my idea for a maxwell skill tree

[TheL1quidFox]

maxwell is easily one of if not the strongest characters and realistically needs a skill tree for power reasons the least out of anyone, but seeing as he starts at basically full power and the only major power spike you can get is the bone helm from fuel weaver I do feel like klei needs to do something about him, especially since using pure horror does absolutely nothing different other than fuel the coxed umbra by 50% instead of 25, which is an incredible letdown.

that being said, in a world where wortox gets a dark sword that costs silk, willow gets a star caller staff that costs bees, and winona gets to chose between being functionally immortal or having basically free cross map teleportation, I can't imagine they won't be buffing him even more when his skill tree comes out.

with that out of the way here's my idea for a maxwell skill tree
it's mostly stat buffs but seeing as maxwell's strong enough as it is, even these are without a doubt overtuned. the real interesting ideas come into play with the alignment perks

feel free to comment or give your own suggestions. I won't be making this into a mod on account of not knowing how to code but if you want to make this a mod you have my permission to take any and all of these ideas

3 skill categories. servant, spell, and alignment

servant category :

puppeteer 1/2 : reduce the sanity cost of shadow servants and duelists by 10/20%

puppeteer 3 : reduces the sanity cost of shadow servants and duelists by 30% and adds a new spell which costs 10 sanity and 5% codex umbra durability to forcefully obliviate all summoned shadows

workforce 1/2 : makes shadow servants do work 10/20% faster 

workforce 3 : shadow servants now share duelist's 75 health and damage negation mechanics, and are no longer scared of monsters

one man army 1/2 : makes shadow duelists dash 10/20% more often

one man army 3 : shadow duelists now have a static 50% damage reduction and are affected 50% more by shadow items (rounding up)

loyal servitude : shadow servants and duelists range is 50% bigger and now follows maxwell instead of being static (requires at least 7 skill points in servant category)

spell category : 

(note "spells" does not refer to summoning servants)

spell twister 1/2/3 : reduce the sanity cost of all spells by 10/20/30%

fast reader 1/2/3 : spells cast 20/30/50% faster

trap setter 1 : shadow sneak has a 50% bigger aoe and scares mobs for 20% longer

trap setter 2 : shadow sneak makes all mobs move 30% slower for 10 seconds (works on bosses, applies slow after scare on non-bosses)

trap setter 3 : shadow sneak makes all mobs (including bosses) take 20% more damage and deal 20% less damage for 10 seconds

weaver of shadows : effects of shadow sneak and shadow prison last twice as long and shadow prison now no longer has reduce duration when the trapped mob takes damage (requires at least 8 skills in the spell category)

alignment category : 

outer focus : "outsource your power even more than before, learning to utilize the potent power of pure horror"

the crawling nightmares and nightmare beaks have a 10% chance to drop 1 pure horror instead of their normal 1-2 nightmare fuel (lurking nightmares are not included due to their guaranteed pure horror drop during active shadow rifts. this will also be affected by luck when klei makes other drop replacements like butter from butterflies affected by luck

fueling the codex umbra with pure horror does the following :

    all spells and servants cost twice as much durability as they do with nightmare fuel

    makes servants work 50% faster and in a 50% bigger area

    servants are now completely immune to all damage from non-lunar aligned enemies

    makes duelists attack twice as fast and gives them a flat +10 planar damage

    shadow prison now incapacitates mobs/bosses in it, stopping flying away, teleporting, or attacking for the duration

    shadow sneak does 100 pure planar damage on activating

    obliviate fully restores sanity if at least 5 shadows servants/duelists are despawned by it

(requires at least 12 spell points spent, having defeated ancient fuel weaver, and not having inner focus)

inner focus : "shadows now course through your veins allowing you to trade all use of nightmare fuel for massively increase sanity use"

the codex umbra starts empty and longer requires nightmare fuel to function 

when using the codex umbra on 0% durability the following changes are made : 

    shadow servants/duelists no longer take maxwell's maximum sanity.

