New addon development: Balancing questions

[bearkin333]

Hey guys. Long time player/donator here (300 hours, which I expect is below average). I'm working on a new class addon for ToME. I've always wanted to, but I figured I should wait until I beat the game before I tried to start balancing something reasonably. I still haven't, but I've made it to level 50, so I figured that's close enough.

Anyways, the class is called Overseer, and although I've got a pretty good idea of what I want, I think the largest issue to tackle that I feel unprepared to tackle is balancing. The Overseer is supposed to be a specialized and quirky summoner class that manages bratty and unreliable slaves. Frighteningly, it looks like summoning classes are the weirdest to balance. I'm hoping to pick up some pointers from some of the more veteran developers.

Asking for general advice has almost never gotten anyone anywhere, so I'll posit three main concerns:

1. How is damage mitigation balanced for summoners? For example, where a mage might shield damage, a warrior might tank their way through it, I would imagine a summoner would stand behind minions - what happens if you aren't standing behind them? What happens when you encounter AOE?

2. How does damage scaling work? For Temporal Hounds, I notice that as of around level 35, they don't really get any better throughout the rest of the game. This is probably intentional, since Temporal Wardens are fairly strong on their own, and I know other classes tend to have unique ways to empower their summons. However, I can think of a number of summoning classes that are similar to this - as they level up, a summon that hits the level 5 talent cap starts to fall off pretty hard. What are some ways around this?

3. It's supposed to be a fun, quirky class. Have any really weird/fun summon ideas? I have a hundred swimming around in my head, but I'd love to hear some of yours!

[Micbran]

1.) Unless your summoner is designed to fight WITH their summons, no damage mitigation is necessary, just look at summoner who can really only summon. Inscriptions can cover those holes.

2.) most summons scale pretty badly with about everything besides talent level since for the most part they're spammable balls of stats/meatshields. If you want to make them "scale" you can give the class talents much like Summoner's Resilience talent where it modifies summons stats outside of just putting more talent points into the talent. If you want to go really silly, you could just make it so that you could more than 5 points into a summon talent.

3.) Mordy (or Stof) and I were talking about ways to make summoner fight alongside their summons. Either making it so when ever you attack, a summon projects an attack onto your target/an extra attack on their attack or the player projects an attack through the summon + a bonus effect. You could add something like that.

[bearkin333]

Really, no mitigation is necessary? What if I do give them damage mitigation? I have a couple of fun ideas for it. Should I balance this out by making them shorter range, and more "in-the-combat"?

I'm a fan of talents that buff summons. The whole Doomed/Shadow tree is one of my favorites (even though it is so tricky to do well with). I'll probably end up going with a fairly complicated version of that.

That's a cool idea. I'll do a little bit of that, I think, but unfortunately this class is designed to be really
hands-off, combat wise. Maybe giving some options along that line could be an interesting play twist, though, so I'll give it some thought.

Thanks for the advice and opinions!

[Micbran]

its an addon, I wouldn't worry too much about balance. You can tweak things but overall they usually end up being weaker than most classes already existent in the game.

Unless you happen to be Razakai, which in that case every addon you create will end up being OP and fun.

[bearkin333]

Well, I'd rather lean towards the side of OP and fun then weak and not fun.
Thanks for the advice again!