(April Fool's) Upcoming Abilities

[Rias]

Here are some more detailed teasers for upcoming generalized (and a few non-generalized) abilities that we're really excited about:

General Abilities:
- Mighty Beheading: Ever had the perfect setup for that crowning moment of awesome for your warrior character, but you botched the combat rolls? Mighty Beheading is a once-per-day automatic 100% chance to kill any target with a ... mighty beheading! Really gets the point across that your character is not one to be trifled with.
- Eyeshot: Like Mighty Beheading, but for ranged weapon users: A 100% chance to deliver a lethal shot to a target's eye, instantly killing them. Usable once per day, so save it for the right moment!
- Various "Savant" abilities: After long discussion with players and fellow GMs, we've decided to open up all the different channeling types to players. These abilities will cost three ability points each, but now any character can take up the arts of sorcery, elemancy, cryomancy, druidry, and thaumaturgy without any guild affiliation.
- Sword Hire: With the right words and the right amount of riln, you can convince an NPC to join you and essentially become a combat minion. Usable once per day at inns/taverns/equivalents at any town or outpost you aren't disliked at.
- Jack of All Trades: Increases skillgain for all profession skills as long as you don't focus on any one skill for too long. The trick is to carefully balance skillgains between every profession skill. It's tricky, but if done right you can gain skill at profession skills up to three times as fast to counterbalance not being able to focus on any specific one (stacks with skillgain multipliers).
- Homestead Defender: Inspired by tales of stubborn homesteaders who protected their families and lands with their frontier tools, this allows a character to swing certain tools in combat with rolls based on the relevant profession skill. For instance, loggers could swing axes based on their Logging skill rather than Hafted. Miners swing pickaxes and mattocks based on their Mining skill. Farmers swing hoes, pitchforks, farming flails, spades, etc. based on their Farming skill ... you get the idea.

Guild Abilities:
- Elemantic Enchanting: This will allow Elemancers to inscribe elemental patterns into exquisite-quality (or better) gemstones which can in turn be attached to weapons or armor to grant elemental flares or elemental resistances, respectively.
- Ensorcell: Sorcerers can imbue wooden or bone items with a known spell of their choosing. Higher-tier spells require higher-quality objects. These ensorcelled items can then be zapped by anyone to cast the spell within, with a limited amount of charges.
- Legendary Theft: Thieves get the ability to steal worn gear of any size off a target without the target noticing for ~10 seconds. Make your getaway quick before your mark notices his shirt has been stolen off his back! Usable once per day.

It's also been decided that ability points will be uncapped, but will be earned based on total skill points accumulated. This means that the more skill you gain, the more ability points you'll get. Veteran players will thus rightfully be increasingly more powerful than newbies.

[Sneaky]

You need to implament underwear rias, I want to steal someone's underwear off of them, omg, has to be armored though, so armored undies go go go!
This looks so freaking cool

[Alaia]

I have... The biggest collection of heart-shaped gold stars for this entire thing. Me and my friend who plays have been quietly gushing over the entire thing, because we play PCs in guilds that involve a bit of "boxed-in skillgain" and we're so excited to be able to give them abilities that rightfully represent how they are as characters and how we've had them grow.

A thought on the channeling, though; if the ability points are uncapped, what stops someone from having ALL THE THINGS for channeling (other than, obviously, Thaumaturgy + Sorcery) and being effectively like a non-Elemancer elemancer? Or will it just be general training, and the elemancers will still have all of the actual abilities, thus making having all of the channeling abilities less awesome if you're not an elemancer? I won't ask the same thing about sorcery, because I know that's much more easy for people to control, hence we have Tol Rhun which is made on sorcery...

[Lavi]

I would like to steal the clothes of my conquests. Call me Casanova Ben.

[Ilysta]

Does that mean I can enchant a staff with Metabolic Englaciation and batter people to sleep?

[Kiyaani]

Cute.

[Kunren]

Homestead defender already partially implemented according to changelog :D

[Fayne]

Omg, I love that the magic abilities will be available to anyone! I'f like to see them limited to one-per, though, so you don't see someone who can channel everything. I think only having druidry, or sorcery, or one element is good enough for everyone. If you want more, join one of the organizations that uses what you want.

I'm also curious as to how druidry will work without being guild specific. Since druidry has no raw casts, are all or most druidry abilities going to be generalized? Who will be in charge of guving rituals to help new druids find their spirit animal for commune?

Another thing, are guild points going out the window? Will all of our abilities be based off of skill, or will the guild-specifics still be earned through GP? And when you say that abilities will be earned based on skill, does that mean certain skills will go toward certain abilities, or all abilities, or will it just be a sort of "cumulative score" type thing? If it's just the total of all of your skills, does that mean the people who focus their characters on a few skills instead of a lot are going to have a harder time getting abilities? And does that mean that one could potentially have an open channel at all times so that their channeling increases constantly, thus getting ability points?

Okay, done, sorry for the assault of questions.

[merin]

I have an ability suggestion: autopilot. With this skill taking up five ability points, for six hours per day, your character will continue to urn skills while offline.

[Rias]

April Fool's! Hopefully no feelings were hurt nor dreams dashed too badly.

[Lysse]

April Fool's! Hopefully no feelings were hurt nor dreams dashed too badly.

I'm saddened that I won't get a thaumaturgic beast. =(