Stalker Evolution for Rogue v1.0.3

[nsrr]

Adds Stalker as a new class evolution prodigy for Rogues. Get it here or on the Steam workshop.

While wearing no heavy armor (including helms, boots and gloves) and wielding no weapons:
- The Stalker's actions will never break Stealth.
- All damage taken is reduced based on Stealth Power and points invested in the Stealth tree, doubled while Shadow Dance is in effect.
- Effects normally triggered by exiting Stealth will trigger when landing an unarmed critical strike against an adjacent foe (cooldown 8 ).
- Lethality and Dagger Mastery will apply their effects to gloves.
- The Stalker is considered to be wielding Dual Weapons, with gloves counting as both mainhand and offhand.

Unlocking this prodigy requires 25 Dex, 25 Cun and a Stealth Power of 50 or greater. Note that Stealth will need to be sustained for your character to have the Stealth Power it grants. Stealth Power check includes bonuses from items. (50 Stealth Power from the Stealth talent alone can be achieved with 4 points in the talent with 50 Cun or 2 points in the talent with 100 Cun, for reference).

There is no easy-cheese attribute for this one for testing, because the attribute it checks can easily be assigned from the console for this purpose.

All feedback welcome as always. Enjoy!

[Seventeer]

Rouge is really weak……and how about shadowblade？
Free heavy glove，please

[nsrr]

While the evolution could work fine for Shadowblade, I feel like that class should have an evolution of its own, more in theme with its shadowy and magical nature. As for heavy gauntlets... I understand that restricting their use limits the number of 'weapons' available to the Stalker, but the gear restriction is part of the trade-off for the evolution.

That said, I have reworked the handling for 'dual unarmed' attacks such that all calls to attackTarget will now also make an 'unarmed offhand' attack. I had made a couple of specific changes so that Flurry and Heartseeker would behave this way before, but the new handling will affect many more talents, including those which specifically make an unarmed attack. For instance, Dirty Fighting will make two unarmed attacks, the second with offhand damage penalty.

v1.0.1
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[Terrorize]
When a Stalker triggers Terrorize with an unarmed crit, Terrorize will attempt to affect enemies even if they are not able to see the Stalker.

[General]
New handling for dual unarmed attacks. All attacks will hit twice with you unarmed combat, with one strike dealt with the offhand damage penalty.

[Thexare]

I just hit The Master's second form with Flurry for over half his health. Sure, it was a crit, but with permastealth there's not much that isn't. My Drakeskin gloves with chance to cast L5 Cripple contributed, I'm sure, but I have some.. concerns. I'll report more as the playthrough continues.

Edit: Crit one-shot Krogar at the Unremarkable Cave with Heartseeker. I feel like the scaling might be a bit concerning tbh. Between punches, autocasts, and Hidden Blades, I got six hits, and two Quickdraw Knives. That last bit seems like a bug. I did start this character on 1.0 and continue on the patch, so something miiiiight have possibly gone awry from that specifically.

Edit 2: So I just pasted Aluin in one shot. My concerns about the damage continue, though note that by now I'm using a somewhat hilarious merchant randart. This was a Heartseeker crit.

Edit 3: Dropped the Drolem in five turns. Heartseeker, Flurry, Fan of Knives, Rogue's Brew, Dual Strike. The Brew was a necessity due to a significant damage burst from the Drolem though, as with any Rogue this is a very glass cannon build. Tannen down three turns later - move, Heartseeker, Snap. Yes, he died without me attacking more than once; Garrote does nasty things with a Stalker.

Edit 4: I got Flexible Combat because I'm a fan of Recursion Fu, and I had Quickdraw Knife fire four times in one turn. I think something's gone seriously awry here. This repeated multiple times, pretty consistent.

Edit 5: Game over. Couple fun notes: Melee retaliation is bullshit. Throwing Knives provoke melee retaliation, see previous point. Walking around a corner into 900 damage hurts.

Basically I think something's going haywire and giving me way more attacks than I should have, especially obvious with Quickdraw Knife.

[nsrr]

Ah... whoops

Good catch I've been completely ignoring Throwing Knives in my Stalker play through, but I should done more thorough testing when I was working on the changes for v1.0.1.

The new handling for dual unarmed weapons was making a bad assumption that weapon attacks while unarmed were, in fact, unarmed attacks. Throwing Knives is, of course, a perfect example of why this is a bad assumption. This was definitely causing excess hits with Quickdraw.

v1.0.2
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Fixed dual unarmed weapon handling to properly apply only to unarmed attacks.

[KingOfAllTrades]

Edit 5: Game over. Couple fun notes: Melee retaliation is bullshit. Throwing Knives provoke melee retaliation, see previous point. Walking around a corner into 900 damage hurts.

Yep, seconded. I accidentally flurried on a guy who had like 15 melee retaliation and took 735 damage for instant death from full. Partly my own fault for having so many procs, but still felt a little unearned. Kinda seems like Rogues and their ilk are the only classes that truly get punished by retaliation damage; Berserker does big hits instead of lots of little ones and Brawler has flat DR to negate the retaliation damage entirely.

Perma stealth is neat, though, and I like the interesting equipment restrictions. The damage felt very solid while I was alive to deal it, although not nearly as strong as the barbarian's.

[nsrr]

Thanks again for your feedback

Melee retal is definitely a bane to a class with a lot of multi hit attacks, and Stalker exacerbates the issue by making even the unarmed attacks in your kit hit an extra time.

