ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Are there any good, up to date, guides, or preferably frameworks, for building modules. (I see plenty in this section but have no idea which ones might be depreciated or which are easiest for someone to work with)

Way back in Beta 19 I was working on a demon race (the necromancer did not even exist yet- so I could not see a clean way to introduce them into the game; now with necromancers and necromancer lore 'get necromancer to level 30 == unlock demons!'). The idea behind them was that they were a terrible race, bad in every category, reduced stat points, massively increased EXP gain some fire resistance, vulnerability to everything else- but they had a unique racial ability that made up for it; the ability to siphon souls from killed foes, and use those to augment themselves (more stat points, more skill points, more catagory points, increase resistance, increase immunities, increase resistance maximums, increase hit points, increase armor, increase resource points, remove need to breathe, increase regens);

The balance concept being that if you took a balanced approach to spending your souls and did not go out of you way to harvest in excess (just do your core dungeons rather then every dungeon)- they would be about the same as any other race for a given point in the game (which is to say they would weigh in higher per level due to their EXP penalty); but with so many ways to spend your soul points no two demons need take the same build, even if they have the same class (Example: You get hosed by the RNG on any equipment with decent stun/freeze immunity early on, so you spend you souls on raising that; late game you are not as powerful as someone who found good stun/freeze immunity gear- but you have extra slots 'free' for better equipment lacking stun/freeze immunity. You play the same demon/class combo, but get good stun/freeze immunity right off; so invest your souls in more stat points, late game you need to keep wearing stun/freeze immunity gear, but you have superior stats to your last naturally stun/freeze immune run).

Demons would be less effective then a traditional race if you rushed bosses and did not kill everything on all levels.

Demons would be more effective then a traditional race if you did all dungeons available (the soul gain being rather static would eclipse the reduced EXP gain from doing lower reward dungeons after having already out-leveled them)

Now if someone really likes this concept and wants to give me specific pointers, I am all ears, and I'm having a bit of trouble with the gathering souls concept. I could make it another resource that never depletes unless used and has no maximum (or an insanely high maximum). But I was actually thinking of making it an item 'tormented soul crystal' or similar. Is there any way for a racial ability or talent to force the drop of an item that would otherwise never show up in that creatures drop list? Could the number of that item dropped be scaled for creature type (IE 1 for criiters, 10 for unique bosses)?

The place that I would look for inspiration for this would be the alchemist ingredient dropping code. The starting quest could be modified from the alchemists quests, and make the (modified) monsters drop items. The soul drops can be different for different monsters, but it would take a lot of manual editing and replaced files unless you found a more efficient way of doing it.

Another way to do it would be to go the resource route, and draw inspiration from Necromancers necrotic minions. I'm not very familiar with Necromancers, so I can't go into much more detail there.

As for a starting point, I believe that all of the addons in this forum are up to date and compatible with b37. You can also get good support from the IRC channel (linked in General Discussion).

Soul Harvesting really just sounds like an XP system.

So a really simple way to do it would be instead of giving them an XP penalty give them a second Soul Harvesting 'level' and split all experience rewards between character level and the racial level. This would be fairly easy to code and probably fairly simple to balance since the expected Soul level at a given character level could easily be tweaked based on the nature of the XP split (personally I'd start with 50/50 and see how it feels, simply because any other split will eventually become irrelevant after the character hits level 50, assuming both cap at 50 anyway).

From that, you could build a racial 'talent' tree (or many trees) and have the character gain 'Soul' points as he gained racial levels. Structurally this could work much like class and generic talent points do with normal experience levels.

Haven't got many suggestions for now - might post more later - but you COULD instead make this a race class(like Runic Golems are planned to be, eventually).
Basically, have the Demon race force the Demon class, which you should however give A LOT of talents.
Or you could have a few(say, 3)demon-only classes, meaning Demons must pick from these 3 and no others.

Making it a resource and filling it up like Hate would probably be the simplest approach. You can fake an infinite resource pretty easily, I think; you'd just need to display it on a non-linear scale so that you never visually reach the maximum (paradox/equilibrium might do this already). Making it closer to experience might be the best route, though.

Here's a general overhaul that might be easier to implement or more natural to play:

-Demons do not gain experience or levels.
-However, they do gain "soul" or "spirit" power, which is essentially the same as XP. (it could be a simple display change)
-Soul power is spent on specific rewards - stat points, class/generic points, immunities, resistances, etc.
-Reward costs scale much the same as leveling costs (you could look at level 50 total stat/talent points and regress a line against level XP requirements to figure out the relative costs for those bonuses; immunities and resistances are trickier).

