ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This addon adds a new metaclass, the Mage Knight, which focuses on combining physical and magical combat, generally along a specific theme. It includes three classes - the Phoenix Knight, the Mind Knight, and the Storm Knight.

Mage Knights use both Stamina and Mana (or Stamina and Psi for Mind Knights). They aren't true mages; wielding supernatural powers is physically exhausting for them as well as a drain on their magical/psionic energy. Mechanically, resource limits are meant to be one of the primary weaknesses of the class, allowing them to have mage-level ranged and area attacks without letting them be really dominating ranged combatants. Their generic talents encourage them to get into melee in most cases, where they can trigger spells with lower cooldowns and mitigate stamina costs.

Mage Knights are capable with any style of melee weapon; their generic talents often have different effects depending on what fighting style they are using, and they have (locked) access to the primary trees of the primary melee weapon styles.

Most Mage Knight sustains are instant use, 0 cooldown, and have stamina costs that increase with talent level.

Basic Trees: Mage Knights have the following basic trees available:
Combat Training.
Combat Techniques.
Survival.
Two Handed Offense (Locked).
Shield Offense (Locked).
Dual Weapon Attack (Locked).
Staff Combat or Mindstar Mastery.

Foundation Trees: Each Mage Knight class also has access to a pair of class trees drawn from other classes that match their power set - an unlocked tree and a locked level 10 tree. Because that's way easier than creating two more trees per class, and provides a few more build options.

Phoenix Knight
Fire - Unlocked.
Wildfire - Locked.

Mind Knight
Psychic Assault - Unlocked.
Grip - Locked.
Note that while acquiring the Grip tree can provide a Mind Knight with telekinetic wielding, trying to wield a weapon telekinetically while simultaneously channeling psychic power through your weapons is distracting; Eldritch Combat and Eldritch Surge are noticeably weakened while wielding a weapon telekinetically. It's still generally going to be a nice damage boost, but it doesn't come without cost.

Storm Knight
Air - Unlocked.
Storm - Locked.

Generic Trees: All Mage Knight classes includes the following generic trees:

Combat Casting: Allows the Mage Knight to combine physical and magical combat.
Eldritch Combat: A modified version of Arcane Combat, which adds some Arcane damage to attacks (at the cost of Mana/Psi) when it doesn't trigger (damage increased when the talent isn't active at all). Of note is that Eldritch Combat quarters cooldowns, rather than ignoring them, and applies to a wider variety of spells, which it selects from semi-tactically, favoring defense/healing spells when low on life. Different fighting styles get different advantages when using Eldritch Combat. The effect is reduced when using staves (although the proc bonus can offset and eventually overcome the penalty).
Eldritch Body: While sustained, increases your Strength a percentage of your highest mental stat. If you unlock certain fighting style trees, a portion of the bonus will be converted to other scores.
Eldritch Aura: While sustained, provides a boost to combat power and saves (Physical and either Spell or Mind depending on class), some modest resource regen, and light radius, 'cause it's a big glowy aura.
Eldritch Surge: Briefly boost various stats, more stats and higher boost with more talent levels.

Weapons Master: General melee attack abilities. They start a bit below 100% damage and scale up at the same rate. If one of these attacks triggers Eldritch Combat, they will always trigger a certain attack spell, if available.
Focused Strike: Single attack that works at range and boosts one of your stats, based on fighting style. Triggers a Bolt.
Sweeping Strike: Attack in frontal arc that imposes a negative effect, based on fighting style. Triggers a Wave.
Whirlwind Strike: Attack all adjacent and gain a positive effect, based on fighting style. Triggers a Burst.
Rapid Strike: Attack twice and cause a scaled effect, based on fighting style. Triggers a Blast.

Phoenix Knight Class Trees: The Phoenix Knight class includes the following class trees:

Phoenix Fire: Basic attack spells, each with their own areas. They don't harm friendlies. They deal half fire and half light damage (tip: turn OFF Eldritch Combat when you encounter Luminous/Radiant Horrors). Cause a special effect at talent level 3.
Solar Bolt: Beam attack. Burns at level 3.
Solar Wave: Cone attack, area increases with talent level. Blinds at level 3.
Solar Burst: Burst attack, centered on you, area increases with talent level. Removes effects at level 3.
Solar Blast: Burst attack, ranged, area increases with talent level. Heals allies within at level 3.

