There's light magic. There's neutral magic. There's abyssal magic. Then there's this stuff. This is magic that man was not meant to know, or at least not meant to know without a friendly visit from the authorities. Note: When you use any spell listed here, you have a 10% chance of gaining the non-removable effect Star Rating ("Was it the magic chariot you stole? Was it crashing it into the side of a building? Was it running inside through the hole you made with the chariot and killing everyone because they sort of looked undead? You wish they would just work with you." When you reach five stars, the entire thing summons three members of the Thaumic Police- monsters resembling Dread Collectors, but scaling to your level- to kill you. One of these will drop a Dangerously Lawless Evidence Phial, which can be used to create various drugs and illegal substances from your magic's results. Brew of Revivification [24] The problem with reviving people is that you're not always going to revive the right people, and when you do revive the right people generally you do it wrong. It's like that old saying your necromancer grandpa taught you: "You can reanimate all of the people some of the time, and you can reanimate some of the people all of the time, but you can't not turn them into hollow puppets of the underworld unless you get the really good stuff." - You start with the recipe for Elixirs of Questionably Legal Health (Health Potion + Dangerously Lawless Evidence, dropped on occasion from Thaumic Police), and three vials of said (which restore 50 HP and 20 MP but tend to curse you, randomly teleport you, give you unstable-crust effects or polymorph you into a zombie). - The skill revives a 3x3 grid of enemies, and can summon random ones on panels that aren't occupied by corpses, but has a chance to polymorph them into random monsters, to curse them, to not spawn them charmed, to buff them but turn them against you or to deal massive - as they realize the implications of having been beyond the veil and returning- that just kills them again. Cranston's Destroying Malice [15] (cookies to figure out the reference) Invented by an Dwarfish alchemy tutor and dabbling wizard who turned to powdered aluminum smuggling and highly unlawful cantrips to feed his family. This spell should distract the attention of your enemies by transforming a portion of their vital innardy bits into grade-A premium tinfoil wine. - Targeted spell that stuns and deals , and , also creating a bottle of Dwarfish Tinfoil Wine; this fries your mana for another 15 and paralyzes you for several turns, but has a high selling price- pity that Brax is a law-abiding citizen, and upon receiving the drug, as he does with your Elixir of Questionably Legal Health, he will quietly inform the Thaumic Police, who will send three officers to hunt you down. Stygian Market [64 Cooldown] Sometimes, you need to unload your ill-gotten goods quickly, and sometimes things are too moral even for Brax. When that happens, you need to call in the strange proprietors of the Stygian Market, a time-and-space merchant cabal that buys whatever you're selling and doesn't ask questions. - Essentially a portable Brax for selling objects, though the selling price goes down due to the convenience. They'll also purchase things that Brax won't take, such as Lutefisk Cubes, Inconsequentia's Quest Items and your various illegal productions. I'm picturing a tree based around extreme effects that always have an escalating risk of sending monsters after you- and that, should you overcome them, only encourage you to continue abusing your questionable abilities until eventually you start overwhelming yourself. But I'm not sure where to go from here.
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=187 A spell that lets you turn a monster into a harmless diggle, but has a small chance of morphing said monster into an evil plant from outerspace that hurts a lot. Drops the Botanist's Stone on death. Which you can use to make MOAR illegal stuff.
Botanical Hermetics [30] All life, you know, is derived in some way from plants (no matter what the pansy Killer Vegans say), and through liberal application of forbidden florist's rituals, you can exchange the form of a monster for a slightly less threatening vegetable (as long as they have approximately equal values (and of course the magic can bridge the gap a bit)). Of course, magic can't do everything, and it's entirely possible that the gap will not be bridged and the laws of ancient hermetic gardening will transform the monster into a vessel for their undying hatred of your attempt to break the laws of thaumaturgic physics, but who else has that ever happened to besides literally anyone who tries this ritual? Lets you transfigure a foe into a Evil Magic Potato. There is a 5% chance that they will instead turn into a Abyssal Florist Spawn (souped-up version of those veggie ents, you know the ones) and attempt to murder you even harder than normal, as their stats scale to the monster you transfigure. On death, they drop the Botanist's Stone, which is a wand that can be used to summon charmed Abyssal Florist Spawn- but also adds to your Star Rating.
Nerts. An ability to sell your junk anywhere, then (although that's still pretty sweet, I think). And Brax is a demon. So he isn't so averse to products on the deep end of the alignment pool?
Summon Keyblade (or something) - buffs your attack (or something related if something else), but increases your "wanted level" due to copiright infrigements.
I was thinking something along the lines of something that gives you a huge brittle stat buff, but has a chance of not giving said stat buff, and summoning your "generic evil inner self" instead. Killing your evil inner gets you "generic proof of generic character growth" which lets you craft more buffing potions. To make that work, you'll probably need to make a summon spell with a very low chance of summoning, and have it also buff you on-top of that (but you probably knew that already). This spoofs... well almost every other odd teens-with-superpowers movies/animes/shows/etc.
I actually had an idea along the lines of giving you a powerful equip or upping a stat that's difficult to improve, like Crafting or Alchemy, but at the cost of constantly having at least 2 Stars at all times. Something like: Unlicensed Brewery Your talents at the artistic flow of drugs, spells and chemicals have become well-known among the criminal and non-criminal worlds alike, and you've become skilled at distilling and fractionally boiling and all those other neat tricks- so much so that you've learned to incorporate your talents into defense and combat. Unfortunately, being notorious for being a master peddler of unlawful substances is not something you want when the law has teleporters. 23333 You constantly have at least two points of Star Rating, even after resetting by summoning the Police. Therefore you effectively can only gain three stars before you're attacked.
Umm... that sounds like it should be much later down the tree. On a sidenote, you probably want to make the tree unlock recipes as you go. Mostly because it goes hand in hand with the fluff.
I should probably inform everyone: I have no idea how to code any of these. I have no idea how to even use .xml. This is purely conceptual; if I can find someone who can actually code or learn to do so myself, it will get made, but that's probably not gonna happen.
Fortunately, learning yourself is relatively easy, as long as you confirm that your ideas are actually doable before you start.
Basically what Essence said. And here is a site with a few tutorials for you: http://dredmod.com/wiki/Main_Page Good luck and have fun.
