[b42] Expanded Escorts

[Phoenix1]

This addon substantially expands escorts, and to some degree boosts up the rewards. I tried to ensure that each escort provided talents that most any character could get a use out of, favoring those that provide capabilities that all characters can potentially benefit from (mobility, defenses, recovery, passive boosts, etc). I believe any character should be able to get any escort and have at least one useful option, and hopefully a few.

There are seven total escorts; six main ones and the loremaster. The loremaster is very distinct; its rewards have been generalized to three stat points, a class point, or a generic point. All of the other escortees now have one stat option (the thematic stat for that escort), eight talent options, and four category options. And I also went in and added customized "help me" requests, just for fun.

All metaclass talent types are represented among the talents, but are not exclusive to any given escort. Each type has four talents and two trees, excepting Techniques, Wild Gifts, and Spells, which each get a double-dose. The escorts themselves are based more around general mechanical themes, so each one generally draws from several types. All of the escorts can provide both magical and non-magical talents, and talents that draw upon various different stats or resources.

Additionally, the category masteries have also been improved to 0.8, since I hear that's happening in the next beta. Also, there's a discrepancy in the escort code where the tooltip indicates you get 1.0 in a talent, but you actually get 0.7. I'm not sure which is intended; I buffed the actual reward, but if that's incorrect I can change it around.

Since the escorts all have access to non-magical options, and loads of options in any case, and the escorts themselves are reasonably acceptable as not-strictly-magical individuals, this addon doesn't make use of different rewards for antimagic characters.

I'm comfortable with this addon being a generally higher-power one, but if any of these talents stand out as really being intended to fit only within the class they were designed for, or there are other serious balance issues, I'd like to work that out. Likewise, although I don't doubt that at least some imbalance between the escorts is inevitable, if any stand out as being particularly weak or strong, I can see about tweaking that too.

This addon has not been 100% tested. I did enough testing to know that it works in the general sense, but there may be errors or issues on specific escorts. The addon does use overloading, as it is intended as a replacement for the existing escorts. This could, however, cause incompatibility with other addons that add escorts.

The new escorts are as follows:

The Mighty Warrior (Str): Theme is general combat and gear enhancement.
Trees: Combat Training, Conditioning, Stone Alchemy, Cursed Form.
Combat Accuracy
Weapons Mastery
Armour Training
Mobile Defense
Imbue Item
Dark Gifts
Vitality
Unflinching Resolve

The Agile Scout (Dex): Theme is detection and mobility.
Trees: Field Control, Mobility, Conveyance, Spacetime Folding.
Disengage
Teleport
Precognition
Dimensional Step
Projection
Heightened Senses
Piercing Sight
Earth's Eyes

The Indomitable Paladin (Con): Theme is personal defense and resistance.
Trees: Aegis, Fungus, Mentalism, Light.
Wild Growth
Chant of Fortitude
Barrier
Relentless
Shielding
Mental Shielding
Energy Decomposition
Resolve

The Learned Sage (Mag): Theme is obscure and miscellaneous powers.
Trees: Mindstar Mastery, Gestures, Dreaming, Chronomancy.
Stone Touch
Domination Hex
Curse of Death
Gesture of Power
Mind Sear
Psiblades
Iron Will
Entropic Field

The Devoted Healer (Wil): Theme is recovery and prevention.
Trees: Call of the Wild, Harmony, Hymns, Hexes.
Arcane Reconstruction
Nature's Touch
Waters of Life
One With Nature
Sudden Growth
Providence
Hymn of Perseverence
Pacification Hex

The Clever Scoundrel (Cun): Theme is intelligence and sabotage.
Trees: Survival, Scoundrel, Divination, Curses.
Track
Arcane Eye
Vision
Nimble Movements
Trap Handling
Premonition
Curse of Defenselessness
Gesture of Guarding

The Worried Loremaster: +3 Stat Points; +1 Class Point; +1 Generic Point.

Download Link.

[darkgod]

On a general note, dont give class talents, they were never meant to be given to classes that dont have them natively

[Zaive]

Arcane blade with corrupted strength: Spell - hit - spell. Since the second spell is instant I don't think it'll loop.... hopefully.

[Phoenix1]

Got it, I'll go through and see about removing class skills. Kind of a shame, two of the talents I thought worked best were Celerity and Corrupted Strength. Well, strictly speaking, the old Corrupted Strength; hadn't really thought of the implications of the new one, but quick draw and dual wielding just seemed like the sort of things that should be more widely available. Perhaps not though.

[Phoenix1]

Posted new version. I removed almost all the class talents, leaving only the warrior ones, on the premise that the Combat Veteran and Combat Techniques trees are common enough that including them won't have any major repercussions (and since both Rush and the net benefit of Fast Metabolism can be gained from items already anyway). There's more cases of overlapping trees between the two escorts of each class group, but that's fair enough. OP has been edited to reflect changes.

[edge2054]

The trances didn't get finished. Solipsists don't actually have that talent tree, I just left it in the code base because I thought it might be fitting for another psionic class and figured maybe Darkgod would want to finish it up some day.

