Character Skill Trees for Tales from the Borderlands
To those who have played the main Borderlands games, each character class gets three skill trees, each one an extension of the character's personality and skills. For fun, I thought I'd brainstorm 3 skill trees Fiona might have should she become a fully-realized Vault Hunter, and give a brief description of each.
Elemental Roulette- Fiona's Derringer pistol randomly selects an elemental type, triggering bonuses when they strike an enemy with an element they are weak to. As players progress down the skill tree, they will increase both the power and chances of landing critical blows, culminating in massive Elemental Novas when delivering multiple hits in sequence.
Fast Reflexes- Fiona receives bonuses to Movement Speed, Reload Speed, Fire Rate and Melee Strikes. Each times she reloads or strikes an enemy in melee, the bonuses stack, and Fiona becomes a flurry of shanks and bullets. She also reduces enemy Accuracy, causing bullets to miss and ricochet back at bandits.
Pandoran Hustler- Here's an interesting concept...Fiona uses skills that either confuse or distract opponents through a series of taunts or buffs, or utilizes skills which steal Health and Ammo from the enemy. This lends well with her personality, and could be a fun support/healing class.
To keep this discussion going, come up with some skill trees for some of the other main characters, such as Rhys, Sasha or Vaughn.
Comments
Well, I guess I'll have a go with mah boy Vaughn.
Action Skill: Abs of Steel. Whenever this is activated Vaughn becomes invulnerable to attacks from the front (Similar to Athena in TPS) and all enemy fire is absorbed by his buffness. At the end of the skill 50% of the damage he takes is transferred to his shield, making him a tank on the battlefield, and the other half is expelled in a nova blast similar to a nova shield's effect once it is depleted, wreaking havoc to nearby enemies.
Skill Trees:
Exercise Bike: The more Vaughn works out the tougher he becomes. As long as Vaughn is in motion he regenerates a small portion of his health. Investing in this tree gives him buffs to his Health regen and movement speed, as well as damage bonuses to pistols and SMGs. He can race all over the battlefield hitting the enemy from any and every angle. He's constantly in motion and hard to hit. For him every day is leg day.
Killer Workout: This tree focuses on improving his action skill's damage, turning him into a veritable supernova of death. You can upgrade his Action Skill by having 100% of the damage absorbed be channeled into the nova, increase the nova's range, and add elemental effects to it, but at the cost of lessening the amount diverted to his shields at the end. Maybe even more than one at once. With this Vaughn uses the enemy's power against them, absorbing all of the damage then giving it back, 10 times as deadly, 20 times as awesome.
Weirdly Buff: This tree goes the opposite route, improving the defensive aspects of Vaughn's abs. With this tree you channel 100% of damage absorbed into Vaughn's shields, weakening the nova but turning Vaughn into a tank of an accountant. Vaughn uses the enemy's power to keep himself alive and his friends out of danger by tanking enemy fire for them. You can also tweak it to absorb enemy bullets and grenades that are used on you and add them to your own reserves. These muscles have a mind of their own.
Can we all just agree Borderlands 3 should star Rhys, Vaughn, Fiona, and Sasha?
These are really funny, but Vaughn would be broken, especially Exercise Bike tree :P
As Fiona's action skill I think she should slow down time, similar to those two moments in episode 3 when deciding how to defeat the Plant and Mordecai
Fiona should have a skill like: Hat shot (she throws her hat in people and knocks'em out)
Yep. But, you know, when you work out as much as he does, being OP comes with the territory.
Rhys. Action skill: hit yourself on the head and summon AI Jack. He calls you names. All skill trees consist entirely of the 'inspire' skill.
(Sorry, there are some really good ideas for skills in the posts above, I'm just currently venting my frustration at the 'Eradicate!' quest in TPS and hearing Jack insult me for the bazillionth time after falling off the platforms into the void of space yet again. I hate Veins of Helios so much...)
My ideas, from TV Tropes, that I also wrote when I got overexcited from daydreaming:
Rhys: He can use his electronic arm like Tony Stark's to fire an explosive autocannon similar to Jack's, send multiple enemies flying with a punch like Brick's or even jam weapons with a shock blast. If Jack somehow sticks around, he could warn Rhys of incoming bandits or Badasses. Also, for raid bosses or general boss fights, Rhys can summon Loader Bot, who is now a Super Badass BUL Loader with snark, is armed with two slag Autocannons and two Torgue rifles and has increased immunity to elemental effects.