Phoenix Ascendance: General defensive and supportive effects. These are not considered spells.
Phoenix Heart: Sustain to gain Fire, Light, Blind, and Fear Resist.
Phoenix Regeneration: Passively boosts Life Regen while Phoenix Heart is sustained. Activate for a Regeneration effect.
Phoenix Wings: While Phoenix Heart is sustained, provides flaming wings that have a chance to flash with differently colored fires as enemies damage you. Low amounts of damage are blocked by the wings, which either flash red and reflect the damage back on the attacker, or flash golden and convert it to healing (determined randomly based on current life). If the damage exceeds this threshhold, it isn't blocked, but the wings will instead flash orange and reciprocate a percentage of the damage upon the attacker, or flash white and suppress a percentage of the damage. The talent has a low cost, low cooldown activation that guarantees protection against all attacks for a turn, and substantially boosts the damage threshhold during that time.
Phoenix Soul: Sustain to gain Healing Mod and reduce all damage taken by a certain amount, capped by your current life regen. There is a small stamina cost for each instance of damage reduced.

Phoenix Light: Provides the Phoenix Knight's specialty of healing and augmentative effects.
Light of Healing: Targeted heal, becomes instant-cast at level 3.
Corona of Glory: Call up to one foe per talent level in radius into melee range, and force them to target you. As talent level increases, provides illumination, reduces stealth, and eventually dazes foes in the area.
Fires of Cleansing: Removes negative effects.
Glory Rising: Increases the duration of a few beneficial effects active upon you.

Mind Knight Class Trees: The Mind Knight class includes the following class trees. Mind Knight talents are mind powers, not spells.

Psychic Attack: Functionally similar to Phoenix Fire. Mind Knights randomly deal Telekinetic (Physical) or Telepathic (Mind) damage. Each one has different status effects beginning at talent level 3.
Psychic Bolt: Telekinesis causes Bleed, Telepathy reduces Mind Save and Mind Resistance.
Psychic Wave: Telekinesis causes Knockback, Telepathy causes Blindness.
Psychic Burst: Telekinesis causes Stun, Telepathy causes Confuse.
Psychic Blast: Telekinesis causes Pin, Telepathy causes Daze.

Psychic Body: General defensive and supportive sustains.
Fortress of Will: Provides Mind, Disarm, Confusion, and Sleep Resistance.
Biokinesis: Boosts Life Regen (not as much as Phoenix Regeneration) and provides Cut, Disease, and Poison resist, and movement speed.
Telekinetic Shielding: Increases armor and defense. If you know Beyond the Flesh, it instead provides a chance to make a telekinetic counter-attack when attacked in melee.
Hypercognition: Provides See Invisibility, See Through Stealth, Physical/Mental Crit Chance, and a constant Sense effect.

Psychic Gifts: Provides various utility powers.
Dimensional Jump: Short-range targeted teleport. As talent levels increase, can teleport others and teleport multiple targets. Instant use if you only make a single teleport.
Astral Projection: Arcane Eye effect, more talent levels let it sense more things.
Mind Bomb: Area burst that can cause several status effects.
Psychic Dominance: Take control of non-elite foes, up to one per talent level at a time. They will revert back to normal at the end though.

Storm Knight Class Trees: The Storm Knight class includes the following class trees:

Storm Invocation: Continuing the pattern.
Storm Bolt: Beam attack that deals Lightning damage. Also chains at level 3.
Storm Wave: Cone attack that deals Physical damage, area increases with talent level. Knockback at level 3 (confuses instead if triggered by Eldritch Combat).
Storm Burst: Burst attack that deals Lightning/Physical damage, centered on you, area increases with talent level. Grants that Lightning Rune teleporty defense thing at level 3.
Storm Blast: Burst attack that deals Lightning/Physical/Nature damage, ranged, area increases with talent level. At level 3, creates a brief lingering stormcloud that blinds, slows, and damages.

Storm Channeling: The Storm Knight sustain suite.
Embrace the Storm: Grants Lightning Resistance and cap, Pinning and Stun Resistance, and slows projectiles.
Lightning Blade: Boosts crit mult and physical crit chance, also turns your Eldritch Combat damage to Lightning (with a daze chance) rather than Arcane.
Storm Skirmisher: On any turn you begin in a new square, you recover some stamina and lower the cooldown of some Storm Knight talents by 1. Physical crits also give you a temporary movement speed boost.
Whirlwind Dervish: Every time you move, you attack a nearby enemy at reduced damage at the cost of 5 Stamina. These attacks do not benefit from Eldritch Combat, and only apply once per round per foe. Many special forms of movement, however, will trigger them.

