ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Download Link
Design Document

As an attempt to revamp the Ogrillions into something that wasn't using hijacked mindslayer code I ended up stumbling on how to make them four armed, so to take advantage of this I renamed them and began work. We now have Xorns.

I have released it because of pestering :P, it is not finished as I still need to create dedicated classes for them, as normal classes will break with four arms.


Racial Stuff:
Stat modifiers: +4 Strength, +0 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, +0 Magic, +0 Willpower, +0 Cunning,
Life per level: 8,
Experience penalty: 90%,
Heal Modifier: -50%,
Ability to wield 4 weapons (two 2h, or two 1h and 2 offhand),
Does not need to breathe.
Size: Big

Talent Tree:
All talents give +1 to Extract Gems on first level, except T4 which gives +2
T1: Earth Glide:
Sustained
Gives the xorn the ability to move through rock as if digging, with a limit of (20-100) tiles, throwing you out of the wall when exhausted.
Additionally gain (2-15%) healing mod for every normally impassable tile within a radius of 1 around yourself.

T2: Gem Feast:
Activated
Allows you to devour gems for sustenance, giving you a passive regen of +(20-100)*Gem Tier for (1-5 turns)

T3: Body of Stone
Passive
You harden your body using ancient xorn techniques.
You gain (10 - 20) Physical Resistance, (10-20) Armor Hardiness, (10-20) Armor

T4: Throw Mountain:
Activated

Using their amazingly large appetite, they are able to consume a mountain’s worth of rocks on a monthly basis.

Activate this talent to cough up rocks, hurting yourself for unresistable damage of (30 - 100), and hurtle them within (10-20) range, dealing (30- 100) damage and randomly spreading rocks over (1-3) radius

Release 0.0.1:
Initial Release!

Release 0.0.2 "BugFixes Are Go!"
+ Changed starting equipment
+ Changed starting text
+ Added create alchemist gems.
+ Altered extract gems
+ Changed the way gem eating talent works.
+ Fixed Earth Glide Working in the Overworld
+ Fixed Earth Glide acting as a free teleport
+ Fixed Quickswap bug
+ Added Temporary Xorn Paperdoll

0.0.3:
+ Fixed Mana issues again.
+ Made class restrictions go away.

Known Bugs: [Bugs marked as fixed are fixed in source, will remove from list when in released copy.]

• Can't use a offhand weapon if one set of hands is wielding a two-handed weapon and the second main hand is wielding a one-hander. (This has to do with how two-handed weapons are handled in base game's code)
• Only 3/4 of the weapon slots appear to some people (Can't confirm this on my version, but others seem to have this error) - Ran on my steam install with all my mods, still can't confirm unfortunately.

Tasks left to do:[Tasks marked as done are as above, removed when released.]

• Classes
  • Class Styles: (Looking for input on these!)
  • Warrior
  • Rogue
  • Caster
• Talent Icons
• Xorn Paper-doll

That's... a lot of EXP penalty. Basically they'll level up twice as slow as anyone else.
Are you sure this is warranted?

Having played all of one screen in Challenge Mode, I don't have a lot of feedback there. It'd be nice to have an indicator effect to keep track of your current healmod from impassible tiles. Given your only escape doesn't work on trees, I feel like these xorns are not very smart to start in Trollmire. This is also the only time I can remember using Wild infusions for their damage reduction. Also for some reason autoexplore keeps stopping "At object"? Not sure what's up with that.

So it turns out this is fun to speculate about. Hold on to your butts.

Starting points
Stonewarden class seems vaguely appropriate as a comparison, though for obvious reasons a direct port isn't ideal. One of the really fun thematic things I noticed playing one was the slow movement speed, damage mitigation, and the pin effect makes you into a sort of Terminator--unstoppable, unavoidable, and inevitable. That might be a fun theme for a warrior class, though it'd be a shame to miss out on rushing through solid stone.

