I desperately don’t want spirit weapons just to be weapons that scale off of the vitality stat and drain health, so I’m going to suggest a possible, more unique way it could work.
The Concept
At Redwake, there should be a decently prominent location where Redwake’s Shaman lives. Talking to them will have them say something like. “I am a shaman who uses spirits and souls to do my bidding, I could teach you to do the same, but I warn you, only those of truly strong will may learn this power”
and they will give you a quest to defeat 15 enemies of any sort (Example)
Once completing the quest, they will offer to teach you to manifest your own powers as a spirit weapon.
Customisation
After learning how to use spirit weapons, you may go to any Shaman and open up a menu which looks similar to the magic/FS customisation menu. From that you should be able to choose one of your unlocked spirit weapon slots. (Similar to magic/FS)
When customising a spirit weapon you can both customise the overall weapon and its skills.
Overall weapon customisation
- Shape:
As you put more points into Vitality, more shapes with more powerful buffs/debuffs should be available. The “shapes” just mean the form the spirits are manifested in.
For knight builds, they shall be able to pick between different weapon shapes to manifest their spirit weapon such as sword, spear, trident, shield.
For warden builds, they shall be able to manifest spirits directly, leading to much more abstract shapes such as orb, figure or aura.
For paladin builds, their spirit weapons should be manifested as copies of Magic circles, staffs and tomes.
For juggernaut builds, their “shapes” are more like, fist, arm, head, leg, foot, chest (Where the spirit is manifested on their body, people are going to really take this the wrong way though)
-
Colour
This is just a cosmetic change, allowing the user to change the colour of the spirits they manifest. -
Passive drain.
You should be able to select the passive drain that the spirit weapon has when equipped.
(Note that Warden has the passive drain halved)
This will be on a slider between something like 0.1% Hp drained per second up to something like 2.5% per second. The higher the passive drain, the more damage the weapon does with all skills. -
Effect
The effect that the weapon applies when attacks hit. You should be able to choose from:
All base magic status effects EXCLUDING Stuns, Crystalised and anything else which turns out to be overpowered.
Bleeding
Knockback
Health drain (Where 35% of the damage dealt is healed by the user) -
The name of the spirit weapon.
SImilar to selecting the name of skills.
Skills
Skills would come in all forms, blasts, beams, modes, slams, throws and grabs to name a few.
They will also include abilities such as self-buffs.
Every build will get access to M1s which have a small chance to apply the spirit weapons effect.
They will get 5 customisable skill slots, where for each skill you shall be able to select a type (Similar to selecting blast, explosion, jump, beam for magic, except this list is probably much larger as it takes inspiration from other routes.)
You should be able to customise things such as:
- Skill name
- Hp drained when used (In exchange for much higher damage)
- Regular values for skills such as size, explosion size, number of hits.
- Anything else that I have missed.
Other things
Shamans should be found on these islands:
Redwake
Cirrus Island (Shamans are not mages so doesn’t change the whole Arish Vista being the only mage thing)
Ravenna (Tiberia OR somewhere on the mountain)
Shell Island
You should only be able to change your spirit weapon at a shaman.
Damage scales off of all stats, instead of all stats but vitality.
You need points in vitality to unlock skill types.
Lost skill scrolls should be a thing eventually.
Awakenings
Hybrid Vitality builds:
Second awakening unlocks the second spirit weapon slot + 10% less damage is taken.
Warden:
First awakening unlocks the second spirit weapon slot + 10% less damage is taken.
Second awakening unlocks the third spirit weapon slot + 10% less damage is taken.