Stealth Class Possible in Torchlight?

[lothario]

Hey all, a couple of us in the Mod Showcase section got to talking about the game mechanics and how they could be used to create a stealth class -- like a D&D thief. It's actually sounding doable so far, and I thought I'd get a thread going here about hashing out the specifics for such a class, and maybe get some input from anybody who is interested in this or has toyed around with such a mod idea already.

This is what we have so far... hakkenshi thought this up, and I've taken his idea and run with it a little bit by adding some fuzzy particulars:

Stealth Skill: An Active skill, implemented by reducing enemy sight range, and also applies a UNITTHEME that enables further thief abilities, like the sneak attack/backstab. My idea with this is to have this as an activatable skill that costs mana/second... sort of like a "sneak mode". During a Sneak, the player has his movement speed reduced, but the backstab ability becomes activated.

Backstab: A Passive skill, and obviously, a damage multiplier that scales with skill level. The stealth UNITTHEME can be checked for in the Backstab skill data, and if it's not on, the backstab won't fire. But if the stealth UNITTHEME is on, every melee attack made by the player will be backstab damage. In theory, a player could use stealth to sneak up to a group of mobs, and then tear into them with a series of melee attacks, with the downside being a lack of mobility. Probably the best way to take advantage of this tactic is to do hit and runs so the player isn't eaten alive. A one on one fight with an enemy champion could be a little easier than normal, however... which makes sense, considering the assassin-like nature of the thief class.

Trap Avoidance/Mimic Killer: A Passive skill, with two levels. The first level offers a 50% chance to instantly kill a mimic with any attack, while also conferring a 50% chance to avoid trap damage. Level 2 raises these percentages to 90%.

So this is the short list so far. We need some ideas for AoE attacks, and maybe some different thiefly stuff, too. I'm thinking that a grenade attack of some sort is called for here at the very least.

-Loth

[lothario]

Hakkenshi, regarding the Stealth skill:

I think that you were right about ignoring the VIEWANGLE BONUS and sticking with SIGHTRANGE. Worrying about opponent facing is just too tedious for a game like TL. I'm thinking that Stealth should scale as a SIGHTRANGE penalty, with level 1 being a moderate reduction and level 10 being near invisibility. I think this will play out well in the game, as keeping the stealth mode on at the higher levels in a fight will prevent the player from getting swamped by nearby mobs as he's fighting. At level 10, the player will be a ninja, wiping out smaller clusters of bad guys with relative impunity.

If you think about it, this skill will really help out against enemy spellcasters and the like, and definitely change the gameplay from the other classes. A stealthed thief could conceivably sneak in the tomb section, for example, and take out the teleporting spectres without getting noticed by skeleton archers or the poison shamblers... and with enough mana pots, and some careful management/tactical planning, he might even be able to wipe out a whole section of the map without taking hardly any damage in return. It's not going to be like a spell bombardment from the Alchemist, or a sniper action with the Vanquisher, or a charge in and slaughter with the Destroyer... the thief will be a whole different animal.

-Loth

[hakkenshi]

Okay, so I've been considering the possibilities for the "thief", basing it off various sources like WoW, D&D, and even a little bit of the Vanquisher.

I'd even steal the Shadowdancer name from D&D, since it follows the TL naming scheme, plus Shadow abilities sound cool. :p

Bear in mind this a rough first draft.


The Shadowdancer

The Shadowdancer is a stealthy infiltrator specializing in quick, lethal combat and all manners of assassination techniques. Rather than seeking out the thrill of combat or the mystical lure of Ember, the Shadowdancer arrives in Torchlight to make a tidy profit, even if it means having to kill Ordrak to do so.

Skill Trees: Assassination, Stealth, Dirty Tricks

Quickness: The Shadowdancer has a hidden innate skill that increases movement speed and attack speed slightly.


Assassination
The abilities in this tree are based on dispatching opponents quickly and efficiently using standard weaponry.

