ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/soul-s ... ealer-v001

Horribly, horribly unbalanced, unfinished, and untested. Just to warn you.

Main ability: Steal Soul
Cunning based, you can put 30 points into it.
Works like swallow - but when you kill an enemy with it you gain a talent level in a different talent (determined by the enemy). You can learn as many levels this way as you have points in the ability. They can also be unlearned at any time.

I really couldn't think of many more base talents for them to use.

I'm really not terribly interested in finishing this - I figured I'd just lay the basic framework down. So if anybody else wants to modify the code or do anything else, feel free to. It should actually be really easy to mess with what monster gives you what talent, if you wanted to try and balance it out that way.

Other than that, suggestions are welcome. I might work them in eventually

aww finish it finish it! blue magic is so cool.


Or if you really want to make the most awesome class ever, do something to replicate the Magic Eater from Heng/Entroband.

If you arent familiar, they are spellcasters, but they didnt use "mana" or "power points" or whatever.

Instead, they absorbed energy from staves, wands, and rods and those abilities from the items were then added to their "spellbooks".

They had a limited number of castings based on the amount of they have eaten, I think its 1/2 of the items charges.

So if you ate 2 wands of magic missiles with 10 charges each, you would only have 10 casts of it before being out and that talent would have to "recharge" although the recharge time took quite a while.



I know that theres not much in the way of wands in game. Maybe also make them able to absorb runes since those are also magic? 1 charge per rune absorbed, and they would be less powerful than using an actual rune or wand.


Sorry to hijack the thread, I just loved magic eaters.

I've just tried it and it seems good with only one problem I've seen so far.

A lot of the early game enemies are animals, animals give you wild gifts, wild gifts use equilibrium, and equilibrium is unusable for a vim using class. I've only played a little bit so far but I'm passing 1k equilibrium every room and most of that's just from using Soul Steal, if you knew what you were doing, planned ahead and got lucky with a font of life it might be possible but otherwise the early game just seems too difficult because you can't even melee well due to the magic and cunning being your core stats. I also have no idea how to fix it outside of changing what resource they use so sorry about that but the equilibrium really is a big issue.

I /did/ make howl restore a little equilibrium, but yeah, that's definitely something that needs to be addressed.

Aside from that, if you go to the scintillating caves first, you get a nice set of basic abilities.

Why is it based on cunning at all? The 30 levels is fine but it should not be stat based at all. If anything it should be level based so each one can choose which direction they want to go in. You should pick which talent you want to drain if they know more then one. Also many mobs that know things like the wandering parties cannot teach you and they should be able to.

The level 2 talent in the tree should be a stat enhancer instead of what it is. It should just convert your vim into stats with a high sustain cost. Sorta like the enhancement tree talent from arcane blades. I suggest a graduated sustain cost and stat bump. Say 2 each stat per point but each level also raises the vim sustain cost by 30.

The level 3 talent should be a mana regen and the level 4 talent should be a regen for psi, paradox, and equilibrium.

Drain is an awfully powerful bolt early on. That tree should be available but locked at start. Not sure they even need the vimsense tree at all, if they want something from that tree they should have to go hunt it down themselves.

Locking away Drain would make vim recovery very difficult in the early game. The Soul Steal ability doesn't come cheap after all.

Maybe it should go for more of a Afflicted angle than a Defiler one?

Wouldn't have to change the general theme much, and it wouldn't conflict with Equilibrium then.

Avianpilot wrote:Locking away Drain would make vim recovery very difficult in the early game. The Soul Steal ability doesn't come cheap after all.

Not really, every monster you kill normally gives you vim (just not very much). Whack 20 mice and you are back up to full and there is no lack of low level dungeons.

Also, every time you level it is set back up to maximum. Low levels level early and often.

Both of the vim trees should be locked at birth but available. The only tree that should be open at start is the soul steal one itself. It is not like you cannot dump 30 points in that tree already

Seems more like a shadowknight class to me. Physical warrior type with some necro abilities. Bolts just do not make sense at all early on and it makes perfect sense you would need to go kill 20 rats to get the power to leech someones soul.

Honestly what I found constraining was the lack of mana regen, and the ridiculous need for cunning.

