Thief Spell Ideas After Venom and Thievery Skill

[ghost]

All are welcome to suggest.

1. Rummage - Randomly search X number of corpses on your tile. The number of corpses searched increases with skill.
2. Unknown Name - Pulls treasure from adjacent hexes to the thief. Range increases with higher skills.
3. Ferret - A summon that follows the thief and randomly moves about looting treasure items.
4. Various Traps - Web , Concussion ( little damage ) and other CC traps , Poison / Venom. Etc.
5. Transmute - Turns treasure into gold! The % of value transmuted increases with higher skills.
6. One Hex Darkness - End all be all request right here!
7. Venom Power Bar - 1 Power = Normal Venom / 2 Power = Non Stacking Venom but gives multiple charges per cast increasing with higher skills.

Weapons - Shortswords , Bucklers , A bow you dont have to knock.

[mtweldon]

I like the idea of 2. Either a. pull all corpses to your hex that are on screen.. or two pull all visible loot on screen to your hex, to include corpses.

Another spell idea would be: Floating Feet: allows you to move 2 hex through water, etc.. or even jump 1 air hex to go to land / water on the other side.

[ghost]

I forgot to mention the Thievery Skill.

Based on skill Thieves can See Hidden mobs and objects.

[dedmist]

A thief already has the fastest skilling in the game and a decent XP/hr in BG. The problem is: it's boring. The thief is all about mobility and environment control, which is much tougher in the AG.

MA skill is too toe-to-toe to survive, but dark JK is awesome; mine isn't high enough to find a place in the AG that this works, but my expectation is that it doesn't work well. Dagger hunting is designed to be hidden, because it doesn't block well enough to not be. Rapier has to be unhidden because chasing something down in the dark is just frustrating at best.

So, the point is to take a playstyle and make it work in the AG, without becoming like another class. Which means we should damage with magic and finish with melee, while being in control of the number of crits we face. We CAN make up that gap now with wands/balls/bottles and then limit our hunting areas.

How I'd like to play is to be able to limit the number of creatures I fight when going Melee and have a magic assist that I can use at least half the time. I see MA/rapier/katana as having different playstyles. I would think that pure dagger wouldn't be a good option without adding some sort of risk, we need to introduce risk/movement into the average thief repertoire. How I think it could work:

Panther cloak - improved hide This was implemented in the OG AG, though I've never found a description of what an improved hide was. In my eyes, the purpose of a specter hide would be to engage a single group in the open without drawing adds. As soon as a Thief can't handle the adds, they'll have to move off to safety. Maybe this allows you to keep up hide, if: you don't move after being hit or haven't been hit the last round. Hit and move loses hide. This keeps up the danger element, but lets the Thief pick their battles. I see this as the way to really encourage melee, but it needs to be paired with something that softens up the targets.

Thisson tooth - I think Sly came up with this, but I have a different spin This is a fan that procs a 1 hex poison cloud when used like a wand, at the caster's feet. Essentially, this becomes ball fighting, where the PC is designed to soften up the targets, then they get finished off by MA. It would take a different mechanic, requiring the thief to always have PP up and 90-95% of damage would be mitigated by PP (instead of 50% for normal venom/poison). It would need to hit hard and fast, but the effect would last for only 1 round. This would take off around 40% of health per hit; taking 2 hits on a group, then finish with hand skill. It's half as hard as a Wiz can hit in the same timeframe and encourages melee for the skill gain, since the "usage" would be 0 skill gained. Also requires good crit and balm management. This strategy should probably require some mana expenditure, maybe the PC could suck up some mana without generating skill...

Bandoleer of daggers - A spell that fills up all empty belt slots with ethereal poison daggers. These daggers are "thrown" from belt for melee attacks, they can't range. The daggers would use normal venom. Charger Vampiric katana - initial idea by Wanderer Katana that opens up a charge, implemented like polekick, but with sword skill and can remain hidden, does siphon some life with every hit and should hit pretty hard, but ultimately just adds a little efficiency. Makes the Thief work a bit like a weak fighter with either a shield or blocking dagger.

Upgraded throwing dagger It doesn't need to hit harder, just block better and hit more often.

BSR upgrade allows throwing daggers from belt with BSR in right hand - this gives the ability to use ethereal daggers while giving blocking ability. The thief would essentially be required to create a bandoleer to soften up the crits in order to maintain a decent killing speed. Returning daggers would fall to the ground instead of going to a hand if both hands are full.

Reveal - a no warm, no mana spell that can be cast on a group of creatures to show them where you're at, this would lure the creatures to you.

Adding to the mobility as a primary attribute theme:

See invisible creatures - even if we can't hit them

eventually speed allows normal movement over blown walls/sand/water, prevents slips/web

Entanglement Creates a 3x3 web

Dream additions

Recharge wand Gives a declining number of charges back to an empty wand. Each recharge destroys the capacity by 1, giving a thief 15 total charges instead of 5 at the cost of 8 rounds. The tradeoff here is that the thief will probably be trading their bandoleer for wands.

Transmute Turns mundane loot into cheap gems. This isn't really useful for coining, it's useful for having crits stay put for a few rounds to pick up the gems. If the gems were worth only a few coins each and maybe they turned into actual coin on the crit (or disappear altogether) then it can be used like a little crowd control.

[ghost]

New Spell - Create Napalm Bottle.