[1.7.6] Puppeteer - Mage Class (v1.0.2)

[Mr Frog]

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

Adds the Puppeteer, a Mage class that manipulates and maintains three puppet companions that fight in their stead. Puppeteers pull the strings of the battlefield from a safe distance, rapidly laying out powerful weapon attacks by proxy through their puppets and letting them intercept the enemy's action in turn. They possess techniques to repair damaged puppets or protect them from harm. No mere conjuror, a Puppeteer is at once tactician, healer, and lynchpin.

Puppeteer talent trees include:
Puppet Warrior: Unleashes devastating melee bursts!
Puppet Archer: Steadily wears foes down from afar!
Puppet Knight: Redirects and absorbs enemy attacks!
Puppet Maintenance: Repair and protect your marionette minions!
Puppetcraft: Fine-tune your bond with your puppets!
Puppet Gladiator (locked): Upgrade your Puppet Warrior to shatter foes with overwhelming force!
Puppet Arbalest (locked): Upgrade your Puppet Archer to inflict crippling wounds!
Puppet Holdfast (locked): Upgrade your Puppet Knight to punish attackers!
Puppet Mage (locked): Gathers energy into destructive magical blasts!
War Puppetry (locked): Channel magic through your puppets to fire lasers or detonate them catastrophically!
Staff Combat (generic)
Divination (generic)
Conveyance (generic, locked)

A charade of life has yet a life of its own, adventurer. Cherish those that lack names. Without them, one is truly alone.

[Mr Frog]

Quick primer guide since this class has a lot to read and understand:
- For your race, pick Shalore (speed, spell crit, CD reduction), Yeek (silence immunity, speed, emergency disable), Higher (damage, resistances, and spell save), Halfling (crit chance and spell save), Ogre (inscription management, crit, spell save), or Cornac (class points).
- Pump Magic first. After that, build a combination of Dexterity so your puppets crit harder and Cunning so your puppets crit more. Willpower makes your puppets tankier but it isn't important at first.
- Unlock Rapid Fire > Shield Rush > Combo Slash > Repair in that order.
- Open fights with Rapid Fire into Shield Rush (you can use 2 puppet talents in a turn), then Combo Slash on the next turn. Channel Staff can serve as filler for dead turns in earlygame.
- On gear, look for Spellpower, Spell Crit, Physical damage boosts, Spell Save, and damage resistances, along with the above mentioned stats. Always attune your staff to Physical.
- Your first category point should go into either Conveyance or an inscription slot. You won't have the class points to spare for advanced trees until later.

Once you're situated and comfortable with how the puppets work, feel free to ignore any or all of the above! Good luck.

[nsrr]

Nice to see you

I will definitely have to check this out

[smithfield]

Its always a good day to see MrFrog return.

When the puppets die, if I understand correctly there's a 10 turn CD to
respawn. Be really nice if that were in the temporary status display, ala the
temporal hounds.

[Mr Frog]

Nice to see you

I will definitely have to check this out

Its always a good day to see MrFrog return.

When the puppets die, if I understand correctly there's a 10 turn CD to
respawn. Be really nice if that were in the temporary status display, ala the
temporal hounds.

Oh shoot I guess I didn't clarify this anywhere, but when a puppet dies it's gone period until your puppets all disappear out of combat or you cast Reconfiguration. I'll think about how to communicate this to the player (the puppet talent description is already about as long as it can feasibly be)

e: If the puppets ARE spontaneously respawning in combat then that is a bug lol

[Caliginosus]

Hey mate!

The polish of this class is incredible! I barely encountered something you could call a bug, the balance is great and the visuals amazing. Stuff like Laser Legion and String Shield look gorgeous. The descriptions are very detailed and there's even stuff like the low life "!". I never had a problem with the Puppets not spawning, not despawning or something like that, which I find impressive.

I played to the East, on Adventurer Insane. I don't enjoy the game that much anymore after reaching the East, so I am not sure if I will continue the character. Maybe I'll start a Gladiator build on EoR, or just another run to the East with a Gladiator/Arbalest.
I went with Cornac. Inscription into Holdfast, Tinker and War Puppetry. Last cat point I'd spend on Puppet Mage. I did not unlock Conveyance, a Blink Rune felt suffice. Went with Adept into MoD.
The class has many ways to play and unlock, I went with a "Holdfast build" because it sounded the most gimmicky and I am not disapointed in my choice.

