Here's a radical idea, since Estarra must love the late Robert Anton Wilson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_circuit_theory

Now, adapt this to Lusternia.

The Bio-survival Circuit (Becomes "The Nature Mnemonic"). Consume some health herb/health potion, get some sort of healing benefit.
The Emotional Circuit (Becomes "The Emotional Mnemonic"). Drink Alcohol, get some immunity to emotional manipulation.
Semantic Circuit (Becomes "The Symbolic Mnemonic"). Eat Kafe, get some special power (immunity to runes? ability to read enciphered work?)
The Domestic Circuit (Becomes the "Social Mnemonic"). Drink a love potion, get the ability to order mobiles around, or something like that. Or maybe a special influence bonus.
The Neurosomatic Circuit (Becomes the "Planar Mnemonic"). Smoke Weed, get a special ability related to planes and planar travel.
The Metaprogramming Circuit (Becomes the "Meta Mnemonic"). Eat Druid Mushroom Spores, get a special ability to purge self of certain mental/spiritual afflictions.
The Morphogenetic Circuit (Becomes the "Elostian Mnemonic"). Drink Absynthe, get the ability to access hidden knowledge or visions--maybe a super-form of scrying.
The Quantum Non-Local Circuit (Becomes the "Estarra Mnemonic"). Consume "something" (dunno what--Estarra's cookies?)...Get access to a special realm outside of what we know as planar reality.

Golemics, Golemetry, Golemancy, Golemcrafting, etc.

Involves the animation and usage of statues.

Skills: In no particular order (alpahbetical). And this is just a sampling.

AnimateStatue: Animates a statue. Animated statues attack your personal enemies with some damage and a random affliction, based on the runes that are attached to the statue. If the statue is attuned to you, it will follow you around, like an angel.
Attune: Attunes yourself to a particular statue. Attunement can be broken for a significant hit to statue durability and power.
Deconstruct: Give a significant hit to a statue to get a bit of marble.
GuardStatue: Lasts for a bit; protects your statue from being destroyed however people destroy statues with that Arts skill. Like natureguard, but for statues.
Overpower: Channels extra aetheric power into the statue. Produces wrath effect.
Permanance: Replaces one of the runes on an attuned statue with a rune that makes the statue never decay. Is erased if attunment is broken.
PossessStatue: Send your spirit to inhabit a statue. You cannot possess a statue that is attuned against you. Your body becomes inert and inhabits a statue. If statue is inanimate or unattuned to you then all you can do is sit there and look around. If the you are attuned to the statue then you can move about and do stuff (what stuff? who knows). You are vulnerable to attacks that affect spirit bodies. Causes drain of something.
RaiseGolem: Raises a golem from whatever environmental materials are available. Kind of like raisedead, but without the need for a body, and with a limit to how many can be raised. Can break bones or do other stuff depending on where it was raised. Maybe flame for volcanic, frost for water, that kind of thing. Raised in the air? Who knows?
StoneSentry: Link yourself to a statue. If someone enters or exits a room with it, you will see.
SummonStatue: Summons your attuned statue, if animated.
ViolentDeconstruction: Cause a part of a statue to explode. Cause a significant hit to an animate statue's durability to deal damage to all room enemies. Scaled down depending on number of enemies.

I like this concept a lot! New skills from the Dracnari nomads.

I also really like the Golemics, Golemetry, Golemancy, Golemcrafting, etc.

Just tossing something out. Skills are not listed in order of learning, its just a rough idea.

Spirit Drifting

Involves the person being dead to activate and use the abilities listed within. They have no health or mana, and only have ego to work with. When ego is depleted, they automatically pray, there is no way out. You also lose experience in this form as you do not have mana. Use it carefully. All abilities uses ego and limited interaction with items are possible, like opening doors. Limited actions are permitted against them. Instakills do not work against them, they are already dead after all. Neither does swinging swords or pointing staffs.

Death form - SYNTAX: GHOST - When dead and existing as a soul, you turn into a vengeful spirit to avenge your death. Once turned into a vengeful spirit, you cannot be ressurected in any forms or ways. You may still pray for salvation. You will come back with full ego.

Lament of the Dead - Passive - All enemies in the same room as you suffer ego loss every now and then.

Ghastly Wail - Passive - All enemies in the same room as you suffer mana loss every now and then.

Piercing Shriek - Passive - All enemies in the same room as you suffer health loss every now and then.

Curse of the Dead - SYNTAX: CURSE - The target will take damage for each time he or she performs any action or whenever he or she gets hit in any form whether beneficial or otherwise.

