Trea wrote:
That's a interesting thought. I am after all only restricting to those 3 class stereotypes as an arbitrary restriction, nothing says I can't make a "terminator" style class as well as the warrior/mage/rogue. Will consider this as a possibility. Another thought is Xorn mages may be more the style of a warriormage then a pure mage.
Fair enough! I figured the three were arbitrary, but good as a way of not setting sights too ridiculously high. I pitched this mainly as a way of getting possible archetypes out there--even in ToME there's a lot of different "warriors" and "mages" after all. It definitely feels like a warriormage sort of race, though there's something to be said for wielding four staves at once.
twas Brillig wrote:There's a theme of xorns being split up and retaining some function. Harkor'Zun is the most extreme example, but the alchemist quest also mentions xorn fragments staring at you. There's another parallel to the stonewarden here with the crystal halves, but that's explicitly dwarven, very powerful, and more spiritual than biological. It might fit Throw Mountain's precedent of damage in exchange for powerful effects/conjuration if you could tear chunks off yourself/in response to damage to summon fragmentary minions. (alternatively, split up into a squad of four with one limb each, reforming if you're all destroyed)
Wow that's.. that's perfect for a earth style warriormage. Do X damage to yourself to create X minions (Or perhaps even duplicates).
Glad you like it! Straight up duplicates would be pretty nasty. Think about how highly people rate Forgery of Haze and Inner Demons. I guess the axes we have to vary are: flexibility (whether they have all skills, a set of trees, a handful of skills, or just attacks), duration (in terms of pure turns, hit points, and durability), and frequency (cooldown and resource cost). Not having a lot of health recovery definitely makes it harder to pull out multiple times during a fight.
twas Brillig wrote:
Hitpoints and resources
Making hitpoints difficult to recover is actually a really interesting mechanic, as you obviously know. It's part of what makes the undead races a pain starting out, and a smaller part of making the Shalore start difficult. Ways of extending HP are shields (not particularly xorny), resists (straightforward and xorny), damage reduction (pretty xorny), some sort of bone/stone shield effect (would encourage hit and run, obviously very strong), minions/not being targeted (again, powerful), and turning into a rock (voluntary, partial stoning might be an interesting mechanic; it's got some pretty huge trade-offs in return for large resists).
First part, I could see a stone shield being more them ripping stones from the ground and using them as protection, giving brief armour increase as warriors where as mages would transmute the earth to briefly cover them, giving flat damage reduction.
Using stones as protection seems almost more like a blocking effect than straight up armor. That may be more interesting, as an active effect, and potentially more powerful (as something that protects against spells and not just attacks).
twas Brillig wrote: Maybe increase defense/resist proportional to impassible tiles, representing ducking into the stone to dodge attacks?
That'd be fairly simple as an extension of the already existing racial talent
That's what I was going for!
I figured it might be good to separate the two for balance reasons, but it seemed like a natural extension of Earth Glide.
Actually hitpoints > effects/sustains would again fit the entire theme as a whole
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but it sounds important to your image of the race?
twas Brillig wrote:
It makes them a bit more monstrous than alien, but having something like Swallow could provide an intermittent healing effect...though to be really consistent, and to avoid giving them too much easy HP recovery, it might be interesting if it required stoning/gemifying the enemy first. Maybe a "spend money to make money" tree where you can cast effects from hitpoints that prepare enemies for later consumption.
Hrm, not too sure about this one.
Me neither, honestly. At least in
D&D xorns are pretty expressly
not interested in eating people (though living crystals might be fair game). Turning people into rocks to eat is...maybe an interesting horror movie experience, but not all that sensible an evolutionary decision. Stoning may still be interesting to look at, as well as bonuses against stoned enemies.
Swallow mostly seemed interesting as a limited, tactical heal. It works on a moderate cooldown (once or twice a fight), only under certain circumstances, and better the harder the enemy you kill. I figure any kind of active heal should either require managing a resource (like eating gems) or controlling the flow of combat. Does that match with what you're imagining?
Yes. I was thinking about this myself. Stealth that only works while in rocks and something similar to abduction that drags them into the stone and suffocates.
Maybe some kind of chokehold effect? I think that's exclusively a horror talent, via tentacle grab, at present. Suffocation damage is actually huge, now that I think about it. Dealing a percentage of max health to madness bosses would be really powerful.
It'd be interesting if there was a way to represent hiding under the ground. Stealth in walls is an interesting mechanic that requires altering your play style, but stealth under the floor is just...stealth.
It sounds like you have some ideas about the rogue class would work. Any thoughts on the other two archetypes?
The biggest problem with this one is that there's engine restrictions I can't work around just yet such as 1h + offhand not working right if the other set of hands is wielding a two-hander, but dual wielding + shields works fine for the little bit I tested of it. Dual unarmed also has problems working with the engine (in fact I'd have to completely rewrite the unarmed code to do it) and apparently more than 2 shields doesn't work right either.
Ew, gross, don't do that. It might make sense to slightly buff xorns when fighting totally unarmed, to representing their using four equally powerful limbs. So it sounds like (unless you want to make some four-handed weapons) there are at least five possible combinations right now:
- 2 2-handed weapons.
- 1 2-handed weapon, 1 1-handed weapon, 1 shield.
- 2 1-handed weapons, 2 shields.
- 2 1-handed weapons, 2 offhand weapons.
- 2 1-handed weapons, 1 shield, 1 offhand weapon.
Can you wield 2 shields (as with Stoneshield) and a 2-handed weapon? That's sort of a poor man's "bulwark but moreso". Stronger attack, strong defense.
That means between 2 (maybe 1) and 4 weapons, so weapon talents should assume dual-/multi-wielding.
What do you think about ranged weapons? Without support for firing multiple weapons at once, or attacking in melee while firing at range, about the only useful loadout would be a bow plus two shields. I guess weapons with "when wielded" egos would still be useful, but that's sort of...indirect. Dual ranged weapons would also consume ammo twice as fast. (leaving aside that they'd probably need an engine rewrite)
They should totally have some kind of bonus disarm resistance. Because, well...
). It occurs to me that lowering max health makes things that trigger off of % health more powerful/happen earlier. So a talent like the ghoul racial that blocks damage over a % of your max life get strong, heroism gets stronger, Untouchable gets touchier...stuff like that. Not gamebreaking, but interesting. It'd probably take engine fiddling, but if that was a problem it might be possible to leave "maximum" health unchanged, but keep it from going over a limit. (which makes Chant of Fortitude stronger...)