Shattered Kingdoms

Never been all that fond of those spells myself, but I don't see them going away.

A

The bad thing is not KNOWING one's aura. What's bad is restricting your RP to "OMG u r darkie, I not talk 2 u, u must die in fire!!!111```". I have often been in such a tough place playing aberrant characters, who yes, are evil but also have principles (even though often distorted) that they follow, and quite often they will do what a lightie would consider as "good".

Mechanics wise, and as long as I am aware, there are indeed a means to fool people about your aura. Still, this is not the answer. The solution imho, is to keep in mind this piece of information about one's aura if you have the option to, but like in real life yes, be weary about his "general attitude" if that's what you could call one's aura, but do not isolate him because of that alone. It's like IRL someone has been to prison (probably for a crime he has committed in the past although you don't know what the crime is) and keep him away or even hunt him just for that. Now, that's not exactly the model of "lightie" behavior, is it?

Well.

I doubt detect aura will ever be removed from the game.

But damn would it be fine to have an additional ability added in order to offset it.


Dulrik, it's quite clear that this mud will die unless it is made so.

Why the sudden QQ about detect aura and know alignment? These spells have been there forever and people were using them forever as well.

Now if anyone goes down to "OMG OMG evh0l person! Kill! Kill! Kill!", he will also do the same against griffons, elves, delves, anyone wielding aura restricted EQ, religion symbols etc. Do you also suggest spells like innate polymorph for griffons, elves and delves or conseal lewt for others?

PS: None of my chars has used these spells for the last 3 years, so you can't exactly say I'm biased in my opinion.

It's a valid observation. The problem isn't the spell. It's the players.

Most people will use them properly, and the few who don't cause enough heartache to cause a QQ-fest.

*shrug*

Aura is different than race. I would have no problem with the spells if there was a way to either defeat them or fool them. I would like to see spying viable. Right now, lighties cannot spy on darkies and vice versa. That would bring some really good player driven plots and rp.

All the spies now are just grays who are actually lighties but pretend to be darkies, or vice-versa. Some basically lightie / darkie cabals take grays, some don't. Oh well.

I'd like to see a much easier way to subvert having detect aura used on you. Maybe there are some special scripts to fool it, but I don't know about them, and I consider myself fairly twinkish- so if I don't know about them, they aren't something generally accessible.

Here are a few ideas:

Give priests a brewable spell to make their aura appear as they want it to.
Syntax something like cast 'spell' diabolic or brew 'spell' principled.

Take out detect aura, leave in know alignment for the persistant holy people, give a save against it for the spell to reveal them to be an alignment unoffensive to the caster. If you have to keep in detect aura, take it away from sorcs and necros.

Detect aura and know alignment aren't 100% infallible. But perhaps the real problem is that detect aura is a little bit too widely available. I could see sorcerers and necromancers losing access to the spell...

I don't really think that's necessary at all. Detection of auras would be part of magical sight, which sorcs at the least have the most of, given all three other detects. *Maybe* it would make sense for necromancers to lose it, but it's actually a very reasonable survival trait for them to use and develop.

I don't know what would be the best option to do it, but I think that it should be possible for people to spy on their enemies. As it stands currently, that is not possible without breaking of alignment. I would like to see player drama caused by this. This would increase rp by a lot. It would also bring up other ideas of char concepts.