Binding grasp - SYNTAX: GRASP , RELEASE - The target will be immoblise by the weight of your spiritual aura, and the only way to be able to escape your grasp is when your ego is less than the target's. Drains ego while in use. Target can writhe to increase the rate at which ego is drained.

Spirit Drain - SYNTAX: DRAIN - You will absorb some of the target's spiritual strength for your own. Converts their ego into yours.

Death's Advocate - Passive - Experience drain per tick is now halved.

Soul Drag - SYNTAX: DRAG - The ultimate act of vengence, when a target is below either 1/3 health, 1/2 mana or 1/2 ego, you will drag his or her soul out of their body and both of you will pray for salvation at once. The cost of such a move is immense and you will lose twice as much experience for it.


This are just some rough ideas I have to make experience a factor to use as a weapon.

I like the masks ideas, and the "turn normal items into cool things" idea. What if you could, as one of those skills, turn items into explosives? (since I heard talk of explosives as well)

You could magically charge cards and throw them, and have a staff, and be super cool!

*cough*Gambit*cough*

I really REALLY like shammy's idea.

I think it could be really easily shifted into something and modded to prevent OP or UPedness, and rather comfortably clicks into Lusternia's Aether and Magic system.


Also, it seems like it's neutral enough to allow whatever guild to possess it, even warriors. And, if needed to be more specific, could be modded a bit to support a more precise main class, too!

For example, the barbs could either do their own specific type of damage depending on yanks and rips, or could simply do wounding damage like a regular warrior attack. Strike Krellan Head, Aetherbarb Krellan Head, Assault Krellan Head, Yank Krellan Head (Krellan's head comes flying from his neck with a sickening SNAP)

Just an extreme example, and maybe I'm retarded, but whatever.

It's sweet from every angle I look at it, though.

Go Shammy, go!

If the voodoo skillset focuses on a spirit-riding implementation, instead of the Hollywood version, it might also be a way to bring in berserker-barbarian warriors. Whether you subscribe to the totem theory of berserkers, or the alcohol/bog myrtle theory, or any other, a Glinshari-ridden Serenguard sounds like a berserker to me.

We already have zombies, and they are in Necromancy. Hopefully Magnagora will someday field an army of raised dead; in the meantime, the new skillset doesn't need them.

I do like the idea posted earlier about masks and expressions. Adjust that to spirits and aspects of those spirits (e.g. Glinshari Enraged v. Glinshari Defiant), and you have the beginnings of a system. Switching between spirits would take a long time; switching between aspects of a spirit already riding one would take little. Each spirit, in effect, would be its own tactical package.

What exactly each aspect of each spirit should do is an open question. I would like to see some tradeoffs between passive buffs and active attacks, though. Glinshari Defiant might boast increased regeneration and resistance to damage, and add the blocking ability; Glinshari Enraged might have bellow, headslam, charge, and something like the enraged Taurian chance of attacking non-Glinsharis or perhaps non-Serenwilders. On the other hand, Ellindel Peacemaker might have pacify, lovers, and paralyze, while Ellindel Faefriend might retain fae longer as per the Spiritsinger stanza NintobaSong. The specific abilities aren't the point - the idea of having to pick a loa, and then switch among the loa's aspects, is. People could either bond to a specific loa, and rebond only with difficulty as with Guardian deepbonding, or it could just take 10-20 seconds of equilibrium - too long for mid-combat switches, not too long for occasional variety.

For calling spirits to ride, I do recommend more use of herbs, including some of the ones presently only used for cooking and alchemy. Burning or ingesting the right mixture of herbs fits both with low magic and with voodoo.

I envision it as being laid out like the music skillset - a number of common skills and buffs below master, and then org-unique spirits being the bulk of the specialized skills.

The skillset could be Basin-wide. Given the frequent incorporation of aspects of Catholicism into Voudun, and the reverence of saints and reliquaries, even Celest could find a way to invoke historical martyrs, and the other three have pretty clear ways to justify loa-focused voodoo.

To the extent that poppets are involved, I think I would prefer that they can be created only from a willing donor, or only from the body of one whom the puppeteer has personally killed. Give the poppet-user some distance spying, traveling, leeching, and some in-room afflicting. Let the poppet decay relatively rapidly. Personally, I'd rather brink back some of the healing and fertility sides of poppets as well, instead of making a poppet into a vehicle for malice alone. Give some reason for people to ask, "do I trust this person with a poppet of me?" instead of having the answer be an obvious no.

