Demon Seed / Demonologist Idea

[overgoat]

With Demonologists after leveling up a bit you tend to gather a lot of demon seeds you will never use again. These just fill up your inventory after awhile and make it tough to find the seeds you want to you or switch out to. You could just drop them, but I was thinking it would be neat to have another use for these seeds.

My thought would be to have the Demon Seed talent give a new ability called 'Consume Seed' with a long cool down. This ability would allow you to select an unattached demon seed from your inventory and consume/destroy it to give you VIM equal to 2 x its level modified your Demon Seed talent level and additionally give you or temporary buff based on what type of seed it was. Wretchlings might give a 10 rounds of acid affinity, duathedlen's might give invisibility, etc.

I think this would give an already very, very unique and fun to play class a bit more variety.

[Doctornull]

I like this idea.

Mechanics it could facilitate:
- Give Ring slots something more interesting than Vim recovery.
- Delay summoning, or put summoning in a 3rd high-level locked tree, which would allow more buff summons since they're imposing a significant opportunity cost.

[HousePet]

How about using Demon Seeds as sling ammo.

[Red]

Skirmisher crossed with a Demonologist...

Genius. Pure genius.

[Doctornull]

How about using Demon Seeds as sling ammo.

Dual-wield slings, with dual ammo:
- Demon Seeds in the Vim sling; and
- Mindstars in the Equilibrium sling.

The perfect class forever.

[Red]

Mindstars-you mean those weapons that, as far as I can tell, are larger than daggers? The perfect sling ammo right there.

[Atarlost]

Mindstars-you mean those weapons that, as far as I can tell, are larger than daggers? The perfect sling ammo right there.

They're only like grapefruit sized. IIRC there are similarly sized sling stones depicted on Trajan's Column. They mostly even look vaguely walnut shaped like actual molded clay or cast lead sling bullets.

[Red]

I guess everyone just has really tiny hands, then? On the character model, mindstars are gripped in the hand and are larger than the hands they're held in. I've got small hands, and I can easily fit a walnut inside a fist.

Perhaps they could be used as sling ammo by special, oversized slings? Attack speed 50% instead of 120%, but big damage bonuses and, of course, the ability to fire mindstars.

[Atarlost]

I guess everyone just has really tiny hands, then? On the character model, mindstars are gripped in the hand and are larger than the hands they're held in. I've got small hands, and I can easily fit a walnut inside a fist.

Perhaps they could be used as sling ammo by special, oversized slings? Attack speed 50% instead of 120%, but big damage bonuses and, of course, the ability to fire mindstars.

Walnut shaped. Grapefruit sized. They're depicted out of scale so you can see them on the paperdoll, but they're only a few pounds and they're rocks.

[Red]

Alright, according to Wikipedia, the best in leaden sling bullets (and considering you get things like Dwarven Steel, Stralite, and Voratun bullets, I'm assuming they are optimally made) were about 35 mm long by 20 mm wide. That's a volume of about 11514 cubic mm, but that number's really awkward and probably a bit on the low end, so let's assume 12000 mm^3 (12 cm^3, for ease of math). If we treat the mindstar as a perfect sphere with a density equal to standard rock (2.65 g/cm^3, according to Wolfram Alpha), that means if a mindstar has the appropiate volume, it'll be 31.8 g. That's only a little over an ounce. If it's two pounds, it's sitting at 342 cm^3.

To put into real world comparisons (again thanks to Wolfram Alpha), the regular sling bullet is about the same size as 19 M&Ms or a quarter of a large egg. By comparison, a mindstar is going to be about the size of a soda can. There's going to be differences, given their exact shape, but just grab some M&Ms or similarly sized candy, compare 19 of them to a can of soda. (Then enjoy candy and soda.) It's not as huge a difference as you might expect, but it's a pretty big one.

You probably could fire a mindstar from the same kind of sling you fire bullets from, but it'd be awkward. Admittedly, I have no real personal experience with a sling, so if someone who has knows better than I about firing differently sized projectiles, they're going to be a lot more right than I am, but just looking at numbers it seems like you'd take some pretty decent sized penalties for firing a mindstar.

And I've just applied a ton of real world math (not to mention assumptions) to a rock that channels the powre of Nature and your mind in order to kill dragons and orcs. I'd say I need better hobbies, but that was actually enjoyable.

[Planetus]

As much as I enjoy the massive over-analysis of completely fictional realities (seriously, watch Game Theory on Youtube, I love it!), I have a comment that might be more on-topic. Some of the Ashes of Urh'Rok lore mentions feeding the life-essence of one demon to another. Usually, it's done as a benevolent self-sacrifice kind of thing, but what if the Demonologist could do it forcefully? By doing this, you could 'feed' one demon seed to another, increasing the second's level (up to some kind of limit, maybe based on your level, like Necromancer minions), and thus abilities.

This would help thin the herd of lesser demons you can have, while also letting higher-level Demonologists be a little less luck based. Want a high-level fire imp mainhand seed, but haven't seen fire imp mainhand for about 15 levels? Still using that level 25 Wretchling Titan armor seed when you're level 35 and you're getting level 45 seeds? Feed some of those useless seeds to your desired demon and get it at least competitive in level.

[Atarlost]

There's substantial leeway in the size of ammunition a sling can fire, even up to larger than the cup.

ToME sling sprites have large cups to start with.

[Red]

Glad to see we can apply firm logic and reason to firing nature powered rocks and seeds crafted from the souls of demons using a sling empowered by arcane forces that makes some shots explode into diesease. Just imagine what would happen if it didn't match up with the real world!

Jokes aside, knowing this kind of thing works in real life does make me feel a lot better about it. I know ToME is a fantasy game and shouldn't be held to a high standard of reality, but the more consistent it is with our own reality outside of chosen exceptions, like magic, the better.

[overgoat]

Some of the Ashes of Urh'Rok lore mentions feeding the life-essence of one demon to another. Usually, it's done as a benevolent self-sacrifice kind of thing, but what if the Demonologist could do it forcefully? By doing this, you could 'feed' one demon seed to another, increasing the second's level (up to some kind of limit, maybe based on your level, like Necromancer minions), and thus abilities.

Nice idea. Maybe have it be something like the seed eating the other seed gains 1/10th the level of the eaten seed? So if a level 30 seed eats a level 20 seed it would become level 32. This would mean slow growth, but demonologists at mid-high level tend to have a lot of spare seeds.

[Doctornull]

Wow, this thread... 2 posts of content, 2 posts of joke, then ~10 posts explaining the joke to THAT ONE GUY who refused to get it and refused to stop talking about it.

Nice idea. Maybe have it be something like the seed eating the other seed gains 1/10th the level of the eaten seed? So if a level 30 seed eats a level 20 seed it would become level 32. This would mean slow growth, but demonologists at mid-high level tend to have a lot of spare seeds.

Hmm.

I prefer the idea of using Seeds for some ephemeral effect rather than as a permanent buff.

That's why I like the Vim restoration idea: it's expensive, but you don't get Vim back by resting normally, so it's occasionally worthwhile.

The other thing that doesn't regenerate normally is seed life (if you use seeds for summoning). So it might be a good use of low-level seeds to heal other injured or dead seeds.