I was just thinking how having a few skills that had abolutely no practical use other than being required for another skill would add a little flavour.

so... before performing coven rituals perhaps the ground would have to be blessed by Mother Night/Moon.
Before being able to summon Fae/Cherubs/Imps you would have to perform an ability drawing the apropriate realm closer to the location (negated by moving) by adding the ability to manipulate the connection to ethereal with that sort of room effect, wisping could have the restriction of requiring that sort of room and having it attuned to the appropriate part of ethereal (either etherwilde or faethorn for moondancers or etherglom and faethorn for shadowdancers)

Also these could make it possible to have some abilities strengthened or even modified if the precast is active.
so...
Forestcast (or whatever) enchant
Enchants a melded room, unlocking new abilities from the old.

Nature vines
If cast by a druid in a room that is melded and enchanted, the vines will randomly attempt to entangle any enemies they sense. though not as well as the druid could cast themselves.

some other stuff along those lines.

anyone like it and/or have ideas for what skills could get empowered by or require a pre-cast spell?

Yeah... except for the fact, the main skillset of two archetypes, Droods and Mages, rely solely on having their respective terrain type naturally or forcefully in that location.

This is already in place for Wisp and other skills, as it needs to be the same type of forest to wisp them from their location to yours.

Only thing I don't like about that idea, is that people who do not have trans skills have enough trouble without being given useless skills that won't do anything for them till later.

and as such is an example of precasting

... so why do we need more? Guardian's and Wiccans arn't meant to be tied down a certain room to be effective, that's what Mages and Droods do. I mean it'd kind of be worthless having a Nihilist walk in, do their precasting thing, then a Geomancer walking in to forcetaint it. Guardians and Wiccans are meant to be on the move fighters really. Not waste their time precasting all these rooms in case an enemy comes in so they can actually do crap.

the wiccan one is just an example of a precast that only works in one room and is disabled by movement, the actual idea being that if you came along an unprepared wiccan they wouldn't be able to summon fae unless on ethereal.

also the actual precasts would vary, for example i've seen precasts where you just summon fire or a flower, then use that later to attack.

Preparations for combat sucks, there are no reasons for any low level skills to require preparations. In Achaea, the Trans ability of Tarot was Supercharge, Supersecrete for Venoms, Truefashion for Vodun/Puppetry, Truemorph for Metamorphosis. All these skills are aimed at one thing, to promote speed for combat where every second is important. I see no reasons to add any more requirements to any of the current skills, especially since it'll only slow down combat and takes away the fast-paced feeling of fighting.

Well... Mages and Druids wouldn't be so annoyed by archetypes that can actually move around during combat.

So I'd have to make sure to always walk around with all my fae, in case I'm jumped, wasting 7 or 8 power I'm more than likely not going to use most days?

It's nice for flavor and RP, but it absolutely sucks in combat. A lot of skills in Achaea, as has been mentioned, are horrid for combat until you can remove the prereqs by transing. Metamorphosis isn't even half as useful until Truemorph, Tarot needs Supercharge to be good, and without Transcretion in Venom, you lose a large edge you had in speed, which you need.

I like the empower idea. If you invest more energy, time, resources, you can get a bigger effect in the end. Although I'd still prefer the almost-as-good-no-pre-req way.

You just gave me a flashback of supercharge/devil/devilmark. Oh how I miss tarot.

hehe, just think if we could empower rage
plus you wouldn't have to be walking around with full fae all the time, but you might add one to distract your... err... "jumper" should you get attacked.

And damn, i wasn't connected to the internet for like 19 hours 30 minutes and 5 seconds (yes, i did make that up)

This would be useful in defending, but mainly it's just to complicated.

hehe oh i was thinking to reduce complaints about getting a skill that would be useless until later levels, they could be received before the first skill that requires them.

And the reason some of them would be complicated is simply because they would be a great advantage so the complication allows people the chance to prevent you from getting the upper hand.

well atleast this seems to be under the divines radar. wonder how long that'll last