Ambush - PASSIVE - LEVEL 1: Every melee attack you make when in Stealth gains a substantial bonus to damage.
Riposte - PASSIVE - LEVEL 5: Increases chance to block (higher than the normal passive), and reflects damage on block.
Deadly Throw (to be renamed) - ACTIVE - LEVEL 10: The Shadowdancer launches a blade at an opponent for a percentage of weapon DPS. Has a chance of Stunning.
Martial Weapons Mastery - PASSIVE - LEVEL 10
Blade Flurry (to be renamed) - ACTIVE - LEVEL 15: The Shadowdancer becomes a whirl of blades, increasing attack speed and striking opponents in an arc for a short duration.
Mutilate (to be renamed) - ACTIVE - LEVEL 20: A powerful melee attack that deals massive damage and grants the Shadowdancer a bonus to damage for a short duration.
Offensive Magicks Mastery - PASSIVE - LEVEL 20: As normal shared passive, also grants a small amount of mana steal.
Killing Spree (to be renamed) - ACTIVE - LEVEL 25: An AoE attack centered on the Shadowdancer, who strikes each surrounding foe multiple times over the course of a second.
Adrenaline Rush - ACTIVE - LEVEL 25: Activate for a burst of mana and health regeneration.



Stealth
The abilities in this tree focus on avoidance, thievery and remaining unseen.

Stealth - AURA - LEVEL 1: When activated, renders the Shadowdancer invisible for a short while, but at a lower movement speed. Grants access to other abilities (cf. Backstab). Additional points increase radius and movement speed while Stealthed, reduce mana cost.
Cloak of Shadows (to be renamed) - ACTIVE - LEVEL 10: The Shadowdancer becomes more elusive, almost immaterial, by stepping into the realm of shadows; reduces damage taken by a percent for the duration, increases Knockback and Elemental resistances.
Dungeon Delver - PASSIVE - LEVEL 10: As Adventurer.
Garrote - ACTIVE - LEVEL 15: Stealth ability, Stuns opponent and makes it bleed.
Tomb Raider - PASSIVE - [color=#0080FF]LEVEL 15: Grants a high percentage chance to kill Mimics outright on attempting to "open" them, as well as same bonuses as Treasure Hunter.
Shadowstep (to be renamed) - ACTIVE - LEVEL 20: The Shadowdancer teleports in the midst of a group of opponents, unleashing a burst of shadow energy against all of them.
Shadow Clone - ACTIVE - LEVEL 25: Creates a shadow-copy of the Shadowdancer to act as a decoy. The copy deals very little damage, but explodes upon destruction, damaging everyone around it.
Defensive Magicks Mastery - PASSIVE - LEVEL 25: As shared passive, also increases mana regeneration rate.


Dirty Tricks
This tree focuses on debuffs, poisons and traps.

Flashbomb - ACTIVE - LEVEL 1: The Shadowdancer throws an unbearably bright explosive, Blinding enemies and possibly even Stunning them.
Lethal Strikes - PASSIVE - LEVEL 1: As Critical Strikes.
Adder's Fangs - PASSIVE - LEVEL 5: Coats the Shadowdancer's blades with poison, adding chance to Poison foes with every strike and increasing attack speed.[/color]
Nightmare Bomb - ACTIVE - LEVEL 10: Throws a flask of explosive fright-inducing gas into a group of enemies, dealing some damage and scattering them.
Armor Mastery - PASSIVE - LEVEL 15
Caltrops - ACTIVE - LEVEL 15: Lays a patch of sharp, bladed caltrops on the ground, reducing movement speed of opponents while damaging them; at later levels, caltrops explode.
Tough Customer - PASSIVE - LEVEL 20: As Barter.
Smoke Bomb - ACTIVE - LEVEL 20: Throws down a pouch of blinding smoke that allows the Shadowdancer to slip away unnoticed.
Fan of Knives - ACTIVE - LEVEL 25: The Shadowdancer whirls in a flash of hidden knives, piercing opponents in an arc.
Charm Magicks Mastery - PASSIVE - LEVEL 25: As shared passive, also increases resistance to Slow and Silence.


Right now, as you can see, most of the skills are borrowed from other sources, but I think there's a solid base there. Let's all throw in ideas to see how we could build on this!

EDIT: I like the idea you're going with, lothario (and I'm absolutely with you on the use of Stealth, 100%), I'm just not ENTIRELY sure how to proceed. Do you think there are enough Stealth skills? I wanted to leave out-of-Stealth options for if you get swamped by enemies later...

