Mana and Steam - Active - Fire a burning-hot bit of metal at a target in range 10, dealing physical damage based on steampower and fire damage based on spellpower. The physical damage can cause bleeding and the fire damage can cause burning. At TL3, you fire 2 sparks, separately. At TL5, you fire 3.
  
  Dermal Metalization - Mana and Steam - Sustained - Infuse your skin with liquid metal, providing 5-30% physical and light damage resistance and absorbing a flat (spellpower) damage of any type except mind. Additionally, you take 10-50% less damage from critical hits, but never less than normal damage.
  
  Healing Drones - Mana and Steam - Active - Deploy a set of healing drones to yourself or another target in sight for 4/5/6/7/8 turns. The drones will swarm around the target, healing it for spellpower and steampower HP and providing a spellpower and steampower damage shield every turn.
  
  Battle Drones - Mana and Steam - Active - Deploy a set of combat drones with sharp cutting tools for 3/4/5/6/7 turns. These drones will move as a swarm, having steampower evasion, spellpower HP, steampower armor, and spellpower resists, along with being immune to all status effects. They will deal spellpower and steampower physical damage every turn, causing stacking bleeding.

Storm Engines - Cun - Locked - Lvl10 - Replace Steam Engines with Storm Engines - Important to move away from the almost pure fire theme. I noticed that trouble with the psyshot early talents

• Lightning in a Can - Mana - Sustained - Replace your steam engines with storm engines, containing small thunderstorms. All fire damage you deal is converted into 50% freezing cold and 50% dazing lightning. Pyrotechnician still works, and Forge Driven now boosts lightning damage instead of fire damage. Additionally, every time you take lightning damage, you gain 1 storm charge for 5 turns, up to a max of 1/2/3/4/5/6. Each storm charge boosts your lightning and cold resistance penetration by 5% and your spell critical chance and multiplier by 10%.
  
  Crackling Bolt - Mana and Steam - Active - Fire off a concentrated beam of ligtning, dealing spellpower and steampower based lightning damage in a line. Additionally, for every target hit, a second beam of range 5 will be fired at a random angle from 10 to 90 degrees (maybe based on distance?) left or right of the beam. Each target hit by this beam has a 30-70% chance to fire off a third beam of range 3 which will never intersect any other beam. Damage for subsequent beams is reduced by 50-20% per split.
  
  Hailstorm - Mana and Steam - Active - Expand the storms raging in your storm engines into the world around you, manifesting a raging hail storm of radius 5/6/7/8/9 for 4/5/6/7/8 turns. Every turn, any enemy in the storm will take spellpower physical and freezing cold damage, and has a 10-50% chance to be struck by lightning as well, taking steampower dazing lightning damage. You yourself are immune to the ravages of the storm.
  
  Bolt Step - Mana and Steam - Active - Transform momentarily into a bolt of pure electrified plasma and leap up to 7/8/9/10/11 tiles away. Any enemies you pass through take spellpower and steampower lightning damage. At TL 5 you can pass through 1 tile of wall with this spell.

Mechanized Golemancy - Mag - Locked - Lvl10 - A tree for mechanized golems, similar to the Alchemist's golem

• Golem Tech Construction - Active - Steam and Mana - Allows the construction of a mechanized steam golem using materials of tier RTL. The golem's Str and Con will be based on your Mag stat, it's Dex and Cun will be based on your Cun stat, and it's Mag and Wil will be based on your Will stat, and it will have weapon mastery equal to the tier of material used. Activation will allow construction of a golem of any appropriate material (50), or repair of an existing golem using less material (1?). If another golem already exists, this will deconstruct it.
  
  The golem cannot equip any weapons or armor, however it can be equipped with tinkers for weapons and armor. These will determine it's attack methods. If equipped with elemental weapon tinkers, it will attack with a basic cutting arm using those bonuses and also have the ability to spray an attack of that element in a cone of a radius of the material tier of the tinker and power based on Spellpower. If the tinker is non-elemental (eg Razor Edge), it will gain (1-2) talents of the Saw Butcher class of a TL equal to the material level of the tinker.
  
