[Lewdcifer]

Alright. You might've read the name of the thread, and you might just have thought to yourself: "But Kiseki, what are you thinking?! This would be OP!", or something along those lines.
Honestly? Don't blame ya for thinking that! But if you thought I wouldn't make a wall of text to really put things into perspective and maybe even convince you...

Then boy howdy, you're mistaken.

(I've also included a TL;DR at the end of this, but please don't skip the wall of text!)

Implementing Spellcasting to Existing Materials

Let us begin. Firstly, I would like to address the concern of balance. To do so, I would like to mention two specific materials that already enable spellcasting: Conduiz and Rotwood. In theory, the worst it could have possibly gotten would have been with Conduiz. The ability to cast lightning spells with most of the nowadays used weapons, and possibly land a lightning critical, is perhaps the more concerning possibility of all spellcasting domains. In spite of this, there has been no trend of Conduiz builds being oppressive in their execution. Mayhaps one or two builds that deal a lot of damage, but nothing too bad; this is especially noticeable with the recent change to lightning criticals and guile, which have further reduced the power of Conduiz builds.
Rotwood... well. There aren't that many Huggessoan domain spells, and the few that exist are not good enough to consider Rotwood anything past underpowered (i.e. Eternal Darkness, or Void Assassin spells, though the latter would not have access to void energy and thus lack their usual power). However, that is a different problem, and the topic for a different thread. I will mention, however, that Rotwood being kept to wood-only weapons and unable to be crafted as a material kit is most certainly not warranted.

If materials such as Magmic, Arctic, Galdric, and so on were granted the ability to cast spells of their respective element. This would not be so bad, especially due to two reasons -- one: by forsaking a tome, you are forsaking a bonus to power (assuming your tome's damage type coincides with that of your spells' element), and five skill slots (assuming you took the Spellbook talent). And two: you're also forsaking a remains type material, which usually grant a most welcome bonus to weapon stats and a whopping 8 weight that does heavily help with two hand. Those are the cons, and quite frankly, they do seem rather modest!

In terms of balance, then, we can conclude that there would certainly be a change, but not one big enough to freak out or to consider it all overpowered.

*

Now then, to address a second concern -- Spelledge weapons and Reapers / Apertaurus. Both are already somewhat neglected as is, and I am sure some of you will believe this change will hurt them both and sink them more than they already are into oblivion. Honestly? You would not be wrong. What little justification I can provide, however:

• Spelledge weaponry would not have you sacrifice its material, and some have scaled weapon attack scalings that provide a rather powerful amount of, at least potentially so. Additionally, they're not limited to a specific domain of magic.
  
• Reapers / Apertaurus would likewise not have to sacrifice a material, and would in fact be able to use any polearm / axe to cast, provided they have the necessary SAN.
  

...And yet, I am more than sure than these do not quite outweight the hit they'd receive should this suggestion be implemented. Alas, all I can suggest would be a rework to the passives of both Reapers and Apertaurus, so as not to keep it obsolete. For Spelledge weaponry, perhaps the power bonus could be applied to spells regardless of its damage type.

For Reapers and Apertaurus, this was a topic that was brought up a couple of times in the Discord's #dev-discussion channel, but in its current form, the passive hardly do these races any favors due to the amount of SAN investment required for its effect to activate. This is especially true for Apertaurus.

Their passives could be reworked to require a drastically decreased amount of investment for its effect to trigger, or maybe simply allow the ability to spellcast using Remains type materials, a boon that they could very well appreciate.

I am of the belief, however, that these concerns are likely a topic for another thread, and would best be discussed there.

*

All in all, I believe that this change would open many possibilities and grant many more enjoyable options to the players, while giving them more incentive to use those neglected materials that are rarely used for weapons. These changes would certainly affect certain other aspects of the game, but if they're reworked, all of this could very well end up being a great change.

The TL;DR / What this suggestion would like to see done

• Add the ability to cast spells to existing materials when applied to a weapon. Conduiz and Rotwood already exist and should be proof enough that such a change would not prove overpowered, especially when lightning was theoretically the most dangerous possibility. Additionally; bonus power and skill slots from tomes, as well as bonuses from other materials, are forfeit in the process, providing further reason to offset the idea of adversity to balance.
  
• Allow players to create Rotwood kits and apply them to weapons. The existing Huggessoan domain spells are not strong enough to be a concern for balance.
  
• Potentially change/rework Spelledge weaponry, as well as Reaper / Apertaurus's Affinity passives. This change would most certainly make them slightly obsolete, moreso in the case of Reapers and Apertaurus, warranting a change to those abilities.
  

As always, this is a suggestion open for debate -- if you have any thoughts, or your own suggestions to further compliment this thread, I would appreciate it greatly should you make them known in the form of a reply.

[Autumn]

Promoting ease of access to spellblade characters is generally not a bad idea, if old dead and unused materials such as Carapace, Arctic, Magmic are permitted to be able to cast spells from similar to Conduiz then I hardly see a problem, if safety wants to be a consideration you could always look to how Blood Spike currently functions as a method of limiting them as well. But I don't forsee that being a problem yet.

Its a change I could perhaps see in the game, I don't have a huge opinion on it yet, but I've agreed to it in the past and am open to it being introduced into the duelist scene. Helps out most other characters too looking to do stuff like BK/Priest or how not.

[Kameron8]

I don't inherently disagree with the idea, but I do have some concern with letting anyone SWA gouge with Two-Hand and their meta weapon of choice for any compatible element.

Even if Salamander Sword Exgalfa seems hilarious.

[Fern]

To be fair, Tomes would still be an option because they give 5 skill slots. If it gets too out of hand it can just follow the "only uses 80% SWA if X weapon type" theming. I'd say people would be forced to choose between SWA or skill slots in a lot of cases but that's just at first glance.

[Perdition]

The loss of 5 skill slots from not using a tome with any type of magic strategy is a bigger tradeoff than most people think. I think this would be a good change overall. Even with things such as God Rod from Priest which can enable some pretty high SWA gouging weapons with Priest's high damaging spells, the skill slot tradeoff makes it not as lucrative as one might think.

[Shujin]

I mean, Lighting always has been the biggest damage dealer of the elements, so it was always the least deserving of this treatment in my opinion. So the other "dead" materials following suit in a way, wouldn't hurt too much I think.

though I rather just have their elemental properties buffed a little. +3ice atk doesn't feel all that worth, when you trade it to flat +5-8 SWA plus other benefits such as hit and crit, just for some weight (weight often even being desirable).

I would like it when armor/accecory would also increase the elemental power a little.

Alternatively, finally adding beneficial things for low weight weapons/duel wielding etc. similar to Two Hands, might entirely remove this issue already.

80% Spell SWA for such weapons is also a very solid option.