New class: Whistlers

[Feanor.81]

Still needs to be fully planned, but I can't wait to make it public domain and receive your feedbacks and suggestions!

Name: Whistler
Metaclass: Divine
Main Stats: Willpower and Magic

Background
In the beginning there was only void. Then Eru Iluvatar and his Ainur created the universe, weaving its fabric with the power of their divine chants: the Ainulindalë, the Music of the Ainur. Later on, before the First Age, Ainur descended on Earth. Under the name of Valar and Maiar they wandered the lands, created light to ban the darkness, and bestowed the gift of life upon the world. They expecially enjoyed the company of their first-born children: the Elves. Some one favoured them at the point to teach them the secret art of Music, thus allowing some worthy, gifted and willful beings to forge the shape of the world at their pleasure, and bend the nature to their own will. Some of them survived through the Ages, and still wander these lands, preserving them from corruption for the sake of their ancient masters.

Race restriction: elves (this would be a good class to be unlocked in an ancient, dangerous place, like the Ancient Elven Ruins)

Note: when reading the talent trees, keep in mind that this is meant to be a difficult but enjoyable class to play, filled with really powerful talents which in turn can't be used very often. Any usage should be carefully planned, to not leave you helpless in front of a new enemy. Cooldowns and costs need to be heavily balanced, and any suggestion from experienced players is well appreciated! (I never made it to the Far East yet -.-)

Base combat talent tree: Spell/Staff

Ainulindalë/Prelude: Creation
Base req depending on Magic

- Fire Wall
Sustained
Cooldown: 30
Cost: +pos
Call upon the fire element to surround you in a wall of flames, during %d% turns, and dealing %d% damage to each enemy standing in a radius of 1 from you.
At level 3 it affects a radius of 2.
At level 5 it affects a radius of 3.
Note: the damage decreases over radius: full damage for radius 1, half damage for radius 2, one third for radius 3.

- Ice Tomb
Activated
Cooldown: 40
Cost: +pos, -neg
Call upon the water element to imprison an enemy in a block of ice, freezing him in place for %d% turns. Enemies frozen in this way can be shattered into pieces by a physical attack doing more than %d% damage.
At level 3 it affects a radius of 2 around the target.
At level 5 it affects a radius of 4 around the target.
Note: duration raises with talent level, damage needed for shattering decreases with talent level.

- Earth's Cradle
Sustained
Cooldown: 80
Cost: +pos
Call upon the earth element to isolate you from the world. The earth raises to completely surround you in solid rock, making you immune to physical and magic attacks, but you cannot move or attack, and have limited supply of air to breath.
At level 3 you will be given Regeneration while in the cradle.
At level 5 you will be given Restoration while in the cradle.
Note: this is intended to be a one shot life saver spell to be used when the situation is turning desperate. The character is given infinite resist to physical and magical attacks, but he starts suffocating (like being in water tiles) and thus cannot stay in indefinitely. He cannot attack or see what happens in the surroundings (equivalent to full blindness), AoE talents like Fire Wall will be deactivated and disabled, but he can restore himself with potions etc. At level 5 he will gain Restoration, which removes negative effects (poison, bleed, disease), heals him over time (like Regeneration) and replenishes his mana pool. Regen and Restore are immediately deactived upon exiting.

- Perfect Storm (maybe it needs a more dreadful name)
Activated
Cooldown: 60
Cost: +pos, -neg
Call upon the air element to bring havoc upon your enemies. A powerful storm with a duration of %d% will affect a radius of 3 around the target, causing any enemy inside the area to be hit by Lightning each turn.
At level 3 it will affect a radius of 4 around the target, causing Chain Lightning.
At level 5 it will affect a radius of 7 around the target.
Note: Lightning and Chain Lightning damage is calculated as usual, based on character skills. Caster is immune to the storm effects, so it can be cast even around the character himself.

Ainulindalë/Ambar-metta: Prelude to Dagor Dagorath
Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta!
Base req depending on Willpower

- Pestilence
Sustained
Cost: +neg, -pos
AoE around the character, spreading diseases.

