Talent tree discussion thread

[RacingeR]

Well then, I guess I'll just leave this up to Verg's decision. This discussion is rather meaningless, since it ultimately depends on what he thinks.

[Tobias]

We'll I'm just moving on then. Honestly I don't know enough about ap generation to offer any serious opinion on the quality of the second perk, but veil of mystery still seems kind of crazy. As I understand it your current interpratation means it auto nullifies the first usage of any spell or effect used against you and gives full knowledge of the spell effect. That's a lot to ask.

Now, maybe if you had it activate once per battle that might be somewhat more arguable. Or had a significant cost, like activating it cost like, twice the rank of the effect nullified so it couldn't just be used as a total lockdown

[RacingeR]

BTW toby, could you link the talent trees Verg is churning out in this thread's OP? Neko thinks it would make for easier access and readability.

[Tobias]

Not on my phone I can't, but I can get on that when thanksgiving dinner ends

[Tobias]

k, I added the GM talents in a spoiler on the OP

[Verg Avesta]

As a side-note on the confusion about Mei utilizing Qi-boosts: with only Vitality of the Body, she would achieve only one C (S) rank physical attribute at a time if she utilized her Trait and Chi-boost together, and for one turn only. Any higher than that, and she'd have to have Scales of a Dragon or evolved Perks or something.

[Tobias]

By the way verg, I understand the gain new spell talents have undertaken a change, if you want to spell it out I will alter the original post accordingly

[RacingeR]

For the Master Tree

Mind Bond
0/1
Ability to transmit thoughts and mental images through the special bond shared by both Master and Servant, letting them communicate telepathically, without a need for words.

[Spinach]

A stretch of boredom and a recent discussion in IRC ended in me hopping into a call with I3uster and talking about Tris trees. The basic idea was to have a tree for Memory Partitions that focuses on information gathering, a tree for Aqua Vitae production that increases spell absorption, and a tree for cool familiar stuff focusing on making your familiar smarter. In the end I only ended up writing up a familiar focused tree. Maybe posting this will generate some discussion that isn't powerlevels, Verg dumping new NPC info, or debating which Regalia has the best tits.

Tier 1

Free the Stone
0/5
You have tapped into the vast power of the Philosopher’s Stone, and using it you have unlocked the power to create and augment new life. This allows you to augment the abilities of a familiar you already own, or to create an entirely new familiar if you do not already have one. Running on the power of the Philosopher’s Stone, it can act and think on its own, not to mention to have its own abilities to use to defend you. Depending on how many talent points you put into Free the Stone the more powerful your familiar shall be. These usually half-mechanical guardians are employed only in secrecy, and if it’s purpose and secrets become known to too many people, they can dampen the effectiveness of the familiar. If you already have the perk Guardian of Fate, add a new ability to your familiar for every point in this talent.

Tier 2

Craft Work
[Requires Free the Stone]
0/5
You have found more and more usage for your familiar, using it to perform tasks in your day to day life to accelerate your studies and research. By tasking your familiar to research for one phase per day, you lower the time needed to create new spells and craft equipment by [x] for every point in Craft Work. For the phase you devote your familiar to your familiar cannot be utilized.

Tier 3

Echoes
[Requires Craft Work]
0/1
You have come to further understand the unique properties of the familiar under your control, and have devised schematics for a Conceptual Weapon using your familiar as the basis. This Conceptual Weapon can be used by both you and your familiar once it has been crafted.

Tier 4

In the Mirror
[Requires completed talent Free the Stone, Craft Work]
0/5
The mental link shared between master and familiar is powerful, and the bond shared by your familiar and yourself has grown by leaps and bounds. So strong in fact that your familiar is now capable of mimicking your craft. For every point put into In the Mirror your familiar will gain the following upgrades, depending on your abilities.

- Memory Partition
Your familiar may now split its thought processes in the same way that you do. For every point in this talent, your familiar will be able to use Memory Partitions for [x]% of the duration that you can. At 5 points your familiar may split its body into many smaller versions of itself.

