Divine Spells
Introduction
Spells that combine mastery over spirit energy and magic energy with the knowledge/power of the gods. These come exclusively in lost/ancient tier and are capable of being used by paladins and to a lesser extent, savants. When casting them with spirit infused magic energy, their names would not have the “divine” prefix like regular spells infused with spirit, as they already use spirit energy.
These spells aim to try and combine spirit’s focus on environment-altering and survivability-oriented characteristics with magic’s power, properties, and affinity for destruction and disorder. The reaction due to the mixing of two opposing forces (Chaos/Creation) results in divine spells producing unique and complex effects, such as providing survivability with delayed costs and putting a lot of emphasis on risk/reward. (though not all divine spells will be like this)
As spirit energy is utilized in these spells, many divine spells gain the ability to heal wounds and use intent to alter the body (such as by sprouting wings or handing out free cancer) and the environment (such as affecting plant life and the weather), much like spirit energy can, but amplified with the properties of the magic used.
Misc Information
Explanations/concepts for certain things, all in one section!
✨ Unique Obtainment
TL;DR: Regular obtainment would be boring and dilute the ability scroll pool. Special obtainment uses existing spell scrolls and god souls as mentors to rewrite them into a divine spell scroll depending on what is used, separating divine spells from the regular ability scroll pool, fitting paladin’s awakening name (power of the gods), and providing a degree of player agency.
In lore, oracles are rare, and paladins even more so. While divine spells could just be obtained the same way as regular ability scrolls, there a few reasons why this is undesirable:
- It would only dilute the current pool of ability scrolls further
- This is especially atrocious as divine spells can only be used by two stat builds compared to regular spells and techniques, which can be used by any stat build that invests into magic and strength respectively.
- It wouldn’t make much sense for there to be a load of divine spell scrolls to be circulating around in the wild.
Instead, the user can derive divine spell scrolls from regular spell scrolls with the direct help and teachings of the gods themselves, who are suggested to be knowledgeable in manipulating both spirit and magic energy (though magic may just be Hecate). This method reinforces paladin’s awakening name, “power of the gods.”
Upon using a Lost or Ancient spell scroll, the user will be prompted with whether they want to learn it (how it is currently) or derive a divine spell from it. Any player, regardless of stat build, can do this as long as they own at least one god soul.
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Choosing to derive will prompt the user to choose a god soul they have absorbed, along with warning that the original spell will be lost.
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Afterwards, the spell is discarded, and the user receives a Divine spell scroll of equal quality/rarity. (Lost spells can only be rewritten into divine lost spells)
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The spell type used (annihilation, enchantment, etc.) along with the god soul used affects the chances of what divine spell scroll you receive, increasing or decreasing the chances of specific ones.
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Ex. Rewriting an enchantment spell scroll will drastically increase the chances of getting a supportive divine spell scroll, such as sacrifice or grace
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Ex. Having Athena mentor you will increase the chances of getting sanctum, cocoon, atonement, and other risk/reward or defensive divine spell scrolls
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All other divine spell scrolls will still have a relatively low chance to receive
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Perhaps relics could also be added in the mix to determine what you get? No idea if that would make sense though
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This system is meant to allow for some player agency, allowing them to have higher chances of obtaining their desired divine spell while still being able to get other types. It also brings more use for Lost/Ancient spell scrolls and god souls while preventing the potential issue of the current ability scroll pool becoming diluted with the addition of divine spells.
❤️🩹 New Debuff: Life Debt (Anti-Heal)
TL;DR: Debuff similar to injury that gets reduced through external healing. Depending on the source, may grant special effects upon being cleared.
A few divine spells may inflict Life Debt onto you or others, a debuff that taints the afflicted’s spirit energy with an unstable mix of the vitality-oriented spirit energy and the destruction-oriented magic/chaos energy.
- That’s just a potential explanation for it; I think this debuff shouldn’t be limited to only paladins. At the same time, I don’t think it should be too common either.
Life Debt reduces the maximum health the affected entity can heal to based on its value, working similar to Injury, but does not change the current health the receiver is currently at. It appears on the player’s health bar similar to how Injury is shown, except it’s a translucent overlay (so that it still shows current/missing health within its range) with a gradient of dark teal and the affected entity’s spirit energy color.
Healing received (other than natural regeneration) that overflows into the health range affected by Life Debt will instead be absorbed by your Life Debt, subtracting the healing within its range from your total value of Life Debt.
- This means that Life Debt and healing sources (healing potions, regeneration builds, and healing abilities) would both be counters for each other.
It can also be cleared by either waiting until its duration is up or reducing its value to 0.
