Arcana Overhaul (Pt. 1)

The usage of arcane glyphs and diagrams to power a wide variety of occult rituals.
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Rias
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Arcana Overhaul (Pt. 1)

Post by Rias »

Arcana is being overhauled. Here is what has already happened in part 1:

Individual glyphs are no longer tied directly to their own abilities, but rather learned by STUDYing an glyph-teaching item. (Beldi and Distyr are still auto-learned with the Occult Diagrams ability) Studying such an item will first require passing an Arcana skill check, after which it may or may not give detailed information on the glyph's effects. The item must then be studied again to confirm the memorization of its glyph, provided the character is capable of doing so.

The public arcana classroom in the Library of Qamar now has a helpful sign instructing students to LOOK ON WALLS in the classroom, where several glyph-etched plates can be found to learn the common glyphs. Even non-Scholar classes will need to travel to the Library to learn these, rather than studying them in their own guildhalls. Some exclusive glyphs may show up in non-scholar guildhalls in the future for their intended class specializations. (Still mulling that over.)

Glyphs now have a Complexity Level. This determines how much mental space a glyph takes up in the arcanist's mind, and characters have a maximum amount of said mental space. The Glyph Retention ability (also available in the Library public arcana classroom) can now be learned to increase this mental space. This ability can be re-learned to rank it up at most once every 33 Arcana skill. This means classes with a higher Arcana skill cap can have more glyphs memorized, provided they spend the ability points on ranking Glyph Retention up.

The ARCANA command (or GLYPHS or OCCULT or DRAW OCCULT) now lists all known diagram components (bases/separator shapes/glyphs) along with their complexity levels, and tells how much arcane mental capacity a character has (max and currently-used).

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Still working on:
- A way to intentionally forget a glyph in order to free up mental space for learning a different one. This will be fairly expensive and have a lengthy wait time involved, as well as some other repercussions that may be a result of tampering with one's mind in such a way.
- Discoverable glyph-teaching items out there in the world to be discovered.
- Chance for limited-use glyph-teaching items in the treasure system.
- Arcanist-specific glyphs, because boy do they need something of their own.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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