There's a theme of xorns being split up and retaining some function. Harkor'Zun is the most extreme example, but the alchemist quest also mentions xorn fragments staring at you. There's another parallel to the stonewarden here with the crystal halves, but that's explicitly dwarven, very powerful, and more spiritual than biological. It might fit Throw Mountain's precedent of damage in exchange for powerful effects/conjuration if you could tear chunks off yourself/in response to damage to summon fragmentary minions. (alternatively, split up into a squad of four with one limb each, reforming if you're all destroyed)

Using Harkor'Zun as a starting point again, it'd be interesting for the mage archetype to use some acid effects. (I think an earlier version of archmage may have had an acid tree?)

The Stone tree has some precedence for becoming more stonelike/crystalline giving resistance penetration. That seems like something the warrior archetype would be interested in.

Hitpoints and resources
Making hitpoints difficult to recover is actually a really interesting mechanic, as you obviously know. It's part of what makes the undead races a pain starting out, and a smaller part of making the Shalore start difficult. Ways of extending HP are shields (not particularly xorny), resists (straightforward and xorny), damage reduction (pretty xorny), some sort of bone/stone shield effect (would encourage hit and run, obviously very strong), minions/not being targeted (again, powerful), and turning into a rock (voluntary, partial stoning might be an interesting mechanic; it's got some pretty huge trade-offs in return for large resists). Maybe increase defense/resist proportional to impassible tiles, representing ducking into the stone to dodge attacks?

Maybe some talents could either take hit points or consume a nearby wall, as a choice between two valuable resources. (Consuming walls for health might not be too broken, since it would mostly speed up rest periods. It would be more valuable Madness where enemies are harder to avoid.) Actually, in the vein of playing with hitpoints, sustains that take hitpoints or boost them at a cost might be interesting. Gems are another possibility for limited resources, tying extract gems to their racial talents even lets you do that without giving them stone alchemy.

It makes them a bit more monstrous than alien, but having something like Swallow could provide an intermittent healing effect...though to be really consistent, and to avoid giving them too much easy HP recovery, it might be interesting if it required stoning/gemifying the enemy first. Maybe a "spend money to make money" tree where you can cast effects from hitpoints that prepare enemies for later consumption.

Mechanics
As the flipside to rushing through solid walls, it'd be an entertaining (though powerful) mechanic to abduct enemies through solid walls. Sort of suggests a possibly predatory theme to the rogue archetype.

Terrain alteration seems like an interesting theme. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as Throw Mountain, they could pull an antlion and suck enemies in with sandtraps. Maybe the rogue could focus on preparing the environment? Like, spend ten turns to make a long-lasting trap, or area effect you can activate with a second talent.

The four limbs provide some pretty unique opportunities for weapon combinations, which might be fun to play with. You can go melee/ranged, dual wield/shield, 2H/shield, stick a staff on everything, etc. Or go full ridiculous and have something with dual unarmed, quad 1H, or quad shield. (Actually, quad shield would be totally excessive because with just dual shield you can already get almost complete damage mitigation.) Versatility might be an interesting class theme.

0player wrote:That's... a lot of EXP penalty. Basically they'll level up twice as slow as anyone else.

With the strength of their racials and the fact they can wield 4 arms, I felt it is warranted, I will probably change this once I go through another round of balancing and fixing.

twas Brillig wrote:Given your only escape doesn't work on trees, I feel like these xorns are not very smart to start in Trollmire.

Yeah, you are right on nose at that, I had meant to change their starting zone but I wasn't sure where else to start them without saying "Screw it" and creating one for them.

twas Brillig wrote: Also for some reason autoexplore keeps stopping "At object"? Not sure what's up with that.

Also not sure what's up with that..

twas Brillig wrote:Lots of good ideas!

They are all fantastic ideas, and have given me plenty of my own. Thank you.

I'll post something later that'll give proper feedback to all of the ideas

twas Brillig wrote: So it turns out this is fun to speculate about. Hold on to your butts.