EDIT2: I'd like to modify the shared passives as well, since I'm convinced they leave the player with fewer interesting options in unique skills. Reducing them to 5 point skills and/or folding in other bonuses could really help, and I'd seriously consider removing any magic-related ones from this class - Advanced Spellcasting, Magic Weapons Mastery...

[lothario]

EDIT2: I'd like to modify the shared passives as well, since I'm convinced they leave the player with fewer interesting options in unique skills. Reducing them to 5 point skills and/or folding in other bonuses could really help, and I'd seriously consider removing any magic-related ones from this class - Advanced Spellcasting, Magic Weapons Mastery...

Definitely let's get rid of the magic-related skills. No self-respecting shadowdancer uses a dang wand!

I like your list... in fact, it's almost TOO much. We should probably cut things down where there's some overlap. I like the stun attacks (Garrote is a great idea) especially... I'm playing a melee-based Vanq right now and when I'm fighting a bunch of guys it really helps when a stab stuns the enemy for a few seconds so I can get some more attacks in. Having the Garrote be stealth-based is perfect. You sneak up, tag the mob with a garrote, and then backstab the heck out of him... hopefully, to death. We might have to make Garrote an upper-tier ability, as this could get abused if it's available at a lower level.

So you don't like the idea of stealth slowing the player a little bit? I was thinking that it could add some more tactical meat to the stew if we did that... making for a more methodical approach to murder rather than a whirling tornado of destruction. I was thinking that we should differentiate the shadowdancer class from the destroyer, as if we make this class a "charge in and kill" class, it would just be more of the same, you know?

-Loth

EDIT: Also really liking the Riposte idea. I was actually going to suggest that we make Block and Parry available very early.

[hakkenshi]

I like your list... in fact, it's almost TOO much. We should probably cut things down where there's some overlap. I like the stun attacks especially... I'm playing a melee-based Vanq right now and when I'm fighting a bunch of guys it really helps when a stab stuns the enemy for a few seconds so I can get some more attacks in.

So you don't like the idea of stealth slowing the player a little bit? I was thinking that it could add some more tactical meat to the stew if we did that... making for a more methodical approach to murder rather than a whirling tornado of destruction. I was thinking that we should differentiate the shadowdancer class from the destroyer, as if we make this class a "charge in and kill" class, it would just be more of the same, you know?

-Loth

Oops, I forgot the slowdown when Stealthed! That's *definitely* in - increased ranks reduce the penalty, but it has to be there regardless.

The one concern I have about Stealth is that it might slow down the gameplay, and/or hit major hurdles with Ordrak and other bosses. That was why I added so many abilities at first, but it's true that some of them can be folded together - I'm looking at Garrote and Ambush, which are just different versions of the same, and maybe Hamstring? if Caltrops already give a slowing ability, maybe it's just not necessary to have the overlap.

Right now the Stealth tree is lighter. At first, I thought maybe *too* light, but now that you mention it, it may be just right. Let's trim the class down a bit - I'll shoot for six skills per tree, with at least one passive. Does Shadow Clone work for you? I thought the idea of a decoy would be awesome when Stealthed...

[lothario]

Some more concept ideas:

As far as the stats go, I should think that the shadowdancer is heavily str and dex-based, with most of the combat skills taking 50-50 from each -- or maybe even more dex-based than that. We offset the lower strength scores causing less melee damage by the backstab multiplier... so if a player is playing this class right, and using stealth-based skills, then the lower strength won't matter that much. If a player is charging in and playing like a destroyer, he will suffer for it by lower damage output and inefficiency.

I can't see how pumping the magic stat should help that much when it comes to this class, but the skills will be using mana, so maybe we should consider having at least a moderate to decently-sized mana pool for the character to draw from. As for health, we should probably keep that to Vanq level or below. This isn't a tank class, it's a finesse class... right?

-Loth

[lothario]

Does Shadow Clone work for you? I thought the idea of a decoy would be awesome when Stealthed...

That is a great idea, dude... and that reminds me of something:

It might be best to use an imaginary pet with this class.

Having a dog running around as a distraction is going to ruin the stealth approach, as the mobs will be activated by your pet when you get close enough. Then, this will turn into the typical combat for any other class, i.e., mobs activate when you approach, use weapons and skills to decimate them, move on to next area... it won't be any different than what we have already in this game.

