Mysticism, Imbuing, and Focus

Rock

Currently, both Imbuing and Focus can act as the secondary skill to Mysticism, strengthening its spell duration, damage, or mitigation effects. They buff it equally.  However, Focus also offers the adventuring benefits of up to 12 points of stamina recovery and 6 points of mana regen. In contrast, Imbuing offers no direct adventuring benefits.  You might be wearing armor or wielding a weapon that your character imbued himself, but the effects are static, and any skilled imbuer skill could have done the same to your stuff.

This makes for a pretty obvious choice.  Focus helps the adventurer much more than Imbuing.  The only reason for an adventurer to have it as part of his template is if he had no craftsman on that shard to more naturally carry the Imbuing skill point burden.

I see three options:

1. Do nothing.  Allow Imbuing to continue buffing Mysticism as it does now, with no side benefits.
2. Eliminate the link between Mysticism and Imbuing.  You would need to grandfather existing characters so that this change would not ruin existing templates.
3. Add some adventuring benefits to Imbuing. These would likely focus on Mysticism, just as Tactics focuses on weapon skills, not magic ones.

Here are some possibilities for #3.  I didn't want it to just duplicate what Focus offered, but instead give mystics two viable, distinct choices in their secondary skill. I'm not necessarily proposing all of them at once, but some set of features to add some balance.

1. Imbuing would add Lower Mana Cost to Mysticism spells.  Maybe each 20 points of Imbuing would add 1% to the character's LMC rating.
2. It could add Faster Casting. Perhaps each 40 points of Imbuing would add 1 to FC of Mysticism spells. (This one is thematically nice, because young mystics greatly benefit from spell channeling weapons, which have an inherent -1 FCR.)
   
3. It could add Luck.  One formula could be Imbuing * Mysticism / 100 equals amount luck gained.  A human with 20 JOAT skill in both Mysticism and Imbuing would automatically start with a Luck score of 4 (20*20/100).  An advanced character with maxed Mysticism and Imbuing would have a base of 144 Luck (120*120/100). A human character who chose to max Mysticism but take no Imbuing (or vice versa) would have a base score of 24 Luck (20*120/100). Similarly, gargoyles have an inherent 30 skill in Mysticism.  So if they take Imbuing at all, and no Mysticism, they would have some extra Luck as well.  A gargoyle with 120 Imbuing and no skill points spent on Mysticism would have a base of 36 Luck (120*30/100). With no skill points spent on either, their base Luck would be 0 (0*30/100).
   

These are just some q&d ideas.  The overall idea is that a character with Imbuing skill slightly enhances ("imbues") himself, especially in regards to Mysticism.