One of Rhys' skill trees can be focused on Jack and act pretty much like the Doppelganger's skills (summoning Jack to aid him in battle), while the ultimate skill is "The Man Who Wants to Be the Jack", where Rhys allows Jack to "possess" him, giving him some huge bonuses and the frickin wrist-mounted laser beams that act like the heat rays that the Angelic Guards use, capable of wrecking shields, burning flesh and even doing serious damage to armoured enemies.
Fiona: She can use Awesomeness by Analysis to outline critical spots like Zer0, and her shots home in on them, similar to Nisha's Showdown. As well as that, any non-elemental, Torgue or Jakobs guns have a chance to deal elemental damage that changes based on the kind of targets.
This actually seems more like something Rhys would be able to do. ECHO-scan, which lets him activate his ECHO-eye and determine enemies' weakpoints. You could even carry that over to robotic enemies, where he'd be able to infiltrate their systems, and use it to his advantage by exploiting security holes to cause a range of debuffs or something like that.
If you wanted to get even more ridiculous, make this scanning/hacking ability carry over to anyone wielding Hyperion weapons/tech, which allows him to directly hack into them like he does to Vasquez with his gun/car, which lets you temporarily disable shields, cause weapons to start auto-firing all over to kill people around them or to effectively stun enemies, activate Hyperion grenades remotely, etc. Also, they'd be able to slip a Watchdogs reference in there somewhere if they did this.
NOW we have a lot of contenders for Rhys's action skill...
But yeah, I really like that idea, Delt. Fiona's would be something like bullet time, but it lets her pull off insta-kill moves, dodge bullets and home in on enemies she hasn't seen yet, and shoot them in the face.
Not sure if anybody'll see this as it's been several weeks since anyone posted in this discussion, but I was inspired to create a complete Skill Tree for Vaughn:
http://charlottemay416.deviantart.com/art/Vaughn-SkillTree-notes-554588703
That is a link to a PDF file, which you can download. If you click on the tiny stars in the lower-right hand corner of each skill text box, it will pop up a description of the skill's effects. If you want to see the notes in the preview there on deviantart, I recommend you zoom way in first. They show up TINY there.
Rock114, I borrowed a couple skill names and the basic description for Abs of Steel from your post above. I hope you don't mind. I did give you due credit!
EDIT:
Well, I finished Rhys's skill tree, so I'm adding that link here as well. Same deal as with Vaughn's... it's an annotated PDF that you can download. If you want to view the notes on the DeviantArt preview, you will need to zoom in a lot, as the notes are tiny there.
http://charlottemay416.deviantart.com/art/Rhys-SkillTree-notes-555565749
Rhys's red skill tree (Inner Demon) is a bit more complicated than the others I've made so far, since that is the tree that would give you access to Loaderbot, and that requires extra customization (you have to choose whether he'll evacuate or self destruct, and whether he'll have grenades or rockets). And as Spiderman would tell you (over and over and over again), "with great power comes great responsibility." If you want to unlock a powerful ally like Loaderbot, it's going to require a significant investment in skill points in the red tree... and that comes with extra risk. For each skill point you spend in the red tree, it increases the chances that Handsome Jack will interfere whenever you activate Rhys's action skill (Echo Eye, of course). I sort of see this skill working a lot like Fragtrap's VaultHunter.exe skill from TPS, where some of the effects are helpful to Rhys and his teammates, some harmful, etc.
Ok, I finally finished the girls' skill trees. Now that all 4 characters' trees are complete, I decided to post a new reply instead of edit my last one in the hopes of bumping the thread. LOL
To give an indication what they look like, here's a thumbnail of Fiona's skill trees...
And here are the links to each individual character's downloadable PDF skill trees (which include explanations of the skills)...
RHYS:http://charlottemay416.deviantart.com/art/Rhys-SkillTree-notes-555565749
FIONA: http://charlottemay416.deviantart.com/art/Fiona-SkillTree-notes-556876142
VAUGHN: http://charlottemay416.deviantart.com/art/Vaughn-SkillTree-notes-554588703
SASHA: http://charlottemay416.deviantart.com/art/Sasha-SkillTree-notes-556874630
Yes, both Sasha and Fiona have a skill called "Enhance." No, this is not a mistake.