Storm Walker: Mobility, mobility, mobility.
Wind Stride: Provides a substantial movement speed boost for a short time, at higher levels also removes pins and slows.
Thunder Charge: Rush an enemy. A hit detonates a shockwave of thunder that damages and stuns the target and those nearby.
Cloud Leap: Instant movement that also grants temporary Defense and Evasion.
Lightning Ride: Teleport randomly a long distance. The flash of lightning as you arrive causes several effects to help ensure that enemies nearby aren't in a good position to attack you while you're presumably vulnerable.

I'm trying to make this addon as compatible as I can, and catch as many bugs as I can. I think I got most of them, but no promises there. I also want to make the classes fairly well-balanced, aiming roughly for the vicinity of the Arcane Blade. In comparison, they should deal less raw damage, but the Phoenix Knight should make up for it with superior defense and recovery options, while the Mind Knight has better scouting and debuffs, and the Storm Knight has superior mobility.

As always, any suggestions, comments, and ideas are much appreciated!

Download Link

Well congratulations on releasing the first class addon. At first glance this class seems very un orthodox. This currently clashes a fair bit with the game but that is subjective. Its an interesting idea to give out a bunch of talents from other classes. I would personally suggest giving them the actual trees. This will make balancing easier because there are fewer things that change build from build. Currently This class seams to benefit from hitting things a lot, a fun build is is be ghoul and get insane defense and riposte everything to death with spells. This means that shields outshine the other styles (certainly two handers for sure). also I don't think arcane combat procs on ranged attacks so I would suggest leaving that out entirely ( also hurts the theme slightly)

I know who have some theme here and that is really great, I would try to give this guy some variety in terms damage types. I know he gets Resistance penetration but I can see this guy getting steam rolled by a Red dragon far portal boss.

that is what comes to mind from a cursory glance and a quick play with this. I hope I can get a more in depth look in the near future.

oh random code note. you can use damDesc if you replace it with Talents.damDesc. Also sense these guys have no relation with arcane blades in terms of spells I would avoid merging with arcane combat and use a hook instead.

This is a very unique class, and fun to play (up to level 10 at least, can't speak for past that). I really like that all of the sustained skills are instant cast, in fact, I think that that is one thing tat should be brought over to the main game for most sustains (but that's the subject for a different thread).

Many of the activated talents being instant as well was an interesting decision, in that it changes decision making of the class partly from being based on time (what is the single best thing to do this turn?) to resource management and influencing the weapon procs (using a talent means that it won't be triggered by weapon strikes, for good or for bad). This took some getting used to, but it seems to work well.

My build was very starved for generic points in the early levels, investing in Weapons Master and Knight magery, without having any left for Combat Training. I would look at switching Weapons Master into a class tree, and Solar Cleansing to generic, as most healing trees are generic, and almost all damage skills are class.

Back to the Weapons Master tree: a strategy that I believe would be very, very powerful for the investment would be to invest one point in each of Shield Offense, Shield Defense, Archery Training, as well as maybe Two Handed Maiming (for Vitality). This would give the player good stamina and mana recovery in combat from Resolve and Stoneshield, as well as instant weapon swaps from Celerity, (and 3 accuracy, 4 armour, and +5% movement speed) all for just 3 points invested, which is worthwhile regardless of the weapons the player focuses on. The non-base-tree talents could be moved to the level 5 position instead of being available right away, but I haven't thought it through much.

A single point investment in Imbue Solar Fire is currently worthless, except as a stepping stone. At level 1, Burning Fires reduces the damage by more than it adds in burning damage, as well as increasing the cooldown and cost.

This is a very unique and enjoyable class so far, it's good to see the potential of addons being realized.

PS: nitpick about the download: you zipped the folder containing all the files, like so:
Zip File -> tome-mageknight folder -> data, init, overload etc...
If you compress the files directly, without a containing folder, the zip file can be renamed as a .teaa, and used without decompressing.

Don't forget corrupted strength!!

It looks like the class gets all the one point wonders with just one point of investment of these talents. So you can pretty much pick and choose everyone's best one point wonder talents as lukep mentioned at a minimum investment.

