Spellsword (formerly Addon reworking Arcane Blade Class)

[yufra]

A few thoughts that have been ruminating in my head after playing some rAB (reworked Arcane Blade) this past weekend. First, the stance switching caused by the first tier talents should occur earlier in the talent, say right after the target has been confirmed (canProject, etc). It is a bit strange to do a fire strike, but see the lightning/air Arcane Combat proc go off. This would also reap immediate benefits for the stance bonuses, so you aren't still getting Water Stance bonuses when doing a fire strike, etc.

My second thought is if the other strike talents (eg. Tidal Rush) should also switch stances. I believe they do not, and after hearing your explanation of how you visualize Tidal Rush (channeling the water surrounding your weapon behind you to cause a wave) it probably should. Gameplay should win over "realism", though, so if you think this would be too limiting ignore it.

Finally, and this is without actual testing experience, how useful is the Earth stance in conjunction with Arcane Destruction? The other stances all change the damage type to an element, but does Earth really just change everything to physical? The rAB is already doing mostly physical damage with his/her weapons, and the only benefit I can see is if you are using Air Stance or have a lot of +elemental damage on the weapon and are facing a monster with resistance to Lightning (or your +elemental type). That seems pretty rare.

[Hirumakai]

First, thanks for trying the class out.

A few thoughts that have been ruminating in my head after playing some rAB (reworked Arcane Blade) this past weekend. First, the stance switching caused by the first tier talents should occur earlier in the talent, say right after the target has been confirmed (canProject, etc). It is a bit strange to do a fire strike, but see the lightning/air Arcane Combat proc go off. This would also reap immediate benefits for the stance bonuses, so you aren't still getting Water Stance bonuses when doing a fire strike, etc.

I personally see getting Water stance bonuses while doing a Fire strike to be a plus. It allows a much greater variety in combinations. Fire Stance + Any Strike = Higher chance of debuff. Air Stance + Any Strike = higher chance of landing the blow. Water Stance + Any Strike = last bit of extra healing. Earth Stance + Any Strike = Less damage from Riposte (ok, its a stretch).

I like to think of the different damage types representing the transition you're going through. The nature of the attack forces you to change mind set or posture or the like, and only by finishing the attack all the way through, have you fully changed stance. You're hitting with that fiery blade initially but its converting to lightning slowly throughout the attack, until its just a lightning blade at the end. So dealing both types of damages seems reasonable to me (fire from the weapon and lightning from the strike's AoE component). It may have slightly less synergy with Arcane Destruction, but with some careful thought, it can also be leveraged to your advantage, providing you with more options.

So basically, I like the concept of "twisting" strikes and stances together to get more combinations, and I have no problems with a magical fantasy setting having fiery water or electric stone shards. It also means the order of your strikes matters.

What I could do is place the stance change after the strike, but before the AoE component triggers, allowing Arcane Destruction to apply to both the strike and the AoE. I'll try that in the next iteration.

Edit: Scratch that, moving the change over before the AoE would lose the benefit of extra physical power from Fire stance for improving debuff chance of landing. Hmm...

My second thought is if the other strike talents (eg. Tidal Rush) should also switch stances. I believe they do not, and after hearing your explanation of how you visualize Tidal Rush (channeling the water surrounding your weapon behind you to cause a wave) it probably should. Gameplay should win over "realism", though, so if you think this would be too limiting ignore it.

I'm hesitant to do so, because it both a blessing and a curse that the stance changes with the elemental strike. Sometimes you want a particular stance, but need a different debuff. But in that case its fairly easy to dance for one turn to other stance, then go back via the first elemental strike. Assuming you haven't used the first strike recently.

The idea is that once you change to a given stance (say fire), you can't get change to fire again for 8 turns, if you swap out of it. Its supposed to be a semi-meaningful decision. (Ok, 8 turns isn't that long, but still). Having 2-3 talents that can change you to that stance dilutes some of that concept, and makes talent activation order choice less important. Also I think spam changing stances every turn gets a bit silly when trying to burst down enemies.

Lastly, as I noted earlier, I have no problem visualizing combinations of elements. If we can have Elemental weapons dealing fire and ice at the same time, why not an ability?

Finally, and this is without actual testing experience, how useful is the Earth stance in conjunction with Arcane Destruction? The other stances all change the damage type to an element, but does Earth really just change everything to physical? The rAB is already doing mostly physical damage with his/her weapons, and the only benefit I can see is if you are using Air Stance or have a lot of +elemental damage on the weapon and are facing a monster with resistance to Lightning (or your +elemental type). That seems pretty rare.

Arcane Destruction effectively just changes the weapon damage type. It doesn't affect any other damage projections. An Elemental weapon would still deal the small amounts of fire, ice, lightning, and acid, in addition to the rolled physical damage calculated from weapon power, strength, and so forth.