    each servant or duelist you summon gives you a drain of -30 sanity/minute, which can be reduced by the puppeteer skills.     (down to 21/min/summon with puppeteer 3)

    there is no longer a limit to the number of servants or duelists you can have at once and servants and duelists no     longer obliviate after a set amount of time

    on hitting 0 sanity with servants or duelists active all servants and duelists will obliviate and you will be unable     to use the codex umbra at all for 2 minutes

    shadow prison now costs twice as much sanity up front, and has no time limit, but costs 60 sanity/minute to keep active     and an additional 5 sanity every time the captured mob is     attacked, dissipating at 0 sanity (this can be reduced to as low as 42/minute and -3.5 on hit with spell twister 3 and the     sanity per minute drain can be cut in half, with the on hit     penalty removed with weaver of shadows)

    shadow sneak now costs twice as much up front, and if cast twice in the same place can repeatedly trigger for up to 5     minutes or until you reach 0 sanity, at which point it will     disappear like normal, costing 30 sanity per trigger

    obliviate spell costs 15 sanity instead of 10

(requires at least 12 skill points spent, having defeated ancient fuel weaver, and not having outer focus)

[GimplyGoose]

Just a random idea, but what if taking skills with Maxwells's lowered his max HP by 5 each for each one you took? If you take all 15 it leaves him with max hp. 

If something like this happened, it would be fine to give him a super busted skill tree that has abilities worthy of the king of the constant since taking those skills would be seriously costly.

[BB Marioni]

I feel that just adding planar damage to duelists is boring. I suggest adding an entirely separate new shadow summon, that is tanky, deals planar damage, but cannot be summoned togetehr with duelists. This monstrous shadow summon will deplete maxwell's sanity each second and he cannot restore sanity through any means. Once sanity is zero, monster gets unsummoned.

[Jakepeng99]

18 hours ago, TheL1quidFox said:

puppeteer 1/2 : reduce the sanity cost of shadow servants and duelists by 10/20%

Said they wasn’t going to make it op, and the first skill doubles the amount of servants and duelists he can have…

Its like Wolfgangs skilltree where they tried to make it bad then though giving him a 30% damage buff was a good idea.

6 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

Just a random idea, but what if taking skills with Maxwells's lowered his max HP by 5 each for each one you took? If you take all 15 it leaves him with max hp. 

If something like this happened, it would be fine to give him a super busted skill tree that has abilities worthy of the king of the constant since taking those skills would be seriously costly.

Then Maxwell is forced on a beefalo even more than before

18 hours ago, TheL1quidFox said:

one man army 3 : shadow duelists now have a static 50% damage reduction and are affected 50% more by shadow items (rounding up)

Nah I read on more and you can have even more duellists and they take half the damage.

18 hours ago, TheL1quidFox said:

fast reader 1/2/3 : spells cast 20/30/50% faster

trap setter 1 : shadow sneak has a 50% bigger aoe and scares mobs for 20% longer

trap setter 2 : shadow sneak makes all mobs move 30% slower for 10 seconds (works on bosses, applies slow after scare on non-bosses)

trap setter 3 : shadow sneak makes all mobs (including bosses) take 20% more damage and deal 20% less damage for 10 seconds

weaver of shadows : effects of shadow sneak and shadow prison last twice as long and shadow prison now no longer has reduce duration when the trapped mob takes damage (requires at least 8 skills in the spell category)

Stat buffs are not the way to go when we get this.

Like even just a few of these skills will make Maxwell 20 merm guards with skills level.

 

Instead, just give him more options. Add new spells or niche utility or something, or just nerf him.

Edited March 14 by Jakepeng99

[TheL1quidFox]

56 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Said they wasn’t going to make it op, and the first skill doubles the amount of servants and duelists he can have…

Its like Wolfgangs skilltree where they tried to make it bad then though giving him a 30% damage buff was a good idea.

i never said i wasn't going to make it op. i even said "even these are without a doubt overtuned".

if I'm being totally transparent a considerable amount of this skill tree is filler and would 100% be subject to change. you act like they didn't change walter's skill tree like 5 times in beta before releasing it to main, and they're a moderately sized team of people working for weeks or months on something. I cobbled this together in one night.

also it doesn't double the amount. i was careful to choose numbers that each skill would add 1 extra servant/duelist. you could have at most 7 servants/duelists while staying sane, 8 with crawling horror tier insanity, and 9 with terror beak tier insanity with the tier 3 skill.

