ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hi all,

I have some dumb questions about talents and talent trees:

1. What's the difference between class and generic talent?
2. How many talents are supposed to be in a talent tree? I recall most have 4 talents, but I have also seen some with 5.
3. How many talent trees does a character class have? What's the minimum and maximum?

I also think that they are more like lists instead of trees, since they don't branch.

Omega Blue wrote:Hi all,

I have some dumb questions about talents and talent trees:

1. What's the difference between class and generic talent?
2. How many talents are supposed to be in a talent tree? I recall most have 4 talents, but I have also seen some with 5.
3. How many talent trees does a character class have? What's the minimum and maximum?

I also think that they are more like lists instead of trees, since they don't branch.

1. Class take class points, generic takes generic points. You get varying amounts of each (at max level with all sidequests, 70 class and 50 generic). Typically generic talents are ones that are shared across some classes and lean more towards passive and utility abilities rather than direct damage, but that's not always the case.

2. 99% of the time it's 4. The only one I can remember with 5 is the Combat Training generic tree which is a special case.

3. Varies depending on class. Maximum class would probably be Archmage with all unlocks, which has 13 class trees. Minimum would probably be Reaver with 6.
As for generic, varies depending on unlocks. Most tend to have 3-4 base trees, but with escorts, antimagic and training you can easily double that.

They're pretty much single-branch talent trees. I think it was probably inspired by Dragon Age and the like (especially if you look at things like Rogue talents which are similar to DA:O stuff).

Combat training the odd man out it seems to have 5.

However I believe it technically has 6 because exotic weapons counts as part of that tree but is usually hidden.

Also its a weird tree in that none of the talents are required for the other talents.

Yes they are not trees. Combat training isn't even a "line" its a grab bag.

In general class talents are meant to be specific to the function of that class and generics are things that can be anywhere. The rules are not hard and fast Bloodthrist appears for Berserkers and marauders so it crosses from warrior to rogue (fairly rare for class talents). And some generics are mostly isolated to some archetypes (acrobatics tends to be rogues, Thuggery is only on marauders). No class talent appears everywhere, some generic do or close to it (combat training, survival).

Finally generics can be added to any characters but class talents never can. Adding a generic is special: you can buy a few or you can get escorts and one prodigy can awards a generic (Tools of the Trade). In practice this is a somewhat moot point since many generics are unobtainable without being a certain class.

However Tools of the Trade prodigy awards both stealth(class) and scoundrel(generic) trees. But only classes that normall have access to stealth can get it since its a class line, any class can get scoundrel from that prodigy.

Scoundrel, under normal circumstances, is like Thuggery only one class gets it (Rogue) so its like a class specific generic. But actually any class can get it since its a generic tied to this special case.

In function the only difference between Thuggery and a class talent line is which types of points you use. But in theory it could be like scoundrel where its not actually truly tied to the class that normally is the only one getting it. Whereas Bloodthirst, in theory, should never work this way.

Thanks you for your detailed replies.