- If it’s a special Life Debt (Ex. from Atonement), it may also be able to be cleared through other, special methods, and may grant unique effects upon being cleared this way.
Multiple Life Debt effects can stack with one another, and receiving healing prioritizes clearing the oldest effect.
❓ Why in THEOS’ name would you make the healing scale off current health?
TL;DR: The goal of scaling based on current health is to ensure that builds with high investment in offensive stats will have low healing while still keeping high defense builds in check by having the drawback stat (which is typically on high defense gear/painites) lower overall healing. It also ensures that players at low health will not be able to recover as quickly or easily so battles aren’t drawn out too long.
Some of the healing from divine spells scale based on the user’s current health instead of maximum health. This may be controversial, but this is for several reasons:
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High power and glass cannon builds won’t be able to have both good healing and high power at the same time.
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While maximum defense builds would seem busted with this, they typically have very high drawback, disincentivizing attacking (potentially further decreasing DPS) and getting you to low health faster, which means lower healing output in later stages of fights (where healing would typically matter most).
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Healing would be reduced drastically at low health, so you wouldn’t be able to immediately recover a ton of health like you would with a healing potion.
- In team fights, this scaling can allow you to focus the opposing side’s healer(s) to reduce their healing, which can add a layer of strategy and team coordination.
- It also keeps the ability to rebound from dangerously low health exclusive to healing potions only.
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Still stays true to Vetex’s intended use cases for defense and regeneration (Defense is meant more for “burst” survivability while regeneration is meant more for sustained survivability). Also makes gear stat investment far more interesting and varied than just stacking haste if one were to build around these.
- Defense would increase maximum healing potential and have better healing in short/early parts of battles
- Regeneration is better for sustained and consistent healing throughout fights
- Haste is good for improving uptime and frequency of healing spells
❓ Why add this?
As far as I know as of writing this, paladin has no current or planned exclusive content. In its, current state, one could argue that it’s a watered-down version of mage, despite its access to rites. Sure, it has its cool imbues, but can that really be considered “exclusive” if all other hybrids receive this ability too? Additionally, at least from my view, there’s a lot of missed potential for magic and spirit to interact more.
The Book of Athena has several mentions of combining spirit energy with magic energy, with one of them stating that magic cannot heal unless combined with spirit energy. Going back to paladin’s imbues, it shows they are already perfectly capable of mixing magic and spirit together. It wouldn’t be unrealistic for a paladin to mix both together to create brand new spells, and this would actually be an amazing opportunity to form new moves that combine the aspects of both energies.
This way, Vetex (who is known to love magic) can enable a way for magic to still be able to do practically anything (albeit with spirit’s help) and paladins can receive their own unique exclusive content.
Divine Spell Concepts
All numbers/values are mostly just for example purposes; I didn’t want to invest too much time in balancing something that likely won’t ever be seen by Vetex, let alone added. Plus, if it were theoretically added, the dev/balance team would likely change/rework all the numbers.
Obviously, I can’t just suggest divine spells and not give any concepts of them. A few of these spells even have minor Greek references.
I tried my best to make them all unique, interesting, but somewhat complex with features/mechanics that set them apart from regular spells and rites. I also tried to encompass the unique properties of both magic and spirit but simultaneously tried not to force it or lean too much in either direction.
Here’s a few of the many I’ve created (with pictures brought to you from a collab between my shaky hand and my mouse):
Judgement
Judgement
Vulnerability/Delayed Damage Amplification Nuke
“Separate a part of the target’s spirit energy from their body as a special form of ghost, bound by your own magic energy, and leaving it vulnerable before it returns to its owner to transfer the damage dealt to them."
Cooldown: 90s (Begins when spell ends, 45s if you miss or the receiver has grab immunity)
📖 Details
Works like a convoluted snare with higher (infinite in theory) damage potential, especially with team coordination. However, it deals no damage by itself and is more akin to delayed damage amplification or vulnerability. This spell is also considered a grab.
Connects a chain of the user’s magic and spirit energy to the nearest enemy (excluding summons) and pulls out a special “ghost” of the victim in the color of their (the victim’s) spirit energy and leaves it floating at their position from when the spell took place, chained by chains of the user’s magic energy.
- The victim is knocked far away in the process, but afterward can still move around, perform actions, deal damage, and take damage as normal while the “ghost” is active.
While the “ghost” persists, it can be attacked by any player (aside from the victim, their party members, natural damage sources such as lava and weather, and NPCs that aren’t summons) and will record a tally of the total damage dealt to it. It will also have a translucent spirit and magic energy chain connecting the “ghost” to the victim it belongs to. If the victim dies while the “ghost” is active, the ghost dissipates.
