New class: Spell Blade

[HousePet]

Ah that was it. Res All is handled weirdly and I get the interactions a bit mixed up.
High Res All stair guardians are just asking to be walked past.

However, even the Archmage Res Pen talents got extra effects, because 50% res pen is boring. (Okay partly that is the implementation of it.)
Loads of classes doesn't have a Res Pen mechanic and work fine.

[Unnamed]

Right, I can just superload on_set_temporary_effect and increase the apply power. That will also have an effect in case something else than spellpower was used but it should be alright.
The bonus should be rather high (like +4 spellpower equivalent per talent level for all Arcane Blade talents) so increasing spellpower will be too powerful.
I don't want to put code in every talent that applies effects (almost every talent) as that is very inconvinient.

[smithfield]

Played this all xmas eve. What a nice gift. The design and art work are really well done. I think because of the name, one has expectations from the Arcane Blade. The game design of this class neatly thwarts those.

I haven't gotten far yet, but in another recent game with another class,

I had a neat experience w/ an NPC.

In Kor'Pal, something rare was blasting me w/ a fire spell that wasn't completely killing me. It behaved so strangely I had to look and see what it was. Surprise, it was a Spell Blade rare chasing after me with that weak fire spell and two enchantments blazing. I don't remember whether I closed on it or not. I had a Moon Paladin and they are mostly fighting close. I think I shielded up. A nice damage shield torque shuts down all those little hits pretty completely.

Its lovely to see how additional classes are filling in gaps an nuances and expanding game play.

Oh. I think this might be considered a bug, unintended behavior or some such thing.

Since the Spell Blade does not have much ST, I built straight towards Augmentation. And I am relying upon it for my Encumberance. Each time I change levels, the +/- ENCUMBERED thing flashes over my character. It appears that some sustained talents have to be jiggled somehow when you cross zones. The jiggling at the moment in the Spell Blade seems a little 'iffy'.

I really enjoyed how you paired some older talent trees that I hadn't really seen together much, along w/ your created talents which gave rise to a very satisfying chance to go big on the Light spell.

[Unnamed]

I'm glad you like the class.

Oh. I think this might be considered a bug, unintended behavior or some such thing.

Since the Spell Blade does not have much ST, I built straight towards Augmentation. And I am relying upon it for my Encumberance. Each time I change levels, the +/- ENCUMBERED thing flashes over my character. It appears that some sustained talents have to be jiggled somehow when you cross zones. The jiggling at the moment in the Spell Blade seems a little 'iffy'.

The same happened to me while I was playing a Mindslayer who also has a sustained talent that increases strength. I don't think it can be fixed at all.

I also wrote up the other talent ideas I have:

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Prismatic Blade
Your blade enhancement skills also improve the corresponding resistance penetration by 10..40% and the damage by 2..10%.

Prismatic Strike
Overload two of your knives with magical energy before throwing them at a target. This will cause an explosion that does x damage to everyone in a radius 1..3 ball an has additional effects depending on your active blade enhancement skills. If less than 2 are active, you instead use the damage type of the throwing knives.
Fire damage will spellshock and stun the targets, cold damage freeze the targets, lightning damage will apply 2 stacks of charge to the targets, arcane damage will spellshock the targets and overload them with arcane energy, and physical damage will cause bleeding wounds.

Artifice
Reload 3..6 enhanced throwing knives. For the next 3..7 turns your knive attacks get the same effects from your active blade enhancements as melee attacks do.

Wind Slicer
Your knives spin wildly around you giving you some time to prepare a powerful attack. For the next 2 turns every adjacent enemy that attacks you will be hit by a free throwing knive attack for 60% damage consuming 1 stack of Wind Slicer. The total number of stacks is equal to 2 times the number of throwing knives left.
When the effect expires while there are stacks left, and if you have at least 15 stamina, you attack every target within radius 1 for 60..180% weapon damage with your dual-weapons and also do a throwing knive attack for 60..180% damage if you have throwing knives left. This attack occurs on your next turn and is not instant.

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Rock Knives
Each turn you move or rest you automatically shape 1 knive made of stone costing 6 mana. You can hold up to 4..9 rock knives.
The base power, accuracy, armour penetration, and critcal strike chance of your knives increase with talent level and damage is improved with Combat Casting.
Rock Knives count as spell for the purpose of on-hit effects.
Stats same as Throwing Knives (?) but doing bleed damage.
When deactivated, if you have at least 20 stamina, you shatter the remaining rock knives in order to create sharp rock needles that you blast in all directions doing x bleed damage to all enemies within radius 2..4.

