Deceiver class

[fenixdown]

Latest update: 5/6/2015
Download: http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/deceiver

I'm putting out the initial draft of the class I've been working on. The deceiver is a psionic mid-weight fighter class focusing on large burst damage over sustained dps, positioning, escape, and maintaining cc uptime. My intention is for it to use heavy weapons with light armor/gauntlets etc., but that may change.

So far it includes two new talent trees, one focusing on melee combat granting the ability to deal large, sudden spikes of damage to a single target, and a psionic tree more focused on cc that can feedback on itself to be able to keep itself active on a large group of monsters, as well as melee-triggered aoe splash damage.

I'm fairly certain there shouldn't be anything that will explode your computer, but I'm still working on both the new trees I have in mind as well as the existing ones, so things will probably change. Hopefully someone finds this enjoyable, and I'd love to hear what you think.

[fenixdown]

New update released, with a third tree, some rebalancing, tweaks, etc. Should now be in a state that can play through the entire game, theoretically.

Highlights:
- Stealth removed, focus solidified on heavy weapons/armor/str
- Instead of stealth, melee critical hits cause brief invisibility
- Several skills also grant temporary invisibility
- More synergy with invisibility/Terror tree to keep terrify sustained on groups of enemies
- Couple of numbers changes

[Einander]

It's a very cool design, but I'm rather confused by one aspect of the class: why is the class a heavy armor Psi user that has no means to recover Psi or increase its Psi regen? Psi takes double penalties from fatigue and the base Psi regen rate is low.

I mean, sure, you can just hit "R" after every single fight that merits using any Psi, but... I don't really get why you wouldn't add some +Psi regen, a Stamina->Psi move, +Psi when enemies are terrified or when you leave their sight... Anything. The class doesn't even have Advanced Energy Manipulation to let it eat gems for energy.

This seems particularly devastating for Abomination, because your only pre-22 defensive abilities (Telekinetic Leap, Smoke and Mirrors) require Psi, and if you hit 0 then Slippery Devil goes off and you're REALLY screwed. It's pretty hard to justify a move that's so do-or-die, especially when it's a crowd-control technique.

Edit: Another weird thing: why does Artful Dodger trigger on misses when this is a heavy armor class with no +Defense abilities at all? I have no idea how you're supposed to get your Defense high enough for that to be any good.

[fenixdown]

Like I said, it's still very much a work in progress, and psi regen is one of the things I was looking at next. I'm probably going to add another tree with an ability that will address that issue, but for now it's just "rest after every battle". I do want to keep psi a somewhat limited resource since stamina is also going to be a major ability power source, so I want to make sure that psi abilities are reserved for special situations, e.g. jumping in and taking control of the situation, then using stamina for the bulk of the killing.

Abomination in particular is meant to be the most painful ability the class has, letting it turn a crit spike into an aoe that can clear an entire room in one hit at high levels, so it's supposed to be expensive. I also intentionally made Slippery Devil an instant cast, so that if you feel like it might get you into trouble you can always choose to enable/disable it at any time without feeling like you need to predict damage too much.

As for Artful Dodger, keep in mind that invisibility gives you an inherent defense bonus. Like most of the finished abilities so far, keeping a good uptime for your invisibility is pretty much essential for success.

Thanks for the comments, like I said I'm still working on it, and I'm making an effort to deal with some of the issues you pointed out.

Edit: a few notes about how I envision the abilities working together
Evil eye is used to start off the terrify chain, then the player jumps in to initiate with Smoke and Mirrors (or, alternatively, Shell Game -> Smoke and Mirrors). This makes them go invisible, causing the terrified enemy to lose sight and spread fear. Further crits phase them out again, spreading Terrify even more. Abomination should generally be used for a few turns at a time to clear large crowds or soften them up before disabling the sustain to keep psi in reserve. It can be used either as an opener if caught off guard to get some quick Terrifies out, or once the fear is already spread to get the bonus damage. The improved clones from Shell Game should also proc Abomination I think, but I haven't quite decided how that should work. Feint and Sleight of Hand should pretty much always be used together since their damage is multiplicative (combined also with the phased-out damage boost), and especially if you can get the Swift Hands prodigy you can crit harder than almost every class on a cooldown of ~3-4 turns. (Feint + Sleight of Hand + phased out damage boost + Execution = like 1000% weapon damage)

[Einander]

Should clarify: went I meant "go off" in reference to Slippery Devil, I meant "deactivate," in the way that sustains do when you run out of their resource. I also forgot about Evasion in the Survival tree when I talked about Artful Dodger (but it still seems weirdly unsupported, with the general lack of Defense boosts outside of Invisibility).

I've been messing around with a Gnome (that add-on race is a good way to hand a class a talent tree it can't normally get without modifying files), and I really do think Finer Energy Manipulations would solve a lot of the holes in the design as it stands: Realign gives you a second early survival option before Retaliation/Slippery Devil/Unstoppable, Reshape Weapon/Armor makes heavy armor less problematic in light of the double-fatigue-effect-on-Psi thing, and Matter is Energy gives you a way to restore Psi in a pinch if you really need it (but the gem requirement keeps it from being too free).

Also, I need to test if this is related to the whole Gnome thing or not, but, uh, in my current run, Shell Game is currently... kind of broken. See image.

http://imgur.com/fZczPqY

They also appear to have 100% resists in every category, elemental and status. This came to my attention because I suddenly got the "do 600 damage in one attack" achievement here. I have one point in Shell Game. If this is "48% of my stats" I'm kind of terrified to see what further point investment will do. (Edit: Tried it, just gives them more HP. I guess you don't need much more when you have max stats and are also invincible.)

[astralInferno]

They also appear to have 100% resists in every category, elemental and status. This came to my attention because I suddenly got the "do 600 damage in one attack" achievement here. I have one point in Shell Game. If this is "48% of my stats" I'm kind of terrified to see what further point investment will do. (Edit: Tried it, just gives them more HP. I guess you don't need much more when you have max stats and are also invincible.)

(glances)
Looking at the numbers, it looks like it's giving 4800% of your stats. The HP rating seems to be fairly close to that, and... calculator for 4800% of your life comes out within 70 of its life, which is probably caused by rounded numbers we can't see.

OP probably could have worked that out himself, but I may have saved time idk.

[fenixdown]

Oh, yeah, it looks like I forgot to convert from percent to decimal. Thanks for pointing that out for me. As for the skills, I'll add Finer Energy Manipulation and see how it works out. I was still deciding which vanilla trees to add anyway, so that seems like a good one.

Edit: fixed version uploaded, now with Finer Energy Manipulation too. The summons will still have a bunch of resists because they're constructs, and they also get some of your str/dex/con so they may have more hp/etc. than just the percentage.
Probably going to buff the Mind Games tree since it's kind of underwhelming right now, specifically Feint. It will probably get a pretty significant damage boost. Might rework Artful Dodger as well.

[astralInferno]

Given that they start with Beyond the Flesh, starting with a second weapon/a mindstar/a gem might be nice.

That said, that might be important to note: They get beyond the flesh. Probably due to taking Realign. Using this (maybe only if with a weapon?) shifts your weapons to will/cun based. Not sure what you want to do there.

Also, giving a free point of lethality is novel. Might also make sense to give them starting daggers.

Last thing I notice from my entire minute of playing; Sleight of Hand gives you a damage bonus for switching weapons. The damage bonus is one-off and not that big. Switching weapons takes a turn.
This... seems hard to use?

Will return when I've actually played it a bit more.
(SO looking forward to Abomination, it looks so cool)

[fenixdown]

The fact that they get Telekinetic Grasp/Beyond the Flesh is entirely unintentional, basically if you ever pick up any Mindslayer skills then you get those two automatically, and I'm going to get rid of them. That said, Beyond the Flesh is a sustain, so if you want to use your Strength you can just keep it turned off.

Sleight of Hand was designed for back when I was still thinking about making it a dagger class, since dex was a main stat meaning Fast Hands would be a prodigy you'd want to get, also Shantiz. I'm still thinking about this, since I like the idea. And like I said in a previous post I'm probably going to be buffing that tree pretty considerably since the numbers are kind of low at the moment. If you have any thoughts about it, I'd love to hear them.

[Melac]

I get an error whenever I try to make a character, without the "infinite 500" addon also turned on:

Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:86: talent already exists with id T_FEINT
At [C]:-1
At [C]:-1 assert
At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:86 newTalent
At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:38 newTalent
At /data-deceiver/talents/mind-games.lua:20 f
At /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:44 loadDefinition
At /hooks/deceiver/load.lua:8
At [string "return function(l, self, data) local ok=false..."]:1 triggerHook
At /mod/load.lua:265
At [C]:-1 require
At /engine/Module.lua:160 load
At /engine/Module.lua:999 instanciate
At /engine/utils.lua:2221 showMainMenu
At /engine/init.lua:165
At [C]:-1 dofile
At /loader/init.lua:217

Unfortunately, the solution isn't as simple as "keep I500 turned on", because THAT addon is causing other errors to occur for me, currently.