Shattered Kingdoms

OA, I'm developing a priest character right now, and I don't even know what the religion spells are. Nor do I care. I do care that the religion is going to provide IC depth and OOC fun.

Let's take the case of Yed since it was brought up. What does Yed offer a priest's roleplay?

Advantages:
* Built-in community and power base, since a whole class owes Yed homage.

Disadvantages:
* No known agenda on the mortal plane. Gee, that's exciting.
* No particularly interesting worship that a warlock can't RP better.

In comparison to these, I don't see a spell making much difference. It's great for the right person, but he won't always be around.

Religions are immortal-controlled, but they're strongly influenced by the players. Nor is immortal change likely without player requests. There should be some real effort before dismissing priests as unavailable.

Forsooth, you are one person. And your choice of religion to roll a priest for is not representative of the mentality of the majority, by all accounts and evidence.

Also, lol @ warlock class automatically owing homage to Yed.

From the online help file, emphasis mine:

Yeah, well, if you'd tried to tell that to my Warlock Hero Alshainite, she would have hit you in the face with magma.

Just once I'd like to see Yed come down and smite any and every warlock not paying him at least a little homage. Yeah, you read that right, smite, as in take away their spells similar to a curse. Sure the help files are guidelines, but when you have one that says that an entire class "receives" their powers from a specific immortal, IMO, that immortal has the right to revoke them as well.

You may think Forsooth is one person with his views on why to roll a priest. I'm the same way. I don't jump to OOC sources and say hey, what religion/tribunal/cabal would give my priest the best advantage. When I rolled up my current one, I had a basic premise in mind for her. When I went through the creation halls, I did not weigh each question to what would give the best stat, this is where her RP started, she looked at it as a quiz and answered each question how she would if placed in that exact situation. Once finished with that, the RP started and she got into her religion of choice (which I picked from the help files on what can be some very intriguing RP down the road)...from there may avenues opened up and I made the choice as to what would be better for her in the long run for RP. Not for sheer power playing or the ability to PK - those are perks.

IMO, if more people rolled every character based on their RP ability and not their "win-ability", took an IC stance in the hall of creation, and ignored all OOC knowledge on what gives the proverbial leg up to the character then we would have a much better situation with deeper characters. Yes, people RP, however, IMO 80% of my interactions (even with those with the little PAR tag) feel stale and bland, and I would much rather interact with quests and scripts than these characters. It is no wonder why the vast majority don't get played to age-death let alone the first or second age marker.

Along these lines, since I have seen other posts saying others think the hall of creation is bland or ripped off of something else, why not change it? After letting someone choose the race, gender and profession of their character, give them a series of mini-quests that would determine the rest. Not just questions from a disembodied someone to answer, but actual NPCs to interact with. Make nothing last more than 1 minute per quest, so the whole thing could wrap up in around 15 minutes (if I recall correctly, there are 15 questions).

Two people also do not a majority make, especially not when the who list is counting close to fifty today.

Do I agree that RP should be the major determinant factor in every decision a character makes? Yes. Is that the reality? No.

And forcing all warlocks to pay homage to Yed, especially warlocks who belong to different and potentially conflicting churches, is quite literally mentally damaged. Yes, I said it. It's brain damaged. If that ever happened to a warlock character I had just because I chose to look at the elementalist skill/spell list as more mage than priest, I'd gather every bit of support I could and I would make every conceivable effort to gank the entire church of Yed into complete inactivity or deletion.

As I said, that is my opinion, which I am entitled to as you are entitled to your opinion. That said, if I ever play a warlock, no matter what religion there would be some little bit of my character saying "Thanks, Yed, for allowing me to be able to speak to your elements this way." Just like if I ever played a sorc, there would be some homage to Mira, no matter what faith, as one of Mira's spheres is magic. My current priest actually does respect each of the gods in their own way based on how the relate to her patron. They are gods, they all can "interfere" with mortals if they choose, she understand this and gives utmost respect to her patron god, but she also will not go out of her way to tick off the rest of the pantheon.

Would it honestly be that difficult for any warlock to at least say, "hey, this is nice...I'm not one of Yed's followers but yet I can control the elements he has reign over. Thanks Yed for allowing me to further (insert patron gods' name here)'s work in these realms." I personally don't think so, and I also don't think that it would hurt RP in the long run. Who knows, it could catch Yed's attention and gain you something. In the least, all it would take is all of 5 seconds to pay homage once in a while, I'm not saying before every spell, but maybe once an IRL month to just give a little hey, thanks. But then again, that is my opinion.

Just like the Pilgrimage quest, IMO, should only be done by those who are not in religions since what person in their right mind who has given themselves to a particular god would prostrate themselves to another? I know SK isn't RL, but would anyone of strong faith convictions enter into a holy site of another faith and do that same thing? Not very often if at all. But I am starting to get off track here, so I will simply stop and submit this.

OA, whether or not it's "mentally damaged" (apparently your arguments are so weak that you are incapable of making them without base insults?) it's still IN THE HELP FILE. I don't know how a warlock can fight against earth, air, water, or fire anyway. There's nothing about the religion of Yed that conflicts with any other religion.

And I think you're perfectly capable of respecting other gods while still devoting yourself to your own.

I grant that if you make a religion spell overpowered enough, you'll get priests no matter what the religion is. However,
1. Making religion spells overpowered is a bad thing.
2. As you've pointed out, the religion spells aren't changing without Dulrik's say-so.

So look at things that religions can influence. Even the attempt can be ICly fun.



No, it's a binding restriction on a character class, and far less restrictive than what some others have to deal with. It's not that hard to work it in. I played a strict Zavijite warlock who started out never having heard of Yed. But unknowingly, he made blood sacrifices to Yed through his familiar spirit. The spirit also intervened when my character was thinking of acting against the church.

There used to be a term floating around back then... "Parasites". Any non-Khore following warlock was deemed a Parasite by the Khore Church and was hunted down.