Celerity, Resolve, Stone Shield, and Corrupted Strength I think are the biggest offenders especially since they're all passive. They're all highly specialized and class defining skills which makes them very powerful in their own right and even more powerful when you start combining them. I'd drop them personally and have rank five give you a second rank in the other four skills. But it's an add-on and your class so I'm not sure how much of a concern balance really is for you.

I really like the concept of the class though

Thanks for the input, all!

Dropping archery may be a good idea. They already have magic for range anyway, so it does seem kind of redundant, now that you mention it.

The Weapons Master tree in general may not have been the best way to do what I'm trying to do. I see how stacking up the one-point abilities might be too much. To be honest, Corrupted Strength was actually kind of the seed reason for all that; most of the mage knight characters I've thought about for like D&D and the like did the dual-wielding one-handed weapons thing. The fact that dual-wielding seems really advantageous to these guys just made it seem to fit. Admittedly, adding the various options was pretty much just tacked on for customization options, so I probably didn't give it the consideration it warranted.

Perhaps, though, a better thing to do would be to create a separate talent tree for combat that is weapon-independent. Give them a dual-wield one-handed option that works differently from Reavers somehow, and drop the cherry-picking options, so I'm not stepping on other classes' toes.

The points about being all-fire-all-the-time and a one-point Imbue are both good ones too. Probably the solution there would be, push the Imbues up a tier, add a first level one that converts, say, 10% + 10%/talent level Solar Fire damage from Fire to Light, either at no major cost (other than eating up your Imbue) or maybe for just a little damage penalty.

I was looking at the damDesc thing for a while and could not figure out what you meant, but I remember now that I was having errors with the damDesc in the info functions and just went and copied the function to all my talents pages. So use Talents.damDesc instead, got it. Thanks! I'll probably wind up updating this with these changes, so I'll also try and zip it more efficiently when I do (I did try to just zip it as .teaa, but the forum didn't accept it...still zipped the folder though, so not even sure if it would have worked if it had...)

Anyway, lots of really helpful suggestions. Thanks again!

Poking around in the talents, I found a few bugs:

The on-learn effect of archery utility and archery training gives you -3 accuracy, not +3. (unlearning also gives -3, as expected)

Eldritch body activation and description do not match, activation is 0.05 * talent * stat, description is 0.10 * talent * stat.

Using Eldritch Combat with Blast Shaping (IIRC) causes the ball to explode at the end of the range, missing the enemies.

Imbuing healing or cleansing into Solar Fire does not allow them to hit you (though it does say "allies", so it may be intended)

The description of Arcane Combat is not right anymore, replacing it with the code below fixes the number, but the words still don't fit perfectly. Attempting to unlearn Imbue Solar Fire gives a lua error and does not return the point invested. (but it is still unlearned)

You can gain sustains from Stance Mastery by investing in a weapon skill to get lvl 1 in the talent, improving Stance Mastery, then unlearning the weapon skill. For example, getting level 3 two handed offense, then putting a level into Stance Mastery I, then unlearning two handed offense, results in your character still having 1 level in Berserker. Changing the skill to the code below fixes this, as well as changing the behaviour of Stance Mastery so that it no longer matters when you invest in it. (Stance Mastery code was not changed)

EDIT: new, much cleaner code:
Hope this helps.

Got it, I'll have to do some tweaking on those. Thanks!

I love the concept of the class, but I have a question. I created a level 50 character to kind of plan out my points, and as a Dwarf Phoenix Knight I had a maximum life of 308 without boosting anything. Is the class supposed to be that low on HP? Most mage types have about three times that at level 50.

I think that the problem occurs with the life_rating of the class being put into the copy {} section of knight.lua, rather than copy_add {}. Messing around with it and putting it into copy_add resulted in the character having ~1300 life at level 50, which seems more reasonable for this style of character.

Nope, that doesn't sound right. Probably just me not quite knowing everything about how the code works yet. Good catch!




I've implemented some changes, going to test them a bit before posting the updated version. Basically, added Radiant Fires as a new first imbue, which converts to light damage while active, pushing all others up. I've also added Bolt Shaping as a fourth targeting option, and Pulse Shaping as a fifth, both change the attack to single target, with Bolt giving a hefty damage boost, and Pulse reducing damage but lowering cooldown and mana costs. I think I also got all the bugs and issues mentioned above.

Biggest change was to Weapons Master. It's now a separate tree with four combat talents. Focused Strike, which is a single attack with a physical power based damage bonus and a bit of mana recovery. Tactical Strike, which is an attack with a debuff on the target. Rapid Strike, attacks twice and causes a special effect if both hit. And Whirlwind Strike, your basic attack everyone around you which also gives a special effect to or for each target hit.