I use many addons. The most notable for balance reasons are: Selectable Escorts and tankier escorts, free Skill Point and Stat Point allocation (which I only used for unlocks and testing out skills). At the start of the game I picked up 5k gold from the God Merchant. I didn't go for excessive shopping, only bought all infusions and runes at the beginning of the game.


The first few levels were pretty easy with 3 body blockers and attackers. I had my first death in Norgo's. My Puppets went down and it was the first time I realized I didn't know what to do when my Puppets are all down. It was a fun and memorable moment.
My gear was pure trash up until end of T2s but I was able to manage. Survivability around that time felt good, if not a bit bouncy. Single target damage was pretty bad for a long time, which was partly due to the bad gear and probably partly due to me picking the "tanky build".
Second death was in SWL. I spammed wait because I felt strong and save with an Air Recycler.
Survivability of the Puppets felt on point. It is fun to actively cleanse and heal the Puppets. With an active Bastion me and my Puppets were unkillable.
Single target damage felt bad up until end of Dreadfell but very consistent! Now matter how tanky the enemy, I would slowly wittle down anyone in my way.
I even finished Godfeaster without any problem.

All in all the class is very fun to play and build. A cozy amount of offensive skills and a big amount of support and heal. I especially enjoyed having to wager if I can blow up my Holdfast to immediatly respawn it or if I have to keep the respawn CD because the battle ahead is tough.
The class is quite active despite having 3 permanent pets. I do consider this a good thing but it also means I can't just rush trough the very long second part of the game. Not the classes fault though.

I only really encountered one bug, which happens with Puppeteer+Fearscape classes. The Puppets are not teleported into the Fearscape. It's no problem for the player because we have a skill to recall them. But after killing the enemy in the Fearscape, it's minions are left behind as friendly npcs. I couldn't do anything with them but they interupted auto explore.
Also, enemy Puppets show the low life "!" just as the player ones do. It's a bit distracting. Nothing big but probably not intended.

I had one LUA error. I couldn't find anything special that happended at that moment. Maybe it's a conflict with another addon? Anyway, I'll post in just in case:
Lua Error: /engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:351: /engine/interface/Actor.lua:324:/engine/interface/ActorTalents.lua:190: /mod/class/NPC.lua:166: bad argument


Thanks for your work, cheers!

[Mr Frog]

Oh that is a tasty bug, thanks I never thought too hard about what would happen if you were Fearscaped but I'd have assumed that the puppets would travel with you since they're in your party, but I suppose not! I'm morbidly curious what would happen if an enemy Puppeteer gets Fearscaped by the player...

Your options when your puppets are all gone are basically:
a) Scream
b) Cry
c) Use whatever universal tools you possess to get away and reset
This is by design; as you noted, you're pretty safe behind your 3 proxies, so I wanted losing them to be an actual crisis scenario. Without your puppets, you lose nearly all of your kit. It's still pretty simple to use inscriptions or Conveyance to reset the fight, but that's just the nature of a pet class to be able to dump your pets and run.

The class being somewhat dense actionwise is also probably unavoidable since you are essentially playing as a party of 4-5, although I did do my best to keep things moving and automate away busywork; 2 puppet actions per turn the 2nd of which ends your turn, puppets deploying automatically using an algorithm to select good spots, etc

Thank you for donating your time and I'm very glad you enjoyed yourself

[Caliginosus]

So I had another go in EoR.
I feel like there's something inconsistent with debuff and talent usage. I can use Puppet skills while frozen and asleep but confusion can still make those same talents fail. One case suggests Puppet skills are used independently from the player the other one suggests the opposite. Personally I feel like one shouldn't be able to order commands while frozen or asleep, currently those debuffs feel weaker on the Puppeteer than on the average other class.
Another problem I encountered was the Inert feature. Inert Puppets can't be recalled, so any time an enemy pulls me away from a Puppet I have to walk back in range of the Puppet to control it again. Or even worse the path to the Puppet is blocked by enemies so I have to "bury" it out first.
It would be cool if we could recall them or if the leash distance is increased.

[Mr Frog]

Personally I feel like one shouldn't be able to order commands while frozen or asleep, currently those debuffs feel weaker on the Puppeteer than on the average other class.