- If the ghost takes damage that does not originate from the user of the spell, records only 66.7% of the damage dealt.
After its duration is up, it automatically returns to the victim, dealing critical damage to them based on a percentage of the damage tally.
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(Ex. The “ghost” records 4,000 damage dealt to it in total, and deals 800 critical damage to the target)
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To prevent Acheron level, absolutely catastrophic numbers, this could maybe have a reduced tally at some point, possibly based on the user’s level or total number of stat points invested into spirit/magic. (Ex. Any damage past (Level * 40) will only record 33.4% of the damage dealt)
If the victim comes into contact with their “ghost” before the duration is up, the spell ends early and deals its critical damage immediately, preventing further damage tallying.
- Because of this, things like Barrier, Nebula, Construct, crowd control debuffs (slows + stuns), and knockback may somewhat synergize with this spell.
- The user can also recast the spell to force the ghost to return to its owner and end the spell early as well.
🗒️ Side Notes
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According to the Book of Athena, ghosts are only able to manifest with high magic energy. This spell spins this and creates a special kind of “ghost” from a living being using their + the caster’s spirit energy and sustaining/trapping it with the caster’s magic energy. (this might be a massive stretch)
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NPCs by default use deep blue (neutral spirit energy) unless they are set to use another color (such as Dusk using purple). This means this spell could also be used to check the mentality of non-spirit user NPCs, which could be a potentially neat hidden lore detail.
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This could also be good as a sort of DPS check test dummy.
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I will also acknowledge that the damage this can deal seems utterly absurd, but keep in mind:
- The victim can pick their “ghost” up to take damage and end the spell early
- You would have to be actively attacking the “ghost”
- Even then, the damage from your moves would be less effective overall considering the “ghost” only transfers a fraction of the damage it takes
- You still need to get value from landing this spell in the first place
- Most absurd numbers would likely come from teams of players, and let’s be real if you’re fighting a 1v3 or something… you’re not winning anyway
📝 Customization
Duration
- Affects the duration of the “ghost” and the percentage of the tally it deals as damage. Higher duration results in less damage. Minimum could be like 6s with 30% of the tally, and maximum could be like 12s with 17.5% of the tally.
Ultimate Art
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- Increases the duration of the “ghost” and the percentage of the tally it deals as damage at the cost of more energy, and a much longer cooldown.
Cure
Cure
Teamwide Debuff Cleanse
“Use magic energy in conjunction with spirit energy to destroy harmful magic effects and accelerate the body’s ability to recover from ailments for you and nearby allies."
Cooldown: 60s
📖 Details
A support spell that reduces the durations of negative status effects (excluding certain debuffs, such as Life Debt) for you and nearby allies (including summons) in a large range, by a percentage of each debuff’s respective current duration plus a flat number of seconds.
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Spell potency and AoE is increased the longer it’s charged.
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There’s a cap of 5 mins cleared for each debuff, for each instance of this spell.
If a debuff is able to be cleared by the user’s magic through flaunting, it is instead outright removed completely. Additionally, the user’s magic cannot clear status effects applied by said magic if they are always guaranteed to apply on any hit.
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(Ex. Water Cure will completely cleanse Singed, Seared, Scalded, Melting, Petrified, Charred, Corroding, Scorched, and Burning for you and all nearby allies. However, it cannot clear or reduce the duration of Soaked.)
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Additionally, this spell is able to immediately cleanse Water Poisoning for you and nearby allies, regardless of the magic used.
Additionally, anybody affected by this spell is granted the unique buff Immunized, which decreases the durations of incoming debuffs by 33.4%. Duration of this buff additionally scales with charge up time, potency slider, and potency% from jewels. This effect’s duration can be stacked with multiple uses of this spell, up to maybe like 1 minute maximum.
📝 Customization
Potency
- Affects debuff cleansing potency and buff duration. Better debuff cleansing results in a shorter Immunized duration.
- Could maybe range from like debuff cleansing that’s 50% as potent with 20s of the buff to debuff cleansing that’s 100% as potent with 10s of the buff.
*
Ultimate Art
- Increases the spell’s potency, Immunized duration, and AoE at the cost of more energy, and a much longer cooldown.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice
Teamwide Healing via Health Transfer
“Combine magic’s destructiveness and spirit’s healing potential to distribute your own life force to nearby allies."
Cooldown: 30s
📖 Details
Upon casting, uses both the user’s magic and spirit energy to consume a percentage of their current health. Afterwards, evenly distributes the amount consumed between all nearby allied players.
- (Ex. Consume 20% of 4000 current health to heal 4 nearby allies for 200 health)
If a healed ally is currently in combat, using this spell will put the user in combat as well.
