Assassin - Complete Rogue Rework v1.8

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/5775

v1.3

- Parry no longer causes an error when triggering against a trap or environmental damage.
- Mutilate correctly grants Deadly Throw when learned with Throwing Knives.
- Increased the cost of Blade Flurry.
- Deadly Poison correctly works with ranged attacks.
- Warrior and Rogue subclasses with the Acrobatics and Field Control trees have had them removed due to overlap with the new Mobility tree. Some classes have been given the new Mobility tree as a replacement.
- Marauder and Shadowblade have had Dual Weapon Training replaced with Duellist.
- Marauder now has Throwing Knives.
- Brawler's Reflex Defense has been reworked due to overlap with Trained Reactions.
- Marauder's Thuggery tree has received changes to compensate for the loss of Dual Weapon Training.

[Atarlost]

Someone on IRC today traced a balance destroying bug to I think this mod.

It overrides escort quests and one of the options for I think he said Anorthil is from a mindslayer generic category. Having any skill in any mindslayer category gives a TK wielding slot. This is, obviously, vastly more powerful than any escort reward should be.

[Doctornull]

http://te4.org/node/5775

v1.3

- Parry no longer causes an error when triggering against a trap or environmental damage.
- Mutilate correctly grants Deadly Throw when learned with Throwing Knives.
- Increased the cost of Blade Flurry.
- Deadly Poison correctly works with ranged attacks.
- Warrior and Rogue subclasses with the Acrobatics and Field Control trees have had them removed due to overlap with the new Mobility tree. Some classes have been given the new Mobility tree as a replacement.
- Marauder and Shadowblade have had Dual Weapon Training replaced with Duellist.
- Marauder now has Throwing Knives.
- Brawler's Reflex Defense has been reworked due to overlap with Trained Reactions.
- Marauder's Thuggery tree has received changes to compensate for the loss of Dual Weapon Training.

I've been kicking the tires on this, and I really like what you've done so far.

Some suggestions:

- Make the throwing knife a projectile. Take a look at the Dream Hammer tree to see how to make a (temporary, fake) projectile. This solves issues like getting melee retribution damage -- that's a chunk of the utility of this tree, after all, the fact that it's not a melee attack.

- Take a look at the Nulltweaks Poisons replacement. What I did was turn all the poison sustains into timed effects, to force PC and NPC variety.

- I like that you've blended the old Two-Weapon passives into a tree of actives, but I'd suggest a few tweaks:

-- Give +% offhand damage once per talent, so your offhand damage improves naturally as you take the tree. Look at how Solipsism works for an example. That would mean you get max offhand % damage at 1/1/1/1 rather than 1/5/0/0.

-- Make more of a distinction between offhand and mainhand. Like, have some talents explicitly use one or the other.

-- Maybe make the throwing knife care about your offhand weapon as a model for damage & effects, and have most of the melee talents favor your mainhand weapon (i.e. give a free mainhand melee attack when you Parry successfully). That creates a tension about which hand should hold your "best" weapon.

- From a usability angle, I always like to put the Rush replacement talent first in the tree. In this case, I guess that'd be Lunge. Take a look at the updated Spinning Backhand for advice about distance. (Also, I suggest that Lunge could be one of the talents that only uses your mainhand weapon.)

- With all the free throws from the Throwing Knife tree, Flurry seems a bit stronger than usual. Maybe reduce the attacks to 3x mainhand + 1x offhand, instead of 3x + 3x. To make up for the reduction in total # of attacks, have it deliver your attacks to other adjacent targets if the main target dies early, so you're not wasting actions.

- I love the Exposed condition, but I don't like the active Parry blocking mechanism. Have you considered making it more like the Cursed / Gloom / Weakness bonus? Basically, the idea would be:
-- Whenever someone misses you, or your Parry % intercepts an attack, the target gets +1 Exposed stack.
-- The Exposed stack causes some visual effect -- maybe just steal the Weakness visual, it's easy to see.
-- When you hit an Exposed target, you get some perk -- maybe get some instant Stamina back, or some energy so you're effectively attacking faster -- and consume the stack.
That would make melee against multiple enemies a bit more interesting, just like it is for a Cursed, since you're incentivized to spread your attacks around instead of focusing down one target.

