Augments

Ashes of Creation hosts a wide array of progression paths that offer augments to a character's active skills.

• Secondary archetypes.
• Social organization augments.
• Religious progression.
• Racial augments.

Q: There are 32 augment schools, not including racial/social/religious augments, meaning a total of 8960 (280 spells * 32 augment schools) different variations of spells. How do you guys plan on tackling that, or has the augment system for the classes changed since?

A: It has not changed; and the intent is for us to design relatively templatable effects conferred by each school of augmentation; and those effects will have a lot of shared benefits that get conferred to a particular ability when the augment gets applied. – Steven Sharif

Augments are applied individually to active skills from a character's primary archetype.

• Augment effects are intended to be templatable so they can apply to a range of abilities.
• A character can have one active augment on an ability at any given time.
• Augments do not cost skill points.
  • It was previously stated that certain augments will have more expense required on the skill point side.
• Secondary class augments may be applied to any skill, but it is possible that some specific augments may be locked to specific abilities.
• The progression system for augments is very similar to the class progression system.

Augments can affect a multitude of things and can (in some cases) create entirely new skills.

• Drastically change the ability itself.
• Change the damage type and value.
• Change the cooldown period.
• Change the distance (of the skill).
• Change the effect from a ranged to melee ability.

Augments can affect a multitude of things. It can drastically change the ability itself. It can change the damage type. It can change the cooldown period. It can change the damage values. It can change the distance. It can dramatically change it from a ranged effect to a melee effect. Augments are essentially can create- they are creating entirely new skills, but they're going to keep obviously some identity with what that primary active ability was. – Steven Sharif

Class augments

A player may choose a secondary archetype when they reach level 25. Each secondary archetype offers four different schools of augmentation. Each augment school affects a primary archetype's skills in different ways.

• For example: A Mage offers Teleportation and elemental schools of augments. These augments will affect a Fighter's primary skills differently than a Cleric's.

When you reach the class phase, which is around level 25 and you introduce that secondary archetype selection to create your one of 64 classes, then you'll have a number of augments that you'll be able to apply on a per-ability basis; and your core ability kit comes from your primary archetype selection; and those augments will change the look and feel of those abilities; and some will have the affect to create more darker thematic aspects to it. Or just generally different aesthetics to the abilities that represent the secondary [archetype] selection. – Steven Sharif

• The player can then augment their primary skills with effects from their secondary archetype.

If a Fighter were to choose Mage as a secondary archetype, the fighter would become a Spellsword. This combination opens up augments that can be applied to skills in their primary skill tree. Fighters have a Rush skill that allows them to rush towards a target; and upon reaching the target, deal an amount damage with a chance to knock the target down. A blink augment could be applied to the rush skill, which would now teleport the player to the target; thus eliminating the charge time on the skill.

• Each skill in the primary tree will have several augment options from the secondary tree. This is an example of horizontal progression.
  • The progression system for augments is very similar to the class progression system.

• Each augmentation has a level requirement.

• Augments to primary skills can fundamentally change the way the ability works - adapting what the ability once did to incorporate the identity of the secondary archetype/class.

• Augments do not cost skill points. It was previously stated that certain augments will have more expense required on the skill point side.

There's going to be a certain threshold at which you can no longer augment your active abilities based on the decisions you've augmented previous abilities, so you'll have to pick and choose which ones you want to apply the augments towards. – Steven Sharif

• Choosing the same primary and secondary archetype increases focus on that archetype.

• Secondary archetype augments allow different aesthetics to apply to primary abilities that reflect the secondary archetype selection.
  • Some spell colors and general FX change based on augments.
  • Active skills could look totally different after an augment gets applied.

• Changing skill augmentations will require visiting a NPC in a Village node or higher.

Bard augments

This section will be updated as soon as information is made available by the developers.

Cleric augments

Classes with Cleric as a secondary archetype are able to choose between life or death augments.

• Choosing life augments will provide self-healing benefits as well as limited life-giving benefits to other players.
• Some cleric augments applied to certain skills will indirectly provide the ability to heal others. These will not replace the need for a cleric archetype.
• Cleric augments will radically change the type of summons available from the summoner primary archetype.
  • Skeletons, zombies and other undead summons will be possible with death-based augments.

Any class that's going to choose Cleric as a secondary class will have the ability to pick from those augments to influence their skills to affect the life of others around you. – Steven Sharif

Fighter augments

This section will be updated as soon as information is made available by the developers.

