General Abilities for Scholars

Seekers of knowledge, from physickers to alchemists to occultists.
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Maina
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General Abilities for Scholars

Post by Maina »

So, at present, it feels like scholars fill up on abilities really fast, and then they have nothing left to work for. It has been said in the past that Warlocks, for example, have a lot of abilities. It doesn't feel like it, though. Why is that? Because the Scholars guild has almost nothing in the way of general abilities while Warriors and Adventurers have tons.

A benefit of guild-wide abilities is that one ability adds options to multiple subclasses! A difficulty for the scholar's guild is that they are all so very different in playstyle, so general abilities are a bit harder to design.

So I am making this thread to suggest potential general abilities for the Scholar Guild!

TACTICS: SCHOLAR
Prerequisite: Student? (See below)
Effect: Using your knowledge of the various creatures of the Lost Lands, you guide your group towards the enemy's weaknesses. (Group members' weapons that deal multiple damage types are more likely to use a damage type that their target is weak against. Alternately, increased aim accuracy. Alternately, exotic damage types (alchemy/fire/cold/etc) get a damage boost).
Notes: The idea here is for scholars, unlike other guilds, to get a single shared Tactics that is focused entirely on supporting a group, since Scholars are not meant to be fighters. Kind of the way Bard tactics also focus on benefitting a group. The idea is the scholars using their knowledge to buff the party in contrast to the next...

TACTICS: FIELDWORK
Prerequisite: Field Researcher? (See below)
Effect: Using your preference for study in the field over reading about things in books, you study your foes and make note of the weaknesses in their maneuvers. (Combat endroll percentages (offensive of defensive) of -50% or less by hostile entities will generate Research, a resource that lowers on its own over time. Research provides an additional reroll to the group for each 50, but it is cut in half each time a different creature type is killed.)
Notes: A variant on the above that's more active, the idea is you give the party huge boosts to fighting the same type of enemy repeatedly. If you are killing humanoid Nethrim and then have to kill an undead dog, that will drop Research immensely because your Research was on humanoid Nethrim, not undead dogs. This could be in addition to or instead of the above option, possibly letting Scholars choose which specialty they want.

LIBRARIAN
Effect: Join the staff of the library, helping shelve books and direct visitors in exchange for more regular pay. (The idea here is to let the library work like the Physicker's patients. You go to a suitable 'front desk' location and go on duty. Then books and people will spawn for you to shelve books and take visitors to various shelves to find what they need. Maybe also a task to copy books that could be a little minigame where you write out bits of text as prompted.)
Notes: Like medical care, this will be uncapped. A way for non-physicker scholars to generate revenue given the difficulties we can have getting it other ways.

SCHOLAR'S EYE
Effect: Your studied eye lets you sense artifacts of note, even when they are not immediately obvious.
Notes: Like Wanderer's Eye, but for lore/study items in a room. A little notice when you enter like 'There is something worth studying here!'. This alone feels pretty weak and niche, but it could probably also allow detecting if a foci is present in the room or if an occult effect is active there to let Scholars act as a sort of early-warning system for potentially hostile occult activities in a room. This could also require a second level of the ability.

TRANCE
Prerequisite: 300 Meditation?
Effect: When given the time, a scholar can focus their efforts entirely on their craft. Base effect: Increased energy regen at a major malus to defense. Maybe even making defense impossible? But also additional effects based on subclass:
Physickers - Automatically treat wounds when the injured party is is disengaged during combat and to do so at reduced roundtime but increased energy cost. Attacking breaks trance.
Primalist - Reduced sanity loss and energy cost for using their abilities, and increased potency for their non-combat abilities (more healing from vitality, more light from bio, but no damage buff for claws). Attacking does not break Trance.
Arcanist - Greatly reduced roundtime for drawing glyphs. Attacking breaks Trance.
Warlock - Reduced energy cost for raw casts and spells, reduced cooldown for spells. Raw casts do not break Trance, but mundane attacks do.
Alternate Warlock - Greatly reduced cooldown and energy cost for spells, add a reroll to the channel roll to avoid energy loss from extra channels, but raw casts (and attacking) break Trance.
Notes: One way to work in general abilities for Scholars, given how different they are, seems to be using the whole 'bonus for specific classes' system. The idea here is something that really doubles-down on the idea of scholars as a supportive role, making them rely entirely on others for their defense but letting them do their support thing much better. The Warlock alternate is instead of, not in addition to, depending on the vision in mind for them.

FIELD RESEARCHER
Effect: Focus intently on reaching the next target of your studies. Base Effect: Gives a buff to climb/swim/perception (skill or rerolls?) when channeled, like footpad. Additional effects while channeled:
Physickers - Increased chance for hitting a weak/already-injured location when not aiming.
Primalist - Reduced travel RT, ability to add a percentage of their Druidry to the climb/swim/perception rolls. Ability to sense Primal locations without channeling Druidry.
Arcanist - Reduced climb/swim/search RT, ability to add a percentage of their Arcane to the climb/swim/perception rolls.
Warlock - The base skill buff also applies to stealth with reduced movement RT while sneaking. Ability to sense Nether Wells without channeling Sorcery.
Notes: The idea here is for an ability that helps all the Scholars find the thing they want to study easier without being terribly useful outside that niche. It needs to be channeled to indicate the character has deliberately decided 'I am going to look for something to study' rather than being always active. This could also be a prerequisite for the Tactics: Fieldwork ability above. I have kind of envisioned two mini-branches for 'general' Scholar abilities - Scholar, who focuses on reading books and diving deep into lore and Fieldworker who is more interested in going out and experiencing it all first-hand. Like any ability branch, they aren't intended to be mutually exclusive, just two different character types to support. Someone who is more interested in application rather than study would probably focus more on their class's abilities rather than shared abilities.

STUDENT
Effect: Study ancient tomes and derive lessons regarding more modern foes. (Allows a Scholar to prepare a special journal. They or anyone else can hold this journal and 'sketch X' where X is a creature or person they can see. The scholar can then take this sketch to the appropriate bookshelf and 'study sketch' to turn it into a 'document on the nature of X'. The scholar can either study this themselves or give it to someone else to study. It will provide a far more detailed list of the target's abilities, armor, etc, along with a buff when fighting that type of enemy based on the highest of the author's relevant Scholar skills.)
Notes: This is to be the 'Scholar' equivalent to the Field Researcher ability above, perhaps a prerequisite for Tactics: Scholar. The idea here is to give scholars a way to interact with other classes without, necessarily, having to fight themselves. They can hire people to go make sketches of various monsters and then research them and provide the information and buffs to others for a fee. If you are having trouble with Mythweavers, for example, you might give a Scholar a sketch of one and the Scholar's notes on that sketch could buff your resistance or make it easier for you to kill them faster. Maybe the scholar can even choose whether their notes buff offense, defense, or something in the middle? The notes would have to be single-use, probably, for balance reasons.
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