This topic inspired me to talk about a couple mechanics I’ve thought of lately
AT FIRST I thought that Spellbooks (i.e. Tomes of skill) are a bad idea and “remove the character building” impact but THEN I figured (and wrote it down further in the topic) [Posts 33, 34, 45 and the post #46 further down the topic if you wanna check the idea’s background]
Realized the following:
Issue occurs only with skill Tomes if they’re not off-class (i.e. if you gain power for skill your character already has), meaning reduce the “skill choices” impact… Well, WHAT IF the Tomes can’t be learned but gained differently as a bonus ?, and THAT’s when I realized the following
- Skill Tomes don’t necessarily need to be permanent-bonus i.e. consumables
- Skill Tomes need not necessarily be “endlessly queable” (i.e. say there’s a limit to how much you can consume ?:P, well not quite but limiting this actually increases build diversity for characters)
- Combine those and got to the following 2 “Endgame artifact” mechanics (more or less) that I think are worth looking at ATM
- Rathma’s library [
put up to 3 artifacts that curse particular types of monsters with a certain weakness] - Lilith’s library [
put up to 3 spell tomes that empower your character]
Rathma’s library could be filled with special types of “chalices, charms, body-parts, voodoo-dolls, blades, whatever” (only this time, instead of affecting your character, they introduce “curses” to your opponents per type per debuff), for example:
- Skeleton Archers deal -25% damage and take 25% more physical damage
- Melee monsters deal 25% less damage and their lifesteal-denial/armor-penetration curses are 25% weaker
- Each monster of type Demon explodes on Death damaging nearby monsters
- Whenever aerial monsters are hit by Critical they’re enforced to land for X seconds
- Monsters with Slow and DoT affixes have their duration reduced by 50%
- Elites proc a damage return of 250% onto themselves with every 3rd attack within 5 seconds
Things like that
The other [Library of Lillith] is pretty much self-explanatory, playing a WW Barb ?, no problem, you add up a Meteor skill in your Library of Lillith and now you have a WW Barb who can ALSO cast a Meteor 
The COOL part about this is that you could use 3 different skills, OR, find special type of tomes (Tome of Empower) that gives bonuses to OTHER tomes in that particular library slot. As said above - the Skill Tomes could come with anywhere between +1 and +4 per skill slot, so you might have a “+1 to Meteor”, BUT also might have a “+4 to Meteor” (the first one much more common, the 2nd one only a late-game-boss-fight material)
AND, in order to make “stacking” bit harder - could also have “Tomes of Empower” (+1 to +4 as well), meaning you might wanna “fish” for the +4+4+4 (i.e. lvl12 Meteor off-class build, OR you might settle for something “lesser”, the choice is yours)
Sooo yes, the idea being:
- Step 1 - Skill Tomes are NO LONGER consumables (instead put them in Lillith’s Library and you gain your skill bonuses, don’t like what you have ?, swap a tome out)
- Step 2 - Skill Tomes are introduced in “variety” of power, i.e. not Every skill Tome would give +1 to a skill (as permanent character consumable), INSTEAD they can vary (anywhere between +1 and +4)
- Step 3 - Wanna go even more ALL-IN ?, fine, get your “Perfect roll” (+4) Tome, and look for 2 “perfect rolls” of Tomes of Empower (+4 to other Tomes)
THERE you go, 3 types of Endgame skill empowerments (Library or Lillith) and 3 types of Endgame monster debuffs (Library or Rathma), add to that your GEAR, then your character build… You have about BILLION (well, not quite but should be enough) end-game build combinations
What say you folks ?