(This skill is a mystic thief path skill. It would cost 2 thief points, reducing arcane lore to 5 points instead of 7. Bards get this skill normally, but at a higher level than thieves do, 30+.)

In their line of work, thieves and bards, particularly mystic thieves, have to temporarily memorize a variety of both plain and arcane texts for reasons ranging from burglary, blackmail, satire, negotiating mystic traps or deciphering magical and runic locks. Naturally, thieves with a bit of arcane training, and bards with their quit wits and tongues, can apply this skill to memorizing the text of scrolls.

This skill allows a thief or bard to memorize the text of a single scroll they have in their inventory in order to cast it in combat. Memorizing a scroll requires light and the ability to speak aloud to oneself precluding hiding or sneaking, a large portion of the scholar's mana, and a scholar can only memorize one scroll every 12 hours (reduced to 6 via Arcane Literacy edge) They may later cast this scroll in combat as normal, consuming the scroll, a niche feat those trained to use scrolls for more mundane purposes never truly aspire to.

The purpose of this skill is the same as the purpose of the scrolls skill, but specifically offers thieves high-damage finishing moves to complement their openers backstab or knife, and another option besides cheap shot to seal kills. They also give theives options against paladins and other clerical classes or undead where previously they were rather screwed.

(See: CANTRIP or CHANT as possible new commands to implement for the actual casting, which recites the scroll at a target and ignores recite's combat limitation, all other aspects of reciting a scroll in this way are normal but with somewhat reducted success. CHANT must make an additional check on the caster's dexterity/intelligence as well as the usual recite check with an additional penalty on top of the one thieves already have. Bards may replace the intelligence portion of their check with charisma with a subsequent edge, 'EPIC RECITAL'.)

As a rough gague, a given thief that might have an 80% chance of properly reciting a scroll should have a 65-75% chance in combat dependent on their skill in arcane lore and memorize. CHANT would check the skill level of memorize, similar to how LAUNCH checks the grenade missile skill. Naturally, elves/drow and their half-breed cousins should get further inherent bonuses to this skill.

I think this should nicely open up the mystic thief path to a bunch of combat options without breaking the conjurer or transmuter classes by offering the advantages to them as well, and allow bards a tool to use to get around the problem of resist mental that fits thematically with their repertoire. It's something to consider for what torak mentioned his problem with mystic thieves were.

Naturally, such a skill would have to be implemented at the same time as or shortly before a rebalancing/addition of a wide variety of scrolls, particularly maladictive and damage scrolls that aren't of the variety of plague or curse. You would also have to fix the problem of the fact that the only scrolls worth using are a) usually hero level, and b) behind mobs such as Kharzandra or in areas such as Corte' which either require the player to use gentlewalk/deft touch at minimum which costs 23 thief points, and leave them at the mercy of the uptime command, or require a group to kill when many run of the mill hero level mobs are already a handful for any thief build to toe to toe with as-is, and you would have to add more options at all level ranges including purchaseable scrolls that aren't the wordless 'bewilder' or 'hobble' varieties sold in Udgaard for instance.

Many of the shop scrolls would need at least 2 damage/debuff spells cast at a variety of spell levels and available to a variety of level ranges to make the introduction of this skill worthwhile so that you don't limit it's usefulness purely to players who have an encyclopedic knowledge of magical items aka torak and Gaplemo. And for the record, very few, if any, of these scrolls should use anything as powerful as blindness or plague, but they shouldn't be as weak as bewilder or hobble. Fireball, forked lightning, iceneedles, 3x vampiric touch, slow + chill touch, augment toxins and etc. are more along the lines of what I'm thinking of. Things that are like the scrolls of storms (high damage, niche application, significant self-damage drawbacks) that can be used as finishers by thieves or boost their abilities to fight tough mobs such as cabal inners solo without offering additional advantages to mages or increasing the amount of a/b/s scrolls in the world.

I pitched something vaguely along these lines (memorizing a single scroll to later recite from memory in combat) to Valg when he was working on arcane thieves, but for whatever reason I couldn't sell him on it. I no longer remember what those reasons were.

And that same idea was made for Nexus way back when as well, but I think it was valgy who shot it down too. Strange :p

Would be OP if the thief could use it to confer beneficial effects on allies.

Also means he could keep one scroll in his inventory, memorize it, then only use the memorized spell and never actually burn the scroll. Would be one way to camp on limited scrolls.

If I had this, I'd memorize "word of recall" and just have that in the bank at all times.

You do realize with the skill percentages I just cited, that's like asking to die right?

chances are if you have this skill and acrobatics stacked, you probably deserve to live because otherwise this isn't exactly Enigma of the Thirteen here. It's better in some instances, worse in most others, because if you fail, and you will fail often during a critical moment, thieves always do no matter how high arcane lore is, you blow two rounds. Addtionally a skill like this deserves to be the capstone skill of the mystic path, not Arcane Vision.

Nevermind if you forget you memorized a scroll and recite it for a more mundane use because then you are blowing the two rounds for no reason and a 100% failure rate.

And I think coding for this skill is probably complex enough without trying to code it to allow you to select a target. As a general rule it should either check if the target is yourself or the enemy you are fighting and that's it.

What I was tackling by suggesting this:

Preserving the pattern of several thief paths that reward players who explore, while offering sufficient options to those who do not. (for the majority of poisoner functions for instance, if you are willing to farm the gold, you can spend your entire life using only ingredients in Hillcrest.)

Avoiding giving thieves any more options for nerfing stats anymore than they already get in the thug path. Thieves generally and thugs specifically are the opposite of assassins, their damage is frontloaded and they are not meant to tank as well as assassins via debuffs or get in long drawn-out fights. Additionally, it gives thieves lacking options such as sucker hit or the forget/movement control effects of the poison path the option to use high damage finishers with more restrictions than invokers, transmuters and conjurers already have.

Adding a skill that fits the flavor of the mystic path that matches up to the powerful yet niche uses of the capstone skills of the other paths. Grenade Missile, Drag (shadow drag doesn't count until simply typing 'vis' doesn't counter it), Prey on the Weak, etc.

But anyway, I didn't think it would actually be implemented within this year or the next, but I was just tossing it out there. It sounds like Nepenthe and Valg have already hashed this idea out before and I probably haven't added anything new they haven't already discussed the generalities of. Chances are good that Valg has thought of something that can be done with scrolls that none of us have and hence nixed the idea even though EXCISION is in the game for vaguely related reasons (rather than casting in combat, giving AP's the option of not losing their extra HP/damage from letting go of a weapon)

>Would be OP if the thief could use it to confer beneficial
>effects on allies.
>
>Also means he could keep one scroll in his inventory, memorize
>it, then only use the memorized spell and never actually burn
>the scroll. Would be one way to camp on limited scrolls.
>
>If I had this, I'd memorize "word of recall" and just have
>that in the bank at all times.

...not really bards, though.

I think one caveat for something like this would be the effectiveness of this ability is converse to how far you take the thug path.

Thieves seem a lot less intimidating these days. No idea why.

>Thieves seem a lot less intimidating these days. No idea why.

How quickly we forget Flaaaaaaaaaayin.