Alternatively you could drop the whole "demon" thing entirely and call it a Mimic or something. What you have described sounds very interesting but it doesn't particularly scream "demon" to me. I think it should be very possible to implement this; the harder part is balancing the costs on the soul investments.

Yeah, demons have a pretty specific place in the game setting and they have lore already.

That said these could be a specific race of demons that are almost parasitic or vampiric mimics in nature. Just realize that calling them 'demons' probably isn't good enough. They could have the demon flag and a demonic sounding name (Dollegs and Duatheldans to name a couple that are already in the game) and could certainly be demons themselves.

But the concept of a demon (by ToME standards) that's adept at shapeshifting into other races and mimicking all sorts of different traits would solve a lot of the issues of how these guys fit into the game world. If they're able to make themselves look like a cornac then people would accept them as cornacs.

As to the unlock, corruptors borrow a lot of demon magic. Necromancers do not.

ok:

Lore- Admittedly my knowledge of the in game lore is pretty limited, so feel free to keep posting corrections/concerns about my treatment of such.

First- why necromancer LV 30 == demon unlock: part of the necromancer lore in game is that for whatever reason powerful necromancy attracts/brings forth/weakens the walls causing demons to start moping about; if you feel there is a better way to bring about there playability I will most certainly listen (though perhaps it's a moot point until I have a working demon, the mechanics on how you get it is pretty minor)

Second- Souls aren't they just another EXP?; Yes, they are another EXP, or rather another growth point; but unlike EXP souls care less about the power of the creature killed, only its rank- and even the weakest creature will provide a reasonable fraction compared to a unique boss (Right now I have it pegged at 1/10th)- so a PC interested in growing there soul base would be more interested in kill 1000 easy enemies that would award no EXP as opposed to 100 hard enemies and a boss that would award a lot of EXP; second it is a growth point that will allow changes in directions not normally available through level/skill assignment

Third - Be careful about existing demon lore; It was my understanding that the demons are consuming entities that seem to have a particular affiliation with torment and corruption; what do they get out of this, just food? Something more? I went with something more. If there are specific reference on the demon lore in game you think I should read? Feel free to post up some links. Though, if the concept seems interesting, but my implementation is not lore friendly I am no married to calling them demons; they could be called harvesters, or one time magical foul ups involving dark magic, or whatever seems most cool. Again however, I think this is not much of a sticking point until I have an addon that people are playing and then saying 'ok, I like the race, but it really does not fit the in game lore as it is.

I don't think there's specific lore yet that goes into all of that.

Mainly my point was that if, instead of just calling them 'demons', you gave them a demonic name and made them a specific race of demons you may have an easier time integrating them in the long term. I'm sure there's plans to expand on the demonic lore in the future and possibly even a whole demonic campaign planned. The more specific your individual idea the easier it would be for it to fit in a wider tapestry. If they're just 'demons' well the game already has a bunch of different 'demons' so it would be kinda like making a race that's just 'elf' when we already see that elves have many different expressions. It would make more sense to add the proposed 'elf' race as say a Falore or whatever.

I hope that makes sense.

Anyway it's your idea, do what you want with it. I was merely offering feedback.

Starslayer wrote: First- why necromancer LV 30 == demon unlock: part of the necromancer lore in game is that for whatever reason powerful necromancy attracts/brings forth/weakens the walls causing demons to start moping about; if you feel there is a better way to bring about there playability I will most certainly listen (though perhaps it's a moot point until I have a working demon, the mechanics on how you get it is pretty minor)

I'll weigh in against making unlock "level 30 necromancer." Lore wise, necromancers do undead and corruptors (or was it corrupters?) do demon stuff. Gameplay wise, I strongly dislike unlocks based on playing a specific class.

If you absolutely want to go that route anyway, I'd suggestest making it a corruptor to level 30 instead.

Some aternative unlock ideas:

• kill a major demon
• kill 100 demons (major or minor)
• have played every one of the starting races to level 30

jotwebe wrote:corruptors (or was it corrupters?)

It's both.

bricks wrote:

jotwebe wrote:corruptors (or was it corrupters?)

It's both.

Lies!! It's Corruptor!

Not all mages can shoot fireballs after all, only archmages And my Ghoul Reaver (a Corrupter) has never had anything to do with demons!
And yeah, sounds more fitting for demonic forces then a necromancer
I imagine any lore referring to Necromancers as consorting with demons is outdated. I believe that at one point they would have been a Corrupter (the meta-class; using Vim and what not, not to be confused with the Corruptor character class which is but one member of the Corrupter meta-class) but Darkgod decided to tie them to the mana resource instead.

... and that is a terribly confusing post.