Shattered Kingdoms

Ever tried IC notes? You can address them to specific players, even. It's certainly not perfect, but it would at least give you the chance to interact with the HF (Although it's also true that I don't think he could invest you while you aren't online).

I would think that at the moment, the faith boards are the best place to for the players to post seekers, and for the players to ask the IMMs if they would be willing to invest someone who has RP fitting to the faith. A coded "change" in this way would be nice, but I also feel like it could be solved with similar efficiency with the systems already in place.

Investments can be done offline. At least, they could be done offline at recently as six months ago, when Kehtokweh ninja-invested/blemished Tolene into Dulrika a few minutes before deleting.

If this is still the case, then I could see how a system where anyone in the faith is able to recommend someone for investment given that they think their RP fits. A clause that allowed the HF or immortal to reverse said decision would of course be in order, but all in all I think this might work. It would however, require a change in the official policy about investments, complete with sticky's and everything imo.

Fortunately I'm already GM, so I have all the time I need to blemish them, cleave them into dreamland, dominate them while they're stunned, and then make them do silly things until I either run out of mana (Dom is a HUGE drain) or I'm happy again.


Don


(Loves being in charge of Tyranny)

My solution: Offline invest/induct.

How it works:

You can't find your tribunal/cabal/religion leader? Just make a post on the astral boards about it.

To make sure the leader sees the post, a tweak needs to be made that informs a recipient of a targeted note that a note with his name on it has been posted.

After maybe 2-3 posts interaction and quest/questions are complete and answered in subsequent posts, the leader can invest the player while he/she is offline.

Again not ideal, but better than handing the job to NPC's i think.

We could just change it so that non-invested people could cast up to and including veteran spells. That would vastly improve the time during which a priest could viably stay without a religion, compensating for low player counts and potential time-zone issues, and opening interesting roleplay options in which we see characters that aren't "called" to some religion immediately upon creation as we mostly see today.

QFT I couldn't have said it better. Well done!

While there have been some implied things in this thread that I don't agree with: (That it requires leveling before you can RP).

I think you could certainly extend a religious character's allowable time as a pantheist or whatever that is called.

In fact I don't think it would be the end of the world to allow a priest to go to grand master as a pantheist:

> They wouldn't have access to a religious spell or religious gear.
> They wouldn't have access to a structured church or the player allies and resources that entails.

And unless the pantheist priest was actively trying to get into a religion up until that point, and just never got a break, I'd advise the other religions to make them really work hard for their investment at that point.

It's a little harder with Paladins and Hellions who should never truly be worshiping all the gods. (Maybe you push the level requirement back a tad Expert perhaps).

The things I'd be considering in the balancing are:
> A players ability to advance without making contact with someone to invest them.
> Empowering the idea that RP begins at level 50, and that a player cannot get themselves involved in serious RP or Conflict before that level

While I agree that there is no level requirement for RP, worshipping all the gods (or even simply refusing to revere one above all the others) comes with its benefits and drawbacks.

Benefits include:

- freedom of roleplay to whatever standard you desire

- ability to use pantheist-only spells and armor

- as a priest, ability to wear armor types that may be restricted after you choose a faith

Drawbacks include:

- Gods are (generally) apathetic to your character in turn. For priests, this means you have only the basic spells of a cleric. While you're certainly free to get to GM without being invested, there's no reason why you should have the benefit that devoted priests and priestesses have during that journey.

- No access to sacred items or spells -- tying in with the above. These are reserved for followers.

Rewarding pantheism for a class that is specifically tied to religion is kind of silly, in my opinion. Very few characters have ever been true pantheists that "worship" all of the gods. Most pantheist types worship the gods of light, darkness, natural forces or some other logical combination that fits their concept. It'd be fairly ridiculois for an elven priest, for example, to take on pantheism in a true sense. Unless you're grep, you're not going to bother trying to justify worshipping Thuban in part or in full as a light aura.

Even fewer characters are stupid enough to deny the existence of any of the gods. Since they're real, the pantheon is a reality of Pyrathia. Acknowledging all the gods is not the same as worshipping them.