[crossfire] [Rebootworld] Priests and prayers and cults

[Mark Wedel]

Lalo Martins wrote:
> quoth Mark Wedel as of Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:41:59 -0800:
>> Lalo Martins wrote:
>>> Some thoughts on Rebootworld religion.  This is mostly to set priestly
>>> types further away from magic-users.
>>   Quick question - how does this affect non priests?  Does it make
>> sense for a fighter to decide to worship a good just for the cool
>> bonuses but otherwise never do anything for that good?  One thought
>> may be the bonuses adjust based on priest level (so a level 1
>> follower gets very little resistance bonus or other benefits, while
>> that level 100 follower gets really good bonuses?)
> 
> In-story I think that makes most sense; as most religions in history
> or fiction have both priests and followers :-)
> 
> I don't know if we need to change the code though.  Maybe the
> resistances are good enough as they are, and higher level priests are
> rewarded with altar gifts, such as is already the case, for example,
> for Valkyrie and Mostrai at least.  (And Gaea, Gorokh, Devourers and
> IIRC Rugilli get nifty spells.)

  Maybe.  It always just seemed a little odd that the starting character goes 
and becomes a follower of a cult and suddenly gets a fair set of nice bonuses 
(and in some cases, penalties).  Sort of begs the question - is pretty much all 
citizens in the town having various benefits/penalties like the character?

  It may just be a case of characters getting more gifts more often, but less 
powerful.  For example, every 10 levels you get a 5% increase to that resistance 
- means a level 100 priest has 50% resistance to whatever - probably not that 
unreasonable, but probably unreasonable to give them that at first level.

  It also means that someone who chooses a religion but never does anything with 
it (doing anything being a broad term) shouldn't get all that much in the way of 
bonuses/benefits.


>>> - No prayerbooks.  Prayers will be learned in the temple and
>>>   different for each cult.  (Sometimes it will be the exact same spell
>>>   but with different name; same internal spell code but different
>>>   archetype.)  The only spell off the top of my head I see pretty much
>>>   every cult having is Cult Monsters (which will probably have a better
>>>   name though).  Maybe Word of Recall.
>>   What about the healing spells?  One things that make priests somewhat
>> specialized is they get healing, and wizards don't.
> 
> I don't think *all* cults should have healing.  Even in 1.x it's
> denied for some.  But it does make sense for both the Imperial cult
> and Valrielianism, which I think will account for the majority of
> players... if you want to play something advanced, then you probably
> understand that things will be different :-)

  Fair enough.  It should probably be pretty clear which ones do and don't, so a 
newbie doesn't play a priest expecting healing, but chooses the wrong god 
because the information isn't out there.

> 
> One question wrt healing: if a player really wants to focus as a
> healer, how would he level up?  In the pre-skill days, he could just
> join a party and get his share of exp.  Now that still works, in a way
> (he gets more HP), but his praying level won't go up.

  There is a general problem with all skills that don't involve killing or risk.

  Some games handle this by whenever the skill is used, you get exp.  But that 
just gets tiring - every time you're wandering someplace, you just cast a spell 
repeatedly to get that exp.

  Some of this could be quests - doing a quest gets exp in praying skill.  But 
that requires a lot of quests, and sort of gives a bonus (character is 
presumably getting exp in other skills to do the quest, and then gets a bonus on 
top of that).

  One idea discussed in the past is sacrificing items to your god.  Each god 
would have a different list of acceptable sacrifices - for example, a god that 
prohibits weapons may take those as a sacrifice (disarming the world). 
Sacrificing body parts of your gods enemy races also makes sense (fewer of them, 
the better).

  All that said, I pretty much think most call cults should have damage spells. 
  It otherwise may not be a very interesting character to play if all you set 
around and heal people.

  One oddity right now is that if there was another character in the party with 
praying skill (to different god) and did kill monsters, that one with only 
healing skills would still get exp.


> Ideal is a reputation system as you proposed.  You'd get minor cult
> reputation simply by being seen regularly in the temple... wearing a
> holy symbol could have a minor influence as well.  Cult-related quests
> could do a lot more (although I'm not too sure what those quests would
> look like).  I suppose known membership in a restricted sub-order
> could also impress people, as it implies a minimum level in the parent
> cult, but that requires further thought and it has exceptions (being
> known as a Gorokhist certainly doesn't make you look better with
> Valrielians, even though it's a restricted sub-cult).

  Cult related quests could fall into many different areas, broadly defined:
1) Recover item of importance to cult (it was stolen, etc)
2) Kill monster the cult doesn't like

Those above 2 are things that could already be done - following would require 
more work:

3) More followers for cult.  This sort of presumes there are folks to convert - 
probably don't want to include players, as too easy to solve then, but if there 
are villagers, etc, in the world.  Note this could fall back to one of the above 
- villagers are like 'hey, you kill those wolves eating our livestock, we'll 
worship whoever you say' type of thing.
4) could also have competing quests.  Maybe half a dozen different folks want 
the goblin king killed.  Player has to decide which one he really goes for (an 
example here could be that basically all the different classes (skills) want him 
killed and give some form of exp reward or maybe something different.  In this 
way, every class can get something from it - do you want that fighter experience 
of praying experience.  Sort of counters the problem I mentioned above with only 
healers having quests for exp.  This also helps out the problem where in a 
sense, you don't have to write as many quests - a bunch of quests could use the 
same maps.
5) The cult could take on something that doesn't directly affect it, but other 
folks aren't solving.  Something could be hurting followers of the cult, but the 
city just isn't bothering to do anything, so the cult is looking for those 
adventurers to do it.

  I don't think being able to find quests for a cult to give out would be hard 
to do.


> Being seen with other people of very high reputation could have an
> effect too... if you're always walking around with a group of known
> Gorokhists then you'll start being treated as "probably one of them".

  But that is sort of odd - right now, there isn't anything preventing a party 
of mixed gods - you could even associated with followers of an opposing god.

  I'm not sure how much that should be changed - hard enough right now to find 
folks to adventure with - if you started excluding a bunch because of religious 
differences, no matter how realistic, that probably isn't an improvement.