Solipsist (Reality bending Psionicist)

[Grillkick]

I think that a combination of your, my, and Greyswandir's ideas would probably be ideal. I like Grey's idea of materializing weapons and your vision of not forcing the player to walk around empty handed. Here are a couple ideas.

If you go with sustained Dreamforged weapons of any sort- you could have them materialize in the alt equipment slot. It must be unoccupied to function. Error message upon attempting with both slots full: "You must free your mind of distractions- focus by emptying your alt equipment slot."
Switching to the alt slot would be equivalent to your mind altering the reality of your wielded weapons- use some aspect of them to buff the dreamforged ones. Calculated from their base damage and retain on-hit abilities.
Have the first skill devoted to materializing weapons, with the other three providing one-time attacks of some nature that require a dreamforged weapon to execute.
This approach accomplishes several things- Instead of limiting players by forcing them to either use mindstars or be empty handed to use, it actually rewards players by using effective equipment of their choice and builds upon it. It is thematically and effectively different than psiblades because of the versatility of its use and is the only thing that grants access to the further abilities of the tree. It can be used in conjunction with psiblades if one wishes as it builds upon them like any other weapon. Lastly, it's really $#%$ing cool.
Similar to what Greyswandir suggested, have the Dreamforged weapon generated be of the same type as wielded when activated. That would make for some cool builds. Becaaaause- dreamforged weapons use willpower as their main stat! (Possibly willpower and cunning?) I could see a lot of people dumping psiblades because they want to use a dreamforged version of their twohander. While they wouldn't have access to the usual dualwield/one-hander/twohander class trees, the other buffs of Solipsist and the ability to use the rest of the Dreamforge tree could prove quite viable. What do you think?

Edit- on a side note, depending on how powerful you believe this tree would be, you could make the core Dreamforge skill (which allows the other skills to be used) to be either a sustain or something that steadily drains psi per turn.

[Sirrocco]

I'm rather liking the idea of exploiting the alt slots, and of filling in the "why would I wish to do this" question with "because you can use mindpower and cunning to fight with". It would, of course, do mind damage by default, rather than physical damage. I think it would be cool to see one active that did a decent amount of damage and then had a decent chance of putting its target to sleep. Just for a first go-round...

- Dreamforged Weapons: initial sustain, probably functions like other base weapon-boost skills (+mindpower instead of +physpower, though... might be interesting to balance properly)
- Strike Resistance: Melee attack. If it hits, deals damage and has a chance (based on mental save) of causing a significant debuff to mind damage resist. If the debuff fails, gives a short-term, weak-to-moderate but stacking debuff to mental save.
- Strike Wakefulness: Melee attack. If it hits, deals damage, and then gives a chance to sleep (resist by mental save). If unsuccessful, duplicates the mental save debuff of Strike at the Resistance.
- Strike Loyalty: as above, but instead of sleep, is a short-term dominate effect

The idea of the debuff is that you're actually attacking - they can "parry" with their mental save, but you'll take a few chunks out while you're there. Debuff only lasts 2-3 turns or so, but you can fr these attacks off back to back and pretty much assure yourself that *one* of them will go through. Part of the idea of the above is that the affects get more powerful as you go up the chain, but they're shorter duration, and longer cooldown as you go up too. I'd see base damage of each to be identical when at the same skill level.

Side note - might be cool to see a moderate-to-long-term debuff that reduces its target's mental save by 1 every time they have to make a mental save. You could cheese it with mind damage attacks, but that's kind of the point. I'd make it a curse, but there isn't anyone who uses curses and also cares about mind save.

[MisiuPysiu]

Hey,

I wanted to try this class out, give some feedback. Sadly the link on page 5 doesn't seem to be working anymore. Is there any way, I could get my hands on the newest version of this class addon?

Cheers.

[edge2054]

At this point I'm thinking dream-forge may end up being two trees. One unlocked and one advanced.

I considered alt-weapon slots as well. Simply forcing a weapon swap on sustain cast if your hands aren't empty in your main slot.

Anyway at this point I'm working on the unlock and than we'll see where we're at.

@MisiuPysiu

This won't be an add-on so it's a bit more complicated. The class is in the ToME main repository.

You can get the source from here https://gitorious.org/te4/te4/commits/master . The tarball is in the links on the right hand side.

