New talent tree for alchemists (and others)

[Sirrocco]

Something I'm pulling out of the "Remove all potions" thread, in the hopes of getting some response to it in general as an idea.

This would be a generic talent tree available to alchemists, with some relatively easy unlock for non-alchemists, both at multiplier 1.000. To encourage alchemists to go with it specifically, either it should cost non-alchemists a category point, or alchemists should get the first talent free. Functions off of the magic stat.

- Craft Rune/Infusion
- Brew/Drink Potion
- Scribe/Read Scroll
- Carve/Recharge Wand

- Craft Rune/Infusion: Something along the lines of what Sus was suggesting with merging runes and infusions to make better ones. Basically, you can take two runes or two infusions and combine them (destructively) to make a new rune/infusion. The rune type will be the type of one of its parent runes, and the level of the rune will be somewhere between the levels of its parent runes (with higher degrees of magic skill and/or talent possibly biasing it towards the high end). If either parent rune had an ego, the child rune will have an ego. If either had two, the child will have two. Egos would be chosen from the prefixes and suffixes on the parent runes. Higher levels of the talent permit combinations using higher level runes. This allows an alchemist who's willign to futz around with runes and infusions to more precisely choose the runes and infusions he will use, and lets the people who enjoy playing crafting games do so and get power out of it without making crafting the obvious thing that everyone should do.

- Brew/Drink Potion: Turns an infusion into one or more single-use potions, with potion effect type being based on infusion effect type (broad categories - heal, buff, cure, mana restoration, or whatever) and potion power level being based on infusion level, with some randomness thrown in. The "Drink Potion" side of this is what lets you use the things, and it comes on a (short-to-middling) cooldown. This gives alchemists another panic button with some versatility, at the cost of a fair amount of preparation - and lets the people who enjoy playing the scroll/potion game do so without making it the obvious thing that everyone should do. Higher levels of the talent permit brewing of more powerful infusions, and may generate more than one potion at a time when brewing lower-level infusions.

- Scribe/Read Scroll: This is pretty much identical to Brew/Drink potion in all respects except that instead of taking in infusions and spitting out drinkable potions, it takes in runes and spits out readable scrolls. Note again that type of scroll and power level are somewhat random. If you want a pile of scrolls of various sorts to give you flexibility, that's pretty easy to achieve. If you want a pile of magic mapping scrolls to fit a specific objective, then it may take you a while to accumulate them, and you're likely to have a pile of monster detection scrolls on teh side when you're done.

- Carve/Recharge Wand: lets you attach a rune to a blank wand or appropriate wood type to create an wand that does something similar to what the rune does. Also allows you to recharge an empty wand with mana and a gem of appropriate tier.

Basically, this tree does a few things. As noted above, it lets the people who like crafter strategies and the people who like scroll/potion strategies do their thing and gain tactical benefit out of it without making using those strategies clearly better than not using them. It also gives alchemists a way to access the same sorts of utility powers as the other mages have, in a more alchemist-like way (accumulating a bunch of random stuff and mixing it together in strange ways based on arcane lore). It also gives people another place to dump generic points - and the mage types, at least, are rather short on those (especially as slime and sand drake are largely useless to them and antimagic all but barred)