ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Stat prerequisite is a weird thing. It is both trivial and annoying in the main campaign. If there are any reason why you don't want to invest in a stat than all you need to do is to hoard stat+ equipment to put on.

I offer to remove prerequisites and replace those with a mastery penalty tied to the attribute. If your current stat is lower than minimum required attribute for it, you receive minus 0.X to mastery for this particular talent.

This way stat prereqs will remain relevant in infinite dungeon\arena modes but such change will remove that stupid item juggling for leveling up and make attributes slightly more relevant overall. (Playing magic user with no con but leveled-up thick skin for those resistances? Sorry, but you aren't getting all of that sweet resist all 15% with your 30 con.)

Strongpoint wrote:Stat prerequisite is a weird thing. It is both trivial and annoying in the main campaign. If there are any reason why you don't want to invest in a stat than all you need to do is to hoard stat+ equipment to put on.

I offer to remove prerequisites and replace those with a mastery penalty tied to the attribute. If your current stat is lower than minimum required attribute for it, you receive minus 0.X to mastery for this particular talent.

This way stat prereqs will remain relevant in infinite dungeon\arena modes but such change will remove that stupid item juggling for leveling up and make attributes slightly more relevant overall. (Playing magic user with no con but leveled-up thick skin for those resistances? Sorry, but you aren't getting all of that sweet resist all 15% with your 30 con.)

That's interesting, and from a mechanical standpoint it seems to do the job -- you'll get less benefits if you swap your gear after acquisition -- but it seems convoluted, and it'll have some potentially deadly knock-on effects if you get stat-lowered in combat (which many diseases do, for example).

Also, it could have terrifying effects on rare / boss NPCs who get more talent points and also get higher stats than the PC.

Finally, some talents don't scale with mastery, so they'd either need to be re-written, or they'd just circumvent this mechanic.

Hrm? How is it an issue for rare/boss NPCs? They didn't suggest anyone gets an increased effect from talents/stats in any situation.

It is a little convoluted, but so is being able to use temporary stat bonuses to qualify for permanent effects.
I'm not worried about the effect of diseases causing talents to become less effective. I've never cared about the stat reduction on disease before, only the damage.
I think there are very few talents left that don't scale with mastery level. Any remaining should be updated anyway.

I like this idea rather a lot. Well done Strongpoint.

Against stat reducing opponents, like corruptor, reaver, and cultist of entropy, this can really mess your talents, and possibly your campaign. Mastery reduction can cause duration reduction on talents. I don't really want this to happen to talents that need high uptime (silence, disarm, %talent failure, stun, etc). This also can cause total headache on single stat focused classes. Having reduced damage from stat reduction is something, but then further damage reduction from mastery reduction? Nope, sorry.

Quetz wrote:Against stat reducing opponents, like corruptor, reaver, and cultist of entropy, this can really mess your talents, and possibly your campaign. Mastery reduction can cause duration reduction on talents. I don't really want this to happen to talents that need high uptime (silence, disarm, %talent failure, stun, etc). This also can cause total headache on single stat focused classes. Having reduced damage from stat reduction is something, but then further damage reduction from mastery reduction? Nope, sorry.

If you are a single stat focused class, then chances are that you have a very healthy amount of "excessive" stat and debuffing you to the point when your stat will fall below required stat is rather hard. (at least on sane difficulties)

Multi-stat focused classes are actually hurt way more by what I propose, especially because they often choose to ignore secondary(tertiary) stat completely.


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To be honest I'd rather see no stat requirement at all in the main campaign. They matter only in ID and arena where you need more time to hoard things that give temporary buffs to stats

Yeah this won't affect single or even dual stat classes at all. (Except if you are rushing for high tier talents early on.)

Oops, my bad.

I don't like the idea because my abilities would get nerfed harder by diseases(which you can't save against) than they already were
and don't CoEs have something that reduces your stats too? that'd make them be even more dangerous if they're paired with a bulky class and/or enemy type

This proposal is like "Remove the nails scattered all over the floor, replace them with screws".