So... if those talents don't quite work right they don't quite work right. I'm not sure the last talent is even finished come to think of it.

[Phoenix1]

Ah, got it. I had thought I didn't recognize those, but I didn't see the tree declaration commented out and didn't check the birth file, so just figured I had glossed over them. Will swap for something else. Thanks!

[Grey]

I'd like to see a Marauder added too, with Mobility as one of the options. Also a Scout type warrior with Track as a reward. I think we need more "normal" types of escorts to counterbalance all the magic ones.

[Zaive]

... The ranger has both track and mobility on there already. At least that's what it says in the first post.

[XLambda]

Awesome idea, definitely going to give this one a try!

[skein]

Ok, as I am playing a psionicist atm maybe I am just noticing more then I normally would but almost all of the escorts are spell based. Spell users can use non spell based escorts but the other way does not work and not even the stat bonouses are helpful.

Zigur aligned characters normally get to change the spell based escorts for non spell ones(by betraying the casters). You kinda need to add that functionality back. All the trees they get are from stamina, psi, or equilibrium only.

I would add a summoner escort as well and probably a wyrmic. The summoner should open trees harmony and mindstars but should offer talents of summons. I suggest maybe the ritch flamespitter, the mold, and the wardog.

The wyrmic should offer the first talent in the lightning tree and probably increased stamina and life regen. He should open up the generic equilibrium trees.

I am also unsure why you are not allowing of a double tap. The first to make a tree openable, the second to go ahead and open it, and the third to increase the focus in that tree to 1.2.

You should also maybe remove the loremaster entirely and just have that as a default choice on any escort(that way one really is never wasted- you can always use one for 3 stats or a skill level)

[Phoenix1]

I thought the antimagic betrayal thing was built into the basic escort functionality. I'll check and see if I need to do something special for it. That said, as long as they aren't antimagic, non-spell users should be able to use escort-granted spells just fine, I think.

The druid provides Harmony and the Mindslayer provides Mindstars. My basic pattern was to primarily provide talents from the trees the escort opened. I think the only exception I made was giving Reaver's Weapon Mastery, and that's a very general talent. The summons themselves are class talents, which apparently should not be offered by escorts for balance reasons. Likewise with the wyrmic lightning tree (in fact, the ranger originally provided the lightning tree and the first lightning talent, until I removed the class talents).

I think that "double tap" is a great idea...but it has to do with basic functionality. This addon isn't intended to really alter the overall way escorts work, just to change and add escorts themselves. So, it's a bit outside the scope of the project.

I had considered the possibility of adding, at least, a generic point option to all escorts for just that reason - to prevent waste. I decided against it because I think in many cases, that would really overshadow the escort rewards themselves. There are honestly fairly few talents where getting a single point could really compete with another point that you can freely add to one of your abilities.

That being said, one of the big goals of this addon is to make it so that most any character should be able to get most any escort and have something that it will find useful. Which ones are standing out as lacking value?

[ghostbuster]

The idea is interesting, but I regret the disparition of the loremaster talents. Spit poison is not so useful, but disarm may be useful for a melee char and mind sear is **great** and gives a decent mind attack to anybody. Of course for a char that invests in mindpower, but also to add ranged attacks to a melee char and even for an archmage as a non mana attack to "finish" an opponent.

[Avianpilot]

Haven't tried it yet (though I plan to very soon), but I have a question. Why does the Fighter teach Combat Training? That's an easily obtainable tree by purchasing it, and doing so gives you the tree unlocked and at 1.0 mastery. Is there any reason to take it from a Fighter escort instead?

And being the greedy person that I am, is there any way to get Stone Alchemy within your setup or future plans?

[Phoenix1]

New version posted. Made some modifications to several talents and changed a few escorts around. Regarding things mentioned in this thread specifically, I replaced Lucid Dreamer with Mind Sear for the solipsist (I had found that one useful a time or two myself, and I figure that since it was there previously I can count it exempt from the no-class-talents guideline). I also replaced the fighter's Combat Training with Conditioning, although it doesn't give Conditioning talents; I think the Conditioning tree is pretty nice, but the benefits for a single talent level are too small to be relevant. For this reason, the monk is gone (replaced by a slightly modified ranger, which was replaced in the gifts section by a wyrmic). The OP is up to date with all the changes.

Antimagic rewards (which, indeed, required me to specify them - whoops!) are available again. For now, I have a generic set (since a lot of the previous talents are more widely available now), so antimagic characters wind up with somewhat less versatility, but more focused options (and slightly broader general options). I do expect I'll wind up changing this if I can come up with a better idea, and I'm open to suggestions.

As far as Stone Alchemy...it's so far suffering from my prejudice against it. Alchemist was pretty much the escort that I found most useless (even the Loremaster at least gave you Mind Sear). So...somewhat unlikely at this stage, anyway. That said, there are a pretty fair number of other decent generic talents available, so maybe a third escort in each group would be possible in the future. ::Shrug::