  If equipped with an Armor Spikes tinker, the golem gains the ability to shoot spikes at all targets in a radius of half the material level of the tinker, with damage based on Str. If equipped with armor re-enforcement, it gains the ability to reform itself with power determined by Cun and cooldown determined by the tinker material level. If equipped with crystaline armor, it gains the ability to manifest a protective shield with power based on Mag and duration based on tinker material level.
  
  Arcane Steam Furnace - Passive - Construct your golem with an arcane-powered steam furnace core. The golem will gain talents of the Furnace tree at a TL of RTL, and all damage will be converted to 50% fire. If Lightning in a Can is active, damage will instead be 25% lightning and 25% cold.
  
  Multi-Appendage Golem - Passive - Construct your golem with additional appendages. It can now attack an extra 1/1/2/2/3/3 times per turn, gains knockback and pin resistance of 20-100%, and gains movement speed of 5-25%.
  
  Command Golem - Active - Command your golem to focus on a single target. If the target is an enemy, the golem will use all power possible to destroy that enemy, though will still avoid harming you. If the target is friendly, the golem will stay near the target and attack enemies nearby.

Furnace - Cun - Unlocked

Generic Skills

Physics

Chemistry

Engineering

Divination/Teleportation/Aegis - Locked

[HousePet]

And totally yoinked all that.

You've got some great ideas here. However there are a couple of things you can work on.

First, basically everything costs steam and mana, which means you have to manage two resource bars but there isn't much in the way of resource management talents here.

Secondly, the theming and mechanics need refinement. Fire magic fused with steam power doesn't quite work. Steam power is whole power source, so what are you doing with it after you've supercharged it with fire magic? Steam attacks, fire bolts, metal magic, constructs and magical storms. You've got too many themes and mechanics, which makes it hard to focus in any particular area and synergies are almost non existent.

[Davion Fuxa]

Having a steamy spellcaster would be cool, but much like Housepet I have to agree that what I see here isn't thematic and probably wouldn't work well.

Some ideas though to throw out -

Ditch Mana and the whole spellcasting theme and just focus on creating a Technomancer. This means you only have one resource to manage - and think up talents for managing the resource.
Check out past ideas - for example, this one: The Mechanomage - DRAFT FINISHED, LINK INSIDE!

[astralInferno]

I agree with HP, but no so much Davion. I too had minor plans for a steam-mage, and I think one of the coolest things you can do is determine how those two interplay. They can use steam to bolster their magic, or mana to create steam from nowhere, or just manipulate boiling hot steam rather than actually projecting something. Definitely fertile ground to work with.

[Planetus]

I agree that it's rather unfocused. I wanted this to jumpstart a conversation and ideas. For the record, I don't really have the mental energy to learn the code-base behind ToME after long days coding databases all day, so I'm hoping to inspire and influence someone else, be it a modder or someone making something official.

With that in mind, I looked at the Psyshot class and thought why I was so dissatisfied with it. The core thing there was that they had psionic abilities, and they had steam abilities, and they had the Gestalt tree that fused the two, but little beyond that. I'm imagining something more developed, more integrated.

I was focusing on the idea of a mage who adapts the new steam-engine technology to his own purposes, so still an arcane caster, but using technologies and ideas from the new age. So, yes, things will cost both Steam and Mana, meaning that you're using steam power to supplement things normally done with mana, or using mana to supplement things normally done with steam. I'd expect the costs for both of these would be lower than the mana cost of a pure caster doing something similar.

As for resource management, I do have the Pyrotechnician talent that would boost steam production significantly and mana regen noticeably, more easily allowing a class to be heavily reliant on talents that use it, the Steam Wand Handling (poorly themed, but mechanically there) that boosts steampower by your mana and spellpower by your steam, and Mist Shield that not only functions as a damage sponge, but also a resource recharger. Steam Purge and Fumogoroth (forgot what the actual name was and didn't have the game available at the time to look it up) Form, on the other hand, basically only leave you with enough steam for sustains, but Steam Purge does damage explicitly based on how much steam it took.