-Loth

PS I think boss fights might actually be easier with this class if your skills are being used properly. Brutal hit and run tactics, debuffs by caltrops to discourage a chase, re-stealth and backstab, drop caltrops and escape, etc. The bad guys are going to be flinging magic at you sometimes, and summoning allies to help them, but you can take a moment to wipe out the summons with AoE skills, and then it's back to stealth attacks on the boss.

[hakkenshi]

Does Shadow Clone work for you? I thought the idea of a decoy would be awesome when Stealthed...

That is a great idea, dude... and that reminds me of something:

It might be best to use an imaginary pet with this class.

-Loth

PS I think boss fights might actually be easier with this class if your skills are being used properly. Brutal hit and run tactics, debuffs by caltrops to discourage a chase, re-stealth and backstab, drop caltrops and escape, etc. The bad guys are going to be flinging magic at you sometimes, and summoning allies to help them, but you can take a moment to wipe out the summons with AoE skills, and then it's back to stealth attacks on the boss.

Mmmm, that does sound like some pretty sexy gameplay right there...

And yes, absolutely, the imaginary pet is a must. I just can't picture it working any other way.

I'm starting testing with Stealth in the editor, I'll let you know how it works out...

[lothario]

I'm starting testing with Stealth in the editor, I'll let you know how it works out...

Sweet, dude... if you can get the UNITTHEME working, then it can all fall into place.
-Loth

[lothario]

Okay, assuming all goes well with the Stealth test, we should break the rest of the skills down so that we don't have any overlaps in effects. The stealth/backstab method is going to be the bread and butter of this class, but what else can we expect from the shadowdancer? I've compiled some concept ideas here to stick hakkenshi's list into possible tiers:

Low level tiers (player levels 1-5)
1. There needs to be a defensive AoE centered on the player that can be used as an escape when you are swamped by mobs, similar to the Winds of Justice in the Vanq class. We should probably put this in the Dirty Tricks section... perhaps the sand in the eyes could be a smoke bomb instead? I'm thinking no damage, a small knockback, and chance of stun are appropriate effects here.

2. An attack buff for lower levels can be a big help. A poison weapon effect is perfect for adding a little extra oomph to a backstab for those harder enemies.

3. Passives here should be the Riposte, Trapspringer, and Critical Hit.

Mid level tiers (player levels 10-15)
1. The shadowdancer starts to develop his nastier side here. AoE damage and debuff effects like the Nightmare bomb and the single-target damaging and debuffing Deadly Throw serve to harass and soften up enemy positions before the shadowdancer closes in for the kill.

2. Here also the defensive manuevers become more effective, with two prominent choices for the player to decide upon. The caltrop is an activated slowing effect on opponents often used to cover an escape in order to begin another attack run or heal, and the cloak of shadows is a passive effect upon the player that acts as a partial damage absorber while stealth is active.

3. Other Passives here should include the Armor and Martial Weapon masteries.

High level tiers (player levels 20+)
1. Ahh, the good stuff. Here we see the deadliest unfolding of the shadowdancer with devastating AoE weapon strikes like the killing spree, and nasty paralyzing techniques like the Garrote that allow a player to stun even the toughest opponents and then possibly unleash a bloody sequence of backstabs right afterwards.

2. Here also the shadowdancer has developed his body to such a degree that he can literally meld with the darkness, teleporting into his foes and knocking them back... possibly even killing or stunning them in the process.

3. But the command of shadows reveals other abilities as well... a shadow clone of the player can be formed that will distract opponents -- and then explode, often wiping out several enemies at once.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I left out the Blade Flurry, Mutilate, and Weakening Poison because they are kinda duplicates of other effects or we could fold them into other skills. Also, I think we should keep the crit hit, armor mastery, and martial weapon mastery to round out the class. The way I figure it, a player will tend to stick to one or two class skills that he likes anyway as he develops his char, and not having an armor or weapon mastery available tends to weaken the class overall.

So what do you think?
-Loth

[hakkenshi]

Okay, assuming all goes well with the Stealth test, we should break the rest of the skills down so that we don't have any overlaps in effects. The stealth/backstab method is going to be the bread and butter of this class, but what else can we expect from the shadowdancer? I've compiled some concept ideas here to stick hakkenshi's list into possible tiers:

Low level tiers (player levels 1-5)
1. There needs to be a defensive AoE centered on the player that can be used as an escape when you are swamped by mobs, similar to the Winds of Justice in the Vanq class. We should probably put this in the Dirty Tricks section... perhaps the sand in the eyes could be a smoke bomb instead? I'm thinking no damage, a small knockback, and chance of stun are appropriate effects here.

