I had an idea for a skill line that made use of the various jewels you find in game. The name is an obvious reference to the game Bejeweled. Some rough ideas for skills follow in no specific order: Name: Beprospector Description: You know the difference between a worthless rock and a worthless rock people find pretty. You can occasionally find gems others wouldn't notice. Function: Every 40 turns you can use it to find 3+x random gems around you, where x equals your Bejeweled level minus one. _____ Name: Becombo Description: You arrange your gems just right and they erupt with magical energy. Function: You sacrifice 3 gems of any kind and case an explosion of energy around you. The element of damage depends on the jewel used. Also knocks back all foes. 10 turn cool down. No affect on Diamonds _____ Name: Super Becombo Description: Ooooh, Shiny!!! Function: Combo with 5x5 area as opposed to 3x3. Special affects applied on the targets based on the damage done. 25 turn cool down. No affect on Diamonds _____ Name: Be A Girls Best Friend Description: You can sacrifice a Diamond in an attempt to charm a female monster to help you fight. Some of them have to be female, right? Function: 50% chance that when you place a diamond on a monster they become charmed and fight for you till death(does not work on named mobs). 50% Chance to place an affect on them that makes them immune to this skill(suggested name: Just Pretty for a Guy). _____ Name: Be Pimping Description: Your pretty fly for an adventuring guy! You walk in with your jeweled chains, jeweled rings, and jeweled hat and everyone is stunned by your obvious greatness. Function: All enemies with in a 3x3 area of you have a 20% chance of being stunned for 3 rounds. Passive.
At first, I was going to complain about the first skill, but I guess it's actually not that bad. Especially cause gems don't have a huge use except for selling and maybe that jingly staff. Though the first Becombo might be quite useful depending on the amount of damage it deals, the second Becombo seems lackluster. I don't imagine you'd hit many more monsters, cause how often are you really that surrounded? Depending on the states, it still might be nice, even better if it boosted the damage a bit too. Be Pimping seems a bit OP to me. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy. Maybe the chance to stun could be based on how many items you're equipping that were crafted using gems (of course, that'd be useless unless they added more crafting recipes revolving around gems. All told though, I think it's cool. I've /never/ had a use for gems, so it'd be nice to have something to do with them.
To clarify, I meant I originally thought the first skill was OP. 3 free gems every 40 turns without even putting a single skill point in seemed a bit much. And when talking about the second Becombo, I meant statuses, not states. Edit: whooooa, wait a minute. The first skill would make crafting two Jingly Jangly Staffs of Crystal all too easy. You'd need to only get to level nine (unless you find some components) to have 38 damage and 20 magic. That's a bit much.
I like the idea of magic that uses up stuff instead of mana. I'd change the gem finding though (1st skill). Like maybe prospecting ore/ingots to get some. Waiting for X turns and just conjuring it is weird. And the last skill seems overpowered (probably more so when stacked with other stun thingies). Also it might use like skills that shoot in line or a box infront of you, not just around you. Most importantly of all though, when "Be A Girls Best Friend" fails, main character should yell "Balls!"
I agree that finding conjuring them is a little odd, but there needs to be a way to have a steady stream of them, and that is the only way I could think of. Also, the idea of shooter abilities would be nice. Maybe adding another ability that eats 5 of a certain type of gem and does fairly high damage in a straight line, probably with degrading damage so that the 5th tile hit takes one-half of the damage the first took? What to call it though? As for Be Pimping, what sort of change do you think is needed? Lower chance, only on attempted hit, only when you attack?
Like I said, getting them from other items could work - the only ones that would make sense though would be ore and ingots I guess (which would make it kinda incompatible with smithing) and maybe from jewelry (breaking down a ring/necklace into a few gems). About the line skill. I don't know. "Shine Line"? I don't think chance really matters for Be Pimping. If I understood the skill correctly, you could just walk with a mob chasing you, waiting till he gets stunned to start your attack or whatever. That'd be broken. I'd go with a debuff that makes sense - like uhhh reducing their chance to hit you cause you're so shiny. What I didn't quite get is how the gems are gonna be used. How would you choose them? Or would they be randomly chosen everytime you use the skill? (Also, 3 + x, where x = y - 1 is better written as 2 + y)
Getting them from items wouldn't make sense either, and just from rings and necklaces would never make enough to be viable. The same would be true with ores and ingots unless you took blacksmith, and no skill should have to rely on another to be worth anything, save for dual wield needing a weapons skill. Beyond that, it would ruin the realistic geology thing this game has going for it. It currently functions the same way as the first Fungal Arts skill or Lucky Pick. The idea is that you actually know what you are doing so you know how to gather spores/don't misplace or break your picks. The mechanics don't matter so much as the result, that being you seemingly having more of something than others due to your skill in acquiring or keeping something. The problem with the name 'Shine Line' is that is falls out of the naming theme. I had thought of something like 'Bechain', since those mach 3 games tend have rewards for chaining combos together with one move, but that name conjurers thoughts of a hold skill, which is misleading. Perhaps a name that brings thoughts of a line clearing power up would be best, but I can't think of what a name like that would be. I actually sort of like your idea for Be Pimping. Perhaps a 10/10 perma-buff to Dodge and Dodge Reduction due to them being dazzled. I could see how its current form plus Radiant Aura could be highly overpowered if stacked. Another thought, though, is to make it last one turn instead of 3, so it just causes them not to be able to attack? It would help with escaping still, but not so much that you can use it to hit and run, since as soon as you turn around, they would already have recovered. As for how gems are used, my original idea was to have the player right click the gems in their Inv to use the skill. This is also why I left out line attacks since they would be hard to aim that way. How ever, you just gave me an idea. Maybe it could choose random gems, each doing a portion of the damage in their element. And if you are lucky enough to get 3 or the same, you do 4x piercing damage instead of 3x of that element. That could make a Bejeweler/Alchemist a very good combo, as you could attempt to stack the deck in favour of that happening, while consolidating your Inv at the same time, and giving you plenty of gems to make good potions.
I understand that it might sound like it's not enough, but it could be a large amount per conversion. Like single ore -> 7-10 gems (depending on the ore or something). Or game core tweaks could be made like a gem vending machine or more ore/gems per floor guaranteed. I think it all depends on whether this skill is supposed to be a core skill or just a complimentary one. Because if it's just a secondary skill then I could easily see playing with limited (but still decent amounts) of gems as viable. If it's supposed to be primary then gems basically work like mana and should have like a near infinite (slow) generation. I prefer the first option, since unlike mana, gems can be sold. The thing with manually selecting gems is that it'd be too much micromanagement. That's why I brought up the random gem idea. It could actually be fun if you combine it with your original ideas. Like nothing would happen if a diamond was chosen. So a ruby + 2 diamonds would only do 1/3 fire damage (+ nothing + nothing). So do you throw diamonds out or transmute them? No, you still need them for other skills
I think they actually have plans to make it so you can't stack items in your craft slots. And you can use things out of your belt, so there is no reason random picks couldn't check those slots as well. Anyway, the thing with selling is that its easy to make 10-15k even on the first floor as it is if you take your time to sell things. As it is, you can buy an epic quality weapon by the end of the second floor and a suit of armour to go with it by the 4th, so long as you are lucky and Brax has them. Even in GR you can have those by the end of the 6th, at the latest. Worrying about selling the gems is a little pointless. Even if it does become an issue, having degrading values or giving Brax a hard coded limit of, say, 10 gems a shop would solve that issue. A non-bejeweler would have to have insane amounts of luck or obsessively sell to the same shop every time to hit that cap. He could say something like he doesn't want to tarnish his upstanding reputation by handling all those 'hot jewels'. And again, the Gaslamp guys have prided themselves on having realistic crafting and geology. Suddenly being able to find half a dozen, plus, gems in any lump of ore would break that. Being able to recognize random rocks and pebbles as uncut gems because you have trained eyes? That at least seems a little more reasonable to me, personally.