- No Memory Partition
Your familiar has absorbed the knowledge you possess in spellcasting, allowing it to cast the same spells that you can. For every point in this talent your familiar gains 40 prana, and you may select one of your spells, your familiar may now cast that spell.

Tier 5

Hierophant’s Greed
0/1
[Requires completed talent In the Mirror]
The growth of your familiar astounds even you. Its intelligence has developed to the point of having a personality and desires of its own, awakened by the powers of the Philosopher’s Stone that birthed it. Though it is still bound by the master and familiar bond between you, your familiar has been recognized as a full-fledged member of your dorm, and can independently create and advance R-Links of its own. However, this may not always bode well for you.

Tier 6

Experience of a Golden Requiem
0/1
[Requires completed talents Hierophant’s Greed, In the Mirror, Echoes, Craft Work, Free the Stone]
Immortality, though not as perfect as you wish, is yours. You have implanted a shard of your very soul into your familiar, and as long as your familiar is alive and near you, your body can withstand even physical destruction, being deemed ‘not dead’ by the world itself, time will reverse to heal even the most fatal of wounds.

[I3uster]

I WANT MORE PERK TREES VERG

House ideas. First design philosophy ideas then perk ideas in a later post.

Okay so what is the House template about. Punching of course. The template gives you very limited access to trinkets and spells which means even with Unorthodox Assassin you will probably use that around your main perk which is DMA. DMA is, as everybody probably noticed by now, really good, but what does it actually enable, let's take it apart:

-Massive stat boost for a Perk allowing the House character to get a decent physical stat block
-A massive advantage for the first fight in the form of pretty much making every hit actually hit

You really want to get the most mileage out of the second part, but you obviously want to actually use your signature ability without it suffering the Elixir effect, right? So what do we build the House trees around:

First Tree is a straight up punching tree. We're gonna give it the cliche name of "Iron Fist". To contrast it with the funky chi magic stuff of the China girls this tree involves no resource management whatsoever, and no funky magic tricks. A person investing points in the Iron Fist tree, and this is important, will want to ALWAYS use his DMA. How do we encourage that when one of the big advantages disappears when it is used for a second time?

Iron Fist will provide benefits for as long as DMA is active, a few of them ensuring that the opponent will be crippled for an extended duration.

DMA techniques will cause serious trauma not based on magic but anatomy. You shatter bones, sever nerves, inflict organ damage, rip out eyes, all the fun stuff. So the next time you meet your opponent they can now dodge your attacks a lot better...except they are missing an eye and can't move their arm anymore. Magical healing makes this stuff a biiiit more difficult but the power of wank should balance this out.

Further, situational buffs apply as long as DMA is being used. I'd rather not have straight stat buffs especially at the beginning, but there are lots of other options there. Of course, this being a more straightforward style a Housie investing themselves fully in this tree could be able to break the stat cap as he is either at the very end of the tree or nearing it.

Okay so this is the first tree idea. The second tree idea is focused fully around stealth. To keep the martial arts cliche sounding name theme I just came up with we're calling this tree "Shadow Arts". fuckin ninja shit man

Housies are the closest to normal human beings you have on OLYMPUS, and normal beings have a tendency to not get noticed as easily in the Nasuverse (see COMPLETELY NORMAL HUMAN TOHNO SHIKI killing Louvre), so we build on this. DMA's evasion negation makes the strikes of a stealthy Housedude follow a "one shot one kill" policy, ensuring that, once you break your shifty evasive sneaky disguise your strikes will kill.

Talents involve not only stealth buffs and sneak attack boni but also information gathering perks and analytical abilities. A housie investing in this tree uses his DMA only when he is absolutely sure that he can make the kill and is a master of evasion and kiting. This allows them to observe magical and monstrous freak alike, map out their weaknesses and then killing them in an encounter on their terms, all while revealing nothing about their own style...until it's too late.

