ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Normally I would have a fairly large paragraph explaining my thought processes and why I chose to make this mod, (fixed!) but I started this 12 hours ago somewhere around the first time I ever decided to open a .lua, worked on it until 5 am, then passed out and woke up a few hours later and finished it. Also I had a dream where a hippy was trying to murder me while I was coding for some reason.

Thought you should know that.

Edit: Decided the entire post was horrible, so I redid it.

The focus of this mod is simply to make the necromancer more of a necromancer; blood, demons, curses, that kinda thing.

Note that everything is subject to change and such, depending on my whims and the suggestions I receive. If you believe a certain ability/tree adds too much, is useless, overpowered, underpowered, doesnt fit a theme, or belongs elsewhere then feel free to say so, the thing I need the most help with here is keeping things balanced, I dont want my custom trees to be so attractive that every build ever takes it, as that would make players feel forced into playing a certain way they perceive as the best instead of doing what they believe to be the most fun/interesting. I also have a horrible sense of balance when it comes to classes I enjoy.

Most recent changes:

Exsanguinate is now a 3 turn damage over time effect, does slightly more damage overall, and deals physical damage.
Blood Exchange life regen penalty doubled, may increase the penalty even more.
Feel like I am forgetting a few things. Therefor I must have. Will update if I remember them.

List of current changes:

Added a modified Bone talent tree to necromancer, it uses mana instead of vim and is locked, no other changes.
Added a modified Curses talent tree to necromancer, it uses mana instead of vim and has no other changes.
Added a new tree to necromancers, Sanguinis, Blood magic. List of talents below.
Uttercold Efficiency changed from 1.2 to 1.3
Conveyance is now locked at the start.
Conveyance Efficiency changed from 1.2 to 1.0
Divination Efficiency changed from 1.2 to 1.0
Skeleton Mage AI changed to Summoned

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Sanguinis Tree:

1: Exsanguinate: A three turn damage over time effect, does physical damage, 50% of damage dealt is added to the caster as life.
Cooldown: 7
Mana Cost: 30

2: Blood Sacrifice: Ability which was commented out of the Sanguisuge tree, requires an enemy to be within your line of sight to use, consumes half of your CURRENT health and restores mana based on spellpower I believe.

3: Blood Exchange: New sustain ability, grants a large spellpower bonus (8 per talent level) but drops your life regeneration. (-2 per talent level)

4: Blood is Power: Similar to Blood Sacrifice, but gives a 5 turn buff instead of mana, the buff currently gives a 10% (+5% per level) boost to all damage done, the ability is instant cast. It is pretty much Lifetap, with a shorter duration, larger damage boost, and it cost health instead of vim.

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Plans:

Make the lifesteal percentage of Exsanguinate depend on talent level. (40-60%?)

Replace Blood Sacrifice with a sustain which causes spells to cost life instead of mana. (What would putting extra points into the talent do?)

Think of a more undead themed divination-like tree to replace the current one.

Think of a more shadow-y or necromancer-y escape tree, then remove conveyance completely.

Find a better AI setting for skeleton mages, one that does not allow them to harm the summoner but does not care for the other summons preferably.

Add a few more things for summoned undead to say.

Tweak mana costs of Bone, Curse, and Sanguinis abilitys.

Attempt to keep everything as balanced as possible.

Adding a mechanic for sacrificing escorts to darker powers would be interesting, and could add some flavor to a few non-antimagic classes. (necro, corruptor, reaver, cursed?, doomed?)

Find out what happens when you use Blood Sacrifice/Blood is Power while Blurred Mortality is keeping you on life support.

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Now, the reasons for the changes I suppose.

Uttercold: 1.2 > 1.3 Uttercold is already not that great, why 1.2?
If I am wrong on this, please tell me.


Adding Bone tree: Bone tree fits the theme that necromancers have, however the abilitys within the tree do not fit the playstyle of necromancers very well, so it is an option but it is locked. Personally I will most likely always take shades, advanced minions, or uttercold over this, I may tweak a few of the abilitys though. (One idea I have had: change bonegrab to teleport them 1 square away from you, allowing your minions to do the rest.)


Locking/Removing Conveyance: Conveyance is a very nice escape tree, possibly the best in my opinion, and it comes with a somewhat reliable shield. It is also fun to use Phase Door to move enemys that are too close to use Chill of the Grave on, after firing said ability into an empty room. However, it does not fit necromancers very well. Or at all. Necromancers are generally not very well known for their ability to blink around, use shields that 'displace' damage, (though thorn type abilitys are common, they tend to be curses or spiked bone shields/walls.) or tear down the... laws of probability? in order to teleport through walls.

However I assume the reason necromancers have this tree is because they do not really have any other escapes, best way to protect yourself outside conveyance as a necromancer is to put up a wall of minions between you and your enemy, (outside inscriptions) and then perhaps run if needed, this does not always work. I feel that this tree could use a replacement, ideas I currently have for new escapes are somewhat limited, the only one I truly like so far is the ability to turn incorporeal for a number of turns so that you may pass through walls, or, it could perhaps be a sustain with a large mana drain per turn. This could have a number of bad side effects, but since there is already the gemport and probability travel abilitys there is probably nothing too gamebreaking.


