Shattered Kingdoms

I realize I haven't been playing since August due to school but I have been thinking of returning to sk around christmas after I graduate. While I was thinking of what I might like to play when I get back I came up with some ideas. See what you think. I realize some of these ideas may seem left field but read all the way through before you explode.

Note: These are mainly to add flavor to religions.

F3 bearing paladins, hellions, and priests become immune to all religious based based spells not cast by a member of their faith. This also means resurrection. They can only be ressurected by someone of their own faith. However, they have the option of manually ressurecting (IE, you'd just type ressurect like reincarnate) after 20 minutes time has passed. This form of ressurection will cause them to have -3 spirit disorientation. However, if they are ressurected by a priest of their own faith, then that ressurection gives them 0 spirit disorientation.

Now lets look at what becoming immune to spells does before I get a bunch of "ZOMG AYE READ IMMUNE SPELSL AN NO FURTTHER THAT R DUMB U SUCK NOOB CANNIBAL PLZ DON'T ROLL A CHARACTER AND own ME INTO DELETION FOR SAYN U SUCKS BUT DAT BAD IDEA."

On a roleplay level. It reflects the power of your position. You are so closely attuned to your god that no other god's prayers will work on you. Your god protects you from the prayers of other gods either because of concern, jealousy, or perhaps because they do not want the taint of another's prayers on their high follower. There is an rp reason for every alignment to grasp hold of as to why this occurs.

Now this is a double edged sword mechanics wise. The benefit of being immune to everyone's incoming damage spells is obvious. Do not overlook the fact; however, that no one can heal you either or cast any sort of beneficial spell, even ressurection on you, unless they are in your faith. This is a pretty even stick when you look at it in that light. How often do you see roving parties of the same faith in sk? Not very often at all. Most groups are a mixed bag.

Now dealing with the self ressurection bit, the time could be tweaked but obviously we don't want this to be an instant thing. Also the ressurection spot would need to be a random temple dedicated to your god to keep people from running to where you rez to rez own you. There are tons of temples for each god in the game. Just code them like the stones for reincarnation only make it temples for the auto rez and specialized for each faith.

Of course this brings up another balancing issue mechanics wise. Paladin vs Hellion becomes infinitely weighted into the paladin's favor when an F3 paladin and an F3 hellion duel because none of the hellion's spells will harm the paladin and although the paladin can't bog or spear the hellion, he can still spam heal himself. Note I did not say that his sanctuary or protection spells would work because they won't. When I say they are immune to spells, I mean those as well. However, the paladin still has disarm + cures vs cleave. Granted cleave is the pwnage but lets face it, paladin can eat a cleave and then just cure himself up while the hellion sits there and gets whittled away. So this is what I suggest to fix this. Allow hellfire to heal hellions by half the amount of damage that the spell would normally inflict, but only when cast on themselves.

Hellfire casts too fast and for too little for it to be fair to make it heal for its full damage ability. At a half damage cure ability it would be akin to healing somewhere between a cure serious and a cure crit. Which is still pretty good and even though the paladin casts cure crit slower you have to keep in mind that the paladin can still cure other people.

So now you have the hellion and the paladin on pretty even footing. Their battle would be more of a match of man to man and marital skill than between their Gods whom are equals (although neither would ever admit it). Hellion still gets cleave but the paladin can still disarm. Their healing factor would be equal in the long run since a paladin can get two cure lights off just as a fast as a hellion can cast hellfire. Cure light costs less mana, hellfire heals for slightly more. It's a perfect reflection of the two classes. Hellion starts off strong with the cleave and his hellfire heals well to begin with but he runs out of mana faster. Paladin is the defensive roll as always. He can remove the hellion's weapon and he can cure for a longer period of time.

I don't believe non-clergy (read not a priest/paladin/hellion) should be allowed the magic immunity. I just don't think it makes sense rp wise since those people aren't allowed to channel their god's power through prayers to begin with. If he/she doesn't trust them with that power, he/she certainly wouldn't grant him the other.