While Iron Fist wants to have DMA active ALL THE TIME and hit head-on, Shadow Arts wants to save it until you are absolutely sure you need it.

The third talent tree is about integrating (and this part is important) LOW-RANK SPELLS AND CONCEPTUAL WEAPONS into your fighting style, and it is called "Like Water".

The explicit goal of this tree is to NOT make the House a hybrid class with DMA because I feel that goes against their template. Your spells and CWs should be silver bullets, used in conjunction with your DMA to make you an unpredictable walking arsenal. No earth-shattering swords of legend and reality marbles, your spells are situational, like a fistful of sand to your opponent's face. You are Batman, and your equipment is your anti-shark spray.

This template exists to support the Unorthodox Assassin perk and the cheaper Breathing & Walking of the template. While it does use DMA in a few perks it is the least reliant on it of all the templates.

Activated DMA will provide situational boni to spellcasting and CW use, mostly in cost-reduction and number of uses. Tying in to a cheaper B&W a Housie specced in Like Water will basically never be interrupted, despite low CAS ranks. Acquisition of spells and CWs is eased for lower ranks in exchange for being barred from higher ones, allowing you to create a good, situational arsenal that prepares you for every circumstance.

[RacingeR]

I'd think the "only works for the first fight with an opponent" part of DMA would disappear or be reduced as the perk itself evolves tho.

Otherwise I think this works as a general conceptual idea.

[I3uster]

Some stuff for Chivalric Orders.

I'll take the same approach to design as last time. So one tree pretty much 1:1 following on what the template delivers, one complementary tree that does something else with what the tree provides and one tree that goes "against" the template.

So let's take it apart again:

Holy Church

• All members of Holy Church have the “Divine Protection” Perk, free of charge.
  
• With a cost of 10 points, a member of the Holy Church can have additional conceptual weapon “Black Keys”.

• Chivalric Orders

• Able to take Tier 2 conceptual weaponry.
  
• Any attack against undead gains a rank up.
  
• Any healing spell they would cast to a Servant that has a “holy” status gains a rank up.
  

First thing we notice is that Chiv orders are the closest vanilla Regalia had to a support template. Their offensive bonus is inferior to the offensive bonus of the Assembly and they don't have the sexy option of getting a T3 which is kind of a big handicap all things considered. Regardless they can be played as a purely offensive class because nothing is stopping them from packing spells + B rank CWs but it squanders their only unique class bonus, so I'd consider it "atypical".

So the first tree will focus on delivering better support. We're going for a themed naming for the trees so I can keep them apart again. This tree is called Charity. Cost reduction for healing spells, increased efficiency of the same, buffs and strengthening of support-type CWs. The main goal of this tree has to be to offer a varied playstyle. Of course somebody who picks this template with the intention of supporting has probably made peace with the fact that they are going to heal a lot with their Master, but that doesn't mean that the template has to support a healbot playstyle. Instead it should focus on giving the player more options than just "spam Curaja". Different incentives for using support CWs compared to using healing spells would be one way.

The second tree is a tank build called Faith. Packing healing spells is pretty useful thanks to the class bonus, and even if that doesn't give it a direct advantage when applied to yourself it does provide an incentive to get em. Packing Divine Protection as a standard is also conductive to the goal here. What's important here is sustainability of healing, that means cost reduction is emphasized here more than in the first tree to ensure longer staying power. Also maybe some dodgetank options a la eye of the mind, resistance to mental interference and general pseudo-battle continuation skills that allow tanking without having to cast your entire healing arsenal every single turn.

Third is, you guessed it, an offensive template called Hope. Besides unlocking T3 CWs I am kind of lost on what to do here tbh, but I would probably encourage a hybrid playstyle of spells and CWs since the Church templates have the luxury of flexibility here. Open to suggestions here. Scripture and Relic support def go here though.


Charity perk ideas:


TIER 1

Anoint
0/5
You have focused your efforts on the healing of the sick and wounded. For each rank in this Talent, you can take one new healing spell at E-rank. You can also spend this new spell to research and rank up one of your previously gained healing spells.