No, their "Enhance" skills do not have the same effect. 
I think there is too much focus on his buff trait and too little on his other ones. Like his dorky accountant self or his nervousness. I would keep one of the workout beast trees, but give him two other ones:
"Nervous trigger finger": boosts weapon damage and fire speed the less health he has and the more enemies/badasses are around. He loses accuracy, though and he has a chance to fail to reload. He also randomly melees enemies instead of firing, when they are too close. Always accompanied by screaming hysterically.
"Watch those numbers go!": Hacks into the bank accounts of enemies to steal money upon killing them. Can try to bribe weaker minded enemies to be bodyguards for him in exchange for a continuous depletion of his own money reserves for the duration of their "employment". Should he run out of money or terminate their employment, there is a change that they will become "enraged" and evolve into badasses which will become hostile and attack him. Gets discounts in shops.
it doesn't seem to work for some reason. I am clicking those stars but nothing happens? And yes, I am looking at the pdf.
this would work well
well, after thinking about it for a while, I had fun creating trees for Vaughn, so I will do the rest, too.
Vaughn: I like the idea of @Rock114, so if he doesn't midn, I would use the action skill and one of his trees and merely add two of mine as well:
Skill: Abs of Steel. Whenever this is activated Vaughn becomes invulnerable to attacks from the front (Similar to Athena in TPS) and all enemy fire is absorbed by his buffness. At the end of the skill 50% of the damage he takes is transferred to his shield, making him a tank on the battlefield, and the other half is expelled in a nova blast similar to a nova shield's effect once it is depleted, wreaking havoc to nearby enemies.
1st tree: Weirdly Buff: This tree goes the opposite route, improving the defensive aspects of Vaughn's abs. With this tree you channel 100% of damage absorbed into Vaughn's shields, weakening the nova but turning Vaughn into a tank of an accountant. Vaughn uses the enemy's power to keep himself alive and his friends out of danger by tanking enemy fire for them. You can also tweak it to absorb enemy bullets and grenades that are used on you and add them to your own reserves. These muscles have a mind of their own. This role would be the tanky kind.
2nd tree: Nervous trigger finger: boosts weapon damage and fire speed the less health he has and the more enemies/badasses are around. He loses accuracy, though and he has a chance to fail to reload. He also randomly melees enemies instead of firing, when they are too close. Always accompanied by screaming hysterically.This role would be the damage kind.
3rd tree: Watch those numbers go!: Hacks into the bank accounts of enemies to steal money upon killing them. Can try to bribe weaker minded enemies to be bodyguards for him in exchange for a continuous depletion of his own money reserves for the duration of their "employment". Should he run out of money or terminate their employment, there is a change that they will become "enraged" and evolve into badasses which will become hostile and attack him. Gets discounts in shops. This role would be the weird/fun kind.
Rhys:
Skill: Load of pain!: Loaderbot gets shot down from Helios to aid Rhys. He deal AoE damage when he lands and continues to fight enemies with his loadout until he gets destroyed or the duration ends, on which he will either self destruct or leave depending on your skill tree.
1st tree: righteous father: Loaderbot will let Rhys ride on his back and protect him by absorbing incoming bullets. Rhys will lose control of his weapons, but will be able to control loaderbot's arsenal which will be generally stronger (and customizable in the menu). He will not selfdestruct upon the skills ending and will merely leave with the words: "I'll be back!" Outside of the action skill, Rhys gains improved aim and damage (thanks to his echo eye), but has reduced damage against robots since he is a "righteous father" of one.
2nd tree: cruel father: Loaderbot will not let Rhys ride his back and will not protect him. If there are no enemies, he will friendly fire him, too. However, he is a badass bot which deal more damage. Because Rhys doesn't lose his weapons, he will be able to fire with his own ones while Loaderbots deal out damage himself. Upon critical damage or skill time expiration, Loaderbot will self destruct with the words: "I will have my revenge someday!", dealing a lot of damage to enemies and Rhys if he is near him. Outside of the action skill, Rhys will deal more critical damage and a higher chance to inflict status effects because he likes to see the world burn. He also does more damage to robots because he hates them. Especially loader bots.
