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[PTTG??]

Ever since the secrets system was introduced I've thought of ways to modify them to achieve some practical effects:

- More book variety: right now, 95% of books either contain the great and terrible secrets of the nature of life and death, or else are talking about the books that contain the great and terrible secrets of the nature of life and death.

- More historic variety: the positions that necromancers hold in history as powerful, self-motivated individuals is very interesting and shouldn't be limited to one kind of bad guy.

- More enemies for PCs- forts or adventurers.

- More abilities for PCs to make use of (trapping an alchemist and supplying him with lead bars might be very fun, as would finding a pyromancer tome)

So with that in mind, here's what I'm planning:
   -New Secrets:
      
      =Philosophy:
         A basic concept, these are wandering philosophers that will write long rambling philosophical texts, and counter texts, and counter-counter texts. They would be interesting as just background historical features and don't need to have special effects, which would make them good proof-of-concept dudes. Importantly, they won't dispise all life. I'm not sure if they will try to build towers or not; ideally they would live in towns like anyone else but just wandering should be fine too.
      
      =Prophets:
         If you want to make a distinction, Prophets could effectively be Philosophers except exclusively divinely(/demoniacally) inspired. The ability to conscript living cultists (unlike zombies) and raise towers (temples, if you like), would make them interesting, especially if they aren't automatically OPPOSED_TO_LIFE.
   
      =Pyromancer:
         [IS_SPHERE:FIRE]
         [IS_SECRET_GOAL:FIRE]
         [LIKES_SPHERE:JUST_GUESS]
         I'm assuming that these both use the regular spheres. Pyromancers would gain immunity to fire and at least firebreath, if not other abilities such as remote ignition. They, unlike Necromancers, are not unaging nor self-supporting.
      
      =Alchemy:
         Would have the targeted ability to set the material of items to others- capable of turning metals to gold, and flesh to stone. Not sure how doable this is, but some reactions can be done along these lines I'm sure. Again not naturally immortal. I'm wondering how to make use of this guy in a historical sense.
         
      =War Mastery:
         Supernatural battle prowess; the books use terms like "tactics" or "ambush". War Masters get stat boosts and longevity, but aren't immortal in any way. They also get great ability to learn and teach armed combat skills.
         
      =Martial Art:
         Unarmed combat equivalent of the above. I'm not sure how smart history figures are at using unarmed combat if they're best at that. I just think mystical easternish monks getting into historical battles would be nice. They could be unaging, which seems to fit monks.
         
   -Change Necromancy:
      Make it spread slightly slower to counter the immortality effects, and make raising corpses less effective somehow- perhaps corpses still fall apart at about the same speed as an ordinary living person? Just something to keep the numbers down so that hunting down a necromancer doesn't involve one turn of getting gummed to death by 3,000 zombies.
      
So what I need to know is, is this impossible? Would simply copying dragon fire breath to Pyromancers work? And can reactions like the Alchemist's abilities be done? Oh, and what does the [IS_SECRET_GOAL:] tag accept as arguments, and what does it do?

[i2amroy]

Very cool ideas, though sadly they run into one large problem, the fact that currently the only valid [IS_SECRET_GOAL:X] token is IMMORTALITY.

[PTTG??]

Well, that's not essential, I think. Pyromancers could just seek immortality by starting fires.

[Dunamisdeos]

Pyromancers could just seek immortality by starting fires.

I know I do.

[davros]

Look up dwarf chocolate mod. It has all this and more.

[IndigoFenix]

Unfortunately, there's a lot of limitations on how secrets as of yet.  While you could add just about any ability or effect to a secret book, actually getting interesting effects in worldgen is tricky.  For instance:

No goals aside from IMMORTALITY.
If they can't make zombies, they won't make a tower.
If they don't live in a tower, they won't teach the secret to students.
If they don't have certain necromancer-related tags, zombies will attack them the moment they spawn.
Any tower built by a necromancer (read: any tower) will be filled with zombies.

...Well those are the only real limitations, but it kind of puts a damper on non-zombie based secrets (that spread beyond a single individual - lucky slab-finders can learn any secret, but they won't do any of the tower-based things like visit fortresses, etc.).  You COULD do something to greatly weaken the zombie-making effectiveness in practice, though, even to the point of making the zombies completely helpless or die instantly.  Also, because most immortality-seekers will keep learning secrets until they actually find one that makes them immortal, you could fill up the world with secrets and wait for a single individual to learn a whole bunch of them, become a necromancer (or custom zombie-maker), build a tower, and start a multi-disciplinary university.  Filled with zombies, naturally.

[PTTG??]

Blast.

I guess the best thing to try would be to make a few different kinds of slave/zombie makers. Priests with Acolytes, somebody else who ressurects people in a "good" way, maybe someone who makes robot servants out of rocks. Philosphers are right out, unfortunately.

Thanks, this gives me some ideas.