ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

What if we could make Arcane combat work more like the new Contingency spell from the Chronomancy tree. The idea being that you could choose the spell that will trigger on melee combat when you sustain the spell. This would make having more than one element on a Arcane blade more viable as then you could choose the element that is appropriate for the situation.
As an example, you are coming up against shining horrors, better change from flame to lightning. Right now if you have both it is completely random which one you will trigger if you have both.
An extension of this could be to allow more spells to be used this way, for example flameshock or chain lightning could be used this way. A way to balance the use of higher tier spells could be an increase in mana cost according to tier.

Have been thinking this would be a good idea for about a week now.

Would it trigger a cooldown? Chaining a few flameshocks or chain lightnings sounds like a problem, mana costs or no.

Otherwise, good idea.

Its 30-40 mana, ignoring fatigue. I can't see it being too bad.

I like the idea a lot. You can limit it to the cooldown of the skill - say, you can only pick something with a cooldown of 8 or less, or maybe triggering it does set the ability on cooldown, but 8 less than it should be.

HousePet wrote:Its 30-40 mana, ignoring fatigue. I can't see it being too bad.

Hidden resources, Highborn's bloom, +mana items.

supermini wrote:Hidden resources, Highborn's bloom, +mana items.

Well they need to be good for something.

It's definitely a cool idea. Might be hard to balance, but something along these lines would be an improvement.

If nothing else, maybe it could be restricted to tier-1 spells?

maybe rather than "chose one" it would let you tick the spell, so it would fire a random spell out of your selection?
also, FIREFLASH YAAAAAY FOR SELF DESTRUCTION!!! or how would that even work? dont they target a tile way behind the target, rather than the targets tile? would it even hit anyone?
and if you make this sustain more flexible, maybe it could even proc spells outside of the AB class?
i was always confused that it can trigger earthen missiles, but arcane destruction has arcane damage instead.

also, we have no arcane archer... we have temporal, and DB is supposed to be capable of using bows i hear, but no arcane ones.

Making Arcane Combat work with a greater variety of stuff would make Adventurers (and therefore, casuals like me) very happy. I absolutely support this.

as an adventurer... i would set it to trigger drain, virulent desease and catalepsy.
then use some techniques that don't require stamina, and screw the enhancements tree.

actually... if i can trigger drain with the arcane combat... SCOURGE TREE WOULD BE USABLE!!!!! OMG.

Just set it to cast Searing Light/Firebeam. Who needs resources?

...or, if it works on all spells and not just beam/bolts... sunburst and sun flare.