All four techniques have some different effect depending on the type of weapon you're using (two handed, dual weapon, weapon/shield, and single weapon). The bonus damage/mana of focused strike changes, the debuff of Tactical Strike varies, and the special effects of Rapid Strike and Whirlwind Strike. I also adjusted Eldritch Combat to bring the other styles up to par with dual weapon regarding it; since dual weapon gives two separate chances to trigger, I set two hander trigger whatever it does twice, weapon/shield triggers a spellsurge any time it triggers anything, and one hander just flat doubles the chance of triggering. I think all four styles should be, if not equally viable, at least competitive with each other.

I'm not sure if the additional options that switching weapons allows means I'll need to go in and require, say, purchasing a one-point generic talent for each weapon type's benefits to apply, but since switching takes a turn anyway, I think it's reasonable and adds some nice tactical options for a real "weapons master" style character, which is a fun archetype.

Dual-wielding two one-handers is still in, because it's so iconic in my mind. I did just set the variable to "yes" rather than giving them actual Corrupted Strength. I was hoping to actually adjust things so when they did it they would deal 60% with each weapon, rather than 100%/50% (which would bring it more in line with two handed fighting and keep Reavers strictly superior at it), but I couldn't find a way to do it without overloading the combat.lua page, and I'm trying this time to keep overloading to a minimum for compatibility purposes.

Avianpilot wrote:I had a maximum life of 308 without boosting anything.

So that is why I had such low hp ^_^.

Wings of Protection also seemed buggy, with the damage returning that did not show up in the log.

Eldritch Combat could trigger wings of protection. The description is not very specific about what spells would work: "one of various Mage Knight spells" can be triggered. I don't think I ever got the healing spell triggered?

marvalis wrote:Eldritch Combat could trigger wings of protection. The description is not very specific about what spells would work: "one of various Mage Knight spells" can be triggered. I don't think I ever got the healing spell triggered?

Eldritch Combat varies which spells can be cast and their chances based on HP remaining, as follows (spoilers):

100%-75% HP: Solar Fire (x5), Corona of Awe, Corona of Power, Wings of Protection, Spellsurge
75%-50% HP: Solar Fire (x4), Corona of Awe, Corona of Power, Wings of Protection, Solar Healing, Fires of Cleansing, Spellsurge
50%-25% HP: Solar Fire (x3), Wings of Protection (x2), Solar Healing, Fires of Cleansing, Spellsurge
25%-10% HP: Solar Fire (x2), Wings of Protection (x2), Solar Healing (x2), Fires of Cleansing (x2), Spellsurge
< 10% HP: Solar Fire, Wings of Protection (x2), Solar Healing (x2), Fires of Cleansing (x2), Spellsurge

As you can see, the chances of healing spells goes up the less HP you have, and the chance of offensive skills goes down. I think that this is a very well designed system, combining both randomness and intelligence effectively.

I think the reason Wings of Protection acts weird is because I'm using src.takeHit for the returned damage. I guess it should be...what...a damageProjector?

Great addon, had a blast playing with this char, got him up to the prides, then got killed multiple times by necro guys. The -Darkness resist really hurts there.
Still, great class, a bit OP (crazy AOE damage).
Hope to see some updates here

The -darkness is probably unbalanced, unless you make the skill into a sustain instead of passive.

Glad you like it! The cold/dark/blight vulnerability are in part to balance out the wealth of resistances that Phoenix Soul gives, although in terms of class flavor, I do more envision phoenix knights as not being able to regenerate from those things, rather than being vulnerable to them. I'll see if I can figure out how to code it so attacks with those elements turn off Phoenian Regeneration instead, but that still leaves Phoenix Soul giving tons of resistances. Maybe I'll take a cue from wyrmics and spread the resistances out as passives tacked on to other abilities.

Their area damage does get fairly serious, especially once you have enough mana to start pumping Solar Fire Flurry more routinely. And I think I have multiple burns from Fires of Burning stacking, which they probably shouldn't be. Would that help matters, or is their raw damage just too high?

I've pretty much got the mind knight class set as well, but the file's too big with both to post to the forums. So, once I make these tweaks and maybe do a bit more testing on the mind knight, I'll have to see about getting access to posting on the site itself, I suppose.