Sure, that's a great idea - very ninja-like. Smoke Bomb it is.

2. An attack buff for lower levels can be a big help. A poison weapon effect is perfect for adding a little extra oomph to a backstab for those harder enemies.

3. Passives here should be the Riposte, Trapspringer, and Critical Hit.

Do you think Adder's Fangs is too much for low levels, or is it just one passive too many?

Mid level tiers (player levels 10-15)
1. The shadowdancer starts to develop his nastier side here. AoE damage and debuff effects like the Nightmare bomb and the single-target damaging and debuffing Deadly Throw serve to harass and soften up enemy positions before the shadowdancer closes in for the kill.

2. Here also the defensive manuevers become more effective, with two prominent choices for the player to decide upon. The caltrop is an activated slowing effect on opponents often used to cover an escape in order to begin another attack run or heal, and the cloak of shadows is a passive effect upon the player that acts as a partial damage absorber while stealth is active.

I was thinking you would activate Cloak of Shadows while Stealthed. Otherwise we need to decide whether Stealth is deactivated upon attacking, or simply until used again.

The sequence would be something like activate Stealth, Cloak of Shadows, attack.

High level tiers (player levels 20+)
1. Ahh, the good stuff. Here we see the deadliest unfolding of the shadowdancer with devastating AoE weapon strikes like the killing spree, and nasty paralyzing techniques like the Garrote that allow a player to stun even the toughest opponents and then possibly unleash a bloody sequence of backstabs right afterwards.

2. Here also the shadowdancer has developed his body to such a degree that he can literally meld with the darkness, teleporting into his foes and knocking them back... possibly even killing or stunning them in the process.

3. But the command of shadows reveals other abilities as well... a shadow clone of the player can be formed that will distract opponents -- and then explode, often wiping out several enemies at once.

That sums it up pretty well.

I left out the Blade Flurry, Mutilate, and Weakening Poison because they are kinda duplicates of other effects or we could fold them into other skills. Also, I think we should keep the crit hit, armor mastery, and martial weapon mastery to round out the class. The way I figure it, a player will tend to stick to one or two class skills that he likes anyway as he develops his char, and not having an armor or weapon mastery available tends to weaken the class overall.

So what do you think?
-Loth

I think it's great! My only real concern is that so far the class is really about the one thing. I'm okay with 5 new skills per tree (especially since I suck with the editor, it seems), but I do want players to have variety as well. Mutilate doesn't really have an equivalent elsewhere since I removed Ambush, and neither does Blade Flurry. You're absolutely right about Weakening Poison, it can be folded into later levels of Adder's Fangs, for one thing.

The Stealth skill is annoying to make, probably because I'm still so inept with the editor. It activates, but the movement penalty stacks if it's recast. I figured I'd use the NotTheme parameter, but then how do you get out of Stealth? The skill wouldn't cast.

Anyway, it's getting kind of late here, so I'm off for now, but here's the crappy work I've done so far in the editor. Maybe you can spot the glaring mistakes I'm missing...

