ToME WikiRavenRed: Just a quick thought on having revisited one of the Darksword Trilogy books (Weis and Hickman were a vice of my misspent youth... Terry Pratchett is the vice of my misspent adulthood... I digress, however) which were the source of darkswords and by extension, unbelievers. I was just thinking of ways of reimplementing the skill and class and came up with...
- Darkswords are replaced with weapons of Darkstone (ego-type). These are base damage die weapons, but see below.
- Dark-Weapons have a new attribute, that of "Spells_Absorbed"
Each darkstone weapon can absorb up to Antimagic Skill in Spell Levels. Every time a monster's spell is successfully "blocked" the counter rises by one. These raised spell levels have certain effects...
- For Every 8 absorbed spell-levels, your dark-weapon's dice rise by 1 each. For example, the humble 1d6 Small Sword of Darkstone will become a whirling 7d13 weapon of destruction by Spells_Absorbed level 48. If it's this nasty with a small sword, imagine a Zwiehander or Great Axe. Whack.
- Detect Traps now costs 1 Spells_Absorbed to use, with destroy traps being 5 Spells_Absorbed.
- Disrupting the space-time continuum now takes 1 Spells Absorbed per game turn to use.
Now having said all this, you'd think that you'd want to keep your sword at the maximum all the time, right? Well, no. There are two main reasons for this.
- Firstly, the more "satiated" your darkstone weapon gets, the less effective it is in suppressing spells. From the normal (Killerbunnies derived) formula, the radius drops by Spells_Absorbed@5 and the strength drops by Spells_Absorbed@20 percent.
- Secondly, if your darkstone weapon is FULLY saturated (i.e at Antimagic Skill Level of Spells_Absorbed) it may DETONATE (at a chance of 50-Antimagic skill%, checked with every new "blocked" spell), releasing all the spell levels absorbed in an enormous blast! This will leave the weapon at 0 Spells_absorbed and has a (50- Antimagic Skill)% chance of making the character stunned. The blast itself will do mana (of course) damage of "Spells_Absorbed"d"Spells_Absorbed" over a radius of Spells_Absorbed @ 6. At Antimagic Skill level 20, this may be done DELIBERATELY, giving the Unbeliever a significant (if dangerous) weapon in their arsenal. A 50d50 blast is nothing to be sneezed at, even at L50.
The aim of these changes is to make an Unbeliever more conscious of the status of their darkstone-weapon. On the one hand, it gains a significant power-up which makes up a bit for the lack of +to hit, + to dam. On the other hand, a significantly powered-up darkstone weapon is firstly less effective in blocking spells and secondly, somewhat like carrying around a tac-nuke. 
As always, it's up to the player to juggle the consequences effectively for their own survival. As per usual, comments, abuse and advice greatly appreciated.
2cworth and counting...
Chatter
ElvishPillager: Why would our Unbeliever believe that the sword could possibly blow up? Swords simply don't blow up. On the other hand, expanding it to ego weapons would be a nice idea. "Dark sword" is a pretty ridiculous name.
DarkGod: I'm not that fond of the unbeliever backstory actually. Specialy now that antimagic is a skill. I think ni T3 unbelievers will be renamed to something else and we will be done with the idea of disrupting magic by not believing in it. As for ravenred idea I quite like it, it provides more things for antimagic users to do than just walk around hacking things. Suggestion for the name of the new class ? Something stylish plesae not things like "magic eaters" ;>
ElvishPillager: Come to think of it, me neither.
Class names ideas: Quencher (Quenches the fluctuations of magic) Subduer (same as above, but worse word) Purifier (viz. beating the Silent Watchers with the Phial - less of a "no magic" idea but still...) Antimage (j/k)
The Quencher idea fits with Ravenred's idea quite nicely. The character absorbs the fluctuations of magic into his weapon, making it more powerful but more highly magical such that it is harder to squeeze more enemy magic into it. However, the magic could also be released for various purposes.
NeilStevens: My comments:
- I still don't like the Dark Sword as ego type idea. It's an unnecessary generalization that penalizes unbelievers. Let's keep it a base type.
- As for your MAIN idea, the absorption stuff, my biggest concern would be micromanagement. If the player has to constantly be watching this level, and constantly throwing off extra energy and such, that could get incredibly tedious. Especially for unbelievers that will spend hours in battle hacking at lines of monsters, who wants to have to deal with that? So it'd be tricky to design well.
Idea: let the absorption stuff be an ability that can be bought and turned on and off?
ElvishPillager: I think that there's no real problem with micromanagement as long as the penalty for more energy isn't too great. For one thing, I'd certainly leave out the 'exploding sword' thing.
Also, dark-sword-as-an-ego is hardly a penalty at all if the ego is common enough and comes before the base type name.
Simple idea: Absorbing a spell gives the weapon +1 to-dam, and antimagic-'spells' are cast that consume the weapon's to-dam.
NeilStevens: The ego list is being rewritten too, remember, and if we do dark swords as a base type, then we can do darksword-specific egos, like we'll do with mage staves. So don't be so sure it's a mild penalty.
In fact, even in ToME 2, losing the ability to get an Elemental Dark Sword of Aman would be a big deal I think.
ElvishPillager: Well then, you *can* have many darksword-effect egos, with different powers. On the other hand, bleh... I probably undervalue ego items anyway. I usually end up wielding all artifacts by endgame.