Steam Witch 1.3.1

[andersmj]

Adds the Steam Witch, a Tinker sub-class. The Steam Witch was born into time magic but found the ordered ways of the Wardens boring and struck out to find a path of their own. Travelling through time and space they found an affinity for technology and integrated their time magic with steam mechanisms.

Steam Witches are a ranged attack and spell casting class. Their tl;dr description is ‘magical Psyshot’. Class highlights:

Mystic Combat: Steam Witches fight with a steamgun in one hand and a dagger in other, projecting ranged dagger attacks when attacking with the steamgun. Successful dagger attacks will trigger additional effects based on a selected Touch ability (possible magical attack, magic enhancement, or lifesteal regeneration).
Timegear: Use steam-powered devices that are infused with magical effects.
Hexes: Cast hexes on enemies to render them vulnerable to damage and disabilities; later talents add damage-over-time to hexes and a special attack based on each hex a target is suffering from.
Witchbrews: Customize your character build with one of three Brew sustains that enhance either combat, magic, or steampower.
Future Relics: Activate powerful offensive and defensive abilities that require a turn and a large amount of steam to charge up.
Time Magic: Phase away from enemies, deflect and delay damage, repair your timeline, summon a spider familiar, and create walls out of thin air! Be careful though, as Steam Witches lack the rigorous training of Chronomancers and thus do not benefit from and have less control over Paradox.
Clockwork Menagerie: Command an array of mechanical creatures just short of a winged monkey with cymbals.

Feedback welcome!

***
Updates:
v1.0.1- Fix to Hasted Gunnery
v1.0.2- Fix to EoR compatibility; updated talent descriptions
v1.2.0- Overview of changes (requires new character):

*Witch Touch ability split out from Timegun Training to form a new talent tree: Mystic Birthright.
*Time and Space moved to Generics.
*Witchbrews moved to Class Talents.
*Chronomancy and Fate Weaving trees combined/remixed into new talent tree: Fate Manipulation.
*New talent tree: Clockwork Menagerie (mechanical summons).

v1.2.1- Bat scouting; Reactive Fate redesign; fix to Clockwork Cat requirements; balance changes
v1.3.0- Hex rebuild; modifications/balance changes for Cut the Threads, Quantum Mortar, Touch of Lachesis, Witch Brews.
v1.3.1- Fix to Vintage of Violence; description fixes/updates.

Link: https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/steamwitch

[nsrr]

Very unique concept and an interesting design. I haven't played far, but it's been pretty fun.

I did find a bug with the second gun talent, the multi-shoot. You can fire one or two shots and then cancel targeting and the talent returns nil, so no energy used, no cooldown, etc, but the shots are still created. You can empty your entire pouch in one turn. After the first or second target is chosen, the talent should return true if you cancel targeting. My Grove Keeper class has a very similar sling talent, and I ran into the same issue during development (archery attacks are a pain).

[andersmj]

Thanks for catching the bug and the feedback! New version released that should fix the Gunnery issue.

Given this is my first addon I actually used your Grove Keeper addon as a structural example, would have helped if I remembered the multi-shoot talent in said module The original skill was double shot as the class started as a dual-steamgunner; when I switched to steamgun + dagger I incremented to triple shot.

[nsrr]

Really nice work for your first addon (far and away better than my first, especially when it was first released). I started off the same way, working from someone else's add-on to get the structure and for refrences. I've gone full circle

Played a bit more, no new errors so far. The only thing I've noticed is that some of the descriptions could use a little clarification. There was an advanced skill that deals some damage but doesn't say how much. There are a couple that also grant other talents, one of them does not say what the talent does.

Having the class talent that increases accuracy available earlier would be nice. I noticed a fair number of misses early even with maximum points in combat accuracy that level would allow. Splitting points between magic and cunning for reqs doesn't leave much to spare to put into dexterity for accuracy.

The class has a very large number of generic trees. Maybe brews should just be a class talent? I realise it's based on chants or hymns, most likely, but brews feel very witch themed and the class already has both paradox and steam generics, as well as survival and combat training. Plus I just think it would help balance out the talent spread a bit.

Overall there are probably too many talents that grant other talents. Maybe consider splitting some of these things off into new trees? The offhand projected attack could be its own tree, for instance. First talent for dagger mastery, maybe reduced offhand penalty. The touch talents could be split up and turned into temporary self buffs, instead of mutually exclusive sustains all granted by one talent, perhaps.

