Potential Rook Parlour Ability and Progression Changes and Ideas

General discussion of Guilds that doesn't fit into the other forums.
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Kiyaani
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Joined: Mon Sep 04, 2017 3:16 pm

Potential Rook Parlour Ability and Progression Changes and Ideas

Post by Kiyaani »

Welcome to my entirely too-long post!

I'm not sure what's in store for certain guilds and societies now that there are affinities involved, but I feel like this change provides an opportunity to allow people to further specialize and branch out within these specific organizations as well as the schools of magic. With that in mind, I've come up with a potential idea for the Rook Parlour and wanted to run it by the lovely people reading this board to get feedback and general opinions. If this proves to be a positive discussion, I may come up with similar structures for other societies as well.

Since there's not a lot of information (or any really) yet on the wiki, I did pull a lot of data from the other game as a guideline. I also included some potential other ability ideas of my own to try and keep things fairly even. I realize that many of these abilities may be altered, removed, renamed etc. later on for COGG, but this is just a general premise anyway. So please don't get too hung up on what ability should go where or why etc., though that feedback is welcome as well.

Basically the idea is that the Rook Parlour might have different branches or specialties since what they study has various aspects to it. Life and death is a very broad subject and their general kit seems to support several different play-styles all meshed together. It has aspects of someone more combat-oriented, some great defensive spells, some more ritual-type things, and then the restorative part. Why I decided I wanted to propose this is because some of the abilities in the other game's version are gated behind what I consider to be seemingly unrelated prerequisites and I wanted to try and clean up the spell trees while coming up with potential character concepts.

So, what I'm proposing is splitting those ability pools up so that players can RP specific paths without necessarily having to take abilities that may not match their general character concept. However, I don't want to take away from the challenge or feel of accomplishment from having to obtain certain prerequisites or standards of sorcerous study before unlocking some of the major spells.

With that in mind, I came up with a general 3-branch tree for the Parlour: Path of Life, Path of Death, Path of Balance. Some abilities will be the same across all three as they are the general base-line abilities for Rooks. What I'm looking for is feedback on both the general concept of paths as well as potential ability ideas for those paths.

Path of Life - This would be more focused on herbs/medical treatment of both the living and corpses and returning a living soul to its repaired vessel. These rooks still use sorcery, but focus on the use of nether as combined with traditional medicine for restorative purposes. They can access the most advanced spells with regards to restoring life to a vessel and split their abilities almost equally between sorcery and medicine.
Rook Abilities
- advanced nether manipulation
- shadow familiar
- metabolic englaciation (to aid in preservation and surgical practices)
- soul retrieval
- nether shield (or whatever this is being called)
- soul harvest
- shadow martyr
- minor animation (maybe)
- essence leech (maybe)
Medical Abilities 1-6 (Things that are surgery/unguent/first-aid based to help with restoring living and dead flesh no matter how mangled - could get real frankenstein-y if things are too messed up. I'm not good at coming up with this stuff, so ideas welcome. And yes, I understand that in the other game corpses had to be viable so some of this may not fly.)
- Medic Basic Certification (level 1)
- Medical Suture (level 2)
- proposed medical ability level 3 - Bone-setting
- proposed medical ability level 4 - Basic Organ Transplant (for corpses only - includes basic vascular system repair - for bad wounds to vital areas)
- proposed medical ability level 5 - Advanced Organ Transplant (for corpses only - includes advanced vascular system repair - for severe wounds to vital areas)
- proposed medical ability level 6 - Limb Replacement (for corpses only - includes reattaching severed nerves, vascular repair, tendon and bone reattachment - for bad or severe wounds to extremeties)

I know, some people may say - but wait, some of those are highly advanced micro-surgery techniques! Well, this is why they're only performed on corpses and it's nether-assisted. (But wait - again! Nether is corrosive! - Listen, you... animation happens somehow and it's not always on corpses that aren't totally destroyed or missing flesh entirely!) There could be a high probability of failure or maybe some things just can't be done, or maybe those abilities are scrapped and replaced with something else. I added in the medical abilities to provide advanced options that could go before soul retrieval but this is all up for debate and change, obviously.