So, overall, the idea is what would a mage do with steam power? Enhance engines with fire runes is a simple idea, and doesn't take constant maintenance. Summon steam from magic is an option, and maybe a pure mana spell that adds a bunch of steam could fit in somewhere. Probably in Fumomancy, since that's definitely steam magic. The next step, to me, is to completely redesign the engines to work on something more powerful, versatile, or at least familiar, thus the Lightning in a Can idea (they're not exactly bottles, after all). A raging thunderstorm should provide plenty of mechanical churn, too, and gives you thunder and cold to play with, instead of just heat.

The actual attack spells, though, if you're not using a purely magical effect and only using the engines to recharge mana, then you have to work with what the engines have and give you. That's mechanical force, probably manifested in metal, which you're already magically shaping with the runes, or the hot steam that comes out. So, the default trees I themed on heat, steam, and metal. I don't really like the drones in any of those yet, though they kind of work in metal.

The Mechanized Golem tree, then, represents another significant but obvious step: combining the mechanical machines of steamtech, already evident in the Steam Giant technology AND used lightly by the Psyshot, with the autonomous golemancy prevalent in alchemy. An alchemical golem using mechanical principles, partially powered by a massive engine inside the usually-solid core? Multiple appendages, instead of being limited to basically humanoid form? I'd love to see even more of that kind of idea, with other talents, advantages, and restrictions for making it less and less like a conventional golem.

Another idea I toyed with, but doesn't quite fit in a steam-tech mage, was a rising science of anatomy and primitive electrical medicine. Combined with necromancy, that opens the door to new types of undead, custom Frankenstein flesh golems, and possibly even augmenting yourself with salvaged body parts of other creatures (the Yeti tissue sparked that idea). Throwing that in there, too, would be a bit much for one class, I think. The golem was already mixing in new class ideas, though it thematically fit.

I hope this sparks some ideas in you guys, too. Feel free to post complete re-writes, your own ideas for such a class, suggested talents, etc. I don't want this to be a 'Here's my idea, what do you think', so much as a 'Here's a prompt, let's talk about what we want to see in such a class'.

[Darkgobbo]

I think it would be pretty cool to have a steam golem for alchemists as well. Allow them to wield saw blades and have specialized tinkers

[Zeyphor]

honestly id rather just have a straight-up engineer class who doesn't rely on weapon damage to deal damage and uses steampower as their main power
the class could be called engineer

[nsrr]

honestly id rather just have a straight-up engineer class who doesn't rely on weapon damage to deal damage and uses steampower as their main power
the class could be called engineer

I have a work up for a 'Gadgeteer' class, that uses a combination of summoned mechs (three, semi-permanent, sort of like golems, but each has a different role; damage, tank and utility) and Steampower damage talents.

There's one tree for each mech, plus a mech mastery tree that has talents which can interact with any/all of the mechs.

Damage talents would be similar to the tinker attachments that give you active abilities (project saw, grappling hook, etc). Potentially there's a tree that would increase the power/utility of crafted tinkers, as well.

They would also have Steamguns, but only the mastery tree. These would only be to supplement damage, and (perhaps) to interact with the mechs. Dexterity is their secondary stat (taking the meaning of the word literally) but it would probably only be a requirement for one or two of their class trees, the ones focused on using Gadgets (basically the Steampowered damage and utility talents).

If I can track it down, I will post it up in its own thread. I think it's on paper, though, so finding it might be a problem

[Planetus]

Ooh, maybe make their activated damaged abilities themed on pure technology. Electrical abilities, more firmly tied to the tinker form than the lightning mage tree, so maybe one random target each turn within a radius, and a touch-based ability that also dazes. Then heat and steam, a cone of steam shooting out from you and leaving vision-limiting steam for a few turns, and your mechs are powered up by being in that steam, and maybe a heat-touch that disarms the enemy. Then also projectiles, like the sawblade and thunder grenade tinkers.