Adding Curses tree: What led me to create this addon in the first place. Curses seemed excellent for necromancers, (themewise) debuffing your enemys with cursing/hexing tends to be one of the big things that necromancers do, moreso curses than hexes, which is why I did not add them. (also did not want to add too much in one go)

The abilitys in the Curses tree do the following: decrease spell saves/defense, decrease damage dealt, good damage over time effect which stops life regeneration, and reduce the target's resists. I feel this also makes the minion necromancer perhaps a bit more viable, by allowing your minions to do more damage to a single target, or slowing how quickly that boss shreds through your minions.

May need balancing, but in the end it fits necromancers extremely well.


Creating Sanguinis: This is for the demon/blood magic fans out there. I was thrilled after reading the necromancer lore about how some necromancers choose to attract demons to them while others avoid them at all costs, then I was disappointed when I found out there were no talents to represent this. This tree does not quite fix that, outside of having some flavor in the ability descriptions that imply you are making deals with demons, but it does add abilitys which are focused on sacrificing your health to increase your magical potential, which is what I feel blood magic is all about, and felt like it was missing. (Sanguisuge has abilitys similar to these, but aside from bloodcasting they cost and restore vim, not health.)


Divination: Divination is a tricky one, many moons ago the word 'necromancer' was used to refer to people who used the spirits of the dead to gain information- divination. But nowadays necromancy is much much more about raising the dead, cursing/hexing, sacrificing, demons, blood, cults, etc. In fact in (some editions of) DnD if you chose to play as a wizard character focused on necromancy you become unable to even learn divination spells.

But I do feel I could change this up a bit, there are many, many forms of divination that fit a necromancer, not just rolling the bones or interrogating spirits, and there is bound to be a few I could perhaps tailor an ability or two around, perhaps a few with a soul cost. (once I figure out how to do that.) Do a quick search for 'methods of divination' if you are interested in the many different types.

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+2 points if you read all that junk.

Well.... I guess that is all? I think I am supposed to wrap this up somehow.

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Praise Odin.

Very nice!

I was thinking of doing something rather similar.

I'm pretty sure the whole "blood and bone" thing is already covered by Corruptors...

Indeed. The reason I gave necromancers bone is because it seemed like it was something they should have, may even fit the theme of necromancers more than corruptors. However it is somewhat useless for necromancers so removing it is something I have considered.

The reason I added blood magic was more because to me, blood magic should use your life as a resource, in Sanguinis you use your life to fuel your spells and increase your damage/mana, in Sanguisuge you use vim, which I believe kinda misses the point when it comes to blood magic, and the Blood tree only has the lifesteal that blood magic needs to have. I have considered adding a few abilitys to corruptor to make up for adding blood themed abilitys to necromancers though. (current thoughts are a tree focused on turning people into walking bombs via plagues.)

If I end up creating too many talent trees I might just make a new class.

I vote new class. Thematically, blight does not fit with necromancers. Necromancers are just archmages that studied the darker arts, they had no hand in the corruption of nature (which is literally what blight damage is, corrupted nature)

Yes, I have wanted to change the blight damage done by Exsanguinate to something else, but am just not sure which type of damage it should do, darkness and cold are the two main options for necromancer, so I guess darkness? Other than that there are no other blight damage spells, the other 3 abilitys in Sanguinis actually harm the caster, bone abilitys all do physical damage, and the one damage ability in curses (curse of death) does darkness damage. At least I hope there are no other blight damage spells. If there were I would feel like even more of an idiot.

I assume all I would have to do to change the blight damage of Exsanguinate while keeping the life gain would be to make a copy of drainlife damage, and then replace the blight part of it with darkness, so it should be easy. Though things are rarely that simple.

I have spent the last few hours trying to turn Exsanguinate into a 3 turn dot but keep getting errors. Probably because I suck at this. Once I finish that (or give up) I can reupload with a version that does darkness drainlife damage.


Edit: Forgot to mention this. somehow.

I do want to create a new class, I really do. That will become my goal at some point, However right now I am spending 3-5 hours on every dam ability I make or edit, so I think I will need to get a better handle on this before I begin a larger project. (this addon started with me wanting to fix the general trees necromancers have access to, and then... was completely derailed by me wanting to do blood magic.)

azrael wrote:I'm pretty sure the whole "blood and bone" thing is already covered by Corruptors...

And gardeners!

Anyway, I'm happy with Bone being there. I would have done that myself.
Blight damage does seem a bit wrong though. (but saying that Corruptor's Poison Storm does nature damage...)
Maybe go with arcane and bleeding for blood magic?

I have considered bleed damage as well, however that is a subtype of physical damage, and I assume armor reduces physical damage? and it would be odd if using magic to make your target bleed was less effective if they were wearing armor heh. At one point I did think about making blood magic abilitys that cause/exploit bleed (I have too many ideas.) but figured it would be too complicated for me to pull off.