Mage augments

Mages will offer four magical schools of augmentation, such as teleportation, fire, frost, and lightning (electrical).

Say for instance, I am a Ranger that has a Charge bolt ability as my primary active skill and I've chosen Mage as my secondary and applied the elemental to it. I now have a Frost charge bolt, and if I fire that frostbolt and hit a target, they may be freezing for a period of time as a debuff and that might slow their speed. If a wizard applies a nuke on a target and that nuke is a frost-based nuke, those two stacking elements might then either further snare (slow the target) or paralyze and freeze the target. So, there are combination out effects that build up: A primary, secondary and some ancillary effect occurs when those are combined. – Steven Sharif

There's going to be four schools of augmentation for each archetype. One of the schools for the mage is the teleport school. You can take that teleport augment, apply it to your charge skill: now instead of charging x distance over time you're going to immediately teleport to the target dealing x damage and a condition modifier. If you were to apply the elemental school to your class ability you would then instead you would charge x distance; upon reaching target you would set the target ablaze if it's fire or you would electrocute them and deal with damage over time. – Steven Sharif

Ranger augments

Hunts will be a Ranger school of augmentation.

• Hunts do not interact with pets.

Hunts will be discussed in a future update. They are a Ranger specific mechanic, and also a school of the Ranger’s augments. They confer a number of different types of effects to your target, but the fx are particularly fun. – Steven Sharif

Summoner augments

Summoner augments are still in development.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Classes with a Summoner secondary may grant augmented skills that summon weapons. These summoned weapons are not able to be equipped.
  • The word "equip" only applies to items. There are currently no plans to include summoning items into a player's inventory or character slots. It may however be possible to change the appearance and damage type/data of a weapon through the use of a spell.
  • There are summoned weapons that appear as a spell VFX to damage opponents for a period of time. These will not be able to be wielded, since weilding implies an item in a character equipment slot.

Rogue augments

• Stealth augments from the Rogue secondary archetype will incorporate stealth modifiers into a class' primary skills.
  • True stealth resides within the realm of the Rogue (primary) archetype.

There will be counter-stealth mechanics for sure. That's just a natural balancing act of stealth. But additionally with regards to secondary classes, one of those aspects is augments represent the secondary class and some of the- one of the most fundamental aspects of a rogue is stealth whether it be actual invisibility or the ability to sneak around in the shadows or something. So you can almost certainly count on the fact that should you go a secondary class of rogue that there will be the ability to influence your action items from your primary class with the stealth modifier. – Steven Sharif

Tank augments

This section will be updated as soon as information is made available by the developers.

Racial augments

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Racial augments are based on a character's race and are available to each class.

• These apply to abilities on a character's primary archetype.
• They affect how the ability works and can also apply cosmetic effects.

In keeping with our theme of Consequence, and unlike other games, race won’t just be a matter of look, with relatively inconsequential abilities tacked on. Instead they integrate deeply into our class system, augmenting and changing the basic chassis provided by our eight core archetypes. Our goal here is to create a system where an elven fighter feels different, but serves the same role as a dwarven fighter.

Religious augments

Strong religions provide unique augments that can be applied to a player's primary skills.

• Religious augments are considered top-tier achievements within a religion.
• These augments can be stacked on top of class augments. They will have a give-and-take system based on the choices a player makes.

You're going to have advancement within the religion and within the church that you're a part of. And those advancements are going to be both reflective of the community's development of that religion out in the world: Building temples, building infrastructure for that, completing certain quests for it; and then you will benefit from the community's development of that specific religion via having certain augment abilities that you'll gain access to be able to apply on top of your secondary class augments to skills; and it's going to reflect what the nature of that religion is. – Steven Sharif

Social organization augments

Social organizations unlock Up to 3 or 4 augments based on:

• Whether the organization is the patron of their node: Meaning it contributes the most amount of work to the node from its members.
• A player's progression within that organization.

You're gonna see augments being used a lot throughout a lot of our systems. When we're talking about the guild system, when we're talking about social organizations, when we're talking about religions. A lot of those things are going to affect how and what you have available to augment your skills with. – Jeffrey Bard

Skill transfer

Players will not be able to transfer their skills to other players.

See also

• Schools of magic
• Races
• Classes
• Religions
• Combat