Tuesday, 6th June 2017, 12:14 by Shtopit
Thank you everyone for the answers. Here's another build:
Castamour the Eagle, God of Freedom
Castamour was a legendarily skilled battlemage and the founder of a military monastic order. His efforts finally led him to illumination, turning him into a guide for whoever wishes to become like he is: fully unencumbered and unchained. He also lends his mastery of battle magic to those who want to blend martial and arcane prowess.
* Armour penalties (see below) reduced by 20% | fighting and spellcasting crosstrain
** Armour penalties reduced by 40% | +40 to MR
*** Armour penalties reduced by 60% | Choose and Inscribe Vessel Weapon (see below)
**** Armour penalties reduced by 80% | +40 more to MR
***** Armour penalties fully removed
****** moar MR?
More stuff I came up with because of the "Freedom" theme but I am not sure about because of how many different effects they are, and they could cause confusion in the player:
* Immunity to curses
** Immunity to entanglement (nets, webs), roots and constriction
*** Immunity to frozen, napalm and petrification
**** Immunity to slow and paralysis (from all sources, magic or poison like curare or hornets)
***** Not slowed or impeded by shallow water
(maybe they could be dumped all together as ****** passives).
Titles
. Moulting (species name)
* Merlin
** Sparrowhawk
*** Goshawk
**** Peregrine
***** Gyrfalcon
****** Soaring Eagle
The main difference is that most armour and shield penalties are gone: Evasion, spellcasting, aim, and attack speed. Stealth penalties should remain or only be halved, because stealth is exceptional defense (also, it would mean that Shadow Dragon Armour would have no stealth penalty and also give you a +++++ bonus, that you can sum with rings and randarts...).
Actives need work. The fluff too.
About martial + magic skill interplay, I need to think a bit about how to make it. There are a couple of ways to do this.
One is delayed spells, stored into a weapon, that come out when you use said weapon. So you store e.g. silence in a dagger, when you run out of MP, you pull out the dagger and silence the whole place.
Another way that I would like more is the ability to inscribe a spell to a weapon. The weapon then behaves like a branded weapon, but you can choose more and more powerful brands (all your spells), like "stone arrow" or "mephitic cloud". You still pay the cost of casting the spell each time the weapon triggers it, but it is cast at the same time as the melee attack. There are some questions: how should spell failure chance influence the weapon activation chance? And how often should the ability be usable/how should it be limited? The options are:
- free use, but it takes turns to inscribe a weapon, so no changes on the fly (like changing armour). I don't like this idea, because spells are better when you can alternate between them (debuff + area attack + single target etc.) On the other hand, you could carry five different scimitars, each inscribed with a different spell while in a safe location, but I think that there also is such a thing as too much swapping. This could be countered by making inscriptions temporary, but I hate charms because they are temporary and you have to recast them before each fight, which is very boring to me.
- drain (so always usable, but with lingering aftereffects)
- small-large piety cost
- MP or HP allocation (every inscribed weapon takes some of yur MP or HP until you delete the inscription)
- The option I prefer: you have to choose a single weapon you can inscribe (let's call it "vessel weapon"). It would work a bit like the "weapon blessing" by TSO etc, with the difference that, if you find a better weapon later, you demote your old vessel weapon and choose a new one (only one vessel weapon at a time, no costs for changing it). Inscribing a spell is instantaneous, but takes piety.
I would add that the vessel weapon skill crosstrains with the primary school of the inscribed spell.
Should the vessel weapon possibly be an artifact?
The vessel weapon could have an evocable option to disable it (to give the player better MP management).
There should be no way to waste MP by spell failure when using the vessel weapon. It's better to lower trigger chance instead.
Maybe a general spellpower increase as you gain piety or vessel weapon skill?
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