Shaman present an interesting dilemma under this set up. My first thought is that they should not ever acheive immunity since they have no god that favors them and no one spirit is powerful enough to do that for the shaman who is not a god and shaman don't worship gods. My second thought was that no one should be immune to a shaman either.

That second thought is the issue. If a god doesn't want other gods to taint its follower with their touch, then why wouldn't they feel the same way about spirits? It's far too unfair to have an immune F3 run up and beat the snot out of a shaman who is not immune at all to him and can never achieve that. But it's also not fair to have a player group flock around a single F3 paladin or hellion with 4 shaman and heal him through a fight where he's immune to enemy prayers. Seems way over powered.

What I'm thinking is that the immune F3s should only be immune to beneficial shaman spells and shaman protection spells like spirit aura and sanctuary are ignored by the F3. In other words the shaman can't heal or protect this person in anyway and also this person ignores other peoples sanctuaries and spirit auras when attacking them. However the shamans maledictions and attack spells like call lightning still harm the F3. As well as voodoo. This would balance that area up nicely.

As a side note, ainite hellions and paladins would all fully function on each other as things operate right now because Ain does not protect his followers from each other just as no other god does.

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Idea 2: Spirit Distortion changes

This one is shorter.
If you're rez'd by a priest of your own faith you get 0 distortion.
If you're rez'd by a priest of the same alignment you get -1 distortion as is normal.
If you're rez'd by a priest one color alignment away you get -2 distortion. As in, if you're grey and a light or a dark priest rez you, you get -2. If you're dark or light and a grey priest rezzes you, you get -2.
If you're rez'd by completely opposite aura you get -6 sd to reflect the God's contempt for your soul which their priest probably just broke alignment to rez you or you con'd him out of it by lying about your alignment to begin with.

I'm sure the rp reasons behind all that are clear. I think it would make for people more closely adhering to proper alignment for their rp. The rez'd by own faith being 0 distortion also eliminates things like people of different alignments in the same faith getting jipped for having a priest of their god not being the same alignment as them. Thats mainly for the grey faiths but I'm sure everyone can see the draw it would have for all faiths.

k im done. debate.

Spirit distortion, I like, completely.

The first one....I like the immunity up to a point. I think they should only affect the recently added/in progress religious spells. Immunity is a HUGE, HUGE thing. Think about it this way - holy word is a fight breaker. If you have a couple of f3 hellions and priests, THAT ARE COMPLETELY IMMUNE to every single thing any other priest/paladin can do, that's a freakin huge deal. I like the idea that fights wouldn't be decided by bolt/holy word, but that's such a small thing compared to that immunity bit.

The drawback is fine, and probably should go into affect ANYWAY, (f3's not being able to be attended to by anyone but their own clergy), but...that first part of your idea is just too big of a hurdle for me to get over.

On a related note, how would you justify being able to (as an f3) have your weapon/armor enchanted by any tom dick and harry - but you couldn't receive the blessings or aid of a priest not at all misaligned with your deity's goals?

No. This forgets that SK's deities are not exclusive, demanding that you worship only them. Even the high priest of XXX is expected to give proper acknowledgement to the other gods. And that's aside from any balance issues.

You can't build a system on alignment, either. All the amoral gods except Ain and Marfik don't care, and Ain and Marfik only care about law/chaos. Nor would all light/dark gods penalize grays who came to them.

There are gods and priests who would impose penalties on those belonging to certain gods/alignments. But that's covered in resurrection roleplay.

I think in exceptional cases it is okay to resurrect members of the opposite alignment. Anyway, this idea wouldn't be so bad if SK has upwards of hundreds of players, as well as fewer religions available for worship.

Currently, SK just has too many religions. Most of them are not filled any more. This does not make or break the game though so it does not matter for now. The idea being suggested would simply encourage more players to join certain religions in a player base of 25 to 35.

That would totally take out diversity, making SK even more monotony than it already is. Two giant barbarians at Grandmaster come out roughly the same. "Hi there, I am a giant barb, I have so and so skills... and specialize in nothing... you?" "Hey, me too!"

