ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello. I'm a big fan of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and I hope that someone else here is too. Since I found out that ToME was highly moddable, the first thing that popped into my mind, for reasons I cannot discern, was that I wanted to implement a lot of elements from this manga into the game, the chiefest of these being stands and stand users. I am not familiar with LUA coding yet, so I am probably being overly ambitious, but I wanted to consult people here to see if this project is a good idea. There would be no point making it if there aren't many ToME and JoJo fans to play it.

Planned features

New class - Stand User

The mysterious power known as Stands are controlled by people merely known as Stand Users. Each stand is a projection of its user's lifeforce and no two stands are the same. A stand user's primary stat is Willpower. Stand users can be of any race.

Subclass - Short Range

Short range stands cannot be beaten in raw power, yet possess the lowest operating range. It would essentially play like a melee character.

Subclass -Long Range

Long range stands forego raw power for increased utility and operating range. Stands such as these can possess a number of strange different abilities.

Short range stands have a tether limit of two tiles, going by the logic of one tile = one meter. Long range stands can operate up to 20 tiles away. Both types of stands can be remotely controlled by their user. Stands can be summoned or unsummoned at will, and are able to pass through NPCs and the player character. When a stand takes damage, their user also takes damage.

My current concern is being able to capture the sheer range of different abilities that stands can possess. It would need a number of different trees which can do completely different things.

Generic Talents

Hamon - The power of the sun channeled through ripples which pass through living things. Grants improved stamina, strength and enhances your ability to fight undead creatures. Undead characters cannot use Hamon.

The Spin - A special Zeppeli family technique which improves power with projectile weapons, most notably the Steel Ball. It also possesses a wide range of different utilities.

Since I currently lack the technical expertise to fully create stand users the way I want them to, I am going to see if I can create these two generic talents first.

Interesting! Weapon-wise for your character, is this going to be a Brawler style class, Mindstar, or sling/steamgun (I'm guessing after reading the projectile enhancement thing)?

Chronosplit wrote:Interesting! Weapon-wise for your character, is this going to be a Brawler style class, Mindstar, or sling/steamgun (I'm guessing after reading the projectile enhancement thing)?

Using the Hamon generic talent would encourage a melee style character. Hamon can only be channeled through living things, so that would be fists, mindstars (I'm presuming they count as being alive) and nature infused weapons. Hamon can be channeled through Stands too, so you could use it with a long ranged Stand.

Using the spin would encourage a long range style of play. The way the Spin works in the manga is that you make a projectile perform a number of rotations to increase its power and range. The steel ball in particular made use of numerous rotations as a lethal weapon and even a medical tool. You could use the Spin with slings, arrows and potentially guns too. This would be ideal for a long range stand user, but it could be used to compensate for lack of range by a short range stand user too.

I think that the class should play in a way that no other quite does in this game if I manage to implement it.

I don't think you need to worry too much about making it completely unique at this point. There's only so many ways you can interact with enemies - regardless of whether you're shooting from a sling, a gun or just tossing it, you're still just tossing steel pellets at them. It's nice to have a unique idea, but at this point variations on just about everything have been done.

Heck, even disregarding addons, there's a class in the base game which summons a humanoid guardian from psychic energy and shares damage with them. If I was going to create a stand user class, I'd start off with that as a basis.

I'm currently watching the series for the first time, and I have some suggestions if this takes off. You could make a "Joestar" race category and have each of the generations represented. First-gen would be a melee-caster using Hammon, second one (my favorite) could be a rogue-caster relying on weapon-swaps, thrown weapons charged with Hammon (maybe have an ability that when you throw a second weapon at the same empty tile as another thrown one, it'll boomerang back to you), and most importantly, RUNNING! The third generation could be another melee-caster, but instead of Hammon, could use a Stand resource that summons a buffed player character, but while it's summoned you can only control the Stand, leaving your PC defenseless. The Stand resource would be the equivalent of health, and when it hits zero, your PC takes 75% or so of it as damage and the Stand is unsummoned (alternatively, it only deals 33%, but gives a non-resistable (is that a word?), fairly lengthy stun.

By breaking down the scope of this project to separate seasons, it should be much easier to accomplish (if this was more than an idea). It would be impossible to cram all of the mechanics that I've seen from just three seasons into one character, let alone the ones that I haven't.

(P.S. Let me know if you default on this. I would be interested in making it if you aren't. Jojo's just too good to not be in a game.)