arcanists and Arcanists

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nobody
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arcanists and Arcanists

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Rias, game channel, 12/23/2020 wrote:And full disclosure, Arcanists are also the class I'm feeling the least. I like Arcana as a system, but I almost feel like its place would work really well as a supplementary thing that anyone can pick up, rather than as specialization. Given its rote pattern nature and all.
...
I'm not saying Arcanists are currently on the chopping block, but I admit I'm side-eyeing them whenever I end up sharpening the axe
Keeping in mind that Arcana as a skill/concept would still exist, and Scholars would likely still have some exclusives as a guild. Just not an entire class dedicated to it.
Arcana is kind of like our more complicated version of spell scrolls. Occult powers made more accessible.
I've been thinking over this a good bit, and I like the accessibility of arcana, and the idea of making it more accessible. Currently anyone can learn it to 100, and there are some useful glyphs that can be learned by anyone as well. When I think about the broadest application of opening up arcana I imagine
  • Everyone can train arcana up to 200-400, no guild needed
  • all scholars can train arcana to 700
  • Classes with particularly beneficial glyph use cases might have caps at 500 even
  • all currently Arcanist-exclusive glyphs are now Scholar-exclusive glyphs or available to everyone
In terms of world building / lore, this makes sense to me; if the Scholars' guild trusts Arcanists enough to have those glyphs, they'd trust any other Scholars the same, and clearly the material to study to raise arcana to 700 is there. It makes sense to me that the guild might restrict dangerous glyphs (ones that can cause damage to people or possessions) or nefarious glyphs (ones that can be used for breaking-and-entering, robbery, murder, or any other generally illegal activity) to protect its image and restrict it to people they trust. That being said, it also kind of makes sense that the Library (as opposed to the Guild) simply makes knowledge available. In this case, Dorun would be helpful for everyone, but especially helpful for scholars, and neither Dorun or Shaol are dangerous or do anything untoward. I wouldn't be affronted if they were made available to everyone today, tomorrow, next week, or any time in the future.

That I think is the reason for the side-eyeing Arcanists. If any scholar should be able to learn glyphs they can learn, and any scholar can take the time to learn as much arcana as an Arcanist, why keep Arcanists? And perhaps more troublingly, what do you give them if you do keep them around?

Why keep Arcanists?
I like the pie-in-the-sky dream of arcana being like programming. It makes a useful analogy here. Is programming accessible to everyone? Not quite, but it is accessible to a LOT of people. It's available to everyone with a computer (and arguably also an internet connection), there are legit free online classes as well as a gloriously absurd number of tutorials on the internet. Does everyone program? Of course not, not everyone wants to make the investment of learning. That's ok, but it's available to the vast majority of the world. Do people specialize in programming though? Yes, yes they do. In fact, I think there are two kinds of programming specialists. There are professional programmers that take certification tests and make a living out of programming. Then there are programming enthusiasts who have a passion for it beyond just making a living. There is certainly some overlap between the two, and at the outsides of the Venn diagram where they don't overlap I think do have different skills, though admittedly I'm not either, I'm an amateur enthusiast. Is an Arcanist a professional or an enthusiast? I don't know, but it seems like there would be people out there willing to commit to it without also committing to other fields of scholarly pursuit (druidry, sorcery, or medicine), I'm certainly one.

If they stick around, what do you give them?
What separates Arcanists if not exclusive glyphs, or higher skill? What merit could make it worth it? That's the really hard question, and I don't have a great answer, yet. In part because arcana is unfinished and I really don't know what the future will look like for it. At present there are some things that I think would be nice boons based on arcana as it presently exists.
  • A tiered effect for glyph retention. I'd love to see this as a stacking +1 per ability slot used, so Glyph retention gives 3 the first time, 4 the second, 5 the third, etc. The difference is a glyph complexity capacity of +63 vs +273. That might be a bit much. If it tiered with every three abilities (3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, ...) then the difference is +126, double the benefit of another scholar sinking 21 ability points into glyph retention. I'd love to see this in part because I anticipate the day with dread when a complexity 4, or 5, or 6 glyph is introduced and an ability point will get you part of the ability to do something cool. If the suggestions from this post get used, just multiply by 100, or even add +10 per (300, 310, 320, 330, etc. for 8400 complexity uses vs 6300 complexity uses, not stunningly good, but not horrible).
  • Longer durations. The shorter lived glyphs currently have a maximum duration of 1,800 and the longer ones have a maximum duration of 7,200. With capped arcana I'm at 1,870 out of a potential 7,200. Affinities will fill in some of that, but to reach full duration an Arcanist will need between 150 and 110 ranks of affinity in whatever school they're hoping to hit it in. An ability that extends durations to 4, 6, or 8/rank instead of the base 2/rank might be really nice to help bridge that gap. The duration caps of 7,200 still fall short of druidry's 43,200 duration abilities and high-skill physicker's therapy durations, but I assume that's a lore thing with arcana just not lasting that long or a game balance thing because using arcana doesn't cause sanity loss and physickers can't give themselves therapy. Either way I'm good with that, I just want to reach the potential I already have.
  • Studying the glyphs that others draw to learn glyphs one does not know. This is probably full of nope, because it creates too many loopholes if unintentionally forgetting of rare glyphs is a thing, but it's also the cool thing I'd expect an Arcanist to be able to do even when others cannot.
Those don't make up a guild worth of abilities, and I acknowledge that. I plan on sticking around to make a better case for Arcanists in the future, even if arcanists can be just as knowledgeable and just as skilled as Arcanists, I think Arcanists will still have a place.
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Talyn
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Re: arcanists and Arcanists