Arcvasti wrote:This proposal is like "Remove the nails scattered all over the floor, replace them with screws".

No, this proposal is "remove something that does nothing in the main game mode except forcing player to do boring and pointless equipment switching and replace it with something that has a real gameplay effect and removes the need for a tedious behavior"

Does it nerf PC's power? Yes, somewhat. But game is in process of huge rebalancing for 1.6.0 anyway.

If TOME had only main campaigns I'd advocate for complete removal of stat requirements for skills, but that requirements are actually meaningful and interesting in ID and arena.

An easier way to remove the stat-boost gear-swap tedium would be to ignore gear bonus for the purpose of prereqs. Just flat-out don't look at it. The "base" number is already displayed; make it more relevant.

Lower the required stats to half their current value, but only count permanent stat values for the purpose of prereqs.

Class, race, level, alchemist's potions -- those would all count. Gear would not count.

Boom, no more swapping.

Doctornull wrote:An easier way to remove the stat-boost gear-swap tedium would be to ignore gear bonus for the purpose of prereqs. Just flat-out don't look at it. The "base" number is already displayed; make it more relevant.

You are outright killing unusual builds by doing this.

Lower the required stats to half their current value, but only count permanent stat values for the purpose of prereqs.

Oh... well not killing but with half of the current value you are only creating minor inconvenience for stuff like thick skin, cunning based generic trees, etc and make stat req completely irrelevant for class trees.

Strongpoint wrote:

Doctornull wrote:An easier way to remove the stat-boost gear-swap tedium would be to ignore gear bonus for the purpose of prereqs. Just flat-out don't look at it. The "base" number is already displayed; make it more relevant.

You are outright killing unusual builds by doing this.

You are wrong.

Oh... well not killing but with half of the current value you are only creating minor inconvenience for stuff like thick skin, cunning based generic trees, etc and make stat req completely irrelevant for class trees.

Stat reqs were already functionally irrelevant for class trees, so good job missing obvious things in the core game.

There's not really inconvenience, just build choices -- and these are actual choices instead of the current gear-fueled no-brainers. You can't get to 5/5 Thick Skin without any Con investment, and that investment comes at some cost.

Likewise, investing in Cunning will be required to get points in Survival or the like.

Inconvenience is the current state, where you have to swap gear, open the level-up dialog to allocate one point, then swap gear again and re-open the dialog to allocate another point. What I'm suggesting is a significant reduction in that inconvenience.

I really don't like the lower mastery idea.
I do consider the current state bad though, for both talents and items.
1) switching gear to equip/learn things is tedious
2) it makes prerequisites trivial past early game
3) it feels cheaty (especially for prodigies that don't scale with their stat and for items)

Imo there are several ways to fix this.

1. remove stat prerequisites.
   • pros : same state as right now without the tedium.
   • cons : wearing plate at 10 str or learning unbreakable will at 10 wil feels bad.
2. make only base stats count
   • pros : force player to make interesting decisions rather than just pumping main stat.
   • cons : kills hybrid and gimmicky build. Might require a balancing of prerequisites.
3. when stats drop below treshold equipment and talent becomes worse
   • pros : stats are impactful but you can decide to use an item/talent anyway if you think the tradeoff pays off.
   • cons : some talents are just so good that reducing their power won't have much impact. Instant will still be instant, cleanse will still be cleanse, etc... what's a "worse item" ? Do armor protect less if you're not strong enough ? Makes no sense.
4. when your stats drop below the treshold, talents stop working and equipment unequip
   • pros : make stat reduction more interesting, force player to decide between best gear that might get unequipped and lesser gear that will protect you less but will stay on
   • cons : will probably feel really bad, communication for passive talent that stops working will be hard

I'm sure there are other ideas and more refined. I'd really like for prerequisite to feel impactful and to not be able to gear swap my way out of them. But right now the idea that has the less bad impact is to just remove them. That's what I'd propose on the short term, while waiting for a long term solution to be found and implemented.