- War
Activated
Cooldown: 60
Cost: +pos, -neg
Transforms you into an avatar of destruction. For the duration of the spell (%d% turns), you can no more access your mana pool, but are granted +%d% strength, +%d% dexterity, +%d% attack, +%d% armor and +%d% physical damage.
Note: This spell is intended to turn a mage into a powerful warrior, and bonuses (which increase with talent level) should be tuned so that the resultant warrior stats are powerful like it was:
- 1 -> 5 levels above character level
- 2 -> 10 levels above character level
- 3 -> 15 levels above character level
- 4 -> 20 levels above character level
- 5 -> 25 levels above character level
Armor should rise enough to make him almost unbeatable in melee fighting.
Staff should be replaced by a greatsword scaled to caster level (iron, steel, etc.)
Note: this spell is intended to be useful to quickly dispatch of groups of melee fighters (or maybe archers within reach), and should be almost useless against magical attacks. All sustained effects are deactivated upon transforming.

- Famine
Activated
Cost: +neg, -pos
Drains target's mana/energy/whatever pool, the idea is greatly reduce target's ability to use talents / cast spell.

- Death
Activated
Cooldown: 60
Cost: +neg, -pos
You command the death to embrace the target (living) creature. If it does not immediately die, it still remains greatly weakened, losing %d% percent of his health, and suffering a penalty of %d% to its stats.
Note: since they already escaped death, undeads are always immune to the death effect; however, they still suffer the penalties. Boss rank targets are equally immune, but suffer the penalties. Chance of immediate death is given by a formula taking into account talent level and target level, roughly talent_level * 15% - target_level%.

Ainulindalë/Interlude: Hymns of Life
Base req depending on Willpower

- Life Spark
Activated
Cost: +pos, -neg
You transfer part of your life force into inanimated matter, bringing it to life. The newborn creature will follow you and battle on your side.
Note: the idea is that you can donate life to inanimate matter, but since you are no god, you can only transfer in it a sparkle of your own life. When the spell is cast a dialog will let the player choose how many hp transfer; the resulting creature's health will be 3xhp, and your health meter (maximum, not current value) will be reduced of a hp amount. Much like a sustained talent which costs hp instead of energy. Creature level will depend on talent level. Creture type will depend on targeted terrain: Tree -> Huorn/Ent, Stone -> Stone Golem/Giant, Lava or such -> Fire Elemental, Water -> Water Elemental. When the creature dies, the spark returns to you, and the health meter is restored. You can have only one follower created in this way.

- Harvest Life
Activated
Cost: +neg, -pos
For %d% turns, you will be able to drain the life force of enemies approaching you in a radius of %d%
Note: radius, duration and health drained depend on talent level. HPs drained stack with both current and maximum values of your health meter, and are subtracted from targets' current and maximum values

- Dominate Life
Activated
Notes:
Domination success depends on talent level and difference in willpower between the caster and the target (positive or even negative). Roughly: talent_level * 15% + (char_wil - target_wil)%
Domination lasts for talent_level * 10 turns. At level 5 it lasts until the target dies or you leave the current dungeon.
You can only dominate a small amount (depending on willpower) of creatures at any given time; succesfully dominating other targets will make the current ones (in stack order) turn hostile again.
If Domination fails, it still leaves the target confused/dazed for talent_power turns.
All experience collected by dominated creatures is transferred to the character (like for summons).
Normal experience is given to the character upon dominated creature's death.
Target is still susceptible of damage from caster's AoE spells and talents, but won't turn on him if hit.

- Revive
Passive
Upon death, you have a chance of %d%% to be able to keep together your life force, and be reborn somewhere in the wilderness to continue your mission.
Note: I was thinking of a slight chance, but still worth enough investing talent points, like 4-5% per talent level. Maybe the chance could be higher for the first revive, then drastically decrease upon each subsequent death.

