[1.7.6] Pepper Pack v0.1.16: Roll it Over

[Peppersauce]

Here, today, I'm presenting you an addon full of goodies that, for lack of originality, I'm calling the Pepper Pack.

It adds the usual stuff from some of my previous addons (which are to be considered discountinued as of... right now), such as Bunnymorphs, the Spell / Cantrips tree, rapiers and whips and also includes new things, such as:

- New artifacts (a 2-item set is going to come in the following versions)
- Instruments, like harps and singing swords (the latter are for a class I got planned out)
- Performers, a new category of classes that rely on Cunning and mindpower
- Melody, performers' main resource pool
- Sound damage, performers' main damage type
- New item egos to go along with the additions in here

aaaaaand... Bards, a new playable class that relies on Cunning, Dexterity and Magic and encourages going for an hybrid style.
Races to go along with them: Halfling, Shalore, Cornac, Higher, Yeek and... Bunnymorph?

Here's a brief list of their talent trees:

Generics:

Combat Training (1.1)
Mobility (1.2)
Survival (1.1) (locked)
Divination (1.0) (locked)

Performer / Songs (Cun, 1.3) (melody tree)
The most generic performer tree of them all, this is basically a collection of semi-permanent buffs and radius 3 debuffs, their effectiveness depends on your current melody. If it's too low they won't have any effect.

Performer / Wanderer (Cun, 1.3) (melody tree)
A defensive tree that scales around Cunning and Luck and encourages using light or no armor. Perfect for your mankini runs.

Performer / Bard (Cun, 1.3) (melody tree)
Here you have a set of buffs made to make Bards more manageable and more flexible. Hint: check out Silent Combat, it plays a big role on this class

Class Trees:

Dirty Fighting (1.2)
Combat Techniques (1.2) (locked)
Archery (Slings) (1.1)
Phantasm (1.1)

Spell / Cantrips (Mag, 1.1)
Same as before, except for some light damage being swapped out for sound damage. Flashbang also soundshocks instead of shocking.
Go here for details: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=43309

Performer / Tunecrafting (Cun, 1.3) (melody tree)
Tunecrafting is meant to be the defining performer tree, it's a series of mind talents based around debuffing, stacking debuffs and reaping profits from the stacking. Gravity and Distortion are the obvious inspirations but... I added some twists of my own to the deal.

Performer / Bardic Combat (Dex, 1.3) (melody/stamina) (bardic weapon only tree)
This is where you get stuff to whack stuff, 1st and 4th skill are your main whack buttons, while the 2nd and 3rd skill grant you some mobility while still being whack-tastic. The skills can change according to... something (hint: you need Silent Combat for that)

Performer / Tuneslinger (Dex, 1.3) (melody/stamina) (sling only tree)
Pretty basic, you got your own Steady Shot and some pretty absurd sling talents here (slings need some more love don't they). As with Bardic Combat, Silent Combat plays a role here.

Performer / Dashing Swordsman (Cun, level 10, 1.3) (melody/stamina) (locked) (bardic weapon only tree)
I just wanna point out that the blame for this tree goes both to me and to Aura Of The Dawn, since he encouraged me to implement this.
This is pretty straightforward, use your mindpower to quip your opponents to death. It can get pretty insane with some investment but since it's melee only I guess that evens it out, right?

Performer / Electric (Mag, level 10, 1.3) (melody/spell) (locked)
One of 3 specialization trees for performers (and the only one implemented so far) and the Bard's natural specialization, this makes you and your instruments get that... spark that makes your spellcasting more, well, electric. Get bonus lightning damage on sound damage, summon amplifiers, use an Aether Avatar knockoff, this tree's got it all!

Now, for the technical stuff:

Bugs:
- Egoed harps with on hit effects show those instead of project values in the name
- The character dump isn't the prettiest thing

Bad superloads: -stuff that is likely to break because of other addons/new ToME versions
- Character Dump (for showing the new resources)

About addons:
If grayswandir's weapons pack addon is active Bards will use rapiers from that addon unless they're disabled, in that case my rapiers will be active instead. As for whips I decided to let gray's ones be the only ones available, since he's worked on them way more than I did.

Feedback on balancing will be appreciated as well as quips for any enemy type, the ones that are currently in are few, mostly generic and mostly lame.

The addon is here: http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/pepper-pack

[Dao Zeti]

The bard idea looks pretty nice.

While trying it out in the Infinite Dungeon, I got a Lua error. I was running ID500 and some other addons, so it could also be some sort of incompatibility.