Also, for anyone interested in looking at a good implementation of sympathetic magic, there is always Savoir Faire. I think that a similar implementation in Rapture might be too difficult, but I do not know whereof I speak.

The aetherbarb idea does seem very nice. How does one remove them? Are there any ways for an inventive and disciplined foe to use your barb against you? All details that can be worked out later, though.

Golemcrafting would be a nice high-magic prerequisite skill. Write the correct cabbalistic words, and inert matter comes alive! Might give bookbinders an edge, if some languages were better than others for certain kinds of golemcrafting, and might give them some customers.

Okay, this afternoon, I'm going to work on s skillset called Tinkering. It'll kave two specs. Gadgetry and Golemcraft. Sound good?

At the risk of starting tangent discussions, I've been thinking of some ideas to create sword-and-shield warriors. So here goes...


Shieldcraft

The first ability in the skill causes your sword arm to attack twice as fast as you could normally. It also causes your shield arm to attack half as fast as normal. Hitting your opponent with your shield causes 150% of the wounding and damage that would be done if you had hit them with a regular weapon, and is 100% blunt damage. This ability also gives you an extra 2/100 critical hits.

A student of Shieldcraft can also empower her shield to store the energy from her opponent's attacks and use that energy in new ways.* The warrior will use the Shieldfocus ability to designate a target that their shield's energy will be directed at. Once the shield is focused on a target the shield will begin to store energy. The warrior can choose to unfocus her shield at any time but doing so will cause the energy in the shield to disperse entirely. Energy stored by the shield is tracked by a meter on the warrior's prompt. Such that it might look like this:

9999h, 9999m, 9999e, 10p, 99999en, 99999w ex-

Five stars could be the maximum amount of energy the shield could store. Effects could include:
At two stars, you can choose to spend some of your shield's energy to increase your protection against all damage types for a short amount of time.
At three stars you can choose to spend some of your shield's energy to flash a quick strobe light at your opponent to paralyse them.
At four stars you can choose to spend some of your shield's energy to cause a short-lived blackout to your opponent that will relapse three times passively.
At five stars you can choose to spend some of your shield's energy to mesmerize your opponent which will make them slow to act, i.e. an aeon/sap sort of effect.

Some random abilities that might be included in the skill could be:

Flickwrist - Disarms opponent of weapon/shield, returns it to their inventory
Riposte - ShieldRiposte ability becomes more effective, if you don't have ShieldRiposte, this ability grants it.
Deflecting - When struck by physical weapons you have the chance to turn the weapon aside entirely and strike back at your opponent's exposed side to deal twice the amount of wounding as a normal attack would to both the chest and the gut.
Batter - Use your shield to smash your opponent in the head, deals wounds to head and afflicts with one of the following: Stupidity/Epilepsy/Confusion
Reflection - Endow your shield with the ability to absorb magic attacks. Once absorbed, you can store the energy in your shield for a short time and reflect it back to your opponent any time.
Swiftblade - Using this ability will cause your next six strikes to be so quick that your opponent cannot parry them.
Shieldblock - Use your shield to lower the amount of wounding and damage you take by 15%
Precisionstrike - Your next three attacks will be precisely landed so as to cause twice the amount of wounding they ordinarily would.
Refresh - Focused willpower regenerates health, mana and ego at a steady rate.
Outpace - This ability takes your dexterity and measures it against the dexterity of your opponent. For every point of dexterity that you have over your opponent you will cause 5% more wounding on every attack.
Shieldgrind - Corrode an opponent's armour by grinding your shield against it. Lowers armour status, once armour status hits zero, the armour is useless until repaired.


*Some people may note the similarity in the above idea to that of kai energy in other IRE games but this would be quite different in application. Designating a target and only being able to use energy against that target is a significant difference already. The abilities are also much more peripheral than Kai abilities like Choke, Heal, Banish, etc. A meter on the prompt is just a handy way of tracking things.

Poor Krellan?

I am not that familiar with other IRE's.. little achaea thats about it.