56 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Instead, just give him more options. Add new spells or niche utility or something, or just nerf him.

with the exception of aoe bosses i fail to see any utility he doesn't have that's not already filled. he is already the best harvester of genuinely any resource except for maybe farm plants because you can't till with them, but you don't even remotely need that because you can just use stonefruit bushes. he struggles greatly with combat that requires aoe which is partially mitigated by the multiple skills that let duelists dash more often but i feel like he shouldn't be allowed to be the best in every single aspect.

plus part of this skill tree does give him niches that he's missing as is. with workforce 3 and, as an upgrade, the pure horror alignment perk, he becomes the only character to my knowledge to be able to safely and efficiently harvest a reed trap without needing to first clear all the tentacles, making him an excellent pair with wickerbottom in the hypothetical world where she also has a skill tree, which would hopefully either make her considerably better with her own books than max or give her new books that max couldn't read, killing her title as nothing more than a swap character for maxwell mains, as well as making night armor easier to farm en masse for himself and wanda players

it's hard to come up with ideas for new spells that would actually be useful in any regard without negating any reason to play a different character.

also there's no precedent for nerfing characters when adding skill trees. every single character to get one plays exactly the same as pre-skill tree if you opt to not unlock any insight. even wortox who many saw as playing the game on easy mode with his only downside being completely negated by part of his base kit didn't get that capability reduced at all. instead he got the best crowd control in the game against lower health enemies, a dark sword that costs silk, and a revive with no max health penalty that can also be used as a 10x stronger burst heal and allow any other character to teleport all at the wallet shattering cost of killing 10 butterflies or bees.

Edited March 14 by TheL1quidFox

[TheL1quidFox]

7 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

Just a random idea, but what if taking skills with Maxwells's lowered his max HP by 5 each for each one you took? If you take all 15 it leaves him with max hp. 

If something like this happened, it would be fine to give him a super busted skill tree that has abilities worthy of the king of the constant since taking those skills would be seriously costly.

someone did a day 51 boss rush with current maxwell with 15 max hp. as long as the existence of a skilltree doesn't completely neuter his effectiveness in combat this would only matter until you got any level of armor, any way to revive, or a beefalo, all of which can be acquired by day 5 at the latest

[TheL1quidFox]

1 hour ago, BB Marioni said:

I feel that just adding planar damage to duelists is boring. I suggest adding an entirely separate new shadow summon, that is tanky, deals planar damage, but cannot be summoned togetehr with duelists. This monstrous shadow summon will deplete maxwell's sanity each second and he cannot restore sanity through any means. Once sanity is zero, monster gets unsummoned.

all that would do is bloat the spells menu. you're suggesting a change that's already in the skill tree (pure horror duelists are stronger in some regard) and combining it with the entire identity of the opposite alignment perk, which would be that if you wanted to utilize maxwell's spells and shadows sanity management would be an actual issue, or at least considerably more of one than it is now.

also removing the ability to regain sanity in any way goes against the concept i was going for with the other perk, since i wanted it to be less of a direct upgrade and more that your sanity now works as a functional time limit for your summons that can be extended with sanity regen like clothing or cooked cactus. with the numbers as they are the inner focus perk doesn't actually increase the amount of time you can have the servants by a considerable amount. you can have the same number of servants as without the alignment for about a minute to go from full sanity to 0, which also disables the codex umbra entirely for 2 minutes, which turns you into half health Wilson for the sake of combat if it happens in a boss fight, but the goal was to let you have infinite servants or duelists as long as you have the means to sustain your sanity, making wicker max a good pairing for her cactus growth ability, or willow max a good pairing for her infinite fireball sanity stations, letting you melt bosses with unrivaled dps but only if you either spend a lot of setup time or have just the right teammate to synergize with

Edited March 14 by TheL1quidFox

[aidancode]

Strongly dislike this tree idea. The way you make a tree for an overpowered character is the way they made the Wendy tree: almost no direct stat increases. Maxwell's problem right now is that his power level is pretty much set from the start. He has like 2 turning points when he gets ruins gear and fuelweaver gear and that's it. His skill tree should give him more stuff to do throughout the game, not make his already crazy stats better.