Buff Rogues!! Nerf Hunters!! (Advanced Talent Tree Ideas)

[edge2054]

WoW references aside, here's some advanced talent tree ideas for our friend the rogue.


Advanced Survival (General Tree, Available at level 10 for Rogues and Shadowblades)

- Use Magic Device (passive): You use your cunning score in place of your magic score for activating magical items and using scrolls and potions. Additionally you have a (Cunning*TL/5)% chance of not consuming a charge or the item when you use it.

- Sprint (sustained, 20 stamina per turn): You increase your global speed by (Dexterity*TL)% (Yes I know it's high but...). Sprint consumes 20 stamina per turn it's active. Performing any action other then waiting or moving deactivates sprint. (Was going to call this Flee but since you can use it for closing decided sprint was better).

- Spell Defense (passive, open to a better name): Gives you a percentage chance equal to 10+(Cunning*TL/5)% of your Defense to avoid hostile spells. (Note this doesn't scale off Dex because Defense scales off dex and this scales off defense. The actual formula the engine uses should look something like 10+(Cunning*TL/5)*Defense/100.)

- Survival of the Fittest (passive) As long as your current hit point total is at least 60-(Cunning*TL/10)% of your maximum any single attack that reduces you below 1 hit point instead reduces you to 1 hit point. (This is the Avoid Fate talent I wrote for the Infinite Traveler but with Cunning replacing Willpower.)


Trap Mastery (Class, Available at level 10 for Rogues Only) (Note that Trap Smith should have Trap Disarm as a prereq and through that the whole tree should have Trap Disarm as a prereq.)

- Trap Smith (passive, kinda): You have a 10+(Cunning*TL/5)% chance of salvaging components from the traps you disarm. You may later 'use' the salvaged components in your inventory to set the trap back up in any tile adjacent to you. Setting a trap requires 6 - (TL) turns (zero stamina, no cooldown). At level 5 you may place a second trap on top of another trap, rather that be a trap you have laid or one already on the tile. (Note that trap components should have a somewhat prohibitive weight to prevent players from carrying around hundreds or even dozens of traps. Typical two-handed weapon weight sounds about right. The player should be able to rely on trapping pretty heavily if he sets things up right, i.e. sets traps up in a place he can pillar dance a mob, but not to the point that the game becomes trivialized. If too many traps are being carried by the average player the weight can be adjusted upwards to limit over trapping.)

- Trap Avoidance (sustained, 10 cooldown, lowish stamina cost): You have a 20+(Cunning*TL/5)% chance to avoid setting off traps while Trap Avoidance is active. Overrides Trap Disarm while active. (Wanted to call this one Bait because toggling Trap Disarm is really it's primary purpose.)

- Explosive Modification (active, melee/personal range): You modify the target trap so that it affects everything in a radius of 2 (3 at level 3, 4 at level 5)) each time it's triggered. However the trap becomes fragile and has a 60-(Dexterity+Cunning*TL/20)% of being destroyed each time it's triggered.

- Trap Expert (passive): Traps you lay deal X% more damage. (Was thinking bonuses along the lines of Knife Mastery, Sword Mastery, etc.)

[edge2054]

Here's another way to do Trap Avoidance I like better.

- Trap Avoidance (active; 20 stamina, 20 cooldown): You gain 100% Trap Avoidance for the next TL+(dex+cunning/80) turns. While trap avoidance is active you do not use the Disarm Trap talent when you move into a trapped tile.

This was the way I originally wanted to do it but felt it would trivialize Disarm Trap. Since the other talents in the tree require you to use Disarm Trap to fuel them though I think the 100% for X turns effect is okay. It also makes trapping much more reliable and less dependent on de-stealth luring techniques (de-stealthing with a trap between you and a mob to get the mob to trigger it).

[Zaive]

What I'd like to see is a talent that allows stealthed rogues to have enemies "see" them several spaces away from where they actually are, and head that direction. Maybe at level 5 make it so that it can effect a single targeted enemy even if others could see it as well. Call it "Lure" or something.
It would be good for luring enemies away from a pack and dealing with them individually, especially if Edge's trap ideas are implemented. Only problem I see with is is that enemies have a tendency to wander in circles after losing sight, and will repeatedly activate the same trap over and over again.

Also, I wonder how you could explosively modify a sliding stone trap? xD

[edge2054]

It'd just be a larger rock slide. I realize it doesn't quite fit with the talent name but yeah...

Lure would be good. An active talent that basically makes the enemy think you're 'over there'. It fits the whole stealth concept too. Tossing a rock to draw an enemy towards the sound.

I'm not sure how you'd code the single target effect but a general lure could be done by summoning an immovable 1 hit point mob that's immune to ranged attacks and spells. Player side it shouldn't look like a mob though. Talent ranks could improve the range.

[darkgod]

I like those ideas, not sure about the traps yet, how to do them exactly.
(Also we need more traps in general)

Lure is nice and can be done easily with the new distance map pathfinding. It would just put a zonf of high "attraction" at the target, monsters would naturally flow to it until the player enters their LOS at which point they'll revert back to the player

[edge2054]

Here was how I envisioned the trap skills working from a meta-game perspective.

When the character disarms a trap the trap smith talent gets checked. If the chance comes up successful a trap component matching the type of trap disabled is generated underneath the character. The character may then either choose to pick up the component or simply leave it behind. (The reason I feel this method of generation is preferable to it being generated in the inventory is so for one the character can leave behind traps he doesn't want without having to drop them and for two he doesn't accidentally overburden himself).

The component itself works as a consumable item in the character's inventory, like a scroll or a potion. When the item is consumed a trap is generated matching the trap component type at the character's feet. This trap should in all respects work like the trap that generated the component initially, except that it should be bound to the character (so the character gets xp off it) and modified by any of the character's applicable talents (like Trap Expert for instance).

The character should also be able to disarm his own traps and start the cycle over again, in essence keeping a few of his favorite traps in his backpack.

What I'm not sure on is this...

Setting a trap requires 6 - (TL) turns (zero stamina, no cooldown). At level 5 you may place a second trap on top of another trap, rather that be a trap you have laid or one already on the tile.

I'm not sure if the engine really handles things taking multiple turns or how placing two traps on a single tile might work. For multiple turns maybe a global speed reduction while the action is performed to account for the extra time it takes?

Anyway this is just how I pictured it working in my head. I realize the reality of how it gets coded may have to be much different.


Semi-offtopic: I always feared teleport traps. One of the most dangerous traps IMO. You could get resists against pretty much everything else to cut down on the damage. But being teleported into a group of Us, Ds, or Ps, was always scary.

And I always HATED blasting traps. Item destruction on this level can be almost as bad as losing a character at worst and at best it was extremely annoying.

Anyhow, I think I'll start a thread >.>

[darkgod]

A talent using multiple turns can either:
* use the energy of 6 turns, this basically is equal to a self stun of 6 turns (aka once started the action is not interruptable)
* use the rest system to make a 6 turn wait that is disrupted by damage/hostiles (the golem refit resurection does this)

I like the idea of reusing traps you can disarm. This could work, albeit we do need more traps