Summoning

Roc Call upon a Roc to take you to a familiar destination (only callable outside)
Shark This sea dweller will come to you and attack your foe, however when its job is done it may still hunger (only summonable in water, may attack you when target dies)
Beauty Show those just how perfect you truly are (lusts)
Wyrm This small dragon will use its breath weapon on your enemy (summon wyrm for instance yellow lightning paralysis, red fire flame, blue cold chill)
ArchAngel/ArchDemon/Lady/Daughter? Call upon a holy entity to curse your foe with aeon
Gravedigger Let him craft a pit to hide in or to pounce on your prey (either burrows you or allows you to set up to grab someone and pull them under, they can get out when you die or if they climb)
Fate Judge A minion of the Fates will decide if someone is worthy of life (not like judgement insta.. more like soulless, has a prereq not sure what though at the moemt
Doppleganger A beast you cannot predict, he will arrive the next few times you call others, But you cant predict what he will come as (cant be fate judge or something like that though or a roc..) (def)
Dragon Call upon a dragon to rain its deadly breath over your enemies (like wyrm but room and has a power cost)

This is a bit of an example.. would likely replace tarot for guardians and hexes? for wiccans

ALthough things could have some variation as well based on organization (not on major things though) (like how night users get redcap and moon get mother etc).

I just like the concept of summoning them.. as a note unless specifically requiring it they appear do the task and take leave (cept like a shark for instance who stays). This wouldnt be an army of ents choice.

A skillset involving Ae! Go to your nearest Great Library, and borrow "Ae for the intellectually impaired", By the Scribe of the Elders.

To summarise the scroll, Ae is the language used by the Third and Fifth Circle Elder Gods to manipulate the fabric of reality. To tie in with how mortals can use Ae, the Fates have said before that the threads of the Elder Gods are too thick for them to weave. They have said that mortals have life-threads which are thin enough to manipulate. Therefore, while the Elder Gods used Ae in a more macro, broader, big-picture manner, shards are only able to use individual strands, to refine rather than create or manipulate reality. Seeing as we are unable to fully understand Ae, we can only use it in much more fixed manner than the Elder Gods.

Utility/not the main bulk stuff:
Ae – Learn to use certain words in Ae to alter reality for a short time
Language – Learn a new language (No language seems impossible after mastering Ae!)
Tug – Shorten all teleportation time by 1 second (Aetheric threads become easier to find)
Unravel – Instant kill (Chasm/Judgement style) Unravel your opponents into a mess of threads, forcing the Fates to either sever you or reform you.

Basic abilities:
InspectTemplate – See what you have added to your template
Creature – Creates a basic template of a creature to alter (A short-lived pet)
Room – Creates a basic template of a pocket of space to alter (mostly RP/utility stuff)
Self – Creates a basic template of a shard to alter. Merge with the finished template to alter yourself or your enemies (Buffs/debuffs)
Undo – Turn your creation into a soup of aetheric material

Manipulating commands:
Pronunciation – Alter your pronunciation to form a different effect
Mispronounce – Purposely mispronounce a word to either have a random effect, or effects that would not be normally available. You would not know what this effect would be when you inspect your template
Phrase – Combine different words to form a totally different effect. It takes 1 power for each additional word. The order of the words matter

Example:
Ae word Sight
When used on a creature template, gives your creature an eye. Can be repeated up to a max of 2. More eyes means better accuracy.
When pronounced differently in one manner, gives it thirdsight.
If pronounced differently in second manner, gives it eyestalks (Nothing but RP effect)
When mispronounced, gives an effect from this list: Has no eye, Removes shroud from an enemy when ordered to do so, Inability to differentiate between allies and enemies, Ability to scry allies/anemies on a timer, Gives an eye that ignores max eye limit, Gives thirdsight
When used in the order Sight Fight, gives an additional eye-beam attack
When used in the order Fight Sight Light, whenever it is day, the creature will attack 1.5x as fast (you know, it fights at the sight of light corny example)
Then more ideas for rooms and player templates.


It seems like a lot of work, but I kinda like the idea of having a semi-customised, semi-random room that lasts for just a short while.

I like the etheric barbs idea too, but I believe it will be a bit too powerful unless some accessible means of removing the barbs is created.

I am partial to the idea of Bards receiving a weapon based secondary skill-set centered on the use of daggers. It could replace acrobatics, giving the bard damage absorption and dagger attacks (that use poison and give dagger weapon afflictions). I have no clue how to flesh the idea out at the moment, but my basic focus would be to create some synergy between the Music skill-sets and the dagger afflictions.

This is what I was talking about for the Gematria, I couldn't remember the book on it though. Combine this with gematria and you have an awesome skill set...

Call the skilslet, Numaetria

Oh, yeah, I figured there'd be some way of removing them but I hadn't thought up any balanced way of handling that yet. Also the ideas I gave for the effects are probably hideously imbalanced for most classes, I was just tossing out concepts.

I would imagine it would be a new set of healing, similar to how burst vessels was a new thing to think about.

Psh, don't take it personal, you were just the last thing to attack me

I kinda wish the whole powerful Ancestor thing is reserved for the Spiritsingers in Serenwilde.