Arcane Destruction also provides a +2/4/6/8/10% physical damage bonus and +10/20/30/40/50% physical resistance penetration in Earth Stance, so I find its quite useful. So even if you would have physical damage without Arcane Destruction, you wouldn't necessarily have the10% damage boost or 50% physical resistance penetration. Combined with actual Warbringer/Shearing weapons, the physical resistance penetration can Earth stance quite attractive, especially against high resistance enemies.

[yufra]

I had forgotten that Earth Stance + Arcane Destruction did Acid damage, scratch that. I agree that the number of combinations increases if we force the stance to change early and often, and you seem to think the gameplay with more combinations is better so by all means leave it. It is a lot of fun as is.

[belmarduk]

I've been playing with this mod lately and managed to get a character who I think was pretty winnable to the far east, before I had a very unfortunate encounter with Atamathon. I don't have much post-dreadfell experience, so I didn't really expect an unwinnable level 70 boss fight. Really wish the ToME wiki had more active posters.

http://te4.org/characters/8415/tome/e7e ... a85fea8202

The fire tree feels insanely strong between 15 and 30 ; the Tier 2 dungeons are not very challenging at all and I found Dreadfell to be extremely trivial. By the time I finished I'd died only once in adventure mode, thanks to finding the hidden tunnels at the fragile level of 9. Difficulty evened out once I got to the east substantially and I had to play pretty cautiously. I ended up rushing back to the west because I was afraid of the prides and didn't manage to get to any of them, but Vor Armory was fairly challenging as were the breeding pits and sandworm lair.

Earthen Shield might be a little too strong in the midgame. I don't know how you could really adjust that, though, without damaging it's usefulness in the late game. It also may just be the fire tree. Aura of Fire combined with Earthen Shield made all of the negative status in Dreadfell a complete non-issue. Aura of Fire could probably do to have a 'this effect can only trigger once every 2 rounds' attached to it, to incentivize raising saves and getting immunities. As it was, I didn't need either for Dreadfell. Also: Is the self-damage effect reduced by Earthen Shield? If so, is it possible to adjust that, or no?

Having said that, AB seems incredibly weak when faced with any of the anti-magic enemies or any anti-magic effects. The new manaburning weapons will knock down your sustains in no time and if you get the incredibly poor luck of a random boss with a manaburning ego you can find yourself having a really, really bad day very quickly. I had an incredibly hard time with the wyrmic antimagic rare spawn orc. I ran into him in the breeding pits and only finally managed to kill him by getting a lucky streak where he didn't mana clash me and all my hits procced arcane combat.

This mod makes arcane blades really, really fun to play! I did a lot of playing with earth based ABs when this mod first came out and I think I will try that for my next character and see how it goes.

[Hirumakai]

Thanks for the comments Belmarduk.

I'd been taking a break from working on it due to other distactions, but I'm hoping to spend some time this month working on it again.

In my play throughs, I also found the anti-magic types to be the most dangerous. I remember being down to everything on cooldown, virtually no mana, and at 10% of my health by the end of my encounter with that unique anti-magic Orc encounter as well.

I had been working on 2 advanced trees before my hiatus, one focused on dealing with magic enemies and one dealing with melee type enemies. The first being more magically focused, while the second . One of the changes would be moving Master Blade into one of those trees, and replacing it with an ability that lets you burn Stamina as Magic for a temporary time, perhaps with another benefit, similar to how Adrenaline Surge works. Mana burn wouldn't burn the stamina off, and it would prevent your sustains dropping for a few turns.

In addition, I believe there was talk of reducing the effectiveness of Mana burn in the next release.

The Aura of Fire self damage does have to go through Earth Shield (I think - its been over a month since I looked at the code), so you're only taking about half of it directly. On the other hand, it brings Earth Shield sooner to break down. In principle, I could change it so the Aura of Fire damage, although I'm not sure its necessary.

[darkgod]

I've played a tad mode with it, I like the class
This is however not what I had in mind for arcane blades, so what about you rename it Elemental Blade (which is really is anyway) and split it completly from arcane blade few remaining talents. My idea of an arcane blade is a melee fighter using some magic, your class is more an melee-mage

I'm not sure where it would fit in the lore yet but I'll find

[Hirumakai]

Will do Darkgod.

So I'll need to rename all the abilities which were directly named from the Arcane Blade original abilities, which shouldn't be hard. Do have a preference for keeping it under Warrior or Mage? Presumably keeping the no mana regen means keeping it under Warrior.

Just throwing out some lore ideas:
Militant order of human mages. Instead of a group of mages hidden in one place like Anglowen, imagine a single itinerant master Elemental Blade wandering the lands, never staying in one place, teaching a single student at a time, and perhaps trying to convince people magic is not evil - or perhaps not. Kind of like a swordmaster passing down his techniques to a single dedicated student at a time.