Starting points
Stonewarden class seems vaguely appropriate as a comparison, though for obvious reasons a direct port isn't ideal. One of the really fun thematic things I noticed playing one was the slow movement speed, damage mitigation, and the pin effect makes you into a sort of Terminator--unstoppable, unavoidable, and inevitable. That might be a fun theme for a warrior class, though it'd be a shame to miss out on rushing through solid stone.

That's a interesting thought. I am after all only restricting to those 3 class stereotypes as an arbitrary restriction, nothing says I can't make a "terminator" style class as well as the warrior/mage/rogue. Will consider this as a possibility. Another thought is Xorn mages may be more the style of a warriormage then a pure mage.

twas Brillig wrote:There's a theme of xorns being split up and retaining some function. Harkor'Zun is the most extreme example, but the alchemist quest also mentions xorn fragments staring at you. There's another parallel to the stonewarden here with the crystal halves, but that's explicitly dwarven, very powerful, and more spiritual than biological. It might fit Throw Mountain's precedent of damage in exchange for powerful effects/conjuration if you could tear chunks off yourself/in response to damage to summon fragmentary minions. (alternatively, split up into a squad of four with one limb each, reforming if you're all destroyed)

Wow that's.. that's perfect for a earth style warriormage. Do X damage to yourself to create X minions (Or perhaps even duplicates).

twas Brillig wrote: Using Harkor'Zun as a starting point again, it'd be interesting for the mage archetype to use some acid effects. (I think an earlier version of archmage may have had an acid tree?)

The Stone tree has some precedence for becoming more stonelike/crystalline giving resistance penetration. That seems like something the warrior archetype would be interested in.

I'll have to think about this.

twas Brillig wrote: Hitpoints and resources
Making hitpoints difficult to recover is actually a really interesting mechanic, as you obviously know. It's part of what makes the undead races a pain starting out, and a smaller part of making the Shalore start difficult. Ways of extending HP are shields (not particularly xorny), resists (straightforward and xorny), damage reduction (pretty xorny), some sort of bone/stone shield effect (would encourage hit and run, obviously very strong), minions/not being targeted (again, powerful), and turning into a rock (voluntary, partial stoning might be an interesting mechanic; it's got some pretty huge trade-offs in return for large resists).

First part, I could see a stone shield being more them ripping stones from the ground and using them as protection, giving brief armour increase as warriors where as mages would transmute the earth to briefly cover them, giving flat damage reduction.

twas Brillig wrote: Maybe increase defense/resist proportional to impassible tiles, representing ducking into the stone to dodge attacks?

That'd be fairly simple as an extension of the already existing racial talent

twas Brillig wrote: Maybe some talents could either take hit points or consume a nearby wall, as a choice between two valuable resources. (Consuming walls for health might not be too broken, since it would mostly speed up rest periods. It would be more valuable Madness where enemies are harder to avoid.) Actually, in the vein of playing with hitpoints, sustains that take hitpoints or boost them at a cost might be interesting. Gems are another possibility for limited resources, tying extract gems to their racial talents even lets you do that without giving them stone alchemy.

Actually hitpoints > effects/sustains would again fit the entire theme as a whole, particularly with the ripping yourself apart for minions that was mentioned before.

twas Brillig wrote: It makes them a bit more monstrous than alien, but having something like Swallow could provide an intermittent healing effect...though to be really consistent, and to avoid giving them too much easy HP recovery, it might be interesting if it required stoning/gemifying the enemy first. Maybe a "spend money to make money" tree where you can cast effects from hitpoints that prepare enemies for later consumption.

Hrm, not too sure about this one.

twas Brillig wrote: Mechanics
As the flipside to rushing through solid walls, it'd be an entertaining (though powerful) mechanic to abduct enemies through solid walls. Sort of suggests a possibly predatory theme to the rogue archetype.