Oh wow I didn't even realise you can still target things with your commands while frozen. That is absolutely a bug since I don't think you're supposed to be able to project or target outside of your tile at all while you're frozen. Thanks
The oddity with Sleeping, I am assuming, is because your Puppeteering talents are technically instant and only treated as using energy if you have 2 or more Puppeteering stacks when a talent finishes resolving (Sleep locking a talent obviously being decided before you use it). It's consistent with how Sleep works, but I agree that it's a bit unintuitive since Puppeteering talents do very much consume an action resource even when they're not consuming conventional turn energy. I might special case that in
(...It occurs to me that I never bothered testing how Drem Frenzy interacts with Puppeteering talents being sometimes instant. Oops.)

Inert Puppets can't be recalled,

You should very much be able to use Recall Puppets to grab any out-of-range puppets. If that is not happening then that is a bug!
Beyond that I think it's a fair weakness that being separated from your puppets by pulls or knockbacks can be dangerous or disruptive

It would be cool [...] if the leash distance is increased.

No.

The current leash distance of 8 was revealed to me after many months of meditating under a waterfall and consulting astrological charts. Please understand

Thank you for your continued interest, fine individual!

[Kamani]

Delighted to see another addon from you, and this one seems excellent.
Greatly enjoying my run so far. I took Puppet Mage and War Puppetry, and the power of rainbow lasers is great and working very well so far. Also took Through The Crowd, because I've got a theme going (probably take Blighted Summoning next). Just starting Dreadfell, so we'll see if it going well continues. I did notice that it looks like if you run into a Zigguranth patrol, the puppets spawn on the world map, then disappear if anything touches them (and aren't in your party)? Doesn't stop them from working later, so it isn't a real problem, but I figured I'd mention it.
Also, are the puppets supposed to be Animal/Canine type?

Edit: Through The Crowd (and presumably any other methods of taking fractions of a turn) allow for effectively ignoring Puppeteering limitations with using the same target twice and spending a full turn if using two in a row. When you take a tenth of a turn to move with Through The Crowd, it clears Puppeteering, making all of your Puppeteering talents suddenly jump back to 0% use and allowing you to reuse puppets. Seeing as this feels very overpowered, I assume this is unintentional as a combo?

Additional edit: Also, it looks like Through The Crowd breaks Repair and String Shield (presumably they rely on Friendly Fire and Through The Crowd's disabling Friendly Fire breaks them).

[Mr Frog]

I did notice that it looks like if you run into a Zigguranth patrol, the puppets spawn on the world map, then disappear if anything touches them (and aren't in your party)?

That... is very weird. Do you mean if you see a hostile WM NPC at all, or if you get into an ambush and leave?

Also, are the puppets supposed to be Animal/Canine type?

There's actually a lore reason for this; Puppeteers are fraudsters and, instead of being operated by magic, each puppet is actually piloted by a small, but very angry, Pomeranian dog.
(I think I initially C+P'd the puppet base object from the Summoner's dog summon and neglected to change the subtype)

Through The Crowd [...] allow for effectively ignoring Puppeteering limitations with using the same target twice and spending a full turn if using two in a row.

Oh. Just I forgot that TTC exists period There's probably other ways of ending your turn while consuming very little turn energy; I don't consider Movement infusions and similar effects to be problematic since they're self limiting but TTC indeed seems to break the class's structure in a bad way. It's limited by your cooldowns at least?
I think I do want to nerf this but I'm not 100% sure how; I don't want to make Puppeteering have too much of a set turn limit because I don't want to kill turn speed synergy entirely. I might make it so that it won't be cleared until you have spent at least 50% of the time it would take to cast a spell with your current spell and global speed, but that seems potentially confusing to explain and I'm not even sure where I'd explain it (we are already pushing the very upper limit of how much text is practical). I think I'm open to suggestions on this.

Thank you for donating your time

[Darkgobbo]

I just tried a Puppetmaster in the Hammer Campaign and maybe because the fights are a bit more long it really starts hurting if you dont have a Mana rune. I would love if maybe the buffs from the Mage puppet helped with mana regen. That way you can have a sort of built in sustain for longer fights.

Also I am not sure what prodigies work best but I loved picking adept made it easy to hit the 3 skill points on skills I did not care for.

[Mr Frog]

I just tried a Puppetmaster in the Hammer Campaign and maybe because the fights are a bit more long it really starts hurting if you dont have a Mana rune. I would love if maybe the buffs from the Mage puppet helped with mana regen. That way you can have a sort of built in sustain for longer fights.

The class is very much designed on the assumption that you have a Manasurge rune! Beyond that I didn't intend for resource management to be a huge deal since you already are paying attention to the status of 3-4 other actors (you'll notice most of your class spells are extremely cheap!)