Path of Death - This branch is based around more aggressive use of sorcery, animates, necromancy, and ritual experimentation. These are often considered the more dangerous sorcerers and also the most feared and misunderstood by general society.
Rook Abilities
- advanced nether manipulation
- shadow familiar
- essence leech
- command nethrim
- minor haunting
- minor animation
- possession
- sorcerous amalgamation
- shadow martyr
- soul harvest
- nether shield
- unknown major haunting ability
- unknown major animation ability
- unknown multiple animate ability

Those in the Path of Death cannot necessarily patch up their own corpses before animating them and may require assistance from the Path of Life unless they choose to branch out. They can use bodies that aren't too damaged (light or lower wounds or non-vital area injuries) or bring the body back to the parlour to be patched by NPC or PC from Path of Life or Balance.

Path of Balance - Allows characters to study both Life and Death aspects but excel in neither. Those in this area would be highly self-sufficient, but unable to do the most advanced rituals of either Life or Death.
Rook Abilities
- advanced nether manipulation
- shadow familiar
- essence leech
- shadow martyr
- soul harvest
- nether shield
- command nethrim
- minor haunting
- minor animation
- possession (maybe)
Medical Abilities level 1-3 (enough to corpse patch - maybe just up to moderate wounds, but not if they have bad or severe. They can assist Path of Death folks with patching lesser wounds on corpses)

I welcome any and all feedback or suggestions - including things like - you're crazy, this is neat, or this idea is terrible, though I'd appreciate it at least being constructive. Thanks for reading!
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Rias
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Re: Potential Rook Parlour Ability and Progression Changes and Ideas

Post by Rias »

I very much like the idea of having branches in guilds/societies, and I've always wanted that in particular for Rook Parlour. I like the idea of a common pool of abilities, and then some tucked into specialist branches where you can only go one way.

I think I have an idea for another tree that I'd want to add in place of the "Balance" one, since those balance abilities could just be in the general pool of abilities available to all members. I'd also categorize things a bit differently, as I and the Parlour likely have a slightly different idea of the concept of "life", though I definitely like the idea of including some medical specialty in there (always a part of my view of Rook Parlour even in my other works).

Overall, I like the ideas and concepts here. I'd love to see any other ideas or feedback people might have.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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Rastaban
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Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:42 pm

Re: Potential Rook Parlour Ability and Progression Changes and Ideas

Post by Rastaban »

I was always very interested in the paths of Rook Parlour. I would love to see them made real, actual paths you can choose. Having medical abilities in the Life Path would be so wonderful.
Valmorian
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Joined: Thu Mar 21, 2019 4:37 am

Re: Potential Rook Parlour Ability and Progression Changes and Ideas

Post by Valmorian »

I guess you could choose not to study a specific ability, and even further customize your char
I really like it I'm trying to decide about animate being in life path even though it sort of makes sense would you heal dead corpses that you've brought back in the same way you did living ones? a good example of corpse stuff is in some of Brandon Sandersons work like Warbreaker and Imperors soul. The lifeless in Warbreaker don't have blood, they have some sort of fluid you have to refill or they slow down and stop. They did have to stitch the wounds back closed though so that much was the same not trying to idea steal, just something to consider. Anywaya branches are exciting, and I really like the idea if I think of anything, I'll post
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Avedri
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Re: Potential Rook Parlour Ability and Progression Changes and Ideas

Post by Avedri »

I had these suggestions in yet another MUD.

Poultice Acumen:
Requirements 500 First Aid, 350 Herbalism
Description: Your study of horticulture and homeopathy allow for unlocking additional poultice recipes. You also have a passive 20% to getting potent herbs from grinding.

Ice Patch:
Requirements: Cryomancy 350
Description: Create a patch of frozen ground in the area, any enemies attempting to move in or out or attack in this space will have greatly increased roundtime. Duration is increased based on cryomancy skill.

Life Pact:
Requirements: 400 Sorcery, Essence Leech
Description: Maintaining a channel of sorcery will allow for the transfer for soul shreds to restore energy to a targeted ally.

Caustic Spray:
Requirements Sorcery 700
Description: Sends out a burst of nether to all enemies in the area, reduced damage and increase accuracy to hit the eyes. Successful head/eye shots blind targets. ((Good for body retrieval against large groups))

Close the Gates:
Requirements: Sorcery 900
Description: Basically, NPC Rook rez spell
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Rias
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Location: Wandering Temicotli

Re: Potential Rook Parlour Ability and Progression Changes and Ideas

Post by Rias »

Oooh, I particularly like the transfer of energy to an ally with soul shreds. Adding that one to the to-do list.

P.S. They'll have the ability to restore dead PCs to life.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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