Code: Select all

[LOG]	A bolt of lightning fires onto Cantstop!
Lua Error: /data-pepper-pack/common_utils.lua:89: attempt to call method 'getInven' (a nil value)
	At [C]:-1 getInven
	At /data-pepper-pack/common_utils.lua:89 hasInstrumentMain
	At /data-pepper-pack/common_utils.lua:81 hasInstrument
	At /hooks/pepper-pack/load.lua:357 
	At [string "return function(l, self, data) local ok=false..."]:1 triggerHook
	At /data-Infinite500/damage_typesI500.lua:467 defaultProjector
	At /data/damage_types.lua:691 projector
	At /engine/interface/ActorProject.lua:198 project
	At /data/general/traps/elemental.lua:25 triggered
	At /engine/Trap.lua:139 trigger
	At /mod/class/Trap.lua:148 trigger
	At /engine/Trap.lua:153 check
	At [string "return function(self, x, y, what, ...) local ..."]:1 checkAllEntities
	At /engine/Actor.lua:214 move
	At /mod/class/Actor.lua:1307 move
	At /mod/class/Player.lua:296 move
	At /engine/interface/PlayerRun.lua:137 runStep
	At /mod/class/Player.lua:373 act
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:126 tickLevel
	At /engine/GameEnergyBased.lua:62 tick
	At /engine/GameTurnBased.lua:46 tick
	At /mod/class/Game.lua:1181 
 ----------------  Stack Dump ----------------
--------------- Stack Dump Finished ---------------

[Peppersauce]

The bard idea looks pretty nice.

Thanks!

While trying it out in the Infinite Dungeon, I got a Lua error. I was running ID500 and some other addons, so it could also be some sort of incompatibility.

Nah, it's my fault... I forgot traps existed... those damn traps. I'm gonna upload a fix for that ASAP.

EDIT: Fix uploaded. It doesn't break current saves (much) fortunately.

[astreoth]

tried this out and got to say very nice class works great good synergy between rapier and sling, music and magic, very agile.
now for the feed back

would be good if you added rapiers to the dagger shops so good rapiers would be easier to get, same with harps but no idea where to put those.

the song talents are great but way their set up they have the same issue as chants only one can be used at a time, no incentive to do anything but use the same one continuously pretty much leaving the points needed to get to any song past the first as completely wasted.
not saying you need to change the talents but would be nice if you addressed this in some way such as removing the need for you to get the preceding talents or packaging them all into one talent and having the rest of the tree be buffs for the songs like active effects for changing them or something.

having to have two harps for rapier mode and sling mode feels a bit awkward not sure what to do about it if anything just feels weird.

and that's all for feedback only played to lvl8 and didn't try out bunnymorph so can't say much for the higher levels but the class is golden so far.

[Peppersauce]

So... yeah, I knew I was forgetting to mention something, new items are not in shops nor are they available as 4k randarts. I was going to add those but for the next few weeks I'll barely have enough time for eventual bugfixes so I had to draw the line somewhere and release it all. By next update this'll all be done, rapiers will be, as you said, in dagger shops while harps will be both in charm and staff shops.
As for the Songs I went that route as that gave me the best guarantee they'd be balanced against the main game because... yeah, Chants and Hymns work the same. I'm not inclined to change their progression atm but I'll think about it and see if I can think of something better.
Two harps sure is weird but there's no way to fix that without messing up the inventory system for them I think. Also, it does have its pros.

Keep the feedback coming, especially if you go on with your character, I'm very interested in hearing about how they fare mid and post dreadfell by someone other than... well, myself.

[rexorcorum]

Lalala ... I'm so late for the party .... but will crash it with trumpets, or ... well, other musical instruments ... in the fathomless possibilities of the future, the near one, I hope

[Peppersauce]

Lalala ... I'm so late for the party .... but will crash it with trumpets, or ... well, other musical instruments ... in the fathomless possibilities of the future, the near one, I hope

That is SO great I'm gonna update it as soon as you get to that
...just to make sure, harps are supposed to be of the small, hand harp type, not those colossal unmovable beasts.

[astreoth]

I went on with the character and return with new feedback after doing every tier 2 dungeon but daikara its not post dreadfell but here it is.

harp mastery doesn't give the original .2 melody recovery it should, level it past that and the amount increases as it should but it doesn't give any melody recovery for the first level.

is melody an arcane resource? cause if it isn't then with performer talents being mind powers you might be able to go zigur on this class.
is that possible and/or intentional?

no stamina management your only stamina recovery talent is the one that gives you some for moving and you have a lot of stamina using ability's I have run out of stamina a lot in combat its probably less of an issue later on when you build up a lot of it but still.

and that's it for feedback having a pretty good run so far.

[Peppersauce]

harp mastery doesn't give the original .2 melody recovery it should, level it past that and the amount increases as it should but it doesn't give any melody recovery for the first level.

*that* is weird, looking at the code it should work fine and I don't remember anything like that during my test runs... although some weird bugs have popped up and disappeared leaving no trace from time to time.

is melody an arcane resource? cause if it isn't then with performer talents being mind powers you might be able to go zigur on this class.
is that possible and/or intentional?