Wonder how hard it would be to make the damage type Exsanguinate uses have a chance to cause bleed, in the way that fire can burn and ice can freeze?

Which makes me wonder, do darkness/blight have status effects? I should really figure out what all the elemental status effects are.

Also interesting that corruptor has a nature damage ability, was unaware of that. Though when I play defilers I tend to go with Reaver. (my favorite class)

Armor doesn't apply to physical damage, it applies to melee or ranged attacks regardless of damage type. For example, Swallow does nature damage but is reduced by armor; Mudslide does physical damage but is not.

Damage that causes status effects (freezing cold, dazing lightning, etc.) isn't inherently a property of the element but of the damage type. There's freezing cold ("ice" damage), but there's also pinning cold, and you could make cold damage that causes blinding or confusion.

If you want some examples of how to make a spell have different effects if the target has a specific effect on it, there's a good number of examples to look at - Quantum Spike, the Gravity tree, a bunch of Solipsist stuff (distortion tree, nightmare tree, the last skill in Psychic Assault), Catalepsy, the second skill in the new Rogue generic tree..

Ah, so physical is unaffected by armor? does this make, say, bone spear, an effective spell to use against enemys with high elemental resists? I always assumed it did physical to represent that the damage it dealt was pretty much from being stabbed by shards of bone

I suppose I will go with bleeding damage for Exsanguinate then. Thanks for this info, will help me in the future if I decide to make more blood abilitys

Thanks for clearing up elemental status effects for me too, I just assumed all cold could freeze and all fire could burn etc

Endymion107 wrote:Ah, so physical is unaffected by armor? does this make, say, bone spear, an effective spell to use against enemys with high elemental resists? I always assumed it did physical to represent that the damage it dealt was pretty much from being stabbed by shards of bone

Bone spear is effective against enemies with high armor, but it has no advantages against enemies with physical resist or resist all. (if you are meaning "elemental" as in fire/cold/lightning/acid damage, then yes, it would be 100% effective, as it is physical damage)

All of the "basic" damage types (Physical, Arcane, Acid, Lightning, Fire, Cold, Light, Darkness, Nature, Blight, and Temporal, but not Mind) basically just deal damage, you need to look at damage types like "temporalstun" or "firey no friends" for the fancier features.

Endymion107 wrote:I have spent the last few hours trying to turn Exsanguinate into a 3 turn dot but keep getting errors. Probably because I suck at this. Once I finish that (or give up) I can reupload with a version that does darkness drainlife damage.
[...]
I do want to create a new class, I really do. That will become my goal at some point, However right now I am spending 3-5 hours on every dam ability I make or edit, so I think I will need to get a better handle on this before I begin a larger project.

Are you looking at the log to find out where the errors are coming from, or just modifying the files one small bit at a time? When I first started using the log, I easily doubled or tripled my speed.

Making a DoT is a bit more involved than many other things. The best way (IMO) is to create a timed effect to deal the damage, a damage type to set the timed effect, and have the talent use that new damage type.

Compared to that, making a class is simple. There is an example of how to do it in the "example" addon, and my magebow, grayswandir's monk and gardener (IIRC), and probably others as well all contain the code (but "example" is the best, it's very simple).

I don't think there is anything wrong with using Blight for "blood" damage. I can't really think of any damage types that would make sense other than physical damage (which is really just a catch-all) and nature damage (and "blight" is, among other things, the "magical" form of nature damage).

lukep wrote: Are you looking at the log to find out where the errors are coming from, or just modifying the files one small bit at a time? When I first started using the log, I easily doubled or tripled my speed.

lukep wrote:Making a DoT is a bit more involved than many other things. The best way (IMO) is to create a timed effect to deal the damage, a damage type to set the timed effect, and have the talent use that new damage type.

Yes, I use the log to find out where errors are coming from, but a few of the errors are extremely frustrating. When I was trying to add something to change the healfactor of Exsanguinate based on level this is one of the many things I tried:
...Though I am honestly not sure if that would have worked anyway.

Kept giving me the error: lua:73: ')' expected near '='

Spent a few forevers trying to get that to work and then got it when I changed the { } to include the part about healfactor. Facepalmed quite hard after that, since the nonDoT Exsanguinate was the same.
Still have not got the healfactor to scale with level though. Took a bit of a break for awhile, but about to start again, so maybe Ill figure that out.

It would probably help if I used a guide or something to actually find out what these things do, but for whatever reason I have decided to just wing it. Shockingly, that does not seem to work too well.

lukep wrote:Compared to that, making a class is simple. There is an example of how to do it in the "example" addon, and my magebow, grayswandir's monk and gardener (IIRC), and probably others as well all contain the code (but "example" is the best, it's very simple).

Yeah biggest problem with making a new class for me would be creating enough talent trees while maintaining my sanity. I have plenty of ideas, too many perhaps, but my progress is slow. very, very slow.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I enjoy reading it, and the general knowledge I learn here is very useful outside of this addon, as well as in it.

I think arcane could work too, since you are using pure magic to rip the life from your victim.

or if you wanted to go nuts and get literal, use the "pure" damage type lol.

I think your healfactor=... should be before the }