Rock Edge
Cover your main-hand weapon with a layer of sharp rock and strike the target for 100..220% weapon damage with 6..40 additional armour penetration and 20..50% additional physical resistance penetration.
After the impact the rock layer shatters and you blast the fragments at the target. The duration of all cut effects is increased by 3 turns and for each cut effect the target is stuned, pined, crippled, or disarmed for 4 turns.

Stone Warden
You focus on the target for 3..6 turns. Each time the target attacks you with a non-instant talent, while a throwing knive effect is active and you have at least one knive left, you reflexively throw a knive at the target. A ranged attack will target an adjacent tile instead of you, a melee attack has a 50% chance to miss you.

Stone Walls
Range: 2..6
Infuse your rock knives with mana and throw them at different locations in order to errect 3 tiles long walls of stone at the target location for 4..8 turns. This costs 10 mana for each wall.
When the walls shatter while you are within range 2 you take the opportunity to reshape a rock knive if you have at least 6 mana.

[Unnamed]

I uploaded a new version.
It now contains the Prismatic Blade category and the ranged attack talents were replaced by throwing knive talents. See the first page for details.

[Laughmore]

Hi!

Couple of weird things to note:

Tried v1.2 with a halfling and a yeek. Both started with -1 stats available. I was able to play, so weirdness. Dwarf and Higher started with 3 stat.

With Fire knives active, when I go to press r to rest, mana quickly zeroes out and fluctuates up and down between 0 and 10. This means rest doesn't stop unless cancelled.

When I've thrown some fire knives, and move, the knives replenish without dinging 7 mana (that's the way I understand it).

If I stop Fire knives, then r does replenish mana to 100%.

As z to auto-move first engages rest, that also drains the mana and I don't move.

I haven't played long enough to see if the other blades exhibit the same behavior.

Cheers

[Erenion]

So... bugs and general weirdness with the new version:

- If you know any of the magical knife talents, you can learn Arcane Capacity and/or Augmentation while knowing one less talent from the talent tree, since Throw Knife counts as a spell from this category.
- The cone from Fire Knife with Enervate does not work as intended. It projects the cone from you instead of from the target.
- Throwing Knives do not actually apply ranged on-hit effects.
- Reloading a knife while moving or passing a turn doesn't cost mana.
- Resting while a knife talent is active drains mana even if your knives are full.
- The attack from Wind Slicer seems to trigger a turn too early (when the duration ticks down to 1)
- It seems weird that all other elements have knives, but Ice doesn't.
- Switching knives feels awful if you only invested in one. (Lack of range and ammo for the new one.)
- If you have Ice Blade sustained, Prismatic Strike does not apply the effects of Lighting Blade or Arcane Blade to targets it freezes, but Fire Blade still applies. The immunity is due to frozen targets being immune to new debuffs, and could be fixed by just applying the Ice Blade debuff last (I assume it's applied after Fire, but before the others currently.) Another way to prevent this from occurring would probably be to apply the freeze in the same way that the ITEM_LIGHTNING_DAZE damage type applies its daze effect.

Otherwise, this looks neat!

[nsrr]

I was going to report a couple bugs, but these guys beat me to it. Erenion covered everything I noticed, and more.

Interesting class, lots of possibilities, looks fun.

Your icons are really nice, too. It's refreshing to see some original art

[Unnamed]

Thanks for the feedback!
I fixed the reload relating bugs.

Tried v1.2 with a halfling and a yeek. Both started with -1 stats available. I was able to play, so weirdness. Dwarf and Higher started with 3 stat.

I don't know why that happens. Are there any restrictions on start stats? It seems the other classes just assign 9 stat points so I just did the same.

- If you know any of the magical knife talents, you can learn Arcane Capacity and/or Augmentation while knowing one less talent from the talent tree, since Throw Knife counts as a spell from this category.

I completely forgot about this. Easy to fix.

- Throwing Knives do not actually apply ranged on-hit effects.

That's a mistake in the descriptions. It should apply spell on-hit effects. Also the throw talent will trigger a off-hand weapon attack.

- The attack from Wind Slicer seems to trigger a turn too early (when the duration ticks down to 1)

That's because it did not work otherwise. I think on_timeout is not called when the duration reaches 0. It's a somewhat hacky solution I should probably change.

- It seems weird that all other elements have knives, but Ice doesn't.

I planned another category that will have a knive skill but no blade buff. I don't know whether that would actually make it better or not.

- Switching knives feels awful if you only invested in one. (Lack of range and ammo for the new one.)

That's a good point. I will change this so the ammo will increase by 0.5 for every level in all knive talents.