Nope, Melody is not arcane and yeah, getting antimagic is both possible and intentional although a pretty bad idea on this class. The other performers will be way more antimagic-friendly btw.

no stamina management your only stamina recovery talent is the one that gives you some for moving and you have a lot of stamina using ability's I have run out of stamina a lot in combat its probably less of an issue later on when you build up a lot of it but still.

Duly noted, that's an issue I've seen pop up as well lately, I'll reduce stamina costs across the board for the next update. If that won't be enough I *may* add some stamina gain mechanic in Silent Combat I guess (or Bardic Lore, that is one lackluster talent if you ask me)

[astreoth]

welp character died in daikara
http://te4.org/characters/19679/tome/06 ... ffe523b280
(its out of date since my client couldn't connect to the tome server for some reason)
so here's my final thoughts concerning the run

liberal use of break points in talents along with spells just needing high investment to be good and certain melody mechanics make this a class that demands high investment in talents for them to be good while also demanding a certain level of diversification to maintain synergies such as music is magic and the weapon swapping talents.
overall this is pretty good design their are problems of course but I've already told you about all of the ones I've seen so guess I'll just wait for the next version nice work.

[Peppersauce]

Thanks for all the feedback, I appreciated that. Do note that despite their description a player should try to find the right balance between focusing in a few core talents and spreading too thin, you do have melee, ranged and spell/mind skills but I'd suggest any player to just pick 2 out of those 3 aspects while getting at most some utility out of the third one. Going full on 3 way is not meant to be manageable or else Bards would be powerhorses.

[astreoth]

yeah I totally fell into the spreading too thin category and the not picking a song to cap category.

depending on the changes in the next version plan to build heavily into song of resilience, fencing, and slinging with just a bit into cantrips to get vanish.

by the way can you tell me a bit about the vocal and acoustic trees that are coming.

[Peppersauce]

Nothing about them is final yet, but they're meant to complement sound damage just like Electric does, both will be tied to other classes with an option to swap Electric for one of them. You will be picking only one of these trees as I'll make using them simultaneously impossible.
Acoustic Prowess will be based on sound + mind damage, equilibrium/melody and Willpower and is meant for a pure mindpower class. Its first skill will grant a surge that converts a percentage of incoming damage into sound while giving some sound resistance, aside from mind damage on sound damage.
Vocalism will be sound + darkness damage, hate/melody and Strength based and the first skill will allow (darkness damage on sound aside) for physical power to take the place of mindpower just like Electric does with spellpower. Its unique feature will be allowing you to use performer skills without an instrument by using your voice. This effect will be tied to some sort of point/charges system. Those will also grant the user the ability to negate 1 or 2 silence effects. Once you reach 0 charges the sustain goes down.

[Hunter]

Very interesting so far. You clearly put a lot of effort and thought into this.

Just to start out, a couple of thoughts/questions:

1) Why are the singswords (and harps, for that matter) classified as miscellaneous?

2) Since a singsword effectively replaces the 1-H weapon/harp combo, perhaps some mechanic to allow "Pluck strings" (say, the character causes the sword to vibrate?) to work with it?

3) Are there 1-H versions of singswords? If they were comparatively rare, it wouldn't necessarily be unbalancing to allow a singsword/harp combo.

4) Limiting certain skills, like Bardic Combat to rapiers seems a bit restrictive, especially given that daggers have much the same attributes, only a little smaller and lighter. I get leaving off maces/longswords/whips/waraxes, but why not allow daggers to work equally well?

5) Weapons Pack doesn't actually work with Pepper Pack for me. When I try to start a new character, the game lags/freezes at the intro screen. Disabling WP fixes the problem, so I'm fairly certain that's the reason for the freeze.

[Peppersauce]

1) That was pretty much something I never took an interest in defining so the game made it that way by default, I still have no idea where to put instruments in (singswords aside of course, they'll be moved to weapons) so feel free to give suggestions for that.

2) The fact is each instrument should have its own custom mechanic/skill/thing, Pluck Strings defines harps, lutes (to be added) will have some aoe smash kind of thing while singswords are supposed to... have nothing actually, as of now they're fairly useless but they look kinda strong when thinking about the additions in the future. If somebody has something in mind for them I'd be glad to hear that tho.

3) No 1h versions, making an ego for them should be easy enough, an artifact singsword later on will be compatible with bardic melee skills tho. Also, next version singswords won't drop anymore as they're more of a pain than anything for the player atm.

4) Honest, I regret that decision as many players (myself included) actually find that silly. Next update bards' melee will be tied to light weapons (rapiers and daggers) instead.

5) Just tried, it works here. Are you sure you have the most recent version of the weapons pack on? If that's the case I'll need a piece of tome's logs from you to see what's actually happening.