Ok, there has been so much talk on these boards about the cleric/knight ability to get soulless, so I'd just like to dispel some of the things being said about it and talk about it from a point of view of someone that actually is soulless.

First off, I'd just like to say that soulless is very nice, but it isn't is end-all super powerful thing that many people make it out be.

The requirements for getting soulless are this: 1) You must be an evil cleric at gen 4 or an evil knight at gen 6 2) You must go into level 7 hell and seek out the keeper of souls (not an easy task by any means) In fact, I had to use a trans ticket to get soulless myself 3) You must pay 25 LPs, 5 constitution points (as in you lose 5 con), and a few million in gold

Advantages of being soulless are these: 1) You don't have to wear a holy symbol anymore to cast spells 2) You can wear hunted equipment without devils hunting you 3) You are immune to rune based spells such as stigmata and taint, since you already have a rune on your head 4) You are immune to the good knight spell, sanctification 5) You are granted a minor increase in offensive spells (~5% from what I've been told) 6) You wake up when put to sleep

Now things I'd like to say about it: 1) I can't speak for clerics, but as an evil knight, the increase in offensive spells is very very minor and I really don't notice it. In fact, it seems to me that a mortal evil cleric's spells do about the same damage as mine as a gen 10 knight, but this may have to do with me being a knight. And, of course, I don't have nearly the amount of offensive spells that evil clerics do.

2) The waking up when put to sleep is highly over-rated. It's more of an annoyance more than anything, because although you do wake up, you immediately fall asleep again if you've fallen asleep by means of drowsy, melatonic flood, sleeper hold, or that guard special where they hit you over the head. And I don't mean you wake up and have a second to be awake before you fall asleep again. I mean you immediately fall asleep right after you wake up, 1 line right after the other. So essentially, you're put into a spammy cycle of waking and falling back asleep again till the spell wears off. The only things that soulless permanently wakes you from are if you manually type sleep and from the phyz lecture. This of course is another annoyance since you can't sleep to recover and you can't sleep in arena if you want a thief to steal something off you.

3) So, again I'd just like to say that yeah, I love having soulless, but it isn't as over powered as some people have been saying. The one thing that I do agree with is that soulless shouldn't protect you from the good knight spell sanctification, since this is a remort spell after all.

Good post Lysol :) I think soulless is overpowered simply because good clerics and knights don't have something to balance it. It's my personal opinion that one alignment of knight or cleric shouldn't get something unless the other alignment gets something to balance it. Now, I've been told in the past that the damage increase for being souless, at least at gen 10 is more like 25% than 5% but that's just what I've been told, and that may have been pre-2nd-lock.

agreed elric. Good knights should get a counter balance to Souless with slightly different effects, and for souless, perhaps removing the immunity to sleep and replacing with something more useful would help it out a bit. Just the thoughts of Craedric the Beautiful Fool.

Elric, is soulless overpowered, or is it a balanced skill? I don't understand what you're saying. You first say it's overpowered, but then want it for good align. If you want it for good align, I assume you wouldn't suggest something overpowered, but balanced.

I'm not trying to troll the boards here, I promise.. but.. uh.. what