Shattered Kingdoms

Read the latest Code Update announcement here.

Details about Deputies:
Faction leaders can now appoint one or more members as their deputies.

Usage: cabal/tribunal deputize [player]
Usage: cabal/tribunal undeputize [player]

Here are the commands that deputies will have access to over and above a normal member:

Cabals:
Usage: cabal balance
Usage: cabal induct [player]
Usage: cabal members

Tribunals:
Usage: tribunal balance
Usage: tribunal deport [player]
Usage: tribunal induct [player]
Usage: tribunal immigrate [player]
Usage: tribunal members
Usage: tribunal parole [player] <-- not only allies
Usage: tribunal unparole [player]

The main benefit for cabals will be to allow more people in the group to invite new members. For tribunals, there is the additional capacity to handle the less sensitive administrative work.

Concurrent with this feature is a policy change in that the staff will only be flagging a single leader for each faction instead of the more usual two. The deputy position eliminates the need for redundancy related to recruiting and will remove confusion over who has been appointed as primary leader.

Deputy power is directly related to the current leader's choices and will not be considered as appointing an heir to leadership. When a leader steps down, all deputy powers will also be revoked. Newly appointed leaders will choose new deputies, which can be the same as the old, but it will be their choice on who to appoint.

Although favored religion members already existed, they were not previously able to invest members. Now they will be able to do so.

Interesting changes for the most part. I'm ambivalent about fatigue being removed. I assume that giant strength and haste still penalize mana regeneration, right? Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be any disincentive to maintaining giant strength and haste at all times.

I have never liked the etherealform spell, so I'm glad to see the mana drain on it changed from per tick to per pulse. Have you considered removing the ability to scribe the spell and/or removing magical devices (wands, staves, etc.) that cast the spell?

Centaurs getting meditation innate is a nice perk, but they still aren't playable in my mind. They are weak to fire, which means that they are weak versus priests, warlocks, hellions, and any melee class that uses a fire-based weapon. Fire is also a very common, if not the most common, damage type in end game PvE zones.

There is still a regeneration penalty for haste. I don't believe giant strength ever had one. I consider this change to be an experiment. It would be easy to reverse entirely or we could re-institute fatigue for certain specific spells, if things look like they are out of hand.


We could easily make it impossible to scribe. We could also reduce the duration for the device versions. I didn't do either of those for now, but I welcome any feedback on the change in either direction.


True, this does nothing about fire. The thought is that meditation for centaurs may provide a bit of boost to a few off-beat builds, particularly the centaur bard. It was another un-risky and easy experiment to try out.

Ok, so Etherealform is now pretty usesless, can we at least get the cast time dropped next to nothing? I can get like three ticks before my mana is gone

This is, IMO, a bad way to handle this. As far as I can tell, it's only being done so staff doesn't feel obligated to bump a deputy to leader. Understandable, but doesn't really feel like it'll be good for the game.

If anything, deputies should remain /until/ a new leader is appointed, otherwise factions are going to be left rudderless when somebody idles out and loses leadership (which, I have to say, is an amazingly common occurence at the moment). Factions /need/ a PC who is able to induct members and grant paroles.

As for questions...

Is there a limit to the number of deputies? Or can everybody in a tribunal be a deputy if the leader wants it that way?

Can one person be deputy of their tribunal and cabal? Or leader of one and deputy of the other?

Random thought, some sort of 'help religion spells' in game that lists all the religious spells would be nice (so you know what to use help for to get the helpfile of a specific spell).

I could consider shifting it to having the deputies invalidated when the new leader is appointed instead. But it's important that it's the new leader who gets to decide on deputies and not be pressured to "keep" existing ones. There will already be enough pressure either way, but it is still a lot harder for a fresh leader to actively remove someone than it is to avoid an undesired re-appointment.


That question did come up from the staff as well. There is no current limit, so technically it is possible. But it doesn't make sense to me that there should be more than three deputies. If the faction is small, that might indeed be the entire faction, but hopefully recruitment goes better now.

If a leader makes a habit of always appointing everyone as a deputy, I may need to review and add further restrictions.


Good question. No, you cannot become a deputy of a faction if you are already the leader or deputy of another faction. And that is enforced across alternate characters as well.

It wouldn't be hard but was consciously undecided about this. I had considered adding a "See also" at the end of each god's help file, but decided to hold off for now. Once you are a priest, you can see exactly what your spell is and check the help file for it. So this is really more about making it easier for new players or others who are simply curious...

In my testing with a GM sorcerer with wise wisdom, I was able to reliably hold the spell for over 5 minutes while standing. Of course, I was not holding any other spells, but I also had not trained mana and was wearing no +mana gear. In terms of drain, etherealform is half the speed of the fastest draining spell in the game, so it is certainly still usable (but obviously nerfed so you can't hold it all day long).

What are magic walls? Are they environment hazards?