Healing could possibly scale with potency% from jewels at reduced efficiency.
This spell is able to proc drawback, draining the user’s health before healing.
🗒️ Side Notes
- This spell is meant to have much higher ally healing than the others. This is because:
- This spell does NOT alter your party’s total health pool, only transferring health.
- I guess it could technically raise it slightly if you have a resistance aura/enchantment buff active but that’s negligible
- Using this spell will cause your healing to be reduced with most other divine spells, as it reduces your own current health.
- Decreases your own self-survivability.
- This spell does NOT alter your party’s total health pool, only transferring health.
📝 Customization
Potency
- Affects health drain and healing potency. More health drain results in more healing.
- Could range from 10% of current health to 30% of current health.
Limit
- Affects the maximum number of allies that can be healed.
- Could range from something like 1 ally to 4 allies.
Prioritize Injured Allies
- A toggle that affects whether or not the spell will prioritize healing allies with lower current HP%. If not, prioritizes the closest allies instead.
Ultimate Art
- Increases the health drain and healing potency at the cost of more energy, and a much longer cooldown.
Sanctum
Sanctum
AoE Teamwide Damage Mitigation with Delayed Risk
“Use your soul to extend your magic and spirit energy outward, creating a large, spherical shell of divine energy around you to protect you and allies within, absorbing and converting a portion of damage dealt to your party as life debt for you."
Cooldown: 10s (Begins after the spell ends)
📖 Details
While this spell is held, the user continuously drains energy to project a large sphere of magic and spirit energy around them which can be entered and exited freely by others, regardless of whether they’re an enemy or ally.
- The AoE of this sphere is slightly smaller than the size of annihilation’s pulses. It would have translucent VFX and less particles overall to reduce visual clutter.
When the user or their allies take damage within the AoE, the damage they receive is absorbed based on potency from customization. However, the user of the spell will receive Life Debt equal to a base 150% of the absorbed damage, with a duration of 180s. (Refreshes back to 180s each time it’s increased further)
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The percentage is divided by a value based on the user’s magic’s resistance aura affinity (see potential formula below), meaning Life Debt inflicted will be higher or lower depending on the magic used.
- Life Debt Received = AbsorbedDMG * ([1 + ResistanceAffinity] / 2)
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(Ex. A metal sanctum would inflict 125% of absorbed damage as Life Debt and a glass sanctum would inflict 250% of absorbed damage as Life Debt)
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This spell’s damage absorption doesn’t stack with multiple simultaneous users. If there are multiple users of this spell nearby, prioritizes the closest allied player to absorb damage and convert to Life Debt.
If the user has a total Life Debt value equal to 100% of their maximum health (or higher) while casting this spell, the spell will immediately cancel.
During this spell’s duration, the user is able to move around freely. However, their movement speed is halved, and they cannot t-jump or dash.
📝 Customization
Potency
- Affects the percentage of damage absorbed. Higher damage absorbed results in less damage taken by the user/allies, but higher values of Life Debt inflicted onto the user.
- Could range between 20% to 60% damage absorption.
Size
- Affects the size of the shell and continuous energy drain. Larger sphere results in higher energy drain.
Shape
- Changes the shape of the blasts. This spell is able to utilize a unique feather shape.
- Could affect the AoE, damage, and speed of the blasts or just be completely cosmetic.
Casting Style
- As the user is able to move around during this spell, it would have special casting animations that don’t animate the user’s legs.
Ultimate Art
- Increases AoE, damage absorption, and slightly reduces Life Debt received at the cost of more energy, and a much longer cooldown.
Grace
Grace
AoE Sustained Healing/Damage
“Leap high into the air and unleash your divinity as a mixture of magic and spirit energy radiating from you, constantly healing nearby allies and damaging nearby enemies."
Cooldown: 18s (Begins after spell ends)
📖 Details
Upon casting, the user jumps high into the air (similarly to annihilation) and sprouts large wings made from their magic and spirit energy. (This acts as the spell’s startup delay, which is similar in length to annihilation’s)
- Behind the user’s head is a large magic circle, mimicking a halo.
Afterward, while the spell is held, it will leave the user vulnerable in the air, continuously drain their energy, and will constantly radiate a large aura around them that slightly heals nearby allies (including summons) based on the user’s current health multiplied by the user’s current energy percentage.
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(Ex. Base healing is 0.1% of the user’s current health and the user currently has 68% energy. Nearby allies will heal for 0.068% of the user’s current health.)
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Nearby enemies will instead constantly take low damage based on their distance to the user.