Spoiler: show

[SKILL]
<STRING>NAME:Stealth
<STRING>SKILL_TYPE:SKILL
<TRANSLATE>DISPLAYNAME:Stealth
<TRANSLATE>DESCRIPTION:Slip by enemies unnoticed, carefully keeping to the shadows.
<STRING>SKILL_ICON:skill_shadowarmor
<STRING>SKILL_ICON_INACTIVE:skill_shadowarmor_gray
<STRING>ACTIVATION_TYPE:NORMAL
<STRING>TARGET_ALIGNMENT:EVIL
<STRING>TARGET_TYPE:SELF<STRING>TARGET_TYPE:SELF
<STRING>ANIMATION:special_summon
<FLOAT>MANACOSTOT:5
<INTEGER>COOLDOWNMS:1000
<STRING>NOTTHEME:STEALTH
<BOOL>CAN_BE_SILENCED:0
<INTEGER>MAX_INVEST_LEVEL:10
<BOOL>EXCLUSIVE:true
<INTEGER>MAXLEVEL:10
<INTEGER64>UNIQUE_GUID:-1012746592679947810
[LEVEL1]
[EVENT_TRIGGER]
<STRING>FILE:media/skills/test/stealth.layout
<BOOL>ATTACHES:1
[AFFIXES]
<INTEGER>AFFIXLEVEL:1
<STRING>TARGET:ENEMY
<FLOAT>DURATION:0
<STRING>AFFIX:STEALTH_ENEMYSIGHT
[/AFFIXES]
[/EVENT_TRIGGER]
[EVENT_TRIGGER]
<STRING>FILE:media/skills/test/stealth.layout
<BOOL>ATTACHES:1
<BOOL>NOSTEALEFFECTS:0
[AFFIXES]
<INTEGER>AFFIXLEVEL:1
<STRING>TARGET:SELF
<FLOAT>DURATION:0
<STRING>AFFIX:STEALTH_MOVEREDUX
[/AFFIXES]
[/EVENT_TRIGGER]
[/LEVEL1]

[lothario]

It activates, but the movement penalty stacks if it's recast.

Maybe start by cloning the Destroyer Entropic Aura, and modding from that? If you look in the DAT for the WARRIOR_AURA_SLOW, there are STOP_SKILL entries that could help in getting the stealth effects from stacking if you go off of that. In theory, the Entropic Aura is a nice base to work off of, as you only need to fiddle with the effects to switch the enemy slowing to an enemy SIGHTRANGE penalty instead. And also maybe tweak some of the numbers for mana cost, etc.

That's the best suggestion I could come up with, anyway.
-Loth

[lothario]

As for the Cloak of Shadows, I was thinking it might be best to make it a passive that is activated during stealth (just like Backstab), just for the purpose of player convenience. So every time the player hits the stealth mode, he knows that the damage absorption is active. Think of the Cloak of Shadows skill as a sort of defensive power-up for your stealth skill that enables the player to stay in a tough fight in stealth mode a little longer before he has to retreat (IF he has to retreat ).

Otherwise we end up with the player trying to activate the skill while NOT in stealth mode, and then wondering what the hell is wrong with it. Which reminds me... we should probably be careful with having active skills that work only in stealth mode (like I was thinking Garrote would be) just for this reason. It gets clumsy and annoying for the player to have some active skills dependent upon other active skills to fire.

"Okay, hit this button, then this button, then this button... okay, now I can walk up to the bad guy."

It just makes things tedious, doesn't it? For Garrote, that is going to be a powerful skill, and by the time the player has reached that level to get it, he will be an old hand at using stealth mode effectively. We can probably get away with having Garrote be an "active dependent on active" skill.

-Loth

[lothario]

As for the lack of variety in the skills, I can definitely see where you're coming from there. You're concerned that there's not going to be enough different "flavors" of the class for the player to choose from. Maybe you're right, but keep in mind that they're still going to have access to learned spells... for instance, a player who uses Archer Summoning is going to have a different experience with this class than a player who doesn't. Also, we can always add stuff later... we just need to get the core concept of the shadowdancer down, and get it balanced right.

-Loth

[Feynt]

I noticed an "Exclusive" option in the skills window. Mayhaps that will only apply the skill once at a time?

[lothario]

I noticed an "Exclusive" option in the skills window. Mayhaps that will only apply the skill once at a time?

He has the Exclusive set already. I think that the problem is that there's no STOPSKILLs in his code, so while he can activate the aura, and only once at a time, the game doesn't know that it needs to cancel the effects of the aura when it is deactivated.
-Loth

[Feynt]

Oh I see it there. I glanced through a little too quickly and missed the exclusive tag. >P
But yeah, the event_end thing was my next guess. I've seen it a lot in Pet Mastery at every level, and my guess was that it was there to stop it from compounding percentages, resulting in super duper pets. >3

[hakkenshi]

I've worked on it a bit more, and it seems that an AFFIXESREMOVE upon EVENT_TRIGGER successfully removes all movement penalties, then reapplies them with the AFFIX on the next EVENT_TRIGGER. So that works.

I can't get the UNITTHEME to apply for some reason, though, which is a pain in the ass. Can anyone figure out what's wrong with it?

