I just had an interesting idea. What if you could put various poisons into a figurine, which the figurine will on occaison use on other figurines. The other figurines should probably be able to cure themselves, provided they had the appropriate herb packed into to it. Now, I'm guessing all poisons might not be able to be used, but its just an idea I quickly came up with.
edit: unless, they already had that planned in as well...

What if just one poison, say ibululu or charybdon or whatever, could be poured into the figurine for a possible increase in damage? Sparkleberries give a chance of healing, poison gives a chance of extra damage.

Or, what if you could pack your figurine with different poisons (or something) that changes what type of damage it does in the next attack, and also pack in something that can give various resistances to different damage types? That way, you have to choose whether you'll stick with a certain type of damage, or rotate, or alternate between only a couple. Something similar to debating mindsets.

Meh, that isn't as good as the poison ideas above, but I might get into the battles if there was more of an element of skill incorporated somehow, rather than just random chance.

I think when figurines are fully realized, every tradeskill will have a hand in them somehow. Forgers making little armor and weapons for them, poisonists envenoming them, etc...

Its gonna be awesome.

Hmm...Cooks could give them a last meal before the battle?

no, herofetes no longer just effect people, but any figurines in the room, regardless of where it is, and what becomes displayed is 'Figurines start crawling out of pack and other places as they go to steal some food'

Actually, I'd think that forgers will do damage bonuses, while cooks will produce an armor bonus by baking the figurine in a glaze using sugar (basically a hard candy coating). Since it seems like each trade skill is only doing one thing, and that's the only thing I can think of cooking really being able to do.

I think cooks would give em a little crumb or something that would make them more hardy. This are like gingerbread men, ehh? Figurine Food it would be called... er.. yeah..

We have food that raises our stats, maybe they should be able to pack them with that? Increased speed or something.

Now now.. Let's not make Lusternia a game where you watch little figurines playing a game for you, or give the figurines more AI than anything else in the Basin. No way would it be fun if you could use a large number of poisons/state-altering affects. 1 benefit/affect from each Trade and I would hope that would end there. There's more things to be done than buff up little toys.

Perhaps Ibululu to increase damage.
Sparkleberries to heal damage.
Food to boost speed.
Forging to reduce damage.
Enchantments to create a warping effect, so they can occasionally warp their body out of a hit.
Bookbinding to give them little tomes to confuscate the opponent into attacking themselves on the next round.(normal chance to miss.)
Tailoring to occasionally stop the opponent's attack because they don't want to ruin such good clothing.

Bolded: Enchanters already have a hand in this, a huge hand in this. Without them the Figurines wont be battling. That should be enough for it.
Italisized: That was be so amusing to watch

Whoops. Forgot that Enchanters do already.

I keep checking AB TAILORING compulsively for the new figurine-related skill

heres what I think:
Figurines+poison= the suckage

I think anything that makes poisons more attractive is a good thing.

Still looking for dendroxin and morphite!

Figurine food offers:

"It seems to have a smile across it's face, as if it had recently eaten a really good meal."

Benefit unknown.

I was going to do other trade skills first, but someone dared me to come up with something for cooking and herbalism

Not a clue. Probably something along the lines of more chance to avoid, strong hits, or more chance to level up at a win.

Did you TYPO that use of "it's"?

That was kinda meant as a joke, since I figured these were golems or homucli, and thus had no use for either food or herbs.

And the Triple-Dog-Dare was a reference to "A Christmas Story".