This spell ends when the user stops holding it or when their energy is insufficient, and also has longer end-lag than usual, with the user’s wings having a chosen fading style from customization.
📝 Customization
Healing
- Affects damage and healing potency. More healing results in less damage and vice versa.
- Healing could range from 0.1% of current health to 0.15% of current health. Could maybe just be a flat amount.
Wing Shape
- Changes the appearance of the wings. Could include angelic (siren style) wings, dragon wings, pixie (Allanon style) wings, bat wings, butterfly wings, and whale flippers. (to reference whales being able to fly)
- Could affect healing, AoE, damage, energy drain, and initial jump height, or just be completely cosmetic.
Fading Style
- Changes how the wings disappear. Could including the user’s wings folding back in, bursting/dissolving into feathers/magic, or simply fading out.
Ultimate Art
- Increases the damage, AoE, healing potency, and end-lag at the cost of more energy, and a much longer cooldown.
Cocoon
Cocoon
High Risk Self-Healing
“Encase yourself in magic and spirit energy for some time to heal your own wounds, leaving you vulnerable to attacks."
Cooldown: 40s (Begins after spell ends)
📖 Details
Upon casting, the user floats a short distance off the ground and encases themself in a cocoon of magic and spirit energy.
While this spell is held, the user will continuously drain their energy, cannot move, and will suffer a -70% resistance debuff that’s divided by the magic’s resistance aura affinity, making them far more vulnerable to damage. Additionally, the spell lasts for a minimum of 6s.
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The resistance debuff directly affects the damage reduction (DR) percentage, not the stat itself: if the user has a +20% boost from resistance, it will be lowered down to -50%. (Disregarding magic resistance aura affinity)
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As stated earlier, the resistance debuff is affected by the user’s magic’s resistance aura affinity, meaning it will be higher or lower depending on the magic used.
- (Ex. A metal cocoon would have -50% resistance DR and a glass cocoon would have -350% resistance DR
)
- (Ex. A metal cocoon would have -50% resistance DR and a glass cocoon would have -350% resistance DR
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Energy drain and scaling healing is increased while minimum spell duration is reduced with higher dexterity, at a 25% stat efficiency.
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Additionally, while charging this spell, you will be highlighted for nearby players (similar to the on-hit highlight effect for sensing).
Once the spell is released or if the user takes more than 5% of their current health as damage, the cocoon bursts open, releasing the user and regenerating health for them.
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If the cocoon forcibly bursts open due to taking damage while charging, the user will only receive 20% of the healing.
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The health regenerated scales with current health, based on a base percent plus an additional percentage that scales with the total charge duration, similarly to an S-curve or something. (Healing ramp-up starts off low then shoots up before leveling off)
- If the user is out of combat, the healing will switch to scale on maximum health instead of current health to allow for better recovery between battles.
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Every 2s of charging is around 10% maximum energy consumed. Do note that the scaling of healing is gradual, not stepwise at 2s, and this table does not account for base healing.
| Total Spell Duration | Total Healing (CurrentHP%) | Average Rate of Change within 2s |
|---|---|---|
| 0s | 0% | +0 |
| 2s | 1% | +1% |
| 4s | 2.5% | +1.5% |
| 6s | 5% | +2.5% |
| 8s | 9.5% | +4.5% |
| 10s | 18% | +8.5% |
| 12s | 28% | +10% |
| 14s | 36.5% | +8.5% |
| 16s | 41% | +4.5% |
| 18s | 43.5% | +2.5% |
| 20s | 45% | +1.5% |
| 22s+ | 46%, 47%, 48%… | +1%/2s |
📝 Customization
Base Healing
- Affects base healing potency and scaling healing potency. More base healing results in less healing from charging up.
- Ex.
- Max slider: 5% of current health as healing at base & 20% scaling healing potency (mediocre healing at base, far less healing with charging)
- Min slider: No healing at base & 100% scaling healing potency (zero healing at base, but scales far better with charging)
Shape
- Affects the appearance of the cocoon. Could include orb, cube, heart, star, imprisoned (chains wrapped around the user), and egg (as a reference to Phanes) shapes.
- Could affect base healing, scaling healing, energy drain, and resistance debuff, or just be completely cosmetic.
Casting Style
- Has most of the usual default casting style options, aside from ones that are just a static pose. (Ex. Right Hand Up)
- Only has the initial casting pose until the cocoon bursts, during which the casting animation will play.
- Could include exclusive animations, such as curling up into a ball before unleashing upon ending the spell.
Ultimate Art
- Increases the overall healing potency and reduces the resistance debuff at the cost of more energy, and a much longer cooldown.
[Reached the word limit, more in the reply below]
could def do with more offensive ones