[Suggestion] Respecialization Lore

[Golden Xan]

Hey everyone,

Denis mentioned that we will be able to respec our characters in order to try out different combinations of skills. I thought that would be naturally a good idea, considering that you can develop your classes in different branches from your character's own "formal" inclination. I would like to contribute with some ideas as to how, lore-wise, some characters could justify having their powers changing from one moment to another.

Whether these things involve any particular gameplay element, that's up for discussion. I'm mostly focusing on explaining how that could happen from a story perspective.

Vampire

Blood transfusion, or bloodletting. The Vampire drains all the blood in his body and tries to hold on to his life for as long as possible without the precious life that sustains him. The lack of blood, that has an intrinsic connection to his powers, makes his body weaken and unlearn the manipulations it had. As soon as he begins to decay, he drinks the blood back, recovering the lost power, yet forming new connections with which to re-learn his skills once again.​

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Revenant

The Revenant is born out of hatred for something or someone. His powers are developed in accordance to his goal, which is to achieve his vengeance. By meditating and doing something contrary to his nature, the Revenant focuses on calming his inner fire and disconnects his targets and anger from his existence. As the flame that moves him dims, the Revenant reshapes his reasons to stay alive. He finds new people to target, new reasons to rage over the wrongs committed, new goals to pursue. The then ashes light up again with renewed strength, and the rage that feeds him needs to form new capabilities to fulfill his insatiable goal. He can then form new skills with this newfound flame.​

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Liche

The Liche's existence is tied to the magickal connection he has to his phylactery. His phylactery contains his soul, and his soul learns to manifest in the world within that object. Through a ritual of recomposition, he breaks the atoms of his phylactery until it is nothing but energy, and recombines it into a new form. His soul within the artifact, newly rebuilt, relearns how to manifest again with its previous power intact.​

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Ghoul

The Ghoul is a monster sustained by the material it eats. In order to force his body into evolving differently, it must create different circumstances for its sustenance. The Ghoul prepares an appetizing banquet in the safety of his Crypt which makes him salivate profusely. In a feat of impressive determination, he then locks himself in a cell in front of the banquet from where he can see his food, near enough to smell the wondrous odor of shredded flesh, and throws away the key. Then he fasts. Days go by as the Ghoul withers in hunger. He goes mad from the lack of food and his body begins to consume itself. He mourns the decay of the food in front of him, so near to him, yet so inaccessible. When his body is frail and weak, reduced to a sack of bones, he is then thin enough to pass through the bars in the cage he built by himself for his seclusion. Weakly crawly to the formerly extravagant banquet with barely enough strength to reach the food, he then eats, and eats, and eats again until the monster within is back in the game... with renewed genetic material.​

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The Wraith, Banshee and Wight are classes that I'm still uncertain about how they work or their origins. I will have to speculate and make a few assumptions to be able to make suggestions.

Wraith

A soul that was drawn from its unlife in the spectral realm and tied to an object of power in order to manifest. The Wraith's existence is initially confusing to himself, as he really does not belong to the physical world, yet is forced to be in it. In order to change his essence, he needs to go through a straining act of manifestation in the world he used to belong. By using all his strength, the Wraith attempts to materialize in the physical state. He condenses all the life force around him to create matter, a vessel to call his own instead, of the usual vessels he borrows. Once this strenuous process bear fruit and the Wraith finally creates a body, the inevitable truth is realized as the body does not sustain itself and blows into non-existence once again, releasing the energy used to create it. Having even but a second of presence in the material world changes the Wraith's consciousness further, and from his confusion, being forcibly brought back to the spectral world, he can reorganize his energy into a new kind of Wraith.​

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Banshee

Banshees do not sleep. They live in eternal lamentation. It is their sorrow that sustain them and ties them to the mortal, physical realm. Their emotional energy give them the powers for which they are known. Banshees do not sleep because they wish not to dream. For in their dreams, they relive the situations that brought them to this state, the very circumstances they weep over. Some Banshees would like to forget their torment, while others relish in their dark emotions, for it is the last and only thing they can feel. When a Banshee dares attempting to rest, as their consciousness wanes and they begin to wander into the realm of fluid and restless thought, they are punished by entrapping themselves. Their mind goes over and over the same scenes until the emotional overflow is so unbearable that they are forced into the waking state of their undeath. The shock from the wakening is so strong, as strong as they first felt it when being reborn for the first time, that they have to relearn how to manipulate their ethereal frame once more.​

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Wight

Wights are mummies soulbound to powerful artifacts. Whether these artifacts were tied to them by chance, external influence, or by their own doing during their life, does not matter. The Wight drains the power from these artifacts and manipulate them in order to exert his powers. In order to change his bond to the artifacts, he must allow himself to relinquish the connection. In rituals of cessation and binding, the Wight disconnects himself from all his artifacts, one by one in order of connection strength. As the energy they provided fades, with the little energy still retained, he attaches to them again in the opposite order. Designating a new pathway between his soul and body to the artifacts lead to an event of reforge within himself. His sustenance is fed anew, and his body and mind must learn to manipulate the accumulated experience gained by the artifacts in their journeys together again in order to properly unlive in this existence.​

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Feel free to make your own suggestions as to how the various classes might recombine their powers below! Be them story or gameplay related.

 

[Golden Xan]

I'd like to make a couple of things more clear about my suggestion.

This idea was mostly about cutscenes. For example, a player would get to his character's skill tree, there would be a "respec" button, they would press it, then a cutscene would play out, showing a scene such as I suggested above. Then the game would go back to the skill tree, with all skill points available and all skills reset.

What Iain and Jalen suggested, when they talked about it on the Community Roundtable, was to have missions for getting the skill points back. That is also a good idea, but it can get a bit crazy if you want to respec multiple times. Time consuming, for sure.

Better than that, you can make it so that in order to respect you need to go through a single mission or questline where your character learns how to reshape his powers, or otherwise acquire the means to do it. After that, you unlock the feature, and you can freely use it without any more effort. Then the cutscene would take place when attempting to respec. I think this is a good compromise, if you want to implement that sort of mission. It is interesting to do it so and it doesn't make it obnoxious. On the contrary, it makes it more enticing.

 

[GaiaGreen]

Alternatively, what if the respec ability is available from the start, but at a somewhat slower cost? Then, upon reaching your proposed questline for unlocking the feature, they get the upgraded version which comes complete with missions which hand out EXP/skill points at a much accelerated rate?