Home
Artists
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register
Partychan Telegram Live Sex ThePornDude
Home Artists Posts Import Register

Weekly Bonus Material - Gemstones (Patreon)

Published:
2020-11-26 13:42:58
Edited:
2021-01-12 19:17:11
Imported:

Content

Gemstones! Briefly mentioned in Aquiliea, where Elaine got a diamond to store a skill! (And her parents got some as well, but they were responsible)


How they works: Artisans and crafters with the right class and the right Element (Gemstone), can "Attune" a gem, by a combination of skill and cutting it, make it receptive to holding skills. Anyone with the right elemental affinity can then store a skill in the gem, giving the skill a one-time use at no mana cost to use.


This creates some interesting situations:

1) Someone wealthy can buy a few gems with life-saving skills in them for themselves or their kid. A few gems are ok. Dozens of gems can be problematic. They're hard to hide, and the person ends up with a giant "Rob Me, I'm relying on gems and I'm low level" target on them.  

2) You can get a bunch of gemstones not in your element with a skill stored, but once you use it, it becomes a shiny paperweight until you can convince someone to recharge the gem for you. Some people do this as a service, and charge a pretty penny for it. 

3) For skills where efficiency matters (Elaine's healing skills, for example, have wildly varying mana use depending on how good her image is), gemstones are by default lowest efficiency. Elaine thinking "Heal" vs "Gotta reattack the bone, the nerves, blood, muscle, ligaments, skin...." etc. when healing. 

However, if it's one of your skills you're throwing out from the gem, you're in luck, and you can control the efficiency. 

4) It's almost always better to have more Arcanite, and a deeper mana pool effectively, than it is to have gems in your element. Gems in your element are still good, a rare status symbol, and can be useful for longer-cast skills, and there isn't the delay in "absorb mana, then cast" vs "just cast"  

5) Passive skills can't be stored in a gem. How would that work?

6) Gemstone-heavy users are extremely deadly in a fight for the first few seconds, as they unload all their skills. However, after that, they're almost a sitting duck. Then again, when you have heavy magic artillery, fights only tend to last a few seconds anyways. See Artemis's standard tactic of "throw a dozen rocks and lightning bolts at them"

7) Given the value of attuned gemstones, one could easily imagine them being hoarded, rarely given out or released from the owner's grasp.  

8) With the right combination of skills, gems, and Arcanite, a Gemstone artisan can create rechargeable traps and formations. 

9) The larger the gem, the higher "max mana" skill can be stored.

For example: With a dozen Arcanite stones, a single Ruby, a large, complex, and expensive formation, a Gemstone expert can make a rechargeable flame-trap. Step on the panel, explosive flames shoot out at you. If you get fried, great! It'll slowly recharge over a period of time (a few hours/days/weeks depending on the Arcanite:gem:Skill Power ratio). If you don't get fried, LOOT! Expensive gems, expensive Arcanite, all for the taking! 

Just be careful about the secondary trap ;)

Formations aren't moveable generally speaking, although I'm not discounting them on say, a ship. 


Onto elements and their gemstone! In Primary-Secondary, then alphabetical order:

Primary:

Dark - Obsidian

Earth - Feldspar

Fire - Ruby

Light - Diamond

Metal - Amethyst

Water - Lapis Lazuli

Wind - Jadeite

Wood - Emerald


Secondary:

Acid - Peridot

Arcanite - Arcanite. (I might flip this to be "Doesn't store skills", since it already stores mana.)

Ash - Neptunite (Clearly Pallos has a different word for it, that gets translated back into English.)

Brilliance - Quartz

Celestial - Moonstone

Coral - Pearl

Decay - Bloodstone

Erosion - Morganite

Forest - Opal

Gale - Aquamarine

Gemstones - N/A. No storing gemstone skills.

Gravity - Apatite

Ice - Kyanite

Inferno - Cinnabar

Lava - Olivine

Lightning - Iolite

Magic Metals (Any of them) - Labradorite

Mantle - Citrine

Miasma - Axinite

Mirage - Zircon

Mirrors - Pyrite

Mist - Amazonite

Mountain - Topaz

Ocean - Sapphire

Ooze - Torquoise

Poison - Hauyne

Pyronox - Garnet

Radiance - Sunstone

Sand - Jasper

Sound - Agate

Spatial - Onyx

Spore - Chrysoberyl

Steam - Carnelian

Storm - Alexandrite

Verdant - Malachite

Void - Jet


Questions away! 

Or plotholes/major problems with this. I know the broad, general idea, but I might have overlooked a detail that completely breaks everything. 

Comments

Melting Sky

Neat, this is an extremely powerful and abusable ability so I would recommend adding some serious restrictions to it such as a non-insignificant chance that the gem cracks while being expended thus ruining it for future charging, or some sort of limiter on it when it comes to the strength of the skill it can store such as it requiring exorbitantly large gems to store complex slow and/or powerful skills. Without limitations like these the skill to create skill gems basically turns somebody into an unstoppable God on the battlefield since it means outside of the initial cost of the gems they incur zero additional costs when recharging them and the skill itself will allow them to become very wealthy. Some guy carrying a thousand instant speed 600 mana skill gems could take out a small army by himself and be pretty much invulnerable, invisible etc. while he did via releasing 40 or 50 high end instant speed defensive skills. He could then recharge his entire arsenal at no real cost other than some of his and his comrades mana during their down times. It would give him an effective mana pool of like half a million mp. It would be particularly effective for somebody in a leadership position where they can just order their platoon, division, entire army, kingdom etc. to refill the gems for them. I guess realistically the weight of the gems would become a limiter on the most extreme end of things for someone like a king. It probably wouldn't be easy to carry more than maybe 50lbs of gems on your person but that would still be thousands of skills charges. Every general on a battlefield would probably blind you with the amount of bling they would be carrying. It would also make this skill pretty much mandatory for anyone leading an army.