3rd tree: hail to the king, baby: Instead of summoning only one loaderbot, he summons an army of five. They will be weaker ones, but will distract the enemy well enough for him to pick out his stun baton and wreck havoc with it. During the action skill, his movement speed is tripled and his attacks have a chance to push enemies away. If they are thrown against an object (e.g. a wall or a elemental barrel) they will receive extra damage (and if it's a barrel, it will explode, too) The loaderbots will all self destruct upon death or skill expiration, creating a minefield of doom. Handsome Jack's maniacal laughter will be heard during the entire duration, accompanied by snark remarks such as "Hey, kiddo. Hit that one next!" and "Ohhh, right in the kisser!" The skill will not end once he gets knocked down, because Handsome Jack will help him up once to give him second wind. But only once. Outside of the action skill, Rhy's movement speed and melee damage are increased, but he will lose control over his vision and movement occasionally when health is low. Jack will temporarily take control then. His comments will also trigger sometimes and he will appear in Rhy's field of vision sometimes, doing random stuff.
Fiona:
Skill: You see this pistol? Look at me, look back at my hand. The pistol is now a rocket launcher: Upon activation, will use her ability to convince her enemies that the quality of her weapons is one rank above their actual level...and by simply believing it, it becomes real! Raises weapons quality by one level (e.g. white->green, purple->orange. If weapon is already orange, she will dual wield them.
1st tree: You thought my weapon was basic, but it was me, Dio! That didn't make sense. But like always, the idiots on Pandora will believe it as long as you say it with a straight face. This skill tree will enable Fiona to convince her enemies that her weapons do elemental damage when they do, in fact, not. Adds a chance to deal random elemental damage in exchange for lowering weapon damage.
2nd tree: I am not the vault hunter you are looking for: Neither am I a droid, btw! Enemies will pay less attention to Fiona and occasionally offer their backs to her, enabling her to do extra damage while the enemy isn't looking. Melee hits drop ammo for her hidden revolver. If there is ammo, she has a chance to trigger the hidden revolver for massive damage if fired on someone's back.
3rd tree: dealing negative damage is healing, right?: What happens with all the damage you did to an enemy? If one has only 1 HP, but you deal 10 dmg, do you kill someone so hard he dies to death? Naturally not. The difference will turn into heals. Don't look at me like that, it's completely logical! See? Whenever Fiona overkills enemies, the overdamage is split among the vault hunters and turned into healing. Awesome? Awesome.
Sasha:
Skill suppression fire: continously fire at enemies without being able to stop. Ammo won't be lost and reloading speed is increased.
1st tree: Right back at ya While shields are up, bullets that hit her will be reflected while draining the shield. Grenades can be affected as well. Shield will drain faster and recover slower.
2nd tree: Don't wanna live on this planet anymore Gravity reduced to increase jump distance and falling speed. Deals extra damage while in the air, but reduced damage while on ground.
3rd tree: Bandit's principles Deal extra damage to Every non-bandit on Pandora. Cannot use weapons from any manufacturer but "Bandit", but all bandit weapons will gain bonuses on one trait of the user's wish. (e.g. Sasha will be able to improve one stat of her weapon. Like accurancy, damage, reload time, magazine size, ect.)
Hmm, I have no idea what could be going wrong there. It worked fine for me when I previewed it on DeviantArt and when I downloaded it and opened it with Adobe Reader. I'm using Firefox for my web browser, if that is useful info at all.
Sorry! ┐('～`；)┌
That is some fine work!
Your use of quotes from the game is a brilliant idea...so much so, I'd be shocked if Gearbox didn't name some of their skills off of them.
Thanks!
The quotes made it easy to make the skills really match the character. I did Vaughn's skill trees first, starting with "General Accounting," and I just had to include all the financial terms he rattled off when he was talking to the psycho just before the death race. Then I figured I should include quotes for everybody.
This was a fun project. I put WAY too much thought into it, I'm sure, but it was an interesting exercise. Once I'd finished these 4 characters, I realized that with Borderlands 2 and TPS, there have also been 2 additional characters players can download. I thought that two TFTBL candidates might be Janey Springs (since she did say--depending on your choices, of course--that she was going to get as many guns as she could carry and go save Athena), and August, who still owes Vallory a vault.
