[QoW - Spoilers] World mechanics and Side characters

Since I'm done with the dev. edit phase for the Quest of Words: The Gloam of the Goddess, I've decided to start some character sketch work for some of the foes and possible friends I'm going to need for book 3 while I wait for my editor to finish up his end of things.

For the first chapter or two, I'm going to need a couple of foes for Jax to encounter during her arena battle.

But before we get into that, revealing some hidden mechanics:

I've mentioned in the story already that there is a difference in how Dolilim and the rest of kind are built in terms of what abilities they can take. And that is this: They never need to chant anything in order to activate skills. I'm sure most of you have picked up on this already.

But what does that mean for everyone else? Particularly warrior types? Does that mean they have to cast spells to get their active abilities to work? 

Well, yes. They do. 

As a result, they place a very high emphasis on passives. However, there is a hard limit in how many passive abilities a person can acquire. This varies based on Class, though. Warrior subtypes get the most passives. Mixed types get less. Mage types get the fewest. You can unlock more passives by obtaining more Words (one slot per 10).

I should mention, abilities which modify others generally do not count as passives. You are effectively spending one skill point to buttress another, rather like an edit. So if you want the edit to work, you have to say the Words which you added. This is a flexible concept.

I'm toying with a few ways for how this will ultimately work, particularly for melee specialists.

One idea I had was to create a skill which 'holds' a precast spell ready for later use. So all you need to do is say a keyphrase and you're good. This would hold a number of activations. I think this would be a pretty common workaround to the spell casting limitation. It could even be common practice to purchase a separate skill of this type for each 'spell' a warrior wants to be able to cast quickly. I could even see there being a number of personal 'styles' for this kind of thing or a specific to a person's Clan. Obviously, Sherr Hess never had anything like this... because she was a drunken fuck-up.

Another would be to focus heavily on self-buffs instead of big alpha strikes. That way, you could cast your spells ahead of time and hold them through the fight.

Also, given that each spell is its own skill in which you can acquire levels, the normal way of doing things would be to practice the skill to the point where it's trivial to use in combat. More, in such a culture, Donum's style of picking up stuff by the seat of his pants and actually trying to use it right away would be considered gonzo nutbag crazy.

If anyone has anything more to add to this topic, I'd like to hear it. 

But the reason I bring it up is that I want Jax to fight a couple of guys who are primarily melee focused or mixed (not like Sherr Hess was). I have a lot of mages I'm going to need to build as well, but that will be later on in the book.

The first guy I'm thinking about will be someone who is focused on creating the biggest alpha strike he possibly can. If he hits you, you're pretty much dead. This guy I want Jax to defeat. But what should the alpha strike look like? What's its theme? I don't know yet. Suggestions welcome.

The second one will be more of a hard counter to Jax. Not entirely sure what that will look like yet... but she loses this fight. Her character arc in this novel will involve overcoming the challenge he represents. I'll probably make another post or two related to this topic in the coming weeks.

Anyway, I'm just throwing things at the wall at this stage. Seeing what sticks. That kind of thing. Feel free to discuss.