Void Scholar v1.2.4 "Forbidden Chants Three!"

[Mr Frog]

Download: https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/voidscholar_class

Adds the Void Scholar, a twisted Celestial class themed around cosmic expansion and the emptiness of space, featuring a unique starting scenario. Void Scholars are dedicated spellcasters with poor durability, but many ways to negate damage and debilitate foes. Their spells are ineffective against nearby targets, but grow incredibly potent when cast at a distance -- strike from the depths of infinity, where no eyes or blades can reach! They use a unique resource called "Void Energy" that is built up by casting certain spells and quickly disperses when out of combat, requiring careful management to retain momentum.

Unique talent trees:
Logia (generic): Three forbidden chants to turn away slings, arrows, and everything else!
Void (generic): Render foes impotent before the majesty of the Void!
Vacuum: Draw upon the cosmic vacuum to replenish your resources!
Dilation: Pull space apart like putty to shred your foes!
Chaos: Crumble away your foes' defenses with the Void's power!
Collapse: Slowly crush enemies down to nothing under the Void's relentless weight!
Subspace: Ride and shape the Void to control the battlefield!
Dissolution: Dissolve away the material world to erode the strength of those who oppose you!
Genesis (locked): Repaint the world in your image to build overwhelming power!
Hyperspace (locked): Stretch and bend the universe to resculpt existence and unleash untold destruction!
Terminus (locked): Bring the slow, inevitable doom of the universe upon your foes!

All things come to an end, adventurer. Those who place themselves above the slow march of the cosmos should take heed not to stand upon nothing.

[Mr Frog]

Quick li'l hotfix to address the game exploding violently when you step in poison water with Logia of Dysnomy active (thank you Recaiden for reporting this!)

Changes for v1.0.1:
- Void Stargazer's graphic should now load correctly (the file extension was capitalised, which works fine when loading from my working folder but breaks when loading from the uploaded .teaa :V)
- Logia of Dysnomy now properly checks if the damage source has an actual defined position (damn you poison water!)
- Fully disabled self-damage from Logia Enigma just in case (there are some corner cases where the player might block damage from a source that is not themself but shares the same position)

[Seventeer]

nothing but not enough damage.

[Megika]

Cool class, cheers for uploading! It feels a little weak so far but it's very complicated so maybe I just need to learn it good.

Logia of Dysnomy does not reduce Flame Spit damage from ritch flamespitters. I assume this is a bug (it's a mindpower, right?)

[Mr Frog]

I certainly have been getting complaints that the class is underpowered early on. I might nerf the starting boss a bit in particular but I'm gonna let it sit for a while first since I suspect the core issue is that I might have made the class a bit much to digest at first. As always, rebalances are to be expected this shortly after release. Keep doing your best everyone

[Mr Frog]

Cool class, cheers for uploading! It feels a little weak so far but it's very complicated so maybe I just need to learn it good.

Logia of Dysnomy does not reduce Flame Spit damage from ritch flamespitters. I assume this is a bug (it's a mindpower, right?)

I don't think Spit Flames is properly set as a mindpower in the code unfortunately. Lots of NPC talents have somewhat nonsensical flags due to being quite old in some cases and not really player-facing (my favorite is Brecklorn's Spit Blight being a wildgift and nature power despite... everything). Might special-case some of those in if they become a problem.

[visage]

I certainly have been getting complaints that the class is underpowered early on. I might nerf the starting boss a bit in particular but I'm gonna let it sit for a while first since I suspect the core issue is that I might have made the class a bit much to digest at first.

My experience is that the first boss isn't a problem, it's more enemies with Rush and similar before your "go away" and escape tools are online. Swapping the order of some talents so you can better clear space around you at 4 rather than 8 would help that early game. Alternatively, perhaps make more of the early defensive abilities like Antiphase and Nullify into instants. ...or maybe we should all be playing DoomElfs.

Oh, and perhaps make Erode's radius increase with investment so that at low levels it's easier to use without hitting yourself.

[Arcvasti]

Logia (generic): Three forbidden chants to turn away slings, arrows, and everything else!

Use these THREE forbidden chants to protect yourself from projectiles! Archers hate us!

[Mr Frog]

My experience is that the first boss isn't a problem, it's more enemies with Rush and similar before your "go away" and escape tools are online. Swapping the order of some talents so you can better clear space around you at 4 rather than 8 would help that early game. Alternatively, perhaps make more of the early defensive abilities like Antiphase and Nullify into instants. ...or maybe we should all be playing DoomElfs.

Oh, and perhaps make Erode's radius increase with investment so that at low levels it's easier to use without hitting yourself.