One thing that has been nagging at me with this evolution is that it's all about Stealth, but at the same time it makes the capstone talent in the Stealth tree utterly useless. So, what I'm pondering now is: should we make Shadow Dance have a special effect for Stalkers that might help alleviate the detriment of attacking foes with melee retal and boost their defence over all a bit?

I'm thinking of giving some flat damage resistance based on Stealth power that is either passive and scales up with investment in Shadow Dance, or make the effect a bit stronger but only while the Shadow Dance buff is active. If passive, perhaps scaling up to 50% of your Stealth power at 5/5 points in Shadow Dance (and starting around 20-25% at 1/5), or 100% of your Stealth power if it is only applied while Shadow Dance is in effect (in which case you'll benefit from more points by increasing the duration).

Any thoughts?

[KingOfAllTrades]

50% seems a bit excessive to me, actually. I don't remember exactly what my stealth power was when I died around level 28, but it was at least eighty and 40 DR would for sure have made the entire game a walkover. Even just three points of DR would have reduced the damage I took by a full 20%, easily enough to spare me; with 20, I wouldn't have been damaged at all.

I might do, say, one flat DR for each point invested in the stealth tree, and then have Shadow Dance double it or triple it for the duration? That also makes Soothing Darkness slightly less feelbad to invest in, as a significant portion of its power is tied into relaxing the conditions for reactivating stealth. 20/20 investment would yield a solid passive defense and a steroid almost on par with Subcutaneous Metallisation.

[nsrr]

Thanks for your thoughts

I do like the idea of having something scale with total points invested in the Stealth tree, but I might not do it on a 1:1 ratio. I also like the idea of working off of Stealth power, as it gives a little more weight to gear with stealth bonus power. I'm thinking perhaps a percent of Stealth power flat DR, but scale that percent with total points invested in the Stealth tree, and a boost to the amount while Shadow Dance is active. I wouldn't do a 1:1 ratio, most likely, but rather use points invested as the scalar in a standard talent scale formula. So if the max is 25% of Stealth power, you would start around 10% or so and scale up with more points invested (realistically you would start higher because you'll have points invested before taking the prod, but that's the general idea). Just spitballing numbers at this point, but I have a good idea now of what I want to do and I can tweak numbers as I test it.

Thanks again for your feedback

[nsrr]

v1.0.3
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Stalkers now gain flat damage reduction based on Stealth Power and points invested in Stealth talents (while Stealthed, unarmed and wearing no heavy armor pieces).
Reduction equals 15% of Stealth Power at 0/20 points in Stealth tree, scaling up to 30% at 20/20 points.
The damage reduction is doubled while Shadow Dance is in effect.

[Fela]

While I love the concept, I totally hate leaving equipment slots empty on purpose.

Shouldn't there be a way to convert (suitable) weapons into items with 0 (+ glove) attack power that fit into the hand slots?
That way builds could still be somewhat customized by weapon choice for said conversion.

Keeping offhand empty is what killed the fun in playing demented for me, for instance.

[Thexare]

You're basically asking for the entire unarmed combat system in ToME to be restructured. That seems pretty unreasonable.

[nsrr]

Hm, well, everyone has their own prefrences.

Personally, I find it a relief to have fewer slots to gear. Sifting through loot is not my favorite part of the game, and being unarmed means I can blissfully ignore all weapon drops. Granted, if I felt like I was getting nothing in exchange, I might not give up weapons as readily. Switching to Stalker gives you a boost in damage for all of your regular attacks, and effectively doubles the unarmed attacks in your kit, and provides far more chances to land glove procs. On top of that you get the perma Stealth and everything that goes along with it.

Still, if hunting for the perfect piece of gear to augment your build is something you enjoy in the game, I can see why this implementation might not interest you. However, adding a whole new system to handle equipping items in the hands while being unarmed for attack purposes is more of an undertaking than I feel prepared to tackle at the moment. Maybe a simpler idea would be to just allow them to wield weapons

While unarmed Rogue is appealing to me, it certainly might not be for everyone. Perhaps the implementation here is not the best. There are two concepts here, and maybe they would be better separated. On the one hand, we have perma-Stealth. On the other hand, we have dual unarmed attacks. While I like the idea of becoming extra stealthy by fighting without weapons from a lore perspective, neither of these really requires the other. There is the potential to split them into two separate prodigies. One would give up weapons in exchange for dual unarmed attacks, while the other gives up heavy helms, gloves and boots in exchange for perma-Stealth. I would be inclined to also restrict it to daggers only, in that case.

I would be interested to know what anyone thinks of the prospect of two separate prodigies. Would each be a compelling option for spending a prodigy point on its own? Do the benefits compensate for the equipment restriction they impose? Would you be more interested in one or the other if it split off on its own? My personal, initial reaction to the idea is that I would, in fact, consider taking either one. I would probably lean toward unarmed, but I can certainly see myself doing another run just to try out both possibilities.

Thoughts, anyone?

[Thexare]

Personally, I feel like it's specifically the combination of unarmed and permastealth (and the accompanying quirky mechanics) that makes the Stalker feel so different and fun in the first place. And adding Flexible Combat is fun because Recursion Fist.

I do have an idea kicking around for a two-handed class evolution of the Rogue that gives up stealth to convert its bonuses into something else, but the full details elude me.