Sorcerous Foci

[Xandrea]

I know there's been a good bit of chatter about Warlocks being more supportive in a group setting and while it's not unfounded. I personally use it much more offensively. I 'want' to be offensive.

A good number of players have figured out what focus we Sorcerers use and that's simply an inevitability. Such deductions just happen over time. Though even before this I've wanted more foci to channel sorcery through.

I also want to suggest the possibility of using a more direct focus. Like rods, staves, the like. A part of me wants to be able to get a singular reroll bonus casting for using a more direct focus. Mainly because we can't get our ranged higher than 400. Though I admit I don't know how slippery of a slope this could be with future ideas.

[Ephemeralis]

Fully support this. Would love to see holdable sorcery foci that occupy both hands and give some offensive or defensive bonuses towards using overt channeling.

To help balance them out a bit, said foci could make use of soul shards and hold them in a similar capacity to talismans, with better holdable foci being able to possess more shards at any given time. The more shards they're holding, the more often they give rerolls, and in significantly higher numbers. The visual appearance of the foci could also change to reflect the quantity of shards it is holding too.

Could also even have the shard-foci relationship help reduce the energy costs for holding a channel open.

You could then add in a variety of offensive abilities which make use of shards, turning warlocks into quasi-prepared spellcasters in that they can have short bursts where they might be able to deal considerable amounts of damage but then have to spend a nominal amount of time gathering these shards up again themselves with murder after the fact. This feels very sorcerer-y from my limited understanding of other sorcerous figures in COGG's narrative so far.

I sort of diverged off the topic here a bit but yes, some kind of holdable foci would be wonderful.

[Xandrea]

That actually sounds really good to me. It would make them rather bursty in that they could potentially do a lot of damage in a short time but, hinged on that time consuming resource. I don't want 'every' sorcery ability to consume said shards but, having a bigger pool and an incentive to hold onto them more consistently is very much win for me.

Moreso it allows us to have a big powerful moment but, not being that big powerful all the time. Sure this isn't the scope of what I was suggesting but, if it were a bonus to having a held focus I would be all for it.

[TheCacklackian]

I like this idea, I wouldn't mind having more items that are fueled by soul shreds like the proposed focii idea, I'd also love for some foci that instead of giving refills, augmented raw casting in different ways, eg nether lingering and doing a little damage over time on hit, or even augmenting specific spells like binding tendril or shadow cloak in different ways.

[Onasaki]

I like this idea too, I wouldn't mind having a wand. I have one of those stakes, and I think that'd make a pleasing wand. Lol. Or make something out of bone, and go all Voldemort! XD

Joking aside, though, I think my only peeve is people being able to meta-game recognizing a foci. They shouldn't be identifiable by anyone but other sorcerers, or people with at least 100 actual points in Arcana, or 50 in Sorcery. Or something close to that. Maybe only Scholars can recognize them from a glance? I dunno. There definitely needs to be some love here, though, considering Sorcery is largely afeared, and hiding your Sorcerous Nature would be on the priority list.

I usually keep my stuff hidden for that simple fact. XD

EDIT TO ADD: Also the Anti-Nether Faction should be able to recognize them too, in some similar fashion.

[Ephemeralis]

You can hide the currently accessible sorcery foci behind a bit of clothing that would cover it, so there's that. I can definitely understand why people might want to go incognito with their foci - I did that at the start of my warlock character, but quickly realized that being loud about it is considerably more entertaining for the concept I wanted to play.

In general, things like 'people who walk around wearing lots of bones might be a bit shonky' is a pretty realistic angle for this kind of thing, I think. Between the focus and the soul shred talisman, anyway. Doubly so since Druidry has a bit of bone-usage overlap happening with it, and also isn't especially well understood by... well... anyone.

The octum stake is a good question to bring up, actually. I wonder if all foci are required to be bone just because anything else doesn't act as a conduit properly, especially when the story linked to said stake heavily implies that certain types of wood might be able to 'draw' the nether out of things (or if not the nether, then some form of Spooky Badness, whatever it is). Which begs another question: what creature would be large enough to give a bone that might be usable as a holdable foci, especially for a two-handed one?

[TheCacklackian]

I'm still waiting for my wearable wechuge skull, but perhaps we could make a wand out of wechuge bones! Or bison for the less occult and creepy.