Someone on IRC today traced a balance destroying bug to I think this mod.

It overrides escort quests and one of the options for I think he said Anorthil is from a mindslayer generic category. Having any skill in any mindslayer category gives a TK wielding slot. This is, obviously, vastly more powerful than any escort reward should be.

That sounds like the Extra Escorts mod. Check the character sheet of whoever reported that issue.

[Razakai]

That escort thing is unfortunately me, and it's both hilarious and unintended. Field Control was removed due to the Mobility changes and I needed a new Zigur escort replacement, Augmented Mobility seemed a decent choice. Wasn't aware that gave TK weapons so... will fix.

Thanks for the comments Doctornull.

- I did actually base Throwing Knives off Hammer Toss. I found that even as a projectile it still counts as a melee attack due to the attackTargetWith property. There's probably a way around it but... I'll try to disable retaliation damage at least.
- I did consider doing the +% dmg on every talent, but the other talents actually get bonuses aside from +weapon dmg on level (duration, range etc) so Flurry felt like a good fit. Maybe if I could figure out how to give Flurry another level bonus?
- Heartseeker might make more sense as a mainhand only attack. I guess it's because the existing tree had dual attacks for every talent that I was reluctant, so unsure till.
- I do agree with Flurry getting nerfed to slightly less hits... but I can see there being outcry as it's such an iconic ability. Maybe it's time to bite the bullet and nerf it for balance, as the rest of the tree is quite good now rather than the old state of useless Sweep/Whirlwind.
- I really like those Exposed ideas. I'll probably remove active Parry (maybe buff the passive a little), and change Tempo to instead grant boosts when you attack an enemy. Might need to retool Lunge a bit though, or at least shift it's placement as it relies on being the consumer at the moment. Will have a think about what Duellist should look like post these changes.

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/5778

v1.4

- Learning Augmented Mobility talents from an escort no longer grants TK weapon talents.

[astralInferno]

Someone on IRC today traced a balance destroying bug to I think this mod.

It overrides escort quests and one of the options for I think he said Anorthil is from a mindslayer generic category. Having any skill in any mindslayer category gives a TK wielding slot. This is, obviously, vastly more powerful than any escort reward should be.

That sounds like the Extra Escorts mod. Check the character sheet of whoever reported that issue.

I either already changed that to only work when you invest a cat point in it, or really need to update it to do so.

[Doctornull]

- I did actually base Throwing Knives off Hammer Toss. I found that even as a projectile it still counts as a melee attack due to the attackTargetWith property. There's probably a way around it but... I'll try to disable retaliation damage at least.
- I did consider doing the +% dmg on every talent, but the other talents actually get bonuses aside from +weapon dmg on level (duration, range etc) so Flurry felt like a good fit. Maybe if I could figure out how to give Flurry another level bonus?
- Heartseeker might make more sense as a mainhand only attack. I guess it's because the existing tree had dual attacks for every talent that I was reluctant, so unsure till.
- I do agree with Flurry getting nerfed to slightly less hits... but I can see there being outcry as it's such an iconic ability. Maybe it's time to bite the bullet and nerf it for balance, as the rest of the tree is quite good now rather than the old state of useless Sweep/Whirlwind.
- I really like those Exposed ideas. I'll probably remove active Parry (maybe buff the passive a little), and change Tempo to instead grant boosts when you attack an enemy. Might need to retool Lunge a bit though, or at least shift it's placement as it relies on being the consumer at the moment. Will have a think about what Duellist should look like post these changes.

Sounds awesome.

For Flurry, one thing you could do is have it give you a temporary 2-turn movement speed boost at level 3+, so the idea of hit-and-run would have more run in it.