Unlock: World encounter in the west - find an old Elemental Blade ambushed in the wilderness: If the player is not anti-magic try to save him before he is cut down by a Ziguranth ambush. If the player is anti-magic, aid the Ziguranth in defeating him.

I'll keep thinking about the lore and see if I can come with other suggestions.

Sorry about the break by the way. I got my wife a new computer and have been distracted with other multiplayer games for the last two months...

Anyways, hoping your feeling better from the accident.

[darkgod]

Na put them inside mages, really the only two technique trees they have are mostly magic anyway (which is also one of the reason UI dont find them to be what I want for arcane blades).

Oh and maybe find a better name than Elemental Blade

[belmarduk]

WRU Hiru? This was the best mod.

[Hirumakai]

WRU Hiru? This was the best mod.

Real life happens unfortunately. Combination of factors: time, energy/interest, family, new computer.

Actually, Darkgod's e-mail to donators about 1.0.0 made me decide to stop by the forums (first time I've stopped by in months - even had to reset my password).

And now your post is making me feel guilty (probably intended effect ). I've got some free time through the first week of the new year, thanks to a Caltech's generous employee holiday schedule.

I can try re-downloading the SVN'd version of my code, and see where I was. No promises though. And I really should take a play through or two to see where balance is in the rest of the game in 1.0. (Thats the reason for the energy/interest issue. I've got 25 days of play time listed on the tome website tracker over 2 years, roughly 1 hour per day every day until my break a few months ago).

People are also free to steal whatever they want from the add-on, or use it as a base for their own.

[darkgod]

Hey welcome back

[belmarduk]

WRU Hiru? This was the best mod.

Real life happens unfortunately. Combination of factors: time, energy/interest, family, new computer.

Actually, Darkgod's e-mail to donators about 1.0.0 made me decide to stop by the forums (first time I've stopped by in months - even had to reset my password).

And now your post is making me feel guilty (probably intended effect ). I've got some free time through the first week of the new year, thanks to a Caltech's generous employee holiday schedule.

I can try re-downloading the SVN'd version of my code, and see where I was. No promises though. And I really should take a play through or two to see where balance is in the rest of the game in 1.0. (Thats the reason for the energy/interest issue. I've got 25 days of play time listed on the tome website tracker over 2 years, roughly 1 hour per day every day until my break a few months ago).

People are also free to steal whatever they want from the add-on, or use it as a base for their own.

No guilt intended, I know what real life is like, heh. WB!

[HousePet]

People are also free to steal whatever they want from the add-on, or use it as a base for their own.

I'll get to that eventually.
Making class addons is fun.

[Hirumakai]

I'm in the process of converting the addon to work with RC3. I'm limiting myself to only a few minor tweaks.

I've moved the class into the Mage category. I'm debating whether I should still make it not regen mana base, or as a mage, just let it do its normal thing. For now, its just inheriting from the Mage class, so base regen is in.

I'm changing Arcane Feed (the plus to mana regen skill) to Mana Focus, which still increases mana regen, but also increases spell power by 2 * talent level (so roughly half as effective as Arcane Power). Mostly because I noticed Arcane Feed of the original Arcane Blade has been buffed to mana regen and crit equal to 2.2 * talent level.

A few other name changes as well, to full split off from the Arcane Blade talent names.

I'm going to try going with Spellsword as a new working name (until I change my mind again ). I'm going to try the following for the class desc, to try to fit it into lore:

The Spellsword is a mage who combines the flexibility of elemental magic with the skills of a warrior.

In the aftermath of the Spellblaze, when mages were hunted down, a small few who understood the fundamentals of both magic and swordplay attempted to hide in plain sight. They wandered the land as sellswords, mercenaries selling their martial services and concealed their magical knowledge as merely exceptional fighting skills. Thus were born the Spellswords, warrior-mages secretly passing down their knowledge from one generation to the next in the guise of martial lore, until the time they could once again walk freely in the light.

They initially know how to imbue martial attacks with magical power, but through practice can learn more traditional spells, although not with the same breadth as a mage focused purely on the mystical arts. They can infuse elemental magic directly into their weapons through the use of mystical stances, as well as 'channeling' offensive spells through their melee attacks.

Their Air and Water talents favor dual-wielding, while their Earth talents favor a sword and shield. Finally their Fire talents favor two-handed weapons, although any weapon can be used with any of their martial skills.

Their most important stats are: Strength, Dexterity and Magic
#GOLD#Stat modifiers:
#LIGHT_BLUE# * +3 Strength, +3 Dexterity, +0 Constitution
#LIGHT_BLUE# * +3 Magic, +0 Willpower, +0 Cunning

Thoughts on the fluff? Or thoughts on proposed tweaks for the next iteration of the addon?

[wildwolfofdark]

I haven't had a chance to mess around with it yet and I hope to see an RC version of it soon. I was also thinking if you weren't happy with Spellsword as the name, what about Elemental Blade? I'd be very, very happy to see this grouped with the old MageKnight classes.