Yes. I was thinking about this myself. Stealth that only works while in rocks and something similar to abduction that drags them into the stone and suffocates.

twas Brillig wrote: Terrain alteration seems like an interesting theme. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as Throw Mountain, they could pull an antlion and suck enemies in with sandtraps. Maybe the rogue could focus on preparing the environment? Like, spend ten turns to make a long-lasting trap, or area effect you can activate with a second talent.

Again, this sounds exactly like how I was thinking about the rogues.

twas Brillig wrote: The four limbs provide some pretty unique opportunities for weapon combinations, which might be fun to play with. You can go melee/ranged, dual wield/shield, 2H/shield, stick a staff on everything, etc. Or go full ridiculous and have something with dual unarmed, quad 1H, or quad shield. (Actually, quad shield would be totally excessive because with just dual shield you can already get almost complete damage mitigation.) Versatility might be an interesting class theme.

[/quote] The biggest problem with this one is that there's engine restrictions I can't work around just yet such as 1h + offhand not working right if the other set of hands is wielding a two-hander, but dual wielding + shields works fine for the little bit I tested of it. Dual unarmed also has problems working with the engine (in fact I'd have to completely rewrite the unarmed code to do it) and apparently more than 2 shields doesn't work right either.

All in all, I love the ideas and thank you for the suggestions.

Trea wrote: That's a interesting thought. I am after all only restricting to those 3 class stereotypes as an arbitrary restriction, nothing says I can't make a "terminator" style class as well as the warrior/mage/rogue. Will consider this as a possibility. Another thought is Xorn mages may be more the style of a warriormage then a pure mage.

Fair enough! I figured the three were arbitrary, but good as a way of not setting sights too ridiculously high. I pitched this mainly as a way of getting possible archetypes out there--even in ToME there's a lot of different "warriors" and "mages" after all. It definitely feels like a warriormage sort of race, though there's something to be said for wielding four staves at once.

twas Brillig wrote:There's a theme of xorns being split up and retaining some function. Harkor'Zun is the most extreme example, but the alchemist quest also mentions xorn fragments staring at you. There's another parallel to the stonewarden here with the crystal halves, but that's explicitly dwarven, very powerful, and more spiritual than biological. It might fit Throw Mountain's precedent of damage in exchange for powerful effects/conjuration if you could tear chunks off yourself/in response to damage to summon fragmentary minions. (alternatively, split up into a squad of four with one limb each, reforming if you're all destroyed)

Wow that's.. that's perfect for a earth style warriormage. Do X damage to yourself to create X minions (Or perhaps even duplicates).

Glad you like it! Straight up duplicates would be pretty nasty. Think about how highly people rate Forgery of Haze and Inner Demons. I guess the axes we have to vary are: flexibility (whether they have all skills, a set of trees, a handful of skills, or just attacks), duration (in terms of pure turns, hit points, and durability), and frequency (cooldown and resource cost). Not having a lot of health recovery definitely makes it harder to pull out multiple times during a fight.

twas Brillig wrote: Hitpoints and resources
Making hitpoints difficult to recover is actually a really interesting mechanic, as you obviously know. It's part of what makes the undead races a pain starting out, and a smaller part of making the Shalore start difficult. Ways of extending HP are shields (not particularly xorny), resists (straightforward and xorny), damage reduction (pretty xorny), some sort of bone/stone shield effect (would encourage hit and run, obviously very strong), minions/not being targeted (again, powerful), and turning into a rock (voluntary, partial stoning might be an interesting mechanic; it's got some pretty huge trade-offs in return for large resists).

First part, I could see a stone shield being more them ripping stones from the ground and using them as protection, giving brief armour increase as warriors where as mages would transmute the earth to briefly cover them, giving flat damage reduction.

Using stones as protection seems almost more like a blocking effect than straight up armor. That may be more interesting, as an active effect, and potentially more powerful (as something that protects against spells and not just attacks).

twas Brillig wrote: Maybe increase defense/resist proportional to impassible tiles, representing ducking into the stone to dodge attacks?

