Shattered Kingdoms

This has really irked me about this spell but since it is only derived religiously, it should only be available to religious characters.

The reason I say this is because all the religious characters I have played have been unable to get access to the spirit aura spell, as they are religious and dedicated to a god and not lesser spiritual ancestors. On the flip side though, non-religious characters have had access to a spell that can only be accessed normally through devoutly religious classes (hellion, paladin, priest). Obviously it is tied to religion. Religious characters can also lose the benefits of protection should they be blemished.

Also, do the effects of protection and spirit aura stack with one another? If so, it is obviously more beneficial to be a non-religious character.

Decent proposal.

I would honestly be amazed to hear that SA and protection don't stack. That would mean I just imagined tanking 100x better when my shamans had protection. (and would make the scripted protection on the pantheist sacred eq completely stupid)

No it wouldn't. Spirit aura has a huge hole in that it doesn't reduce damage from magic.

Horrible idea. Not only is it unbalancing, but the reasoning behind it is tenuous at best. The trade-off is symbol bonuses/church affiliation vs. spirit aura, not spirit aura vs. protection.

If this change went into effect then everyone would be forced to join a religion or be shafted, and shamans would suck a billion times more. Honestly, anyone that would choose spirit aura over protection and a symbol bonus is an idiot.

I like ardith's proposal. Non-cleric classes have no benefit to join a church other than RP as it is now. Some even RP laity without even officially belonging to a church, just to have SA. Perhaps this would balance things out better and give people benefits for joining a religion.

Sacred armor. There is the reason to join religions.

I'm curious as to why it would be imbalancing from a mechanics standpoint, and how it would shaft shamans.

Spirit aura doesn't really have any use to sorcs/necros/rogues/bards.etc, where protection has a big one.

Sacred eq is already way more incentive than is needed to join a religion.

lololololol