Spoiler: show

[SKILL]
<STRING>NAME:Stealth
<TRANSLATE>DISPLAYNAME:Stealth
<TRANSLATE>DESCRIPTION:Sneak by enemies, allowing you to avoid them or ambush them from the shadows.
<STRING>SKILL_ICON:skill_shadowarmor
<STRING>SKILL_ICON_INACTIVE:skill_shadowarmor_gray
<STRING>ACTIVATION_TYPE:NORMAL
<STRING>TARGET_ALIGNMENT:EVIL
<STRING>TARGET_TYPE:SELF<STRING>TARGET_TYPE:SELF
<STRING>ANIMATION:special_gen_buff
<FLOAT>MANACOST:2
<FLOAT>MANACOSTOT:2
<INTEGER>COOLDOWNMS:3000
<BOOL>CAN_BE_SILENCED:0
<INTEGER>MAX_INVEST_LEVEL:10
<BOOL>EXCLUSIVE:true
<INTEGER>MAXLEVEL:10
<INTEGER64>UNIQUE_GUID:3311219128512811486
[LEVEL1]
[EVENT_TRIGGER]
<STRING>FILE:media/particles/stealth_launch.layout
<BOOL>APPLYEFFECTS:1
<BOOL>STATSHIDDEN:1
[AFFIXESREMOVE]
<STRING>AFFIX:STEALTH_MOVEREDUX
[/AFFIXESREMOVE]
[/EVENT_TRIGGER]
[EVENT_TRIGGER]
<STRING>FILE:media/skills/stealth_aura.layout
<BOOL>ATTACHES:1
<INTEGER>DURATIONOVERRIDEMS:120000
[AFFIXES]
<INTEGER>AFFIXLEVEL:1
<STRING>TARGET:ENEMY
<FLOAT>DURATION:0
<STRING>AFFIX:STEALTH_ENEMYSIGHT
[/AFFIXES]
[AFFIXES]
<INTEGER>AFFIXLEVEL:1
<STRING>TARGET:SELF
<FLOAT>DURATION:0
<STRING>AFFIX:STEALTH_MOVEREDUX
[/AFFIXES]
[/EVENT_TRIGGER]
[/LEVEL1]
[/SKILL]

Where the affixes and unittheme are as follows:

Spoiler: show

Spoiler: show

Spoiler: show

Also, I'm having trouble making the duration permanent... if I set it to 0, it ends instantly.

I'd like to test it in-game, but it's looking too iffy in the Editor right now.

[lothario]

Try setting duration to ALWAYS.

-Loth

EDIT: Nevermind, that's not it.

EDIT2: Here is a snippet of the Slow Aura that might be relevant:

Spoiler: show

[LEVEL1]
<INTEGER>LEVEL_REQUIRED:5
[EVENT_TRIGGER]
<STRING>FILE:media/skills/warrior/slowaura/launch.layout
<BOOL>APPLYEFFECTS:1
<BOOL>STATSHIDDEN:1
[EFFECTS]
<STRING>TARGET:SELF
[EFFECT]
<STRING>TARGET:SELF
<STRING>TYPE:STOP SKILL
<STRING>NAME:Aura of Thorns
<STRING>DURATION:INSTANT
<FLOAT>VALUE:100
[/EFFECT]
[/EFFECTS]
[/EVENT_TRIGGER]
[EVENT_TRIGGER]
<STRING>FILE:media/skills/warrior/slowaura/slowaura.layout
<BOOL>ATTACHES:1
<INTEGER>DURATIONOVERRIDEMS:120000
[AFFIXES]
<INTEGER>AFFIXLEVEL:1
<STRING>TARGET:ENEMY
<FLOAT>DURATION:0
<STRING>AFFIX:AURA_OF_ENTROPY_ONE
[/AFFIXES]
[/EVENT_TRIGGER]
[/LEVEL1]

In the effect, and the affixes, the slow aura skill is careful to define what the target is. Perhaps your UNITTHEME is being applied to the enemy, and not to the player?

EDIT3: Nevermind, that's not it either. Should it matter that the Bone is blank in the UNITTHEME definition? Probably not, I would think. Damn... we need somebody who knows this theme stuff to show up. I bet it's something simple we're missing.

[hakkenshi]

"Property value is not valid for Int32."