Err, yeah, when I said Lunge should be mainhand-only, I really meant Heartseeker (which mechanically feels like a Lunge maneuver). I'd suggest renaming your current Lunge and using the name "Lunge" for the current Heartseeker. Maybe "Thrust" instead? That matches with the most accepted fencing authority: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw9vaNS3b0s

Also, an idea for a different mechanic to fit in somewhere, maybe into the space left by Active Parry:

• Dual Stances - gives two stance talents, each of which requires dual-wielding. Both have cooldown 10 and are Instant activation, both cost no resources to sustain. You can only be in one or the other.
  • Guarding Stance - Use offhand weapon stats to add to Defense, reduce incoming damage, etc. Applies Exposed condition when someone misses you, and some % of the time when you block some damage.
  • Stalking Stance - Gain 20% chance to make an extra attack with your mainhand each turn for 50%-90% base damage. When this attack hits, it takes the target by surprise, and applies the Exposed condition.
• Stance Balance
  - Guarding Stance gives 20-50% confusion and pinning immunity.
  - Stalking Stance free attack chance improves from 20-50%, and your attack speed improves by 10-30%.
• Tricky Maneuvering
  - When you switch stances, recover 10%-50% of your Stamina, and remove 1-3 detrimental conditions.

... and then some sort of capstone.

[joebobjoe]

Soothing Darkness isn't working for me. Doesn't throw up errors, I just don't get the bonuses when stealthed.

[rekenner]

hm. It's probably some weird conflict, as I have like 20 add-ons installed, but I figure I'll mention it. If I have the add-on enabled, when I start a new game from the main menu, the game crashes during load. Whee.

[Razakai]

DoctorNull - I'll have a think about those ideas. I'm actually going to be making some slightly smaller Marauder tweaks that might involve giving them a new tree and some of those might work quite well for them...

Joebobjoe - Soothing Darkness does actually work, but at the moment it provides a flat heal rather than regen so you don't see it displayed on your sheet. You should see the healing in the log though. I'm going to change it to proper regen so you can see it on your character.

Rekenner - You're right that it's probably not Assassin, but if you go into your ToME directory and look at the TE4 log file, you'll be able to see the error message causing the crash. Post it here and I can tell you what the cause is.

[rekenner]

The next time I tried (4th or 5th time) loading the game, it worked. Weird. It did get me to clean out my addons, though.

But, I noticed something. I have level 4 Rogue's Tools and level 1 Cunning Tools, but when using Cunning Tools, the talents in the dialogue show as their level 4 versions, as do the tooltips. Using Rogue's Brew from Cunning Tools also seems to be restoring the level 4 amount of stamina.

[Razakai]

The next time I tried (4th or 5th time) loading the game, it worked. Weird. It did get me to clean out my addons, though.

But, I noticed something. I have level 4 Rogue's Tools and level 1 Cunning Tools, but when using Cunning Tools, the talents in the dialogue show as their level 4 versions, as do the tooltips. Using Rogue's Brew from Cunning Tools also seems to be restoring the level 4 amount of stamina.

I'll double check that, the code for how Artifice works currently is a bit of a mess so it could be referring to the incorrect version (effectively you have 3 copies of each tool relating to each talent).

[rekenner]

Hm. Possibly related to my previous issue, I can't master anything but Assassinate. I've tried having only Rogue's Brew learned, but it doesn't even show up, then.

[Razakai]

Hm. Possibly related to my previous issue, I can't master anything but Assassinate. I've tried having only Rogue's Brew learned, but it doesn't even show up, then.

Might be related, but perhaps not as that's fairly odd. The dialogue code for mastery effectively does an 'or' statement across each of the 3 copies of each talent, so if you only knew a single one that should work fine. Have some time to work on it tonight so will take a look.

[Razakai]

http://te4.org/node/5780

v1.5

- Artifice tools learned via Cunning Tools and Intricate Tools will use the correct talent level.
- Fixed a bug where Master Artificer was not giving an option for Rogue's Brew.