New Class: Psionic: Gambit

[Sradac]

Also, it looks like rolling a 19 with your dice would be a really, really undesirable effect 95% of the time. Manaburn damage only hurts targets that have an arcane resource. If I rolled a 19 against say, an orc wyrmic that would be bad. Normally rolling high is good, but not if its 19. Almost as bad as a 1.

[Rathlord]

FYI...

Pretty much already existed as another addon already, cards, dice, luck, everything:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=5 ... 30#p152030

Huh, that's pretty nifty. Very similar theme, though mechanics wise worlds apart. This is one I'd love to see in the vanilla game someday, though =D

Also,

Update:

Changed Gambit values around a bit thanks to feedback from Sradac. Manaburn is now a roll of 2, and jostled acid, fire burn, and fire damage around to compensate.

[Rathlord]

Update:

Fortune no longer grants additional benefit from luck. Instead, it gives additional crit chance from luck. The Mistfortune effect was slightly tweaked as well.

[Sirrocco]

Probably should make it less X-Men themed. Just changing the name would do the trick. Also, anyone who plans to wield a staff in combat needs to be at least somewhat magic-based. Mind you, a class that can go magic, psi, or both could be pretty cool, and fits well with the concept of a travelling rogue who has developed powers sort of randomly, rather than through major study.

[Rathlord]

Probably should make it less X-Men themed. Just changing the name would do the trick. Also, anyone who plans to wield a staff in combat needs to be at least somewhat magic-based. Mind you, a class that can go magic, psi, or both could be pretty cool, and fits well with the concept of a travelling rogue who has developed powers sort of randomly, rather than through major study.

I really chose Gambit for the meaning of the word, not for the X-Men on-again-off-again team member. Gambit is a term commonly used when gambling- this inspired the superhero, hence why the tie-in is actually to the origin of the word, not the person.

Also, worth noting, there's a skill in the tree that allows the Gambit to use dexterity (I think it was) instead of magic for the attack; I also meant to change it so that spellpower is converted into mindpower; if I didn't do that already I'll change it.

[Sirrocco]

Sure, the name would be fine by itself for a character that didn't have any other references... but then you have two of his primary attacks involve staff and cards and suddenly it's pretty blatant. I assume that you still want the spinning, sweeping staff blows and the card-themed attacks... though each is kind of awkward in its way. Thus, the simplest thing to do is change the name.

Also, in common usage, gambit is far more chess-themed than it is gambling-themed, and suggests a tactically sound sacrifice play.

I'm a bit confused, though - if you're not explicitly doing it for the Xmen reference, then what's the point of including the staff combat? You're straining a bit to somehow separate them from the magic thing, and you're not doing anything with them that couldn't just as well be done with, say, daggers. The whole point of staffs is to augment magic (and for the +% damage).

[Rathlord]

Mainly the point was to be rather unique. Staff isn't really used much for bumping, and I thought it would be neat to have a class that could do it proficiently. Also, staves are characteristically used by people who don't have the money for finer weapons (historically speaking, that is) and it fits the theme of a poor brigand who just happens to be able to twist fate.

I might consider a change of title if people can't get per the X-Men thing, but it's worth noting I still disagree with you about the word. Almost every gamble is a gambit, whether you think of it that way or not.

[Sirrocco]

These days, with the shortstaff mods, staves get used for bumping by reavers, by a fair number of sun pallys, and by at least a few builds of bulwark. Dual-staff reaver is right up there for "most damaging melee combatant", actually.

Staves in this world are fundamentally magical, and are thus socially rather different than the traditional take a tree and trim it with a knife" thing.

Also, honestly, the weapon skill tree structure you're working with right now for the mindstar stuff is pretty cool to begin with. If I'm reading it right, first skill is an attack that kicks off a sustain (mutually exclusive with all other weapon-boost sustains) kind of like the brawler does with their stances. Each sustain gives you some notable and interesting weapon buff, while the other skills in the tree are powers depending on that sustain. That's an interesting start. One fo the reasons I'd kind of like to see the class go dagger/mindstar rather than staff/mindstar is that it would make it easier to extend that paradigm a bit - you could have two weapon trees for mindstars (cards and dice) and two for daggers (wind and fire? Something more creative that I can't come up with right now?). If you ten make one of the base attacks for each weapon be a melee attack and the other be short-distance (3, say) you have a reason for someone to invest in both base skills for their weapon choice. You could then have other trees that would have nifty side effects depending on which stance you were in. For example, make the Staff Acrobatics tree a weapon-agnostic Acrobatic Attack tree, and then have each of the skills in it have some useful rider that only applies when you're in the right stance. Perhaps Sly Swipe is that much faster while you're under the effect of Shuffle, and Roll... increases the likelihood of hitting/affecting with Lucky Strikes (...with the two dagger ones depending on what they do)

Also, they'd probably be well served to have some sort of talent (a generic, maybe) that let them run mindstar hit/dam off of cunning, rather than will.