- If you have Ice Blade sustained, Prismatic Strike does not apply the effects of Lighting Blade or Arcane Blade to targets it freezes, but Fire Blade still applies. The immunity is due to frozen targets being immune to new debuffs, and could be fixed by just applying the Ice Blade debuff last (I assume it's applied after Fire, but before the others currently.) Another way to prevent this from occurring would probably be to apply the freeze in the same way that the ITEM_LIGHTNING_DAZE damage type applies its daze effect.

I see. I forgot about the immunity. It's easy to change though.

[Cathbald]

Chars starting with negative stat points is because some points are allocated to allow them their starting gear/talents.

No vanilla combo has that issue but you can find it on a couple of addons and I think a dlc class or two.

[Doctornull]

The most common culprit for negative stats on birth is armor (even leather has a Str 11 prereq) on a class with no class Str bonus and a -Str race.

Yeek Bulwark only gets one point to allocate at birth, for example, in spite of the +5 class bonus. (As an aside: Yeek Bulwark was surprisingly effective.)

If you care about the negative stat on birth, consider giving a robe instead of leather, or shifting a point over to Strength.

-- -- --

Anyway my impressions of the class (after a VERY BRIEF play):

- Love the icons. ( )

- Like the basic concept. The blade enhancements are decent, the knives are great. Some specific talents need tuning, like Arcane Destabilization is a bit much (especially on a boss), but the idea is good.

- Some weirdly pointless complexity, like Fire Blade costs 2 mana but Lightning Blade regenerates mana. I'd suggest making them uniform one way or the other -- and my personal preference would be to have them either regenerate mana (so the pattern is cast - bump - cast), or not interact with mana except needing it to remain sustained.

- Too many talents, and they're mutually exclusive. Archmage and Alchemist look similar to this layout, but that's because their playstyle is to focus on only one or two trees -- or in the case of the Alchemist, one + Golem, which might look like one magic tree + a Stamina tree. Your three main class trees seem to be intended for the player to switch between them rather than mono-focus, and I think you allow two to be active at once as a way to try to get people to take more than one.

Worse yet, the orders are bad for some starting zones, but great for others. Trollmire and Alt-Norgos will be good for knives, bad for melee; Scintillating Caverns makes Fire Knife users unhappy, and melee will be very sad that they don't get access to Lightning Rush until it's too late.

-- -- --

In terms of possible changes, I'd suggest incentivizing the player to swap blade-sustains, but doing the opposite for knife-sustains.

Why? Knife use is already active: you have to target them, it's not just bumping. In contrast, blade-sustains are bump-oriented, so giving the player something to optimize with respect to timing might be nice there. Also, knife reloads happen over time, so there's already synergy with leaving one on for a while.


So, to incentivize swapping blade-sustains, first of all don't make the player pay separately for all three. Instead, do what Celestial / Chants does, and give all 3 from a single tree -- and do the same for knives. That might look like:


Spell / Blade Magic
- T1: Passive which grants 3 talents (Fire Blade, Ice Blade, Lightning Blade). You can only have 1 active at a time, and they have a moderate cooldown (12 maybe), but switching is instantaneous. This is also the Mastery talent - points here improve weapon damage.
- T2: Passive which gives increased Stamina & Mana regen. Offhand damage boost can go here too if you feel it's necessary.
- T3: Passive which reduces the cooldown (12 -> 6), and gives you a bonus when you activate one of the 3. This is an incentive for swapping in melee. Maybe condition removal or a surge of Stamina, maybe a few stacks of extra damage effects. Swapping should also give you a few knives, maybe extras if they're the same type.
- T4: An Active which gives you a temporary resistance penetration buff (penetrate all 3 types), and some other bonuses (stamina regen / Phys power / crit chance... something like that).


Spell / Blade Conjuration
- T1: Passive which grants 3 talents (Fire Knives, Ice Knives, Lightning Knives). You can only have 1 active at a time. More points increases ammo capacity.
- T2: Passive which improves range.
- T3: Put the current de-activate effects here as an Active.
- T4: Enervate maybe? Or explosions (% chance).


Having the necessities in two trees -- each of which



... and then maybe, just spitballing ...

Spell / Blade Arts - the actives, all should be usable without their corresponding Blade talent active, but should give a bonus if the associated sustains are active
- T1: Lightning Dash - you already have this doing a nice thing for Lightning Knives
- T2: Frost Edge
- T3: Blazing Whirlwind
- T4: Blade Storm, but the stacks do damage of whatever type you currently have active -- make it element-agnostic.


