I like most of your points. Some of these are more subtle and can easily slip off your mind when you're summing up a lot of things at once.
As Guerilla is tied to Sneaking, lowering AP cost of Sneaking automatically makes Guerilla better. So Guerilla might not need a drastic change, if the 2-AP Sneaking really happens (or something similar). I find the whole "once per encounter" concept doesn't make a whole lot of sense, aside from purely because of balance reason. If it's just once per encounter, and cannot be used in combat, then it'd better be really, really good - something along the lines of instantly killing most normal enemies. As you said, it requires *a lot* of setting up just for one attack. And, the fact is that many encounters do not allow you the option of initiating combat at all.
Good discussion. I'll explain my line of thinking a little more
Currently, Guerilla in-combat costs at least 6 AP (4 Sneak, 2 Attack), not counting any movement required and boosts damage by 40%. 1.4x damage for 6 AP. Three regular attacks do 3.0x damage for 6 AP, giving Guerilla DPAP of -160%.
My suggestion was
already assuming that Sneak gets reduced to 2 AP. That's still not enough to make it useful in-combat. Even with Sneak reduced to 2 AP, using Sneak-then-attack while in combat would cost 4 AP and do 1.4x the damage of a regular attack (2 AP). That's less useful than doing two regular attacks, which would do 2.0x damage (DPAP of -60%).
That's why I suggested that Guerilla get boosted to +100% damage, so a 2 AP Sneak + 2 AP attack would do exactly as much damage as 2 regular attacks (DPAP of 100%).
However, doing
exactly as much damage as 2 regular attacks would obviously still not be any more worthwhile. Even less so, considering you need extra conditions and effort to get the same result.
In order to make Guerilla worthwhile, you would need to give it a bigger boost, to +125 or +150% damage. But I realized that if you boost the damage that much, and allow people to do that in combat as much as you want, that would make cheesy attack->escape->return->repeat tactics
the most optimal way to play.
That's why it can't go higher than +100% and be usable in an encounter more than once.
I also wish that there were more talents designed specifically for spellcasters. There are Fire (Demon) and Water (Ice King), but how come Earth and Air are left out? I like the idea of having separate talents that boost the effectiveness of spells within these four classic elemental schools. Shorter cooldowns, longer durations, damage boosts, etc. Maybe extra resistances against hostile spells from the corresponding school as well.
One of the reasons why I probably didn't post this months ago was that I couldn't decide on what kind of talents other mage schools should get. I didn't want to delay posting this even more, though.
One important question when considering a talent is, How useful is it *in the long run*? Take Arrow Recovery for example. A 33% chance might be fine in a casual situation, but in the tough fights, the most important ones, a "chance" thing like that means it's not reliable (it encourages save/reload when you *have* to succeed). Not only that, from mid game on, when you have all the gold in the world and can buy as many arrows as you like, or make pretty much whatever you want, plus the fact that magical arrows are quite abundant throughout the game, this talent becomes useless really fast.
I prefer something that is reliable, and still useful by endgame. My idea is to rework Arrow Recovery into something like increasing effectiveness of magical arrows - increased duration and/or additional damage.
That's a good idea. I can endorse that one. One reason I didn't really talk about arrow Talents much is simply because on the playthrough I completed, I didn't have any archers, I went 2/2 with a Rogue and Knight plus a Wizard and Enchanter.
I have a few poorly-thought-out and probably bad ideas:
Change Arrow Recovery to something less reliant on RNG Why? - I'll let "Try2Handing" explain:
A 33% chance might be fine in a casual situation, but in the tough fights, the most important ones, a "chance" thing like that means it's not reliable (it encourages save/reload when you *have* to succeed). Not only that, from mid game on, when you have all the gold in the world and can buy as many arrows as you like, or make pretty much whatever you want, plus the fact that magical arrows are quite abundant throughout the game, this talent becomes useless really fast.
1) NEW TALENT: "Improved Magical Arrows Archer" - The damage from all magical arrows (both direct and damage over time from surfaces is increased by 50%. (A simple, straight-up buff.)
2) NEW TALENT: "Arcane Archer" - The damage from all magical arrows now scales with Intelligence. (Allows for a mage build which uses a bow as a weapon instead of a staff or wand. Probably not that effective. Maybe it also allows regular attacks to scale with INT or FIN, whichever is highest?)
3) NEW TALENT: "Arcane Quickdraw" - AP cost of using magical arrows is reduced by 1, but damage is decreased by 40%. (Allows you to fire twice as many arrows, but the damage penalty means you're only doing an extra 20% damage over two shots.)