[Rathlord]

Ok, I actually quite like that idea. I think ill do a revamp this afternoon.

[Rathlord]

Update

Did a massive overhaul; far too much to list everything.

Staffs are no longer used by the class or referenced in the talents.
Dreamforged Daggers has replaced Staff Acrobatics; this retains a focus on mobility and now deals fire and mind damage.
New tree Destiny Daggers; this is a true 'gambit.' Each skill is powerful, but each can also lead to potential negative effects if not used carefully.

Many thanks to Sirrocco for providing helpful feedback that led me to these ideas.

[Sirrocco]

So, feedback

I think it's worth comparing Mind Storm with Flurry (another dual-dagger attack). Flurry is generally considered to be one of the most powerful attacks in the game, and it's single-target and melee. I've not played with it myself, but my understanding is that a reasonably well-built rogue will one-shot most things with it. It makes a total of 6 attacks - three off each hand. 12, as an area effect, is perhaps a bit overpowered.

It's worth noting that it is possible to get 100% critrate. It's not trivial, but it's certainly something that can be done. This makes Mind Storm into an infinite loop of "everyone in range 3 dies unless they're immune to mind damage. If they're immune, the game crashes." THis a talent is so mighty that unleashing it can destroy the world.

Fate Bond is bizarre and fascinating. It probably also needs to be buffed a bit (at least at the low end). Spending a turn to get one turn of "won't die" isn't really worth it. Making it instant would probably do the trick, but it's not the only answer. On the flip side, Fate Bond in the hands of enemies might get a bit ugly.

If prestidigitation is going to be storing up damage, it needs to have an upper limit, or a duration or something. Otherwise, you can find some enemy who cannot possibly kill you, and sit there and let it whale on you indefinitely to build up your wave motion cannon (perhaps aided by a regen infusion and the fungus tree) before utterly annihilating the boss of your choice. Also, it looks like you mean this to trigger on unsustain.

Thaumaturgy needs to be "each time an enemy deals direct damage" rather than "each time an enemy would deal direct damage". Otherwise, it makes you functionally immune to damage against a fair percentage of available enemies for the duration, while firing off a series of powerful abilities. You could add in something that would cause it to reduce damage by some percent, but I honestly don't think it needs it.

The nimbleness numbers seem a bit excessive. 15% global speed for 5 talent points is considered to be a good reason to consider yeek as a race. This is a power off of a class, rather than a race, so it can afford to be a bit stronger, but....

[Rathlord]

Don't Anorithil with 100% critrate basically get to lolstorm everything out of existence, too? I've got some limits planned for Mind Storm that I didn't get a chance to include, we'll see what you think of it after I get them in there.

Note that Nimbleness, unlike the Yeek racial, cannot be used in combat except on the first turn (ever). Mainly it makes it so that you can position yourself better at the start of fights. If general opinion is that it's still too powerful, I might half the speed.

UPDATE!

Mind Storm now caps how many times an enemy can be hit by the first effect- if there's only one enemy, it only hits him three times, and it can't chain. It would require 3 enemies and 100% crit chance to chain indefinitely, and it would only work while all three were alive.

Fate Bond is now instant. I thought about changing it to start at 2 turns instead of one, but decided the high end would get too powerful and left it. It may just have to be one of those skills you have to take because it's good later.

Changed Prestidigitation wording to be a bit more clear. This is how I envisioned it working, but my wording was a bit ambiguous.

Changed Thaumaturgy so you're no longer immune to direct damage during the effect, but you can now cancel the effect early.

Nimbleness now ends if you use an ability, and can't begin to stack while you're using abilities.

[Sirrocco]

Anorithil with 100% critrate don't have critpowers that spawn other critpowers in the same way.

I think that mindstorm as described here would actually be just fine without recursive chaining. Also might consider making the max initial hits per person be dependent on skill level (max 3)

Fate Bond as an instant of duration 1 is still potentially tactically useful. If nothing else, it'd be useful to the Insane players as something to fire off before hitting Teleport, to ensure that they'd survive long enough to fire off an action at the other end.

I think I like the new versions of Nimbleness/Thaumaturgy/Prestidigitation

[Rathlord]

Slightly updated the description of Mindstorm to make hits/enemy scale with skill level.

Thanks again for all of the feedback Sirrocco, and as always I'd love to hear others' opinions!

[malboro_urchin]

Overall, the class looks really cool. However, the Dream-forged Daggers tree doesn't feel dream-forged. Outside of the damage type, it's just dagger attacks and teleportation. Handy, and probably cool to play around with, no doubt, but it doesn't feel dream-forged.