(Gimped version of the standard magus T1 perk. Why gimp it? Chiv orders aren't a magus template per se and their template technically buffs these kinds of spells. Not to mention the compounding buffs healing spells get through this tree)

Tier 2

I shall not Want
0/5

Hidden power courses through the holy relics you wield. Those who receive their blessings will feel revitalized and ready to fight for longer.
Level 1: Whenever you use a support-type Conceptual Weapon on somebody they gain 10 Prana.
Level 2: Whenever you use a support-type Conceptual Weapon on somebody they gain 20 Prana.
Level 3: Whenever you use a support-type Conceptual Weapon on somebody they gain 30 Prana.
Level 4: Instead of gaining Prana the affected may use their ESP one additional time without reprecussions (works on partition duration too).
Level 5: Instead of gaining Prana or ESP uses the affected may use their demonic powers for a slightly longer time (1 turn?).

(Has the added benefit of increasing the attractiveness of lower-ranking support CWs since the higher amount of uses makes this effect a bit more abuseable)

Tier 3

By His Grace
0/5
Even if curses and malevolent forces want to hinder the effectiveness of your healing, you remain true. Your healing and purging spells become more effective at overcoming factors that prevent them from acting.
1 point overcomes E-Rank effects, 2 points D-Rank etc. 5 points grant immunity to interruption through physical attacks a la Breathing & Walking.

(the B&W bonus might be too much but it's a T3 so idk, also doesn't work on CWs)

Tier 4

Repenteance
0/2

While usually a messenger of grace and peace, the blessings you are able to bestow upon people are not always as harmless as one would assume. Sometimes pain can offer a greater healing than tending a wound ever could. Your blessings are now able to inflict pain as well as heal, in hope of enlightening poor sinners to their fate.
All your healing spells and Conceptual Weapons can now be used as offensive spells with effects based on their healing effects. They suffer 2 rank reductions at level 1 and 1 rank reduction at level 2 compared to their healing version.

(really good. logic behind not putting this in the offense tree is that it does not encourage taking offensive abilites, rather the exact opposite)

Miracle of Healing
0/3

Having gathered enough experience in tending the wounded your healing spells act in a more and more refined manner, allowing you to channel more power into them.
1 point in this Talent increases the rank of any healing spell with "holy" status on all targets instead of just Servants.
2 points in this Talent increase the rank of any healing and support-type spell, regardless of type, on all targets (does not stack with previous version)
With 3 points in this Talent any healing and support-type spell you cast is counted as Forgotten Spell (does not stack with previous version)

(healing halfbloods at 3 points, pls nerf)

Tier 5

Icon of Worship
0/1

Your achievements don't go unnoticed by your superiors, and thus you have been granted access to a Relic, guarded by your brethren for centuries. You are granted one support-type Tier 3 Relic Device free of charge.

(self explanatory)

Exalted
0/4

Your considerable devotion and practice infuses your holy arms with additional power. Increases the number of uses your support-type Relic Devices and Conceptual weapons have by 1.

(considering that relic devices are amazingly good shit that can only be used once per day this talent is pretty insane)

Tier 6

The Wrath of God in all its Fury
0/1

No matter how many enemies stand against you and your allies, they shall fall. Your indomitable will and iron discipline inspire those that fight by your side to feats that are nothing short of miracles. As long as they fight in your personal crusade, they will not back down, be it to poison of the mind or wounds of their body.
Once per combat you may initiate a Crusade for five turns.
You and everybody that fights alongside you that you have an R-Link of 3 or higher is treated as if they have Battle Continuation and Bravery, Ranked A.

(LIFE'S TOO SHORT TO NOT GO FOR BROKE
EVERYBODY
EVERYBODY
GO BERZERK

while BC wearing off can totally kill somebody who is at that point only held together by gods grace packing tape and hatred you can totally heal them up before they die, now thats what i call synergy)