So, it might be a long while before I start on this (if I ever do), but I've had a total conversion kicking around in my head for some time.  Here's the gist of what I want to do:

The Lure of Ember
My mod would take place before the events of Torchlight 1, during the expansion and rise of the ember-mining boom towns of the Empire.  Most importantly, it would take place before the corruption of ember by Ordrak and the appearance of the Netherim.

The main story finds the protagonists as part of a paramilitary organization active in the new frontier lands.  They protect new Imperial settlements, guard surveying expeditions and every now and then do an odd job for a rich patron who needs some extra muscle.

This sets the stage for the format of the mod.  It will be:

-A part-focused, mission-based ARPG

Party-focused?
I want the emphasis to be on fulfilling required roles within the party.  Someone will need to facetank stuff, someone will need to be a good scout, someone will need to deal the damage, etc.  Working solo is not an option, however, to make it accessible as a single-player experience I want to implement companion characters whose inventories and skill/stat progression you can control (if possible).  Party size would be capped at 4 whether it's filled with PCs or NPC companions.

All this emphasis on roles does not mean I want to pigeon-hole anyone.  I'd like to use the classless system idea Phanjam and I have been tossing around to let players really customize their characters and ultimately their party make-up.  Parties can be composed of the typical mage/tank/rogue/archer setup or could attempt something different altogether (4 mages?).

Mission-based?
Yup.  Missions would be like dungeons in a regular RPG, but not necessarily be dungeons and not necessarily require killing everything in sight.  Emphasis would be placed on completing the mission.  You can deal with the obstacles in your way however you choose.  Namely, you could probably either evade or destroy most squads of enemies.  But, some mission-specific events could give you other possibilities.  Negotiation, engineering, subterfuge.

Experience and rewards can of course be earned from killing enemies and successfully completing mission-specific events.  However, the best rewards are going to come from completing the mission objectives, de-emphasizing the necessity of killing everything in sight but not making it entirely unrewarding.  Failure would also not be limited to player death.  Mission objectives could also be borked, leaving a party to fight their way out of a mission without any hope of a reward.

Missions would also be modular.  This would allow me or any other interested modders to easily add expansions to the game and game world.  Making missions repeatable would also help with group-finding for multiplayer.  You would no longer have to worry if other party members were on the same quest or in the same area as you.  You get a party together and jump into a mission.

Other features

Complex, Tactical Combat
NO HEALING or MANA REGEN.  There would simply be no potions, healing spells, life steal or hp regen.  Your HP and your mana will be commodities to carefully manage.  I'm also considering limited-use non-mana skills.  Perhaps you could carry a limited number of stun grenades into combat, or archers might be limited to a certain number of special arrows.  Potions could also be limited in number so you have to choose between offense and defense-oriented potions.

No resurrection within a mission.  If I can make it happen, players killed during a mission would respawn as ghosts who can spectate, but not interfere with the rest of the mission.  Unfortunately, I can't foresee a way to work this, so players killed will probably just be left as corpses on the field until completion of the mission (so they can collect rewards and xp) or mission failure.

Gameplay would be balanced around missions, so your health and your mana have to last you through multiple encounters until you complete your objectives.  This will make scouting, planning and communication very important to the success of the party.  Mages will need to plan their spell use carefully to make the most of their powerful, but limited-use, magic.

I'll also include my current Modified Combat Mechanics mod within this mod.  Players will be able to flank and be flanked.  Archers and mages will need to be wary of being engaged by melee combatants lest they get all of their attacks interrupted.

Combat will be slowed down to allow players a bit more time to think in the heat of combat.  Player and monster movement speed and turn speed will be reduced to match the new pacing.  Attack and cast speed will also be reduced, especially for archers and spellcasters which will make them reliant on the protection of melee combatants or superior tactics.

Opaque, Descriptive Stat Presentation
Rather than numbers and data, players will be presented with illustrative text to describe the function of spells, skills and equipment.  I hope this will reduce the focus on number-crunching and allow players to pay more attention to teamwork.

Crafting
I liked Phanjam's idea of building a better crafting system.  This is a secondary interest and would be icing on the cake, but really delicious icing.  It would give a new, different reward possibility for missions.  You could do salvage runs, raids and gathering expeditions for crafting materials to build, brew and enchant all sorts of wonderful things.  It would also offer options for character progression.  Focus solely on combat abilities, or branch out into crafting to support the group?


