Paths for Nightblades

Peerless warriors of varying types, from hulking armored dreadnoughts to stealthy light-footed nightblades.
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Navi
Posts: 350
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2020 7:07 am

Paths for Nightblades

Post by Navi »

The idea is if a nightblade wants to focus in arcana they can by ignoring sorcery. If they want to focus in sorcery, they can by ignoring arcana. Each path would grant unique bonuses to the nightblade depending on which path they select.

The Path of the Full Moon:

Pros:
1. Arcana is a little more widely accepted, so the nightblade can use it more openly without fear of being outed for being a sorcerite.
2. This path would grant unique benefits that make using specific glyphs less time consuming to construct, and possibly generate better results, such as the blur effect disguising a person. Maybe not to the extent of shadow cloak where it covers up all clothing and features, but enough that identifying a person if they’re not wearing distinct clothing would be difficult.

Cons:
1. Unlike sorcery, glyphs require an upkeep with chalk. The artifacts bought to do initial channeling cost 1000 riln, where chalk is 500 and will be continued to be bought until the end of the nightblade’s career.
2. Unlike sorcery, refreshing a glyph requires for a secondary circle to be created. With only one circle per room, it can be very cumbersome.
3. The arcanist cannot be hiding while creating a glyph. Could possibly be addressed with this focus however..
4. Using glyphs requires the character to be placed into round time, and requires multiple steps.

The Path of the Eclipse Moon:

Pros:
1. Sorcery is much more user friendly. Abilities only require an open channel, which requires an artifact.
2. This path may possibly grant the ability to use channeled nether similarly to echo location which would allow a nightblade to navigate and fight effectively in complete darkness.
Cons:
1. Sorcery is not looked upon favorably by most individuals.
2. Sorcery requires an artifact that can be used to identify them as a sorcerite. It also does not persist after death, and prevents them from using their abilities until it is obtained again. While this is true for glyphs as well, chalk can be bought in a lot of different places, whereas these artifacts would require the person to retrieve their belongings, or head to their main guild hall.

As is probably apparent, I’ve given the arcana path more thought than the sorcery path, but the abilities they have regarding sorcery are already quite good. I feel like not picking a path comes with its own drawbacks and should probably still be allowed, which would result in where nightblades currently exist in the game. These paths could also be instead set in societies some how.
wander without wanting, thrust into lands unknown. the shadows shift and change, and the worlds with them.
I'm not a soldier but I'm fighting
Can you hear me through the silence?
I won't give up 'cause there will be a day
We'll meet again
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