That'd be fairly simple as an extension of the already existing racial talent

That's what I was going for! I figured it might be good to separate the two for balance reasons, but it seemed like a natural extension of Earth Glide.

Actually hitpoints > effects/sustains would again fit the entire theme as a whole

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but it sounds important to your image of the race?

twas Brillig wrote: It makes them a bit more monstrous than alien, but having something like Swallow could provide an intermittent healing effect...though to be really consistent, and to avoid giving them too much easy HP recovery, it might be interesting if it required stoning/gemifying the enemy first. Maybe a "spend money to make money" tree where you can cast effects from hitpoints that prepare enemies for later consumption.

Hrm, not too sure about this one.

Me neither, honestly. At least in D&D xorns are pretty expressly not interested in eating people (though living crystals might be fair game). Turning people into rocks to eat is...maybe an interesting horror movie experience, but not all that sensible an evolutionary decision. Stoning may still be interesting to look at, as well as bonuses against stoned enemies.

Swallow mostly seemed interesting as a limited, tactical heal. It works on a moderate cooldown (once or twice a fight), only under certain circumstances, and better the harder the enemy you kill. I figure any kind of active heal should either require managing a resource (like eating gems) or controlling the flow of combat. Does that match with what you're imagining?

Yes. I was thinking about this myself. Stealth that only works while in rocks and something similar to abduction that drags them into the stone and suffocates.

Maybe some kind of chokehold effect? I think that's exclusively a horror talent, via tentacle grab, at present. Suffocation damage is actually huge, now that I think about it. Dealing a percentage of max health to madness bosses would be really powerful.

It'd be interesting if there was a way to represent hiding under the ground. Stealth in walls is an interesting mechanic that requires altering your play style, but stealth under the floor is just...stealth.

It sounds like you have some ideas about the rogue class would work. Any thoughts on the other two archetypes?

The biggest problem with this one is that there's engine restrictions I can't work around just yet such as 1h + offhand not working right if the other set of hands is wielding a two-hander, but dual wielding + shields works fine for the little bit I tested of it. Dual unarmed also has problems working with the engine (in fact I'd have to completely rewrite the unarmed code to do it) and apparently more than 2 shields doesn't work right either.

Ew, gross, don't do that. It might make sense to slightly buff xorns when fighting totally unarmed, to representing their using four equally powerful limbs. So it sounds like (unless you want to make some four-handed weapons) there are at least five possible combinations right now:

• 2 2-handed weapons.
• 1 2-handed weapon, 1 1-handed weapon, 1 shield.
• 2 1-handed weapons, 2 shields.
• 2 1-handed weapons, 2 offhand weapons.
• 2 1-handed weapons, 1 shield, 1 offhand weapon.

Can you wield 2 shields (as with Stoneshield) and a 2-handed weapon? That's sort of a poor man's "bulwark but moreso". Stronger attack, strong defense.

That means between 2 (maybe 1) and 4 weapons, so weapon talents should assume dual-/multi-wielding.

What do you think about ranged weapons? Without support for firing multiple weapons at once, or attacking in melee while firing at range, about the only useful loadout would be a bow plus two shields. I guess weapons with "when wielded" egos would still be useful, but that's sort of...indirect. Dual ranged weapons would also consume ammo twice as fast. (leaving aside that they'd probably need an engine rewrite)

They should totally have some kind of bonus disarm resistance. Because, well...

