These were really fun to use! Thanks for taking the time to make these!

Man that's amazing !

Honestly they all felt weak to me in comparison to some other options, except the electric one but Id still like them all to cost one. Thanks for considering it

I went ahead and reduced the AP cost on some of the weaker surface skills. After I typed my message out I agree with that they were probably a little too difficult to fit in AP economy-wise at 2 AP.

Are there specific skills you would like to have lowered? I've considered lowering Rivulet and Arachnogenesis to 1 AP a few times. I've been hesitant to change them because they let you set up Elemental Affinity for 2 AP on top of getting surfaces below other targets (or replacing surfaces outright). Usually you have to spend 1 or 2 AP to cast a spell, and then another AP to move into the surface to get Elemental Affinity going.

Could the cost of these skill be lower possibly? They dont really feel worth it to me usually

A smoke path skill for Scoundrel sounds good. I will try to get that added when I can put some more time into the mod.

As for the footprint idea, I want to keep the mod limited to surface effects only so spells that don't involve surfaces I won't be implementing.

There are skills that create surfaces that follow the path of the projectile. These are called Zone skills in the engine (think Laser Ray), but they don't use actual Projectiles (Searing Daggers, for instance). It would likely be possible to script in a behavior that creates a surface underneath the path of Projecticle, but it wouldn't work with the same behavior as a Path skill. I want to keep the mod limited to skills that create surfaces only and are similar to the current Path skills.

Basically if it's possible to 'fuse' one skill effect with another skill or spell.

You can use other forms of 'path' skills other than for moving a character, such as when you use arrows with said skill, it creates a path of said item's element.

Also what about 'phantom footprints' basically with how Guard AI reacts to stolen tagged items on the ground and will move to it, a 'phantom' footprint will make 'hostiles' that 'sees' this effect 'follow' its trail.

Hmm, is it possible to utilize path skills that benefit non-combat usage, like say creating smoke for sneaking which 'hides' you as you move while sneaking?

No idea if NPCs 'detects' through smoke though, because in combat you can still see the target in smoke, but the target can't be easily hit.

@Kai There is a push and pull mechanic in the engine for moving characters around. Without the use of scripting, you can only pull a character directly on top of you. You can push characters away from you any number of meters you'd like. More precise movement would require scripting or making the spell of the Teleportation type.

The thorns idea sounds like Flaming Tongues, essentially. The self-destruct idea is similar: Put a status on a character that is replaced with a countdown/explode variant (Flaming Crescendo...) when they trigger a Flaming Tongues-esque effect.

Path Skills comes from the fact that the Path type skill was unused in the dev kit. Every skill made has to fit into 1 of nearly 20 different skill types, which all have some sort of engine-coded interaction that has to be utilized to make the skill work properly. I like your ideas but they are a bit beyond the scope of this mod and are more suited for a general additions/overhaul mod.

I got an idea that involves pushing and pulling, then notice that there is no 'mechanic' of that sort in the game.

But you can 'throw' barrels, why not 'throw' characters?

This gives me an idea: What if path skills isn't just about drawing surfaces but a condition and effect based on the character's path of movement?

For instance a passive skill that buffs a character with thorns, and if your character runs by a 'enemy' character the effect will trigger from a timer, or sensing the target is extremely close to you as you run by.

So in this case a 'self-destruct' skill usable by the player and enemies, where they activate it and after a set period of time they 'blow up' and cause a explosion, or at least a 'proximity' version so the explosive fuse does not start until it triggers when a enemy is next to said character.

Pretty cool