And of course, more daydreaming to come... someday.

DeeeeLISHuz! And puts our planning for a classless system in a new light.

4 mages huh? We gonna need a few more stats to make that workable since mages would need to be able to specialize at the level of their skills (Jedi mind-trick anyone?).

Love it!

Proficiencies instead of Stats

I'm thinking of a new stat system for The Lure of Ember.

I want it to be opaque, straightforward and role-focused, but with lots of choices.  Instead of calling them 'stats', I'll be calling them 'proficiencies'.  They'll still use the TL2 stats that you get at levelup, but here's how they'll be different.  You'll see why I'm calling them proficiencies.

Opaque- The secondary stats derived from the proficiencies will not be visible on any tooltip.  I may nix the arcane statistics page, too. 

Straight-forward and role-focused- Each proficiency should give the ideal bonuses for a specific playstyle and role.  However, I don't want them to be tied down too much to a particular weapon type if they don't have to be.

Choices- I'm thinking of including 10-20 proficiencies.  Mixing and matching could make for a LOT of different character possibilities.  I'd also like to limit each proficiency with diminishing returns, making branching out into another proficiency as appealing as focusing solely on one.  Several proficiencies might give the same bonus, but at different degrees.

Here's a sample tooltip or two that you'll see instead (none of these are set in stone):

'Soldier'
A balanced combat discipline.  Soldiering increases proficiency with martial and ranged weapons and increases your survivability in combat.
The actual stat bonuses of Soldier (or any other proficiency) will never be revealed to the player.  The affix would apply bonuses to Ranged and Melee weapons and a bonus to either armor or damage reduction.

'Engineer'
An offensive discipline.  Increases the effectiveness of technology and firearms.'Engineer' would give bonuses to damage with pistols, shotgonnes, cannons and would also add a stat that modifies a damage affix that is common to all tech-type skills and items.

'Adept'
A balanced magical discipline.  Increases magical ability.'Adept' will increase elemental spell damage, staff and wand damage and mana.

'Prodigy'
An offensive magical discipline.Increases cast speed, critical chance and elemental damage.

'Duelist'
An offensive melee discipline that focuses on finesse and quickness.'Duelist' would increase attack speed, melee damage, critical chance and execute chance when equipped with melee weapons.

'Marksman'
An offensive ranged discipline that focuses on accuracy and efficiency.This would add ranged damage and critical strike chance.

'Gunslinger'
A balanced ranged discipline that emphasizes quick reflexes.Bonuses to ranged damage, execute chance (with ranged weapons), attack speed and dodge chance.

'Warrior'
A balanced martial discipline that focuses on making an impact.Bonus melee damage, critical strike bonus, and health.

'Stalwart'
A defensive melee discipline that favors the use of heavy armor and a shield.Bonus armor% and block chance (only when equipped with a melee weapon).

'Scout'
A balanced martial discipline that augments reflexes.Bonuses to dodge, attack speed and a minor bonus to all melee/ranged weapon damage.




As you can see, there's lots of possibilities here.

Heyya gyt! We've been thinking along similar lines I felt the 4 stats/proficiencies were a little limited and I postulated you could break "focus" into "intelligence" and magic", with INT enabling other skills (like crafting LOL) not just magic skills. And I also thought of a "charisma" stat, but I was thinking it could do things like make more dialog options available when interacting with NPCs.

Anyways, your latest 6-proficiency set up looks nice and balanced; I think you can set that as one stake in the ground for now, so that other areas can build off of it.

As for char-building, my idea was also a lot of trees but not too short (certainly not 15 but maybe not less than 5?).  Also I was thinking trees could belong to groups, like maybe a "survival" group would include a basic combat skills tree and other trees with very basic-level skills (can you tell I haven't fully thought this through yet?). These groups would "grow" from the very basic (as above) to the very esoteric (big summons, big AOEs etc.)

The reasoning for the groups would be like, skill-trees in the lower groups require very few proficiency points to unlock, but the higher-group trees wold need a LOT more and maybe complex mixtures of these proficiency points to make them available to you.