I do love the flavor of Puppet Mage giving mana regen, but since removing the metaclass's inscription slot tax would essentially give double the value for your cat point I'd be concerned it'd make the category too valuable. It already looks like it's one of the more common choices judging from the vault (even in a class with 3 innate pets, people will take the category that adds a pet)

Also I am not sure what prodigies work best but I loved picking adept made it easy to hit the 3 skill points on skills I did not care for.

My personal favourite while playtesting was Blighted Summoning since it makes your puppets a bit sturdier and the diseases do quite a bit of damage. I considered giving them a specific BS talent instead of the generic Virulent Disease but it seemed unnecessary

Ethereal Form was also a bit funny; puppets inherit the damage pen and (with Sturdy Craftwork) part of the Absolute resistance, but won't cost stacks when hit, so that's a little neat

as Kamani noted above, right now Through The Crowd of all things is really broken on Puppeteer since it lets you cancel the Puppeteering state and machine gun your puppet skills. I'm still thinking a bit on how to nerf this but it might be funny to try

[Kamani]

I did notice that it looks like if you run into a Zigguranth patrol, the puppets spawn on the world map, then disappear if anything touches them (and aren't in your party)?

That... is very weird. Do you mean if you see a hostile WM NPC at all, or if you get into an ambush and leave?

Got into an ambush and then immediately Rod of Recalled out.

Also, are the puppets supposed to be Animal/Canine type?

There's actually a lore reason for this; Puppeteers are fraudsters and, instead of being operated by magic, each puppet is actually piloted by a small, but very angry, Pomeranian dog.
(I think I initially C+P'd the puppet base object from the Summoner's dog summon and neglected to change the subtype)

Ah, that makes perfect sense.

Through The Crowd [...] allow for effectively ignoring Puppeteering limitations with using the same target twice and spending a full turn if using two in a row.

Oh. Just I forgot that TTC exists period There's probably other ways of ending your turn while consuming very little turn energy; I don't consider Movement infusions and similar effects to be problematic since they're self limiting but TTC indeed seems to break the class's structure in a bad way. It's limited by your cooldowns at least?
I think I do want to nerf this but I'm not 100% sure how; I don't want to make Puppeteering have too much of a set turn limit because I don't want to kill turn speed synergy entirely. I might make it so that it won't be cleared until you have spent at least 50% of the time it would take to cast a spell with your current spell and global speed, but that seems potentially confusing to explain and I'm not even sure where I'd explain it (we are already pushing the very upper limit of how much text is practical). I think I'm open to suggestions on this.

Thank you for donating your time

Making it take 50% of the turn makes sense to me. Could say half the time it takes to cast a spell? It does definitely seem hard to explain without a lot of words. If it doesn't fit well in the Puppeteering description on all of those talents, could maybe put it in the Puppeteer effect description itself? Otherwise it would probably have to go in all of the Puppeteering descriptions.


Edit: Oh, it also looks like Echo Shield can weaken shields under at least some case? I had a 1004 power shield from Arcane Shield, and then it immediately dropped down to 197, my max from Echo Shield, several times in a row (seems to be consistent with that combo).

Edit: Looks like under at least SOME case the Puppets can also actually spawn on the map when you walk into an ambush. I needed to recall them in the ambush, even though they were in my party, and they somehow ended up on the map afterwards (the Puppet Mage was attacking an Orc Patrol, even), and they couldn't be moved by walking into them, which could very rarely be an issue I suppose.

Edit: Got a win with that character: https://te4.org/characters/196824/tome/ ... 627f1e5097
Running every single Puppeteer tree other than Arbalest. I did learn that sadly the Faetouched Maiden's Heart healing effect doesn't work under Through The Crowd either, but thankfully it turns out Short Staff plus Amethyst of Sanctuary is a good combo when you basically always want enemies at least three tiles away anyways. Fights with things with good see invisible weren't great, seeing as my only defense was my puppets what with my shields being destroyed by Echo Shock and being unable to use the Repair line of talents, but there weren't enough of those to stop a win. Definitely not beating any superbosses though (doubt I could anyways, I tried Atamathon and my puppets were just annihilated, didn't exactly build for that).
Very fun run, despite running into a few bugs.

[Mr Frog]

Got an update in the oven but the Fearscape and TTC fixes will require some careful consideration. Please wait warmly

Interestingly, looking at the code, arriving in Fearscape without your puppets is exactly what's supposed to happen; the bugged parts is being able to recall those same puppets to the Fearscape, and leaving broken clones of them behind in the original map