ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The very first Muscle Wizard was a Slave fighting for his life in Slaver Arena. There he was taught the art of pugilism, but he wasn't brightest combatant. He wasn't very athletic nor brawny, and his wits weren't the fastest for arena. Luck seemed to lead him more than his skill. At the age of 17, a generous merchant bought him out, not wanting the poor sod to die, but asides from giving some spare change and a set of proper clothes, he left the young man alone.
After some travelling around Maj‘Eyal, the newly-made adventurer managed to attract Angolwen‘s attention as a possible pupil in magical arts. The aptitude was there, and eventually he was taken in for further tutoring. At first it looked like he was going to be a great Archmage, but the man‘s thoughts often wondered to his arena life, and the small set of skills he learned there. And so, during his spare time, he was learning how to channel his mana into his body, and perform feats of which other pugilists would only be amazed.
But being a closed community, it wasn‘t long until rumours spread through Angolwen about this magical pugilist. At first they tolerated this, maybe slightly hoping that this could be possibly a new way to promote magic. But these free time “training sessions” soon started taking time into his actual lessons, and more and more this man started rejecting the old dogmas of mages and believing that only his style was the true magic. This angered the community, and after few faked accusations, he was expelled from the hidden city.
However, finding his destiny, he ventured off into northern mountains to train under his own. There, he finished refining the art of magical pugilism, and even systemized it into actual magical disciplines, thinking that Angolwen might give him the second chance. But that never happened to the full effect, and eventually he started taking his own pupils and spreading the art so that it wouldn’t be gone with him.
In current day, Muscle Wizards are barely tolerated by Angolwen, and those who deem themselves worthy, can get access into the hidden city, but few people in there actually like them.

Muscle Wizards are people who decided that neither pure magic nor pure fighting arts were their passion. Instead, they channel mana to power their bodies and perform feats that no normal pugilist could perform. They believe that Spellblaze could have been avoided if the mages kept all the magic in themselves, instead of shooting it around like a toy.
Muscle Wizards don’t favor any single attribute while training. Instead, they use their experience and magical essence to “grow” their bodies in all aspects, eventually surpassing generic Heroes who have to focus in few areas. This also means that it is a much more accessible form of magic, as even the lowliest meek can through training accommodate his body to the needed strength. All Talents of Muscle Wizards are powered with Mana alone. Any strenuous Stamina requiring feats feed of the Mana instead.
Starting Attributes: +0 to All. HP modifier: +0.

minmay wrote:b) You have like 10 different talents for making a melee attack. This is way too many. You have a bunch of spell damage talents too despite this ostensibly being a melee class?

Primal Chosen (which is itself a failure imo).

minmay wrote:a) 11 class talent trees is a huge number. Yes, archmage has 13, but 4 of those are never worth unlocking and lots of the talents in the remaining trees are crap (arcane vortex, chain lightning, mudslide, the entire phantasm tree...); that is not a model you want to emulate.

minmay wrote:b) You have like 10 different talents for making a melee attack. This is way too many. You have a bunch of spell damage talents too despite this ostensibly being a melee class?

minmay wrote:c) Players will just invest in two of the Body talents and ignore the rest, since they are mutually exclusive. This is why even though there are three Chants and three Hymns, their levels are controlled by a single talent, encouraging you to switch between them instead of only using one.
Psionic/Absorption manages to have mutually exclusive sustains where you're still encouraged to invest in all three, but that's because having all three is the only way to cover all damage types and you can swap them instantly...and the swapping is more of an annoying chore than a difficult tactical decision.

minmay wrote:d) I am not convinced that this class would play significantly differently from grapple-less Brawler, aside from struggling to meet armour requirements (and having no physical power, but I assume that was just an accidental omission). It seems to be trying to do basically the same thing as Primal Chosen (which is itself a failure imo).

Physical power measures your ability to deal physical damage in combat. When you use Physical power to inflict temporary physical effects on an enemy, every point your opponent's relevant saving throw exceeds your physical power will reduce the duration of the effect by 5%.

minmay wrote:e) It is very rare for someone to want to code someone else's ideas for free. You will most likely have to program this class yourself if you want to play it.

LtLukoziuz wrote:As I mentioned before, I don't want this to be bump class or a physical damage class. Therefore, Physical Power is really unnecessary and instead Spell Power should be the one focused, both for CC producing and for the general damage. Unless Physical Power does something more unmentioned, it just won't do anything with the current writeup of the class.