I've been so busy that I didn't get a chance to finalize the results of the second MSS contest.
As a reminder:
Entries
#1)
Class: Overdriver
Category : Support
Description:
Support type adventurer that is capable of buffing one or more stats OR senses far beyond the normal range: physical output, physical speed, magical output, hearing, smell, sight, touch, taste. These buffs can also be applied to enemies in such a way that they effectively become debuffs. For example, o buffing an enemy's sense of sight so that they become extremely photosensitive.
- buffing an enemy's sense of smell to receive a scent attack. o buffing an enemy's speed so that they become unable to control their movements.
- buffing an enemy's physical output such that their muscles burst, bones break, or tendons tear. Effect is only applied while Overdriver is looking directly at the recipient of the buff/debuff.
It can be thought of as an "empowering eye"; target can be changed as swiftly as moving the eye, but only applies to one target at a time. Edit: forgot to mention defense as a buffable stat, chanting required for changing/adding/canceling buff, number and strength of buffs applicable increase as mastery increases, mana consumption relative to strength of buff decreases as mastery increases. Peripheral vision acuity needs to be trained. There could be some surprise buffs
#2)
Class : Artificer
Category: Specialist
Description:
This class of adventurer is based entirely around their kit as a walking, talking one man week-long nuke. Physically, Artificers have some of the worst stats. Their agility might be above average, but they dont have any of the other required stats to use it in combat, agility is just because they're skinny, and they have no physical might. Instead, the artificer creates "armaments" which are stored in the passive effect of the class skill, "Armament Domain" at a cost of locking away mana, quantity dependant on the armament.
These armaments are predominantly long-medium range, although all armaments can be tweaked, and fall into 3 main categories of Beam, Mana Plasma and Projectile. How it works: The class has a super large mana pool; think one or more potion grades higher than normal; in order to sustain the combined firepower of their armaments. They are however banned from learning any magic spells above the most basic rank, but the mana efficiency of their armaments is higher than normal. This makes them good damage dealers, but due to their higher mana consumption than normal classes, drawn out fights are more costly, in the literal sense that more mana potions will be used. Simply put, this class is high investment, high reward, but high risk, since if an armament is damaged it has to be physically repaired, and armaments require costly raw materials to manufacture. Furthermore, only the artificer can create and use their own armaments. (some exceptions, but that's a skill :3)
Theoretically speaking, the artificer can become infinitely powerful with infinite armaments. This is an engineering class, and most of the aspects of the skills and armaments are intended to be tweakable by the artificer through different materials and mana circuits and control over their own mana usage and veins and etc This might leave the assumption that this class specialises in building the biggest gun possible, and building several and using them sacrificially, but quite the opposite, due to the active effect of the class skill "Armament Domain". All armaments can be suspended midair within the Artificers "Domain", or simply their active range. Any armaments suspended by the skill drain a small amount of mana while suspended, follow the artificer by default, can be relocated within his domain at will, and have a movement and rotational speed logarithmically dependant on their weight and size.
Heavy stuff moves and turns slower, but with diminishing returns in a sense. I envision this to be how you can integrate Magic, Science and maths together seamlessly in this world, by showing how magic is itself a form of science, using precision maths. I implore you to read some of the attached examples for skills that could be part of this class' kit, in particular the signature skills "Hellfire" and "Siege", available for Siege Artificers. Lore of the Class: This class is immensely connected to the Systema, much more than other adventurer classes. Most of the class's skills rely on the Systema for regulation and without it the adventurer is almost useless. This does however open up many avenues to observe the capabilities of the System to a much larger degree, which ties into my previous contest entry, the Systema Research Chapel. If you read the flavour text of some of the skills for this class, you might be able to figure out where the systema is involved in their maintenance :)
#3)
Class : Dryad
Category: Specialist
Description: Further ranks may differ depending on the abilities and behavior of the dryad itself. Examples further in the description. Type: Specialist Dryads are plantlike humanoids, whose purpose is being custodians of nature and guardians of their domain. Physically weak and brittle, they rely on plant life around them as a means of combat, depending on their magic might they can command and create bigger, stronger or more specialized lifeforms.