I got as far as brainstorming Janey's action skill... but got immediately stuck, as three equally awesome skills sprang immediately to mind.
OR...
OR...
Regardless of which of the above skills would be chosen, the action skill's name would have to be "Waltzing Matilda." All of Janey's skills would naturally be references to Australia. By which I pretty much mean American's perceptions of Australia.
Very nice work! Sasha's seems like the most fun to play to me; it would be nice to have more stealth options in the next game.
Thanks! I actually struggled the most with Sasha's skill trees, so I'm really glad to know that they seem like fun.
But what about other players in the game? Will they be affected?
Don't think so.
Not to be mean or rude but.. I don't see these things/skills being the best thing.
So If you don't mind..
Vaughn
Action Skill: I don't think its good to really put a action skill with just a quote/saying he said. I can understand it upping his shield but the Nova part makes it weird. What just make his abs (literally) explode? The shield part of this skill isn't very useful. And lets say you turn this skill on. You aren't taking damage right? So your normal shield recharge will your normal shield while your temporarily invincible anyways making the shield-heal part of this skill not very important.
1st tree: I want to firstly say there's only 1 tree to upgrade the shield part of the action skill but not the Nova. None of the trees do that.. Just make it so this tree will upgrade his Action skill is better in general. His novas and shield gets better.
2nd tree:This skill wont be handy much with his RIPPING ABS OF BEING A TANK now would it? He just gets normal damage upgrades and later down the tree, More damage the more enemies there are. He does does lose accuracy but does not fail a reload but slows down reload majorly.
3rd tree:The only problem is the employment system. How would you get an enemy to do it in the first place if the first thing they will do is attack you? It would have to work like Aurelia's employment system to where there is a special animation and the person gets hit by a allies melee. So that wouldn't work.
Rhys
Action Skill: Out of the all the things, It's Loaderbot. I dunno. It's not like he has a SPECIAL EYE or anything. You could just make it a weird mix of Nisha's Showdown with Zer0's "I know where Criticals are". Even if you want to keep loaderbot as a skill, Atleast let Rhys use that eye he has. I'm just stick with the Loaderbot action skill for this one.
1st Tree and 2nd Tree: Righteous and Cruel father counter act with each other. What happens if I do both? Get rid of Cruel Father entirely. Loaderbot will fight aslong side you. Much like Deathtrap but atleast he finally has a gun. Later down the tree, He can get certain upgrades and self-destruct. (No damage penalty to robots)
3rd tree: Get rid of the 5 minibots and just have it be a Echo eye tree. Extra damage, Accuracy, Critical damage and more.
Fiona
Action Skill: What a Rip off! Much more smaller name. Enemy's arent affected by gun rarity or anything. I could run around the beginning area at a max level and Pink/Orange guns and Level 1-5's will still try to attack me. Just have it simply upgrade majority of the gun stats. (Accuracy, Damage, Reload speed, Weapon sway, Recoil, etc.) during a duration
1st Tree:: No convincing, Just a gun can change into elemental during her Action Skill. If it is already Elemental. The element damage and chance will increase greatly. More upgrades down the tree. (Maybe later having the elemental explode or work like a Tedoire gun.)
2nd Tree:Not a very useful tree but it can work. Enemy's just will have a harder time getting (aggrivated?) or just ignore her passing by. If you do kill an enemy while this is happening, There would be increased damage, Elemental and maybe even Novas. No melee since I'm sure a bandit will notice someone a few inches away from them.
3rd Tree: This is a Aurelia perk. It's called Overkill, Keep your chin up and Magic Bullet or something like that.
Sasha:
Action Skill: Basically she's salvador with this. Except, Without the duel wield and some increase to stats.
1st Tree: This already beats Vaughns whole system in some parts. Rather, There are chances of reflective bullets, Not grenades. Upgrade the chances and maybe the bullets being shot back can turn elemental.
2nd Tree: Inb4 parts of maps cant be accessed without this tree. Replace this tree for a Action Skill upgrade Tree.
3rd Tree: The worst part about this tree is the fact that it limits you only to Bandit guns. Rather than doing that. You can use other manufactures guns, but you get upgrades in general for using bandit guns.
If I made any typing errors, then my apologies. I quickly skimmed it.
Also, anything I didn't mention, I was pretty fine with and I agreed with. There was no use taking up more space about it.