Release 0.0.2 "BugFixes Are Go!"
+ Changed starting equipment
+ Changed starting text
+ Added create alchemist gems.
+ Altered extract gems
+ Changed the way gem eating talent works.
+ Fixed Earth Glide Working in the Overworld
+ Fixed Earth Glide acting as a free teleport
+ Fixed Quickswap bug
+ Added Temporary Xorn Paperdoll

twas Brillig wrote: Glad you like it! Straight up duplicates would be pretty nasty. Think about how highly people rate Forgery of Haze and Inner Demons. I guess the axes we have to vary are: flexibility (whether they have all skills, a set of trees, a handful of skills, or just attacks), duration (in terms of pure turns, hit points, and durability), and frequency (cooldown and resource cost). Not having a lot of health recovery definitely makes it harder to pull out multiple times during a fight.

Probably better than straight up duplicates is something along the lines of summoned minions that are xorns and have some of your skills. But I'd expect it to be fairly powerful considering you're using your own hitpoints as a resourse.

twas Brillig wrote: Using stones as protection seems almost more like a blocking effect than straight up armor. That may be more interesting, as an active effect, and potentially more powerful (as something that protects against spells and not just attacks).

True, so treat it more like a damage shield then armour? I do want something along the lines of the same talent for each class with differing effects based on the class.

twas Brillig wrote: That's what I was going for! I figured it might be good to separate the two for balance reasons, but it seemed like a natural extension of Earth Glide.

Of course, but it'd be a talent that'd only work if Earth Glide was active.

twas Brillig wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by this, but it sounds important to your image of the race?

Hitpoints > sustains is probably a bad way to word it, what i meant was your idea of using hitpoints to fuel sustains. So basically a max hitpoints is minus whatever the sustain cost is for the duration of the sustain. (Maybe even using this idea for the above duplicate talent)

twas Brillig wrote:Me neither, honestly. At least in D&D xorns are pretty expressly not interested in eating people (though living crystals might be fair game). Turning people into rocks to eat is...maybe an interesting horror movie experience, but not all that sensible an evolutionary decision. Stoning may still be interesting to look at, as well as bonuses against stoned enemies.

Swallow mostly seemed interesting as a limited, tactical heal. It works on a moderate cooldown (once or twice a fight), only under certain circumstances, and better the harder the enemy you kill. I figure any kind of active heal should either require managing a resource (like eating gems) or controlling the flow of combat. Does that match with what you're imagining?

I have this habit of when I create things to determine them based on D&D. Hence why I was balked at that idea. And yeah that's exactly what I'm imagining

twas Brillig wrote: Maybe some kind of chokehold effect? I think that's exclusively a horror talent, via tentacle grab, at present. Suffocation damage is actually huge, now that I think about it. Dealing a percentage of max health to madness bosses would be really powerful.

Chokehold, Yes. That's exactly what I was thinking of.

twas Brillig wrote: It'd be interesting if there was a way to represent hiding under the ground. Stealth in walls is an interesting mechanic that requires altering your play style, but stealth under the floor is just...stealth.

Perhaps, but not sure how to do this

twas Brillig wrote: It sounds like you have some ideas about the rogue class would work. Any thoughts on the other two archetypes?

Yes I do, they are all going to be fairly earthy based, so warrior might have the ability to turn a wall into a weapon or armour and the mage might be able to modify the terrain at their will.
(Biggest problem with all this however is determining what would happen in areas that aren't naturey)

twas Brillig wrote:

• 2 2-handed weapons.
• 1 2-handed weapon, 1 1-handed weapon, 1 shield.
• 2 1-handed weapons, 2 shields.
• 2 1-handed weapons, 2 offhand weapons.
• 2 1-handed weapons, 1 shield, 1 offhand weapon.

That looks about right, not too sure about "1 2-handed weapon, 1 1-handed weapon, 1 shield." as I never ended up testing that.

twas Brillig wrote: Can you wield 2 shields (as with Stoneshield) and a 2-handed weapon? That's sort of a poor man's "bulwark but moreso". Stronger attack, strong defense.