Post by Talyn »

Why not have arcanist be a little like Primalists. Druids get access to druidry and druid abilities, in this case Arcanists and others get access to glyphs but Arcanists get a bigger bonus to glyphs, bigger occult circles. Perhaps some glyphs could be given to the group instead of a single target that walks into circle. In a RP sense Scholars study the unknown, they're students and teachers of the knowledge they learn or try to obtain, but in a mechanic sense they're great support roles for buffing or perhaps crowd controlling mobs.

I think the biggest question is one you already said, what makes up an Arcanist? They study the occult and glyphs more in depth? it would be like a Primalist as example. there are other druids, but a primalist studies the primal forces and attempts a better understanding then the others, well perhaps not the best example as no one can understand how the primal powers work. I would think an Arcanist would do the same with Arcana.

Not sure if this post is the right spot for it, but what exactly is occult arcana? From what I've seen it enhances the users or ally in some way. Some people have used glyphs to levitate objects to follow them to make life easier on them. I love the idea of glyphs, in traps, or even a golem with a glyph that keeps it running together. Seen it a few times in fantasy stories or movies, glyph gets smudged and the 'spell' quicks working. The pendants are also Arcana or the powers of the occult so it just seems quality of life benefits? I could imagine Nuum or perhaps even old Aetgard using glpyhs on many things to quicken productivity perhaps make things easier. Much like automation lines in factories. I could also be very wrong on how Arcana works that's just how I've thought about it while reading up on the glyphs.
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Rias
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Re: arcanists and Arcanists

Post by Rias »

One of the planned things to make Arcanists stand out is the more complex separator shapes that allow multiple glyphs per diagram. At its simplest, you activate multiple effects in one diagram instead of having to draw an entirely new diagram for each effect. Stack those buffs into a single diagram, save a little time (and chalk).

More complex though would be throwing modifier glyphs into the mix. This glyph makes the effect last longer, that one makes it more potent, certain glyphs might combine into an entirely new effect.

Set up a timer. "Activator" + "Wait 10 seconds" + "Explosion" means you can activate the big boom, then get out of Dodge before it goes off. Non-Arcanists wouldn't have much use for the Explosion glyph since it'd always blow up on the one to activate it, which isn't useful unless I suppose you trick someone else into doing so.

Some kind of "Persisting Multiple Activation" thing. I could draw a simple diagram that when activated makes a ring of force to knock others down, but that's fiddly because I have to either draw it in advance, or draw it amidst combat while others keep enemies off me. Neither are particularly practical outside special cases. Throw in the mentioned glyph and now I get X number of charges where, say, every time I snap my fingers the effect goes off, centered at me. Now I can use this AOE force pulse knockdown on-demand a few times instead of having to draw a new diagram each time.

Stuff like that. Which can get pretty complicated, but it's the dream. That ability alone - diagrams with more than 2 glyph slots - might be enough to keep Arcanists around as a class. Most anyone can learn the base glyphs with a simple Glyph, Activate diagram. But Arcanists can get into "programming" more complicated things, and some glyphs may be virtually useless on their own.
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Karjus
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Re: arcanists and Arcanists

Post by Karjus »

You guys make me wonder if you've read the Arcane Ascension series by Andrew Rowe. Probably give you both some good inspiration from the main character, who is an Enchanter and tends to combine different styles of symbols/glyphs together to create different responses. Even the other "classes" tend to work like that with activators/effects/etc.
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