Skill Tree Gambits

[Cheggf]

Hey guys. Everyone else is making threads about skill trees, so I have to make one or else I'll feel left out and excluded. Instead of focusing on a specific character, I'm focusing on a specific theme of traits that have a notable downside. This would allow more thought about choosing what skills to get, or allow experienced players to enable more interesting downsides for characters without making them too difficult for less experienced players. I'd love to see anyone else's ideas for gambit perks, and keep in mind that the idea behind these skills is the important thing, and not the exact numbers.

Wolfgang

Leg Day II - Leg Day now applies to mighty form, but mighty form deals less damage (1.75x damage?)

Leg Day III - Leg Day's bonus is now larger, but mighty form deals even less damage (1.25x speed & 1.5x damage?)

The idea here is to let you choose what combination of speed and damage you want. I think Wolfgang is kind of cringe with how fast he kills things, but love his sprites, quotes, instrument, work bonus... Basically everything except the huge damage multiplier. This tradeoff would greatly lower his main perk, but compensate for it with a different very powerful perk.

Warly

Meal Gambit - Gain a bonus that scales based on how few dishes you remember repeating (Movement speed?), but dishes are more difficult to forget (Dishes remembered based on time and a list of the last X unique dishes you ate?).

Maxwell

Duelist Gambit - Duelists act how they did in the first Maxwell beta, but you gain something. Idk. I just really like how the duelists were in the first beta.

Wormwood

Degeneration Gambit - Periodically take damage, and have something fall off of you. The upside would be whatever you shed as you become injured (Living logs at a better price conversion?), but at the cost of requiring upkeep of health. It would be like Wanda, but needing to actually heal instead of just press your infinite use watch button. I think it would be fun to need to think about gathering enough healing to stave off death, even if you aren't getting hit by enemies.

Degeneration Gambit II - Shed items more often, if the first level wasn't hard enough.

Wes

Center of Attention -  Mobs will hyperfixate on you, only giving up if they think you're unreachable. If they are able to successfully attempt attacks on you they will never attempt attacks on other players. AoE attacks will target you, but still be able to hit nearby players. Attacks that target all players such as Klaus' spells are unaffected. This doesn't really do much, but I think it would be perfectly in-line with a potential Wes skill tree.

[goatt]

Currently, compromises in skill trees are like having to choose between this perk or that perk.

But in your suggestions, compromises can be like improving one ability at the cost of weakening another ability. I think that's a great way to make skill trees more diversified.

In other words, you can customize your perk by customize your downsides. I like it. Those can be implemented into deeper tier in branches.

 

I would also hope there is a station for skill points (partial) refund. Maybe at cotl shrine? lel.

[Cheggf]

15 hours ago, goatt said:

Currently, compromises in skill trees are like having to choose between this perk or that perk.

But in your suggestions, compromises can be like improving one ability at the cost of weakening another ability. I think that's a great way to make skill trees more diversified.

In other words, you can customize your perk by customize your downsides. I like it. Those can be implemented into deeper tier in branches.

 

I would also hope there is a station for skill points (partial) refund. Maybe at cotl shrine? lel.

Yes, exactly. In addition to being able to choose between which powerup you want, you could have more interesting choices if some of those powerups came with a powerdown, or some other thing you have to play around. Skill trees are the perfect time to implement downsides, drawbacks, and tradeoffs.

[Jakepeng99]

16 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Leg Day II - Leg Day now applies to mighty form, but mighty form deals less damage (1.75x damage?)

Leg Day III - Leg Day's bonus is now larger, but mighty form deals even less damage (1.25x speed & 1.5x damage?)

Sacraficing 50% damage for 25% speed is not really good, i would rather trade defense for speed, though leg day could be left alone Wolfgang mighty form probably should not have speed.

 

How about this for a pushing the limits rework:

While your mighty meter is above 100, move faster and take less damage, but lose mightiness when hit and drain hunger 2.5x faster (Only while above 100)

Each skill still adds +10 to the limit

 

 

17 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Meal Gambit - Gain a bonus that scales based on how few dishes you remember repeating (Movement speed?), but dishes are more difficult to forget (Dishes remembered based on time and a list of the last X unique dishes you ate?).

This one only encourages people to stick to meaty stew and meatballs unless i am reading it wrong, it should probably be the opposite where it awards you for having more variety.

[Kwaik]

I appreciate the sentiment (and many others seem to have desired a similar thing) 

 

Wolfgangs the only one that seems fleshed out. The others are either incomplete or don't make sense. 

 

Wes's could potentially be interesting, but he seems to need more love than any character in game, so I don't think it's worth speculating on him 

[lenship2]

honestly i'd love to see damage vulnerabilities in this game, something like 25% more damage taken for doing x thing

[MondayNight]

Options are good. But by this point going back (again) to already done-and-redone characters is "beating the dead horse" with a crane.

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, MostMerryTomcat said:

Options are good. But by this point going back (again) to already done-and-redone characters is "beating the dead horse" with a crane.

Skill trees are beating a dead horse, yes. But they're here, and they're not going away, so they may as well be more engaging.

[Antynomity]

Umm actually skill trees usually don't have downsides so your entire post should be deleted off the forum and you should be banned!

Seriously though, I'd love to pick downsides for myself, oh well, maybe in another 2 years of character updates!

[Cheggf]

On 8/28/2023 at 6:37 PM, goatt said:

I would also hope there is a station for skill points (partial) refund. Maybe at cotl shrine?

CotL shrine letting you change your skill points would actually be perfect, it's rather similar to the source material. In CotL followers pray at the shrine to grant devotion, which is used to purchase things on a tree. You can do daily sermons to get a different resource for a different skill tree.

It would be cool if you could pray once per day at the shrine, and after enough days of that you could refund your skill points for free. It would be a cheap and easy way to change your build, but be limited by both time and requiring you to actually go there. Only issue is it's currently a summer unlock, and by the time summer rolls around you've probably repaired the Celestial Portal and can just change your skill points for a single moonrock.