I loved the first couple of passes with this guy, and there are endless possibilities with builds. You could focus on learning physical techniques or magic spells, while picking up all sorts of trees from escorts. At level 6 I had health, stamina, equilibrium, mana, positive, and vim bars, and I loved the fact that I could focus on literally any direction of build from this.

Suggestions:
-Run with the Blue Mage name.
-Make the Steal Soul talent automatically level with the player, all the way up to lvl 50. Tweak values accordingly
-Rework the soul steal tree with 4 different talents that enhance the built-in soul steal talent. Affinity is already good so keep it. Add in a ranged talent (1-5 range soul steal), a talent that enhances magic spells the player learns, and a talent that enhances physical techniques the player has learned.
-Show available talent "slots" in the Release Soul window (12/15 talents used, or something).
-Work out the equillbrium thing. I like how this class depends on vim, and I think the vim regeneration method (Drain/Steal Soul) is fine the way it is. It should be challenging to learn full talents. Maybe just make nature talents depend on stamina? It's lame but would be easy.

Bugs:
-Using soul steal in the heart of the gloom causes a Lua error.



I think this is a great "Build it yourself" class with huuuge potential. Great work so far, and good luck with future development!

A few problems with this class, some of which have already been noted:
1. The soul steal talent is based on melee damage and melee range, yet it needs cunning to level and the second talent of that tree lets you use spellpower instead of mind or physical power for talents. This suggests that mental stats (magic, will, cunning) are the core of the class, yet the core ability requires a melee attack with an in-hand weapon. This is something of a paradox.
2. Consuming the souls of bosses may give you a rare, otherwise unavailable talent (such as the random element talent from the spellblaze crystal), but you can only get one talent point in it, which significantly weakens it's potential. I like that bosses can give otherwise unavailable talents, but that they're limited to such weakness bothers me.
3. This class can gain abilities from many power sources. Some, such as stamina or psi, may recover on their own. Others, such as mana, won't, but you can recover them. Still others, such as paradox or equilibrium, can't be recovered at all without leveling up. And a few which you MAY be able to gain (I haven't confirmed it), such as souls or negative energy, can't be charged.
4. Vim use is oppositional to equilibrium use, which many abilities use. Every time I used soul steal, I gained a MASSIVE amount of equilibrium (150, putting me at 20% fail at lvl 1 with only one use).

To fix these, I'd suggest:
1. Allow a ranged soul steal option. Maybe even make soul steal an activated ability that grants +X% damage on the next attack of any kind, or maybe just this turn if it's instant, with the ability to steal the soul of the victim if it's killed. This would allow the player to choose between melee and ranged options. Also, don't base soul steal on any stat, and maybe make the second talent use the highest of the three powers for all (which would reduce it's usefulness, but give some options to jack-of-all-trades builds). This would allow players to focus on strength instead of magic of they chose.
2. Rework soul steal to not restrict the level of the talent learned. It's only the number of talents, not the level, that matter. On the other hand, when you steal a soul, you learn it's ability at the talent level the creature had it at. You can't pass that level unless you get the same ability from a creature that has it at a higher talent level. This means a one-time talent gained from a boss would still be viable for the long-term. Of course, if you did this, you'd have to rework the number of available talents to learn. We don't want to be running around with 30 talents late game, but I do want to be able to learn 2 or 3 early on.
3. Give this class some ability to re-set every power source available, or maybe make all talents use vim alone (maybe make it a passive that makes any talent used drain vim instead of whatever it normally does).
4. #3 may fix this, or maybe change the power source. I understand this being vim-based, but it could also work for equilibrium basis, or something else possibly.

Oh, and make more talents accessible early on. When I tried this in old forest, I could only get stun, poison bite (equilibrium based), howl (reduce equilibrium a tiny amount), or a dash ability from mice. When I tried it on a yeek, I couldn't get ANYTHING from the first dungeon (no psionic abilities?). As a dwarf, I had similar problems in Reknor (orcs don't know ANYTHING?). Even in the scintillating caverns, the black crystal was clearly using SOME blight attack, but I couldn't learn it (maybe it was vim bolt, which would explain why).

Amazing idea.
Someone should develop it more...like being able to steal actual skills rather than predetermined ones.
Also, I'd love to see the ability to steal stats, hp, magic, skill points...as a replacement to leveling up. Basically, with every kill, you can choose to add those points to yourself. That would be an epic class.