No, as without stoneshield you can't wield a shield in your mainhand and offhand (As least I believe that's so)

twas Brillig wrote: What do you think about ranged weapons? Without support for firing multiple weapons at once, or attacking in melee while firing at range, about the only useful loadout would be a bow plus two shields. I guess weapons with "when wielded" egos would still be useful, but that's sort of...indirect. Dual ranged weapons would also consume ammo twice as fast. (leaving aside that they'd probably need an engine rewrite)

Again, something I didn't get around to testing BUT when my ogrillions were around people were using two bows without any problem so I don't know. I'll have to look at the code.

twas Brillig wrote: They should totally have some kind of bonus disarm resistance. Because, well...

I personally don't think so, because they are no different than a normal person wielding weapons, they just have more arms to hold more that's all.

Trea wrote: Probably better than straight up duplicates is something along the lines of summoned minions that are xorns and have some of your skills. But I'd expect it to be fairly powerful considering you're using your own hitpoints as a resourse.

Makes sense. Cheap sustains (shadows, the playtest Temporal Warden's hounds) tend to be damaging, disposable bumpers with maybe 1 skill per additional skill on the summoner. Long-cooldown summons (Stonewarden's halves, Temporal Fugue, Forgery of Haze) tend to have short durations and have access to 1-2 trees. Health, especially without in-battle healing is probably worth an upgrade. You're essentially gambling that nothing will keep you from ducking back into a wall to escape. I'd think using scaled-down versions of the Essence of Harkor'Zun would make some sense, and also just look more interesting than sticking a particle effect on the play model, and also fit with reduced/simplified minions.

True, so treat it more like a damage shield then armour? I do want something along the lines of the same talent for each class with differing effects based on the class.

Hm, yeah, I can see that in the google doc. Res/armor/defense is definitely symmetrical...though resistance is generally superior, since it also protects against spells. Maybe they would be temporary bonii that refreshed when the player ducked into a wall, representing bringing some along with them? That shifts it from an active use skill to a change of play style.

Of course, but it'd be a talent that'd only work if Earth Glide was active.

It's not impossible for one talent to effect how a sustain works, or to only work when a sustain is active. Using the 1.3 Temporal Wardens again (because I've been playtesting them), Edge has a passive that upgrades Weapon Folding to proc extra damage and debuffs.

Hitpoints > sustains is probably a bad way to word it, what i meant was your idea of using hitpoints to fuel sustains. So basically a max hitpoints is minus whatever the sustain cost is for the duration of the sustain. (Maybe even using this idea for the above duplicate talent)

Ah, okay. "Leading to" rather than "greater than". I think it would be an interesting mechanic (clearly ). It occurs to me that lowering max health makes things that trigger off of % health more powerful/happen earlier. So a talent like the ghoul racial that blocks damage over a % of your max life get strong, heroism gets stronger, Untouchable gets touchier...stuff like that. Not gamebreaking, but interesting. It'd probably take engine fiddling, but if that was a problem it might be possible to leave "maximum" health unchanged, but keep it from going over a limit. (which makes Chant of Fortitude stronger...)

I have this habit of when I create things to determine them based on D&D. Hence why I was balked at that idea. And yeah that's exactly what I'm imagining

Going off of that, maybe they could heal from eating/damaging enemy equipment?

(Biggest problem with all this however is determining what would happen in areas that aren't naturey)

I think for the most part ToME just sort of...ignores problems like that. Consider lighting Nur on fire. Heck, consider the unique horrors in Alt Nur that light things on fire. Alternatively, slapping a mana/equilibrium/paradox cost on a skill justifies a lot of things.

No, as without stoneshield you can't wield a shield in your mainhand and offhand (As least I believe that's so)

Oh, yeah, it'd need special coding (e.g. transplanting the stoneshield code). Might be worth thinking about if dual shields are possible in general (as two offhands) but not heartbreaking if it never ends up possible.

Again, something I didn't get around to testing BUT when my ogrillions were around people were using two bows without any problem so I don't know. I'll have to look at the code.

