CLOK BBS

Seeing the specialization of elemancers got me thinking about possibilities for specialization in Rook Parlour. I don't know if there are plans for this or not so I won't go into a huge amount of effort laying out a plan, but I thought I would make some suggestions.

I'm thinking of two obvious branches, going along with the Rook Parlour philosophy areas of study: Life and Death

Death: Focus on studying what causes living creatures to die, why, and what happens afterward, wielding various means of causing death with great efficiency. Mostly offensive casting for those who want to be the scary powerful sorcerers that can kill very effectively. Use of some uncorporeal minions like shades and wraiths, created from the nether-tainted soul shreds of those they kill with sorcery.

Life: Focus on herbalism and first aid, various health and buffing potions, and nether-animation of corpses or other applicable matter (golems, constructs similar to the scarecrows?). They would be a sort of medium-tier, below monks, conventional healer and buffer class with lots of minion-based abilities, the logic being they are experimenting with creating their own versions of life via these minions, particularly animates. Less pure casting, more using sorcery to augment their alchemy and work with their minions. They would be the ones to have the resurrection-like ability, since it has been mentioned Rook Parlour will have some sort of resurrection-like ability along with the Monastic Order.

Not particularly thought-out, but thought it might be a nice springboard for the concept.

I've been thinking about sorcerer specialization too, so ideas like these are great. Keep them coming.

Will there be a specialization for armored/melee Rooks?

I really like the Life/Death specialization idea... lots to build from.

There won't be a specialization for armored/melee Rooks, but there will be some abilities that they will enjoy (most likely in the proposed Death branch, if we end up going with that). Kind of like how Templar are mainly geared around being armored fighters, but have some caster-like abilities as well for those who choose to pick them up or go that path.

Speaking of specialization, I'm already seeing some in Udemi: archery and druidry.

edited to add:
Down the road it... might be a good idea to make Aero Volley and permenant animal companions mutually exclusive.

I do like the idea of sorcs having some means of healing during combat. Even if it is much weaker than monks, some means of direct healing via a combination herbalism, first-aid or sorcery would be nice. According to the lore I have gathered thus far, nether cannot be used to heal flesh or anything living but it can be used to reanimate. Perhaps trapping the soul in a body that would ordinarily be unable to hold a soul. I also think Corvus could use some sort of healer.

Maybe sorcs could learn an ability called "Advanced Reanimation Research" that would allow sorcs to use their herbalism skill to directly heal wounds. This skill would probably require a resource like "healing vials" that would need to be prepared outside of battle and would take time to make. These vials could be thrown at a person releasing a gaseous cloud that would aid the wounded person.

The exact lore of how this would work is sketchy but the mechanic of a herb based, depletable resource heal is nice.

Possibly a spec which focuses on using nether magic and cryomancy to create solid nether in various shapes like walls and shards which they fling at peopel? Or maybe they could be a spec of a spec as it were. Specialised Death, focused on combining the two as opposed to focusing on one and then a further spec for each?

Rooks have many spiffy abilities, but combat healing is not going to be one of them. That's the realm of thaumaturges. The "life specialization" rooks will likely have some nice healing potions via alchemy, but it won't exactly be combat healing.

What about limiting the healing abilities to patch work for nether creatures?

Corporeal nethrim are still susceptible to the damaging effects of nether, they just resist it a bit. In heavily nether-tainted beings (including minor animates), think of it as nether taking over the role of blood. Nether fuses with the blood, which it uses to access and control the rest of the body (most importantly the brain). It however stays within the blood, and thus contained and controlled it doesn't damage the rest of the body.

(When thaumaturgic Light effects a nether-tainted being, the Light causes this normally-contained nether to become destroyed in a rather detrimental way (to the host), the reaction causing damage to the body not only from the Light burning away the now-essential nether-blood, but also the nether being destroyed "explosively" and damaging the host body due to the now-uncontrolled nether eating away at the body from within. Hence Light is particularly damaging to nether-tainted beings).

Aaaanyway. Suffice it to say that the bodies of these beings, while nether-tainted, still rely on natural processes to heal. There isn't really a way to manipulate the nether in a way that would cause the host body to physically heal.

In the cases of incorporeal nethrim , sorcerers can already simply prep sorcery and aid them, which will restore some of their energy. Considering they don't sustain physical injuries, this is as good as healing them.

What about a specialization focused on Cryomancy?

That would most likely fall under the "Death" specilisation that Rasui suggested.