In the process of dual membership, maybe certain/similar religions could be combined too. A mechanic that allows more ways for players to band together would give room for more interactions.

Your example of a group of f3s wrecking is rather moot when they are up against a group of f3s isn't it? It turns into a pure melee battle. But they wouldn't only be fighting a group of priests and paladins. There's 10 character classes that would be completely unaffected by this change. Keep that in mind. The immunity only works against religious enemies. There is hardly ever more than 2HFs in a religion at any point in time. It isn't as if you see a ton of hfs rolling in a group together.

As far as the enchantments go, those things are being cast on material objects, not the person. The gods wouldn't care. The only priest who is ever not misaligned with any gods' goals is a priest of that god. Sure, some faiths have closer ties than others but at any given time on sk every faith has pretty much been at war with every other faith on lighty and darky side alike. I mean you as ain warred with alshain. So that's really a bad example.

Again, not a very good argument against. I certainly wouldn't ask people to create a whole player group in one religion just so you can get no sd when you were rez'd. That seems absolutely silly to me. Everyone whose of the same alignment still only gets -1 sd anyway which is EXACTLY what they get right now. I can see justifying grey priests only always only giving -1 sd since their gods are amoral. Lighty and darky gods rezzing greys should still get -2 sd though because these gods are moral based and grey doesn't quite fit what they want.

And no one said you couldn't rez opposite auras. I know that there are completely legitimate rp reasons to do so. I just think it should still come with a heavy -6 sd tag. We all know what kind of rp abuse twinks have pulled in the past with really poor rp'd opposite aura'd rezzes. This would pretty much stop that. And if someone really wants to rp a highly appropriate reason for a light priest to rez a dark aura in that priest's view they still can do so with no rp penalty. This just simulates the fact that no matter what that priest thinks, their god jess don't like them darkies period. And darkie gods jess really do not like them lighties. No matter how you look at it it's appropriate.

You couldn't be any further from being wrong. SK deities are highly exclusive. I'd love to see you justify an alshainite paladin worshipping dabi. I'd love to see you justify a knight of war kneeling down before an altar of aludra and saying prayers to her without sargas being miffed.

For panthiests, the gods are not exclusive. When you join a faith though your soul belongs to that god and no other and you aren't supposed to worship any other god.

Now you are correct sorta on one thing. When a god appears before a mortal that mortal is supposed to respect them because they are indeed a god. Respect does NOT mean you have to worship them in any sense of the word. You merely tip your head in acknowledgement of the fact that they are indeed a divine being.

Your high priest of Meissa may have views that agree with other churches such as alshain or dulrik. But he does not worship dulrik and alshain. His devotion is to meissa and meissa alone. He can respect the other gods all day long but they dont own his soul.

I do see your point about the grey gods though hence me saying in an above post that I could see grey priests always only giving normal sd.

Apelila, a lightie, knowingly rezzed non-faith darkies. Why? Because her goddess didn't care about aura.

Why should a delf be punished for being rezzed by a scrup priestess of a deity that didn't bother with auras?

Edit: But the F3 stuff, I mostly like the idea in theory.

i don't really like either of those ideas, but i particularly dislike the first one.

1) it doesn't really make sense.

why would Meissa make it a pain in the [REDACTED] for her followers (let alone her most favored follower) to work together with the reasonable folk that follow Zavijah?

2) it is far, far more of a punishment, than a reward

oh great, now the people that i hang out with 95% of the day can't do [REDACTED] for me. leadership is enough of a burn-out as is, we don't need to kick group leaders in the nuts for no apparent reason.

3) it wouldn't be fun, or immersive

i see nothing enjoyable about either addition. my gaming experience was definitely not lacking this before.

4) it is not feasible without a larger playerbase.

this applies to both ideas. holy [REDACTED], would it suck to have to sit on my [REDACTED] for (at least) twenty minutes every time a priest in my faith wasn't on. it would be even worse for those players in the slower times of day.

Well, actually, it's not that bad. At least it opens up an option for a rezz when there are no priests on.