ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, my Weapons Pack has rapiers and has bucklers, and I was thinking it would be nice to put together a duelist class that went with them. The thing is, I don't really have any good ideas for duelists on hand. I was hoping y'all could give me enough ideas so I could code up a nice duelist class to make use of these items. Or even just a tree or two to stick onto existing classes to let them be a more duelisty variant.

Here's the items:

Rapiers are mainhand weapons that use dagger mastery, with 40% Str 40% Dex 40% Cun dammod. Of course, since they use dagger mastery, this means if the character has Lethality this is changed to 40% Dex 80% Cun.

Bucklers are lightweight shields that raise defense and physical crit rate. Bashing with them has 40% Str 40% Dex 40% Cun dammod. They give the Guard talent, which temporarily lets you use your accuracy in place of melee defense if it's higher, and gives you doubled attack speed against enemies who miss you in melee. Currently you can use bucklers with the existing shield trees, but if I were to add a dedicated buckler tree I'd take that out, because I don't really think they match the image of Shield Wall and all. Maybe just the offensive shield tree.

Of course, if you have suggestions for how to make the base items better, I'm up for those too.

I think what is needed is a marauder variant with the addition of a tree that concentrates on single one hander weapon usage, dex based, to replace the rogue dual weapon trees and the warrior two hander trees. Talents based on attack forms/postures from fencing perhaps - lunge, parry, riposte, etc. It would need a good multiple opponent 'sweep' or 'feint' attack (maybe flourish?).

With a good one hander weapon tree, I don't believe a second tree for shield use would be wanted/needed. The buckler or shield usage would be passive support - the class concentrating on making the most of the one handed weapon (rapier/sword/axe/mace). Perhaps a passive talent in a supporting tree that gives a percentage based bonus to defense from shield/buckler. What would be nice would be a support tree that allowed dagger/sword-breaker/buckler to be used not as a weapon but purely as a defense instrument.

A mobility attack similar to cursed/slaughter/reckless charge would be great, as would some variation of cursed/endless hunt talents - stalk->focused attack, taunt, harrass - maybe put the charge in with this tree. On the generic side, definitely want mobility and field control trees.

Looking forward to seeing the results Someday I'd like to work on a sword dancer (oriental dual sword dance derived with addition of passive magic - cross between arcane blade and shadow blade)... someday.. playing too much lol.

I believe the buckler is a bad idea.

Traditionally, dueling has been done with either a single blade, or sometimes a parrying dagger. To give the player more choice, an optional defensive tree based on using an off-hand dagger might help.

Mobility is crucial. What I reccomend in this matter is a series of stances to modify the duellist's abilities, a series of abilities dependent on parrying - for example, beginning as simple parrying, then with counters to defense, then to parrying ranged attacks if in melee range - and a set of movement abilities. For example, Lunge would be a Rush that deals lower damage but has a CC effect to a single target. A Sidestep move or something of the like could be a movement with a 3 or 5 turn cooldownthat doesn't take an action and teleports, but reduces global speed by a bit for the next few turns.

To be honest, duellists are single target foci, and dueling as an art is more defensive or trying to catch the enemy off guard.

Hope this helped.

Perhaps a locked tree that includes a fear/dreamscape variant that skips their gimmicks and just lets you take on one foe at a time (probably equilibrium fuelled along with a passive ability of regaining Equilibrium whenever you defeat a challenged foe). Also probably riff on the Doomed's feeding ability with lower levels giving you bonuses against the selected foe while impeding attacking other foes while higher levels give out statuses to attackers other than selected foe or increasing defense while giving far higher boost against those other than your selected foe. If you have the statuses be detrimental but not damaging and immediately end when the duel does you can effctively allow the player to easily take single monsters on at a time while avoiding the majority of monsters until their turn (probably have the most basic challenge skill be something like footwork that gives you a free move towards your challenged foe at the end of each of your turns if you are less than a certain distance from them).