If you're on windows you'll need the files Graziel posted in this thread http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=31549

If you're not on windows you'll need to either compile the source or grab an earlier revision (the fix scrollbar position will completely break the old binary). I think the tarball is always head though so you'd need to check out the repository using git or something similar.

[edge2054]

Alright, just sent Darkgod the patch that will make Solipsists 'feature complete' for b42. Dream Forging didn't make it in but I still might get to it before the class releases, depends on how much time I have an how anxious DG is to release the next beta. I have some solid ideas now on how and what I want to do with that (possibly those) tree(s) so it's definitely still on the table.

Now... I'd like to take a moment to say a few things.

I'm very proud of this class and I hope it's as fun to play as it was to code. I feel I broke some new ground with talent design and did some new things, even surprised myself quite a bit. But this never would have been possible without some of the people in my life.

So I'd like to thank...

My friend Adam for laying the foundation years ago when he showed me a bit of coding.

Yufra for being so patient when he was first teaching me how to code.

Tiger Eye for helping me out with a lot of coding questions.

DarkGod for his help with coding questions and especially for allowing me the chance to contribute to this great game.

My Wife for her understanding of all the hours I've spent on ToME.

Everyone on IRC for their constant feedback, ideas and constructive criticism

And everyone in this thread for all your great ideas and input I don't think the class would be half as good as it is (at least let's hope it's good ) without the time you guys took to contribute.

*edit*
And don't let this post stop you guys from posting more ideas Just because a class is 'finished' doesn't mean there's not room for more great trees, feedback and improvement on existing talents, and balance suggestions. Mostly I just wanted to take the time to thank everyone for all the help

[Grillkick]

Thanks Edge! Everyone is appreciative of all the great work you've put into this awesome game

[MisiuPysiu]

Jup, I agree. Ive been in this community since 2003 (old good times). But its TOME 4 and the people who contribute to the development process which make the game unique.
Keep up the good work:):)

Cheers.

[James LaBrie]

You deserve plenty of credit yourself edge. Your creativity and talent with the classes you code still astounds me. Keep up the excellent work, please.

[edge2054]

Thanks all

Could use some help with talent names.

http://paste.ubuntu.com/1131981/

[Parcae2]

Freud's "Hammer"

[edge2054]

Hammer Time?

Thinking Smith's Hammer for the first one, Hammer Toss instead of Throw Hammer, and not sure for Dream Crusher. Crushing Hammer maybe? meh, don't know. I like Forge Echoes. Wish the other names were that good.

Anyway, going to do an advanced tree as well consisting of sustains.

Dreamforge Armor - Basic armor/defense buff.

Dreamforge Shield - From grayswander's earlier post

Dreamforge - Again from earlier.

So missing one talent. I consider the attacking with hammer stuff complete so nothing that directly deals with the hammer, plus I want this tree to stand on its own. The fourth talent could be an attack of some kind, though I'd prefer if it was a sustain for the sake of consistency. The other unlockable trees are pretty offense/disable heavy so I think this tree will be a nice addition as a defensive option.

[MisiuPysiu]

Can't wait to get my hands on this class. It looks very interesting. Hope b42 will be released soon...

[Sirrocco]

Forged Flesh Grows But Stronger: sustain, with no upkeep cost: adds resists. starts with a relatively minor to moderate boost, but adds a bit of resist to any element whenever you get hit by that element. On the other hand, it also adds a bit to the sustain cost, and the eventual cooldown time. The idea is that eventually you have to unsustain it because otherwise you won't have the psi to do anything *else* - but at the same time, the perfection of your body is only limited by the effort you're willing to put into it, and the pain you're willing to suffer to get it there. Does something appropriately debilitating (though not *directly* threatening) on unsustain, as you suffer from withdrawal.

Other than that, the idea of Dreamforged Flesh seems rife with sustain/passive defense possibilities.

[Grillkick]

Just looked as SVN- snap, none of my ideas made the cut lol

But! I will take a measure in pride at having coined "Dreamforge". It looks like it influenced the general theme- so it looks like no brainstorming sessions are truly wasted. The community here is awesome.

[edge2054]

hehe.. the Dreamforge theme birthed both those trees really

But yeah, your original ideas weren't really what I envisioned for a melee tree if I did one. The dream-smith tree is basically a spell tree, it just happens that the spell creates a hammer for the duration of the talent and passes it into the attack functions.

I enjoyed it in playtesting. It requires a lot of investment but I thought it paid off well and I think the scaling is pretty good on it.

I hope you enjoy playing with it when you get the chance