(locked) Spell / Advanced Blade Arts - high-level actives
- Flare Blade and Ice Shield go in here -- since it's a locked category, you could make Flare Blade cheap, which makes the tree a significant playstyle change. Maybe even have Flare Blade cost a little Stamina and generate some Mana, or vice-versa.


(locked) Spell / Prismatic Blades - high-level boost to passives, and some actives
- T1: Passive which works on knives and melee. Adds a second energy type to each of the basic 6 sustains: Fire+Arcane, Cold+Darkness, Lightning+Light; more points improves the chance of getting a debuff version of the damage type (Arcane Silence, Darkness Weaken, Light Blind).
- T2: Prismatic Strike.
- T3: Passive improves swapping melee sustains as if you'd used a Rune: Lightning Blade gives you that lighting dodge for 2 turns, Fire Blade removes 1 physical debuff, Ice Blade removes 1 mental debuff. Level 1 is a 50% chance for that effect; more points gives a better chance and up to double the benefits (2 debuffs or 4 turns dodging). Fractional debuffs means a lower % chance for the second one.
- T4: Wind Slicer.


(locked) Spell / Blade Esoterica - high-level mix of actives & passives
- T1: Active timed effect buff which changes your weapon's whole damage to your current sustain, and gives you a bonus to that damage type but a penalty to resisting the opposite damage type.
- T2: Passive; debuffs give you +10% turn energy (make your turn come faster), up to 3 per global turn. Investment makes debuffs expire more quickly.
- T3: Active: equalize mana and stamina (average their % full). Fixed cooldown; no cost. Investment reduces cooldown.
- T4: Passive: % chance to de-activate one mental or magical sustain on a critical weapon hit.


... got a bit carried away there.

Anyway, neat stuff but I feel like you could consolidate the trees and give more room for more interaction with the other trees.



Other advice: drop Phantasm, it's not good in its current form. Similarly, drop Combat Veteran. Add Cunning / Poisons, and make it work with magic knives (might already). Temporal is a bit too good for bump-classes, and you've got two shield talents of your own so you don't need Time Shield; consider dropping it. Earth is great utility, keep it. Combat Techniques is boring but necessary UNLESS you make Lightning Rush available early. Dual Techniques is great. Cunning / Dirty Tricks is pretty good now, and does a better job of covering the melee debuff space than Enervation.

On the generic side, I'm not sure you need both Conveyance and Aegis -- I'd drop one of them and unlock Survival. Maybe add Conditioning.


Finally: Bug? Swapping item sets to a non-dual configuration de-activated Lighting Blade, but did not de-activate Ice Blade. Personally I'd prefer if the talents were usable with any weapon style, but that's probably because I like doing weird Adventurer things.

Hope something in my rambling is useful to you.

Cheers!

[Doctornull]

Bug when attacked by an NPC / randboss with Spellblade talents:

[Unnamed]

Thanks for your feedback.
I guess I did the same mistake as with Wyrmics here by sorting talents by damage type. I'll think about a better arrangement of trees similar to you suggestions.
Arcane Destabilization should be easy to tone down by only affecting a certain amount of debuffs.

[Doctornull]

Thanks for your feedback.
I guess I did the same mistake as with Wyrmics here by sorting talents by damage type. I'll think about a better arrangement of trees similar to you suggestions.
Arcane Destabilization should be easy to tone down by only affecting a certain amount of debuffs.

The Wyrmic's talents all do different things -- if you take all of them, you can use them at the same time.

Your trees are written to be mutually exclusive (like the Alchemist's Infusions), and that's fine if you want your class to play like an Alchemist ("pick exactly one"). But I think that's not your intent.

Do take a look at the new Celestial / Chants, it's a nice model to follow.

[Unnamed]

I just uploaded the new version v2.0.
It is incompatible with old save files though as too many talents were changed to work in a different way.
This is a complete rework of most talents and talent categories, mostly in the way that was suggested.
There is one Blade Enhancement talent that allows you to use Fire Blade, Ice Blade, and Lightning Blade and one Throwing Knives talent that allows you to use Fire Knives, Ice Knives, and Lightning Knives.
Some talents were changed. Eldritch Combat increases fire, cold, and lightning damage and converts weapon damage to fire, cold, and lightning, but has no weapon mastery. You can chose to use two-handed weapons or daggers and take the respective mastery. Some attack talents reduce or increase the weapon damage multiplier if two-handed weapons are being used. There is also no talent that passively increases resistance penetration now, but a buff that increases fire, cold, and lightning resistance penetrations and a debuff and reduces fire, cold, and lightning resistance.
As result there are less talents that are really necessary to have. The start is still a bit rough, but it becomes easier once you get some t2 talents.