Abilities:
1) Plant manipulation – control plants directly.
2) Plant modification – to bolster their prowess they have to constantly modify and combine natural plants into new forms, can include plants with healing properties, poisons, plants with sleeping gas and effects close to alchemically made potions or giant trees that can be used as defensive weapons by the dryad.
3) Graft – temporarily merge with a plant to gain stats and/or abilities depending on the properties of the original plant. Depending on the size movement can be disabled.
4) Dryad’s domain - allows them to, with time, attune surrounding land to their mana, and manipulation in this domain becomes more precise and increases in scale, that makes fighting dryads on their “turf” a bad idea, in turn a person can drastically the land or the opposite is possible the mana in the land can change the dryad making them the personification of that place.
Examples:
Carnivorous dryad – residing in the jungles with little light and poor soil, carnivorous dryads use chemical lures to bait people and animals alike into a death trap, where digestive acid and barbs are the main weapons of the dryads. Elder dryads – barely changed, they prefer to cultivate plants and aid animal life to prosper, rarely using their powers to change the domain and living most of the things to the natural order of life. Can have a settlement under their protection, implying that they don’t destroy nature in extreme fashion.
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Dryad Votes: 10 62.5%
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Artificer Votes: 3 18.8%
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Overdriver Votes: 3 18.8%
Creator of the Artificer class; the skills I reference in the description are available on the discord server, if anyone wants to take a look.
Yea it was a bit large and i I didn't want to change your description of the skills. You can post them here if you like though!
Signature Skill - Hellfire: call forth all of your Artifice Armaments in a grid pattern above an area within range. You can designate clear zones in this array. Armaments will be locked in place facing down with a firing arc that allows them to fire upon any location underneath the entire array, but will not be moveable. For as long as this ability is active, weapons ignore their distance to the Artificer. Upon cancellation of the ability, all armaments attempt to store themselves in the artificer's storage space for a fixed amount each (instead of a quantity relative to the armament like normal), but if impossible they teleport to within 10 meters of the Artificer. The ability drains a fixed amount of mana calculated from 30% of the aggregate consumption of all the weapons. The ability automatically cancels if the Artificer is knocked unconscious. All Armaments gain a lower shield that interlocks, in the shape of a tiling pattern, which can be shot through by the Armaments, and defends against a small amount of incoming damage (low strength). The shields of weapons do not extend over other armaments, so the array can be individually targeted and weakened, and specified clear zones of the array pose a weakness as the Shields do not cover side attacks. The armaments gain 3 times damage and fire rate, all weapons have their effective range increased to the necessary distance to participate in the array at the cost of their potency if necessary, and they fire indiscriminately at anything the Artificer would consider an entity, friend or foe. Entity is used instead of "moving being" to include golems and immobile constructs. The array relays information back to the artificer, the precision and detail of which increases if Sensory armaments are present in the array, and the artificer gains an innate understanding of the battlefield covered by their array.
Support-specialist-incompatible (S2I) ability - Siege: Summon all of your armaments simultaneously. Your locked mana is unlocked for the duration of this ability. All mana costs related to the armaments are reduced by a fixed percentage, between 10% and 95% dependant on the duration of the ability, decided by the artificer, scaling linearly from a minimum of one hour to a maximum of one week. The ability cannot be cancelled prematurely. This ability cooldown is thrice the active time of the ability multiplied by the 1+mana reduction value obtained in decimal. For example, one week of the ability would have a cooldown of 3*1.95 weeks = 5.85 weeks, and one hour would have 3*1.1 hours: 3.3 hours.
I literally have a 7 page document on the siege artificer, I had a lot of fun writing it.
Given enough time and mana potions, even a mid level rank 1 combat artificer can be a lethal threat to rank 3 enemies