ToME WikiSo, I was just considering symbiotes, and thinking about what they are and what they should be. What they are is just a funky form of summoner, with some interesting secondary powers, but that's not how it should be. They *should* be all about being really, really good friends with mold. So...a variant take on the symbiote.
First you'd have to have some way to shut off symbiote summoning, or limit it, possibly by making summoning itself significantly more costly and/or less effective.
Second, you remove the special worn symbiote slot.
Third, you create a "symbiote combat" skill, representing the more melee-focused aspects of symbiosis.
Now, having done all that, you give the character a "craft symbiote" power, dependant on base symbiosis. They take a hypnotized symbiote (which at this point would be otherwise unusable) and shape it to a degree, making it a wieldable item that will fit into one of the equipment slots. Initially you can only craft them into weapons, but higher levels of skill will mean you can fill other slots with them, until a high-level symbiote could wear nothing *but* mold, if he so chose. Then you set it up so that every wielded symbiote is, effectively, an odd and somewhat limited form of sentient artifact. Artifact level is limited by creature level. Uncrafting the symbiote will allow it to integrate its new learning back into more normal paths, and apply that experience to the base critter. This also gets rid of any enchant/disenchant effects. Increasing artifact level will increase hit/dam/armor bonuses as appropriate, and will also apply flags. A low-level red mold wielded as a weapon might have fire branding. A high level one might have fire branding, fire immunity, and some appropriate stat bonuses. Base damage dice would be derived from the first attack of the critter in question. Also, all attached critters would provide a small increase to HP, increasing as a function of critter HP, artifact level, and Symbiote Combat skill. Symbiote Combat skill also functions as the Combat subskill for weaponcrafted critters, complete with the .1 secondary-to-primary skill feed.
It would probably be worthwhile to frob around with the magical effects of the Symbiosis skill, if this idea is followed, possibly expanding on the "symbiote-as-spellbook" idea, but that is beyond my scope at the moment.