Interesting. Does that actually help anything? More damage or more attacks or what have you?

twas Brillig wrote: Makes sense. Cheap sustains (shadows, the playtest Temporal Warden's hounds) tend to be damaging, disposable bumpers with maybe 1 skill per additional skill on the summoner. Long-cooldown summons (Stonewarden's halves, Temporal Fugue, Forgery of Haze) tend to have short durations and have access to 1-2 trees. Health, especially without in-battle healing is probably worth an upgrade. You're essentially gambling that nothing will keep you from ducking back into a wall to escape. I'd think using scaled-down versions of the Essence of Harkor'Zun would make some sense, and also just look more interesting than sticking a particle effect on the play model, and also fit with reduced/simplified minions.

Exactly. I was thinking the same thing.

Hm, yeah, I can see that in the google doc. Res/armor/defense is definitely symmetrical...though resistance is generally superior, since it also protects against spells. Maybe they would be temporary bonii that refreshed when the player ducked into a wall, representing bringing some along with them? That shifts it from an active use skill to a change of play style.

Hrm, that is true. Perhaps I'll need to rethink it then.

It's not impossible for one talent to effect how a sustain works, or to only work when a sustain is active. Using the 1.3 Temporal Wardens again (because I've been playtesting them), Edge has a passive that upgrades Weapon Folding to proc extra damage and debuffs.

Oh I never said it wasn't possible, just clarifying that that's what I'd do.

Ah, okay. "Leading to" rather than "greater than". I think it would be an interesting mechanic (clearly ). It occurs to me that lowering max health makes things that trigger off of % health more powerful/happen earlier. So a talent like the ghoul racial that blocks damage over a % of your max life get strong, heroism gets stronger, Untouchable gets touchier...stuff like that. Not gamebreaking, but interesting. It'd probably take engine fiddling, but if that was a problem it might be possible to leave "maximum" health unchanged, but keep it from going over a limit. (which makes Chant of Fortitude stronger...)

I think there's code to reduce one's max health. In which case it won't be that hard otherwise yes, engine fiddling.

Going off of that, maybe they could heal from eating/damaging enemy equipment?

Perhaps, problem is NPCs don't really have equipment defined as the most part so it'd have to be virtually eating, and figure somehow to change their drops in the process.

I think for the most part ToME just sort of...ignores problems like that. Consider lighting Nur on fire. Heck, consider the unique horrors in Alt Nur that light things on fire. Alternatively, slapping a mana/equilibrium/paradox cost on a skill justifies a lot of things.

That actually made me laugh, you have got a good point there though.

Oh, yeah, it'd need special coding (e.g. transplanting the stoneshield code). Might be worth thinking about if dual shields are possible in general (as two offhands) but not heartbreaking if it never ends up possible.

True and yes they can be dual wielded as two hands so I may need to look at doing that anyway.

Interesting. Does that actually help anything? More damage or more attacks or what have you?

Supposedly it does more damage or something, I never tested it myself but I got told that it was possible.

Oh, duh. I just remembered that damage is defined on ammo, bows and slings are just bundles of additive bonuses. (so it's +x range and such)

twas Brillig wrote:Oh, duh. I just remembered that damage is defined on ammo, bows and slings are just bundles of additive bonuses. (so it's +x range and such)

Ah, makes sense.

Alright so, I've discovered that getting new ideas for Xorn classes is a lot harder than I had originally thought, ending up with me biting more than I can probably chew. AS such I'm going to take a lot longer than originally thought in making them, as for now I'm taking a break to let the ideas come naturally. If anybody has any ideas I'd be happy to hear them either on the Design Document or here on the forum.

twas Brillig wrote:Oh, duh. I just remembered that damage is defined on ammo, bows and slings are just bundles of additive bonuses. (so it's +x range and such)

Also, for the 2 bows, every "shoot" and bow talent, like "Steady Shot" would fire off 2 arrows from your quiver. Offhand was as usual, half damage.

0.0.3:
Fixed Mana issues again.
Made class restrictions go away.