Warlocks: The Scholarly Approach

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Irylia
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Joined: Tue Apr 30, 2019 5:20 pm

Warlocks: The Scholarly Approach

Post by Irylia »

Most of the warlock abilities seem directed towards combat or aggression. I'm trying to come up with ideas for this specialization to actually be scholarly and still feel like they contribute to and can get by safely in the world. Any ideas are welcome.

The main issue will likely be if you're not out fighting or in combat areas with others, how will you get shreds for your abilities? I think that can be done through a variety of tasks. These can all be on timers to prevent abuse or getting too many shreds without danger, but maybe provide more shreds in one go than doing combat.

Tasks:
  • Harvest "donated" soul (local): Just like people today donate bodies to science, maybe in COGG world some people feel the same way or perhaps morally gray characters can sell corpses to the warlocks in some kind of underground exchange.
  • Harvest buried soul (long-distance): Go to any graveyard/cemetery in the game and harvest the soul from a newly buried corpse. These areas have a chance to generate "a patch of loose dirt" or "a freshly dug grave" or something similar. This could also be on a timer and instanced to the player ID.
  • Harvest nourishing soul (local/long distance): Go to the local butcher shop and harvest from the animals being slaughtered out back. Waste not.
Abilities:

Appear Harmless: When carrying no weapons (excludes small tool-type weapons such as knives), there is a chance for normally hostile sentient humanoids to ignore you completely, even while staying in relatively close proximity. Obviously won't work if they're very territorial, but for pass-through areas or wilderness this might apply.

Studious: You spend all your time studying instead of adventuring or off fighting foes. This has given you a practiced eye and greater familiarity with the resources available to you. Greatly reduces the cooldown of both studying skills like sorcery, linguistics, AND reduces cooldown for studying lore items. Exclusive to those with no aggressive combat skills over 200 (maybe 100 and excluding dodge or shield).

Bypass Danger: Gives a passive bonus to avoiding blows when passing through areas quickly (maybe lasts for 5 seconds per room). This ability assumes you're too busy going about your business to get up close and personal with potential aggressors, and you're going by too quickly for them to pay you much mind or react. Exclusive to those with no aggressive combat skills over 200 (maybe 100 and excluding dodge or shield). It can work in a group if no one in the group attacks and your character is leading.

Pacifist's Defense: Bonus to dodge and/or shield rolls because you are focused solely on defending yourself and not fighting back.

Sorcerous Modifications: The ability to channel sorcery through a pen-like device to very intricately etch designs into things like books covers, metal, wood, and leather. (pre-written design options. examples below) This service can only be performed at the library, using their specialized tools.
- etched with some twisted vines
- etched with winding tendrils
- etched with a simple geometric pattern
- etched with a complex geometric pattern
- etched with a sunburst
- etched with a mist-shrouded tower
- etched with a lit candle dripping wax
- etched with a rearing horse
- etched with a snarling bear
- etched with a howling wolf
- etched with a blooming rose

Sorcerous Scarring: The ability to channel sorcery through a specialized blade tip in order to offer permanent scarrification to those willing to endure the pain. This service can only be performed at the library, using their specialized tools. Customers are encouraged to seek medical attention immediately after the procedure, or perhaps even during. (step-based and the number of steps varies based on the chosen design and location - alternative to tattoos - no examples, but I'm sure people can come up with some or use the above ones with scarred instead of etched)

Old Task Ideas

I'm including a list of tasks that was in the Warlocks thread since most of them have been implemented yet and would give scholars things to do. Again these do not need to be restricted solely to Warlocks.
  • Copying old letters/manuscripts/scrolls/tomes to new ones due to wear and tear
  • Finding samples of substance X,Y,Z for research - Physikers to bring in herbal samples to make remedies with/Warlocks if they need to bring in various woods, stones, metals, animal skins, bones to test sorcery against for durability or structural components for constructs)
  • Cleaning the library. (Like the lamplighting or stable cleaning tasks already in-place - could include lighting lamps in the library or sweeping the floors/dusting the shelves)
  • Shelving books. (Get a stack of books and put them in the appropriate rooms based on topic)
  • Checking books for damage. (Get a stack of books and look through each page for eaten/stained/ripped pages that need to be copied and replaced)
  • Studying schematics or testing mechanical workings with sorcerous binding or influence
  • Archiving or cataloging artifacts brought into the library
  • Dig at X location to find relics and bring them back (could be simple stuff like old pottery/dishes for anthropological studies - or more fancy stuff like phylacteries or items imbued with nether from long-dead sorcerers)
  • Study nether tainted lands at X location
  • Translate from X to Y (might have to go through several pages of a text for written translation or listen to a traveling/foreign teacher dictate their cultural lore that needs to be transcribed)
  • Weed the library garden (assuming when the library gets a description that maybe it has a garden somewhere?)
  • Feed/tend library messenger pigeons (also doesn't exist yet, but hey, it could happen!)
  • Heal/tend/repair resident scholar's animates or creations
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