The decision isn't up to me, but I would prefer an active utility/arpee skill than something passive.

Like...?

No clue! What ideas I've tossed up are already tapping me out from my creative genius and they're not much in and of themselves.

Edit: Actually, oddly got a curious bit of inspiration right now. Think: squirrel forage, but power reserves instead of food? -ponder- Referncing the bit in Kiakoda's thing about 'Not only did Kiakoda have the power of a Vernal God, but she also drew considerable power from, and thus empowered, the forests of Lusternia.' just as Affinity is now, but could do a nature growth/nature guard thing in the same movement? Hmm, have to think about this more.

You get a (boosted) Nature Guard and Growth for free?

Heck if I know. It's all stirring up in that amorphous imagination of mine. Get a percent or two of power from natural environment and you nature growth/guard at the same time works out in my mind. Of course, I wouldn't mind if I can just do that once for the entire area rather than having to nature growth/guard individual rooms, but, it still remains to be seen if it'd even be dandier than the current incarnation of 5DMP in home environment + longer meld break eq.

It could work actually. If a nature Ascendant could once an IG month Nature Guard a natural area and get a small power boost from it. It seems cool.

Free power and giving back to the land in one go.

Ascendant powers:

Chaos - A chance to gain a resistance/weakness per IC day, probably have to do a command to activate it, and you can't change it until the next day. If it's crazy OP, once per RL day. Given the changes to resistances/weaknesses, it won't really be huge, but you can cap it at level 1-2 strength/weakness if you wish or have it lean more toward weakness. You can really do this with a lot of mechanics such as tiredness, drunkenness, or hunger too. Activate the power for a chance to cure them or make it worse.

Harmony - Chance to 'critical' hit denizens while influencing. Or maybe just get more esteem per influence (not as much as the influence mask). Lots of influence ideas, but a lot of them are already copied by arties.

Knowledge - Ability to speak all languages, ability to write letters/news from anywhere, faster learning, shorter say/emote balance, uh, this is tough. Oh hey, knowledge can also grant you server-side knowledge of how much balance/eq/etc was taken or something.

P.S. I'd be fine with a timed instakill for the ascendant death power.

I'm more than happy to have things to spend essence on, but I'd prefer those things be more of an RP-nature than a PvP nature. What I fear is that the people that can regularly have these temporary buffs will have a clear edge in combat. That's wrong.

Divinefire is a game-turning skill or at least can affect the turn of a fight. Suppose that two demigods both choose not to make divinefire permanent, but one is able to keep it up by regularly purchasing it through huge time investment and the other is not. That is a type of discrimination, and while I grant other forms of this type exist within the game, the fact that they do is NOT a justification for introducing more.

"All else equal" means that. It means that when I am in the same guild and the same race as another demigod, when I have the same blessings, the same stats on robes and weapons, the same -everything- excluding these buffs, I don't want the excuse for my loss or win to be "he had demigod buffs." Granted, it's not realistic to suppose that any two demigods can actually be on equal grounds, but that doesn't mean we should introduce more areas where two demigods can differentiate themselves. The fact of the matter is, it's utterly ridiculous for me or anyone to ask for the same artifacts and the same lesson expenditures, but both of these have options: I can invest time and earn IG credits or I can simply buy credits. However, it is reasonable for me to ask that no more differentiating factors be introduced into a game.

Then clearly what that other Demigod needs to do is hoard up her precious essence and buy Divinefire permanently; saving essence over time from the one who is paying for it temporarily (and repeatedly).

I don't know; artifacts seem to give a large amount more of a combat buff than the stuff being discussed here on the whole except for some of the existing Demigod powers, so it really doesn't seem like an issue to me. Buy your existing Demigod powers permanently and ignore the rest, I'd suggest.

An idea for Knowledge: an ability to give the Ascendant/Vernal a distant 'feel' for events maybe? Say, for either domoths fluxing or villages revolting, if the Ascendant (for this example, let's just call it 'divinepoke') does POKE , they'll get an approximate time period (within 5 hours/IC days of the actual thing) of when it'll revolt/flux maybe? Toss in the ability to read Divine and I'd think that'd be sufficiently e-nerdy enough to justify Knowledge.

-babbles more-

I wouldn't mind the ascendant powers being a small package tbh. All with a theme, so there is the main visible ability and then maybe a smaller passive power to go with it.

Under the proposed system, there's supposedly a limit to the "slots" you can use to buy things. What I'm assuming is that both demigods have used up their slots and one has divinefire through regular purchases and the other does not.

+1

Please no timed insta for the Death power. We don't need Shuyin anybody going blademaster, tendon/pit/insta, especially a 0p insta. I like the corpse-summoning better, seems like a viable antigriefing tool.

Not to side track, but PB's can tendon insta, though it's not going to net you much on its own. You're not going to be pit tendoned though. Can't hit your legs while you're in a pit.

Wonder how the corpse summoning suggestion would work though. I mean, if it's delayed, then people who get pk'd and eaten immediately is out of that situation and if it's ANY corpse, then it'd probably be greefed that way too. Hrm.

No insta, no slots, no nothing, just remove Divinefire reduce experience loss by a fraction and we have an accord! There's no need to over complicate the game balance for the sake of 90( give or take a large handful of inactive Demigods and non-combatants) level 100 + and growing, eventually it will need more rebalancing as more Demigods become active and Ascendants are risen.

I may not have been 100% serious about asking for a timed instakill for death. I'd prefer all the powers just be neat and not game-breaking.

Will there be some lighter more simple things available to spend essence on that don't count towards the total? So that somebody who's already figured out the permanent ones they want and doesn't have a major need for temporary still has an essence outlet?

Death:
- Possibly a vitae like ability that costs essence, used once per IC day.
- A reduction to essence loss upon death or phoenix/reincarnation.
- A couple of other ideas I had were too similar to some Necromancy abilities, since that's basically a death based skill set, maybe it could be a copy or different version of something from that, but buff the ability if you already have necromancy.

Chaos:
- Random buff/blessing of some sort.
- Randomly get a different domoth ability you don't also have every IC month.
- Something that gives levels of insanity would be fun I think, not sure what upside to pair that with though.

Harmony: ((I think Omniscience fits here best, but if do want to move it... ))
- Since you don't like portals being Chaos, maybe it would fit better here? I didn't catch if you were putting it in veneration, but I'd hate to see these leave because they're awesome.
- Go into some form of deep meditation that allows you to freely see and communicate with the room a person is in, no matter where they are. So a sort of different form of Omniscience.
- Some sort of super speed, like Shanth?

Knowledge: ((this one really is hard. ): ))
- I think the secondary skill set idea would fit here if you were going to do it, but lot of demi-gods who wanted it would feel shafted.
- Don't really like the idea to scry a person wherever they are, because that's what SEEK is now.
- I would really like the ability to tesseract to aetherbubbles again, that was fun.
- Ability to predict/calculate certain things like, village revolt times, astrology signs, um... can't really think of anything else worthwhile that's not simple to figure out. ):