I believe all of your space-making skills are unlocked by level 4 besides Subduction and Tesseract (also Hypersphere unless you're Cornac but that's more supplemental). Still, I think I understand the sentiment you're conveying and it's pretty valid. I might bump Void Walk up a bit so its more effective at lower levels. (Still gonna let the class mellow a bit before I start throwing buffs around)

As for Erode having less AoE at lower levels... mmm, that's definitely intriguing I don't personally like the idea of a talent that has a drawback associated with ranking it up (in this case becoming harder to find space for it) but something about the concept is nevertheless quite attractive

[phoenixred80]

I think you need to somehow make sure that the racial starting zone for undead is given priority over the starting zone of Void Scholar. Otherwise everything is hostile and a level 50 master obliterates you.
In specific I started as a Banshee (Recaiden's Undead Pack) Void Scholar and this was the result.

[Mr Frog]

I think you need to somehow make sure that the racial starting zone for undead is given priority over the starting zone of Void Scholar. Otherwise everything is hostile and a level 50 master obliterates you.
In specific I started as a Banshee (Recaiden's Undead Pack) Void Scholar and this was the result.

Fug, someone reported the issue with Banshee already but I forgot. It'd actually be extremely simple (probably, no guarantees obviously) to just blanket check if the race is an undead and/or needs the Cloak of Deception so this doesn't happen. That's gonna be in the next update hopefully (which might contain balance changes, or might not).

[Megika]

I agree with the other feedback, the starter zone boss was not oppressive (on Insane), just required some kiting/healing.

The early parts were a big struggle, I felt very stretched to get damage/survivability/CC/resources. Resources are really important because you can only generate in-combat. IDK, maybe I would have had it easier with a couple extra points in Disrupt/Erode/Filament instead of spreading that much; something like +1 to Voidwalk moves at level 1, and maybe some slight tweaks to early damage, could be appropriate.

Once I got both Hyperspace and Genesis things became much smoother. I think maybe Hyperspace shouldn't be able to trigger Visage, it can produce a lot of clones. I guess you might already know that since you capped the Megalotheos bonus at 20(!!!) clones

I really like Logia Enigma. It's very enjoyable.

The visual representation of Negative Pressure is very cool but I think it's a bit too much. Maybe consider reducing the speed of the animation? Or just more transparent/slightly smaller.

[Mr Frog]

I agree with the other feedback, the starter zone boss was not oppressive (on Insane), just required some kiting/healing.

The early parts were a big struggle, I felt very stretched to get damage/survivability/CC/resources. Resources are really important because you can only generate in-combat. IDK, maybe I would have had it easier with a couple extra points in Disrupt/Erode/Filament instead of spreading that much; something like +1 to Voidwalk moves at level 1, and maybe some slight tweaks to early damage, could be appropriate.

Once I got both Hyperspace and Genesis things became much smoother. I think maybe Hyperspace shouldn't be able to trigger Visage, it can produce a lot of clones. I guess you might already know that since you capped the Megalotheos bonus at 20(!!!) clones

I really like Logia Enigma. It's very enjoyable.

The visual representation of Negative Pressure is very cool but I think it's a bit too much. Maybe consider reducing the speed of the animation? Or just more transparent/slightly smaller.

Yeah, Negative Pressure strides a fine line between giving a good visual of how your surroundings are impacting the bonus vs. preserving visual pristinity.

I am very much considering increasing Voidwalk by 1 move specifically so that it's better to make space at low levels

I did very much want Visage to be able to swamp the field with clones (fwiw I also softcapped the amount of clones by making them harder to summon after a specific threshold) but it definitely can probably use work to get it closer to a 'just right" point where you feel motivated to get more clones summoned without completely breaking the game in half in the process



Lil update to fix the undead starts and make Negative Pressure less counterproductive:

Changes for v1.0.2:
- Redesigned Negative Pressure somewhat; it no longer gives negative incdam and respen if too many tiles are occupied. Instead, it now grants no bonus if 2 or fewer tiles are open, and scales up the bonus from 3-8 open tiles. The maximum bonuses have also been increased to account for the difficulty in finding and maintaining an entirely empty 3x3 area.
- Undead starts are no longer overridden (should work with addon races as long as they properly set the true_undead field)

[visage]

I did very much want Visage to be able to swamp the field with clones

I'll do my best!

[Mr Frog]

I did very much want Visage to be able to swamp the field with clones

I'll do my best!

I'm thinking of making Visage's chance of successfully triggering on a crit continue to fall off as your number of clones increases, in return for Megalotheos having its hard cap removed (because hard caps aren't really what the class is about )

For now, I have a small hotfix release!

Changes for v1.0.3:
- Removed a stray file that resulted in Point Zero being overwritten by a broken copy of Terminus Sanctum, resulting in chronomancers exploding violently upon creation