Ainulindalë/Interlude: Hymns of Time
Base req depending on Magic
This tree still needs to be planned from scratch. I was thinking of some spells of teleportation and time control (time freezing would be nice).

I'll be updating this header with further details as they come, any suggestion or critic is appreciated!

[edge2054]

For some inspiration on time effects feel free to peruse the Paradox Mage, Infinite Traveler, and Time Warden threads (in ideas).

Wilders aren't a 'caster' metaclass so if you're set on doing magic/willpower you'll probably want to go with a different metaclass. I had initially wanted to do the same thing for Druids and DG said it didn't fit with what he had in mind for Wilders (magic/willpower that is). I can see both Mage and Divine working equally well but if you haven't been to the far east you haven't unlocked any of the Divine classes.

Here's a good explanation of how the Divine resource pools work though.

I think I found their ressource system:
They have Positive energy. It starts at 0, and fills up when then use light/sun talents and empties when they use divine combat talents.
This provides a nice alternance of spells to use.
An it decays over time. no hoarding!

Star mages will have both positive and negative energy, both decaying over time. Their light spells will incraese positive energy and they can then use a talent to convert it to negative energy to cast their other spells.

Hymns of Domination I don't really like. The whole tree just seems out of place.

I mean you basically have Creation, Apocalypse, Time, and Domination... one of these things is not like the others Also I'd change Apocalypse to Destruction. I know you're going for a four horsemen theme but Creation and Destruction are diametrically opposed forces, Apocalypse is the act of Creation coming to an end. That's just me though.

Back to Domination...

What if this was like Hymns of Man or Life or whatever. Include a nice Domination effect but do other stuff too. One tree that just reiterates the same thing over and over would be more interesting as a single talent that did all of that plus three other talents that did something else.

That's my 2 cents for now. I'm sure I'll have more to add to this thread later. After all I'm like a moth to a flame when it comes to class ideas

P.S. I like the concept and have always been a big fan of the Tolkien creation myth. There's some good stuff here, I especially like Famine!! I really like the Earth's Cradle too, I get a nice mental image off that spell name and the effect fits right along with it.

[Taxorgian]

Maybe make it Manwe or (perhaps better still, given the elf connection) Varda who taught the songs? ISTR that the only direct interaction that Iluvatar actually made with Arda was to rebuke Aule for animating the dwarves before the elves were awakened? It feels very un-Tolkien to have a direct interaction of Eru with any created creature.

[darkgod]

I agree with Taxo.
Although Eru also made a second intervention: to drown Numenor

[Feanor.81]

Uhm I cannot understand the latter posts, isn't the background already stating that were Maias (well, ok, the ones which called themselves Valas) to pass their knowledge to some worthy individuals? Maybe it should explain the concept in a clearer way. Sorry but my English is not that good

@Edge: I agree with you that terms Apocalypse or Armageddon are a bit out of place, it's more a Christian term, like Ragnarok in Norse mythology. Still, I feel Destruction being a bit too generic. How about Ruin?
I agree again with all you said about Domination tree; I just really liked the idea of a Domination ability, and wanted to toss it in somehow, but had not time to think to a full tree structure. I like the idea of a life control tree (a better name would be great here, too), let's see if we can come up with something original and interesting. Actually, I have this word sounding quite good in my mind for a new talent: Symbiosis.

Moreover, I think the class is lacking another generic tree, staff combat alone is certainly not enough; maybe something containing a bunch of passive talents (which are missing from the current trees)?

[Zaive]

Generics?

Well, if they're gonna be wilders, they're gonna have the generic wilder tree with meditation. It's kinda a necessity.

[darkgod]

"Dagor Dagorath" is the battle of the end of time, the equivalent of the apocalypse for Arda when morgoth will return along with his former defeated servants from the Void, destroying the Sun and Moon and be fought by the free people, the host of Valinor and some others where he will ultimately be slain.

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Dagor_Dagorath




************* SPOILER ALERT ***************










This is actually what you are trying to prevent in ToME4, the Istari are trying to open a way to the Void to let Morgoth come back, speeding up the coming of Dagor Dagorath to change the fate of the world.

[Feanor.81]

Generics?

Well, if they're gonna be wilders, they're gonna have the generic wilder tree with meditation. It's kinda a necessity.

Well, at the moment (and Edge confirmed this) mage metaclass seems to be the best option, since a "caster" class doesn't fit very well in Wilder domain. What are Archmages using as generic, non spell trees? I've not unlocked them yet (ok, I suck, my characters never survive enough to have the quest popup ). Oh well, I guess I'll have a look to the scripts to find out

@DG: Nice point! That article also reminded me a few things, it seems I made a lot of confusion between Ainur, Vala and Maia terms, I will be updating the background accordingly. Also, I think that Symphony should be renamed Music (though it could be misleading if the player has got no Tolkien background).

[edge2054]

@Edge: I agree with you that terms Apocalypse or Armageddon are a bit out of place, it's more a Christian term, like Ragnarok in Norse mythology. Still, I feel Destruction being a bit too generic. How about Ruin?

I still like Destruction just because it pairs well with Creation but Ruin is good.

I agree again with all you said about Domination tree; I just really liked the idea of a Domination ability, and wanted to toss it in somehow, but had not time to think to a full tree structure. I like the idea of a life control tree (a better name would be great here, too), let's see if we can come up with something original and interesting. Actually, I have this word sounding quite good in my mind for a new talent: Symbiosis.

I posted some Symbiosis talents in another thread that where roughly based off the Tome 2 abilities. I don't know if DG is planning to use these for any of the Vim classes, they don't really fit so I'd assume not. One or more of these may fit well in a Life tree.

Molds, Slimes, and Jellies
Disease Empathy - Gives Telepathy for molds, slimes, and jellies in a range of X. Also lets the player charm molds, slimes, and jellies for X turns.
Fungal Sprout - Summons X molds, slimes, and jellies around the caster in a radius of 5. Figure this doesn't need a duration since most of these mobs will be immobile anyhow and end up getting left behind. But a duration does insure actor clean up.
????? - Haven't come up with a good name for this one but the idea I have is that the player could pull hit points from friendly molds including the one he's wearing. Would be melee/personal range.
Symbiosis - Another stolen idea. Lets you 'wear' friendly molds, slimes, or jellies. Would be a similar mechanic to the golem mount ability. Worn molds, slimes, and jellies can attack adjacent foes but otherwise the player has no control over them (so no Q symbiosis cheese). Talent points increase the chance that the mold takes damage instead of the player when attacked. AoE damage should effect both equally.

Moreover, I think the class is lacking another generic tree, staff combat alone is certainly not enough; maybe something containing a bunch of passive talents (which are missing from the current trees)?

Mages get Conveyance, Divination, and Nature. These are all spell trees. Archmages don't start off with any non-spell trees.

[Feanor.81]

Time for some major changes.

- Moved class to Divine metaclass (since the Music tecniques came directly from gods)
- Updated class background to be more consistent with Middle Earth (pre)history
- Almost completely renamed talent trees accordingly
- Completed the Hymns of Life talent tree.

Thanks for all suggestions! Keep them coming!

[edge2054]

Really like the first two Life talents.

On generic hymns could use the Tome 2 Eru spells for inspiration. Know the Music, See the Music, all that good stuff.

I really can't offer any advice on the time tree other then to point you to the Chronomancy stuff. Tax and I wracked our brains for a week straight to come up with those talents and I'm sure you can find some inspiration there.

I'll link the full talent list document so you don't have to sort through it by individual class. Also DG is working on modifying how save games work which will let the engine create save points without the player knowing. In other words, having the character actually travel back into the past may be doable in an upcoming release. If I get around to it tonight I'm going to revise the Chronomancy main doc to reflect his.

Anyway, here's the link.

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?i ... l=en&pli=1#

[Feanor.81]

I'll give a read to the doc as soon as I can, many thanks! And good idea about the 2.x Eru spells, worth a look, too.