SelkieMyth
>>48422188

Ah - recharging a gem takes the same amount of mana as using the skill. A 1000 mana fireball to use, or a 1000 mana fireball to store - same cost, same fireball coming out of it. I'ma link size of the gem to size of the skill stored. Bigger gem = higher max mana stored spell

SelkieMyth
>>48422188

And someone carrying 1000 gems (that's a LOT of gems scattered all over his body) could, for 3 minutes, be the deadliest person on the battlefield. Then everyone under the sun will try to murder him, because who doesn't want to steal enough wealth to buy an entire town? Additionally, while all skills can be stored in it, they're most useful for Mage-skills, which have inherent range limitations. That archer with [Long Shot] and [Penetrating Shot] is 100% going to take some shots - from a long, long way away. And the dude with all the gems, all the skills - he's gotta sleep at some point! But if he spends that much money on it, getting that set up - yeah, he's allowed to be a one-man army. A real army is cheaper. And less likely to walk away with an entire army's worth of money. Who's going to stop him getting Ideas anyways?

Scientist Valci
>>48422188

In my oppinion gemstones are very overpower and from now I will always be anxious if the bad guys have a hidden gemstone. Like after they incounter the next jerk in a strong position and they beat him or whatever, there will always be a chance he pulls out a gemstone that will kill someone or will heal him and let him escape. So my idea\suggestion is to make the gemstones really easy to brake, if they are touched by an active skill of an element they are't made for. Like it would be a standard procedure to use a skill/attack that would cover the whole body just to disable all gemstones. It would make gemstones far less final trump cardy. Just an idea I wanted to share.

SelkieMyth
>>48422188

I dislike dues exing people to have the EXACT RIGHT gemstone. We won't see much of it. Primarily we might see people with a Very Obvious bracer with some gemstones, some nice jewelry with it (That has the same problem as other jewelry, namely, it sucks to be wearing in a fight), or people that are pure Bling, at which point they have a lot going for them. I will say, part of this post was inspired by an upcoming character that's very gem-heavy, and I wanted to get out in front of it and explain how it works. I also need a way to have, for example, fireball traps and other magic traps work, so when we're dungeon-raiding later in the series (or breaking into fortresses, etc.), I have the mechanics worked out. In short, this is great for me making narratives of various sorts, and gives me, the author, a ton of tools to work with. Gems are just as easy as they are normally to break. That is to say, some are hard (Diamond), and some are almost paste (Cinnabar)

Obran
>>48422188

Maybe it takes a special skill to charge a gem so not just anyone can do it. That would make them rarer. And maybe they have to be prepared by a skilled gemsmith to even accept a charge?

SelkieMyth
>>48422188

Sorry if I wasn't clear - yes, you need a Gemstone-aligned enchanted to carve and "attune" the gem first, before it can accept skills. This requires a bunch of time and expertise.

Enkelados

A few questions/food for thought: Can you combine multiple gems to hold a single skill? Does purity of the Stone impact the capacity? Is it capacity/volume or capacity/weight and is it the same for all gems? If so it would be veeery hard to store large light spells (diamond), but there could be literal siege weapons of brilliance (there exist car sized quart crystals) Obsidian is literally dirty glass, could you artificial produce gems or do they need to "bath in the Mana of nature" or something? Do you need to fill the gem at once or can you dropper the Mana in? Does the level of the caster cap the impact of the skill? Could a power mage charge a Stone and a control mage use it for a supercharged spell? Can two persons with the same skill cooperate at charge a stone? Can you use half a stone, not using the whole charge?

SelkieMyth
>>50336613

Excellent questions! 1) No. You want [Giant Fireball of Doom] you need to find a really, really big ruby. 2) Purity matters. Better purity = better capacity and efficiency. Skills don't come through 100% 3) Bigger the stone, more mana/charge it can hold. 4) Yup! Not all gems are created equal, not all elements are created equal in terms of what they can hold. Good idea on massive Quartz fortification skills..... got any more good ideas? 5) You can artificially make gems. Please don't think too hard about gems that are technical overlaps. If you want to, I invite you to explore when Earth becomes Metal, and the fact that most magic breaks down when you look at it too closely. 6) I'll decide this when it matters :P 7) Level of the caster impacts the strength of the skill. You basically get whatever skill the caster has at, oh, 80% efficiency of what the caster could get. Higher level caster = bigger fireball. 8) Kinda. The control of the Power mage matters more though. It's more like the Control mage could improve it a bit, not a ton. It would probably end up being better than the power mage could do alone. Good thinking, cool idea though! 9) I'm going to say no for now. Skills are so personal, even when they have the same name. 10) Going to say no again. Your fireball is a single fireball, no cutting it into pieces. Be careful with that life-saving gem of yours! 9)

Enkelados
>>50336613

Thank you for your rapid answer. Some gems (obsidian eg.) can be molten. So large gems for some elements could be pretty normal. Maybe you could create a mold and then pour molten gem into it to create low labor inscription made out of gems. For some skills it could be usefully to create the gem in a certain shape. Like an inlay around door to create a pyronox door, or a circle on the floor for a shield or imprisonment or just create glowing letters. @10) does that count for channeled skills like healing or veil too? Would you need to break veil to stop it channeling from a gem? Who gets exp from using a stored skill? The user, the charger, nobody? For the first it could be a great way to power level. Can you get general skills from using a gemstone? If yes that could be a great business too, collecting rare or powerful skills to help unlock classes or generally teach certain skills.