Space-time Tuning doesn't do anything when used. From the class description, I would guess that's intended. Also, from the description, I assume paradox does not affect spellpower. Perhaps editing the description so it states that Time Witches cannot tune space time and gain no spellpower from paradox would help clarify if this is indeed the intended behavior. You can peek in White Monk or Dark Priest for an example of how to edit a talent description (both modify the Heavy Armor Training description if you are playing one of said classes).

[andersmj]

Lots of good ideas here.

I should make another pass through the descriptions to further clarify some of the skills (especially the Future Relics), and post descriptions here in the forum.

Witch Brews is a generic as it’s patterned after chants but really I wanted at least one new generic as part of the class. I could swap it with Time and Space as that’s less class-themed, and perhaps create a combined variant version of the two borrowed Chronomancy trees.

Witch Touch effects could be split off (and modified to include Witch Sight earlier). I’m curious how that would affect the class point balance as I designed the class skills overall to benefit from deeper investment (radius bump, new powers, Time Scrambler is linear, etc.)

Shifting skills around in testing destroyed existing saves. Is there a way around that for releases? I’d like the flexibility of putting out some changes but wrecking things for people trying out the class could be discouraging.

Also, is there a way to take Spacetime Tuning off the skill bar by default? I do need to change it to a passive skill (was distracted at the time by getting the existing talent modification code to work at all!)

I really appreciate the detailed review and suggestions!

[Doctornull]

Cool idea for a class.

Haven't tried it yet, but I'll note that there is already a "Hexes" tree (a Vim tree on the generic side); probably not that bad but you might want to consider a more detailed name for your tree, just for your own sanity, especially if someone sides with the Grand Corruptor and gets access to the other Hexes tree too.

Gonna give the class a try.


EDIT: found one bug immediately:

Screen Shot 2019-08-11 at 4.02.25 PM.png (116.16 KiB) Viewed 11289 times

If the Embers of Rage DLC isn't enabled, your addon crashes.

Here's some code I use in Nullpack to detect EoR and not crash:

Code: Select all

-- if Orcs is installed give steam gear and create Steam Hero
local status, Orcs = pcall(require, "mod.class.OrcCampaign")
if status then
(...)
end

pcall is like a try-block in some other languages -- it allows you to try some code which might cause an exception, then catch the exception and report it in the status variable (with the expected return value in the other variable, "Orcs" in this case, if status is a happy value).

[nsrr]

As far as updating with compatibility, you could create all new trees for the reworked talents and leave the old trees in as well. Change the trees at birth to the new trees. New characters will have the new talents, but old characters would not be affected.

Not sure about having Spacetime Tuning default to not show on the action bar. Probably possible, but I don't know off the top of my head.

[Doctornull]

Started a character, poked around a bit.

Birth - got born wearing a hat with two egos, and for some reason wearing a cloak but no Automated Tesselation tree.

Why start with 1/3 of the stat points in Willpower? Paradox isn't that horrible even at 10 Will, and a ton of gear boosts Willpower.

Witch Brew - it's pretty cheezy to have one brew which boosts Cunning, and also have a bunch of talents which require Cunning on level-up but don't need Cunning to function.

Teleports - It's weird that you have one unreliable phase door, then a level 14 talent (in a locked tree) which gives 2 new forms of teleportation including a new type of phase door.

Generic Trees - yeah you got too many. Dump at least one of the Chronomancy trees.

[andersmj]

The missing EoR error-catching code is an excellent idea and I will add it, thanks!

The teleport/phase door in the Future Relics locked tree require a Powercell charge to use and are not instant, so they have a distinct use/cost from the early instant, unreliable phase door.

The magic hat and (non-magic) cloak at birth are mostly a witchy fashion statement

[andersmj]

Steam Witch v1.2.0 released! Lots of changes to talent trees; old characters *should* still work but a new character will be needed to utilize the new talents.

New version includes the following changes:
*Witch Touch ability split out from Timegun Training to form a new talent tree: Mystic Birthright.
*Time and Space moved to Generics.
*Witchbrews moved to Class Talents.
*Chronomancy and Fate Weaving trees combined/remixed into new talent tree: Fate Manipulation.
*New talent tree: Clockwork Menagerie (mechanical summons).

Try it out!

[nsrr]

A bit more feedback for you:

Clockwork Cat appears to have the wrong requirements table (looks like it has teir 1 reqs). Fate Manipulation requirements are odd, but I don't know if they are intended or not.

Vintage of Violence increases physical attack speed, but all of your Steamgun attacks use Steamtech speed, so the benefit only applies to Shoot. Perhaps this is intended, but it makes the ability a bit lackluster if it is.

Talent cooldowns feel too long over all, and especially for Steamgun attacks. You end up having many turns (6-8 easily, even at higher levels when you have more talents) where your only options are basically Shoot or move.

Time Barrier does not explain what it does. If I had to guess, I suppose I would expect it to create wards that stop one instance of damage of any type, kind of like a Bone Shield charge?

[Recaiden]

First of all, I want to say that I like this class.
I was worried that it would be a weird clone of Psyshot or Temporal Warden, and it's not either of those things.
I love Touch of Atropos, and wish that idea were more central to the class.
Touch of Clotho is really well done.
Displacement is amazing.
Chrono Nova is an interesting use of Paradox.

On the other hand
This class has a gun but it only has 1 and a half shooting talents.
This class has a dagger but it only has 1 dagger attack talent.
This class has tinkers but your signature ability require you not to tinker your dagger.
This class has spell attacks but their cooldowns are all kinda long.

This is all a little awkward.


Fate Manipulation is most of Fate Weaving, but with Contingency. Which is a good combination, keeps interesting parts of those trees, but I feel like it could still stand to be more different. The first talent in particular, since there's no longer a whole tree interacting with Spin, seems out of place.

Quantum Mortar hits a random amount of time for random types of damage and status effects, and its damage is high but I think not high enough given the randomness. I would limit it to a handful, maybe Time Slow / Fire Stun / Physical Bleed?

Love Charge Powercell as a system, but given that Charge Powercell itself has a cooldown, I would make the cooldown of all the Future Relics low or zero. I think you might even be able to remove Charge Powercell's cooldown, and make Steam the only limit on using the relics.
Another thing, if you can figure the trouble of implementing it, is make Charge Powercell be '30 steam => 1 cell' and castable any number of times in a single turn.

Damage Types are all over.
You've got Physical shots, Physical knives, Time, Timeburn, Poison, Bleed, whatever seeping Darkness is, Blight, Disease, and Acid on the pets, Light on the relic.
And there's no Hex for reducing Blight resistance, for some reason?
I suggest consolidating this so that most of the special attacks are Temporal, with a bit of fire and maybe one additional type across the clockwork pets.

I suggest consolidating the Hexes similarly. Maybe something like:

• Mortality: Lowers all resistances. Inevitability: Adds damage
• Frailty: Lowers status resistance. Inevitability: Adds stun
• Dread: Lowers saves. Inevitability: Adds fear effects

[andersmj]

All solid feedback, much appreciated, feel free to keep it coming

Clockwork Cat requirements are a copy(cat)-paste error, will shortly make a minor update with various fixes, expanded talent notes, etc.

The gun-dagger combat is currently intended as “bump attack”-centric rather than weapon-skill centric, with those attacks alternating with steamgear/spell talents. The cooldown notes are quite useful in this respect; I’ve been trying to figure out the correct balance and flow for talent usage. Vintage of Violence is indeed intended to provide support for raw Shooting attacks but could use a boost in this regard.

In testing the damage-causing tinker attachments made the dagger attacks more powerful than I’d like; not sure if restricting attachments to effect-based ones would fix this.

The staggered Fate Manipulation level requirements are deliberate; the tree is supposed to provide cherry-picked Chronomancy talents but not be as powerful as the actual Chronomancer trees. I have a new idea to work on for the first talent.

The random damage types across various talents approach was intended for unpredictable excitement but in practice I’d prefer the class was more centered and effective. I’ll have to work on a proper conceptual focus for the damage types.

[andersmj]

Steam Witch v1.3.1 released!

-Fix to Vintage of Violence
-Class/talent description fixes/updates

[Lprsti99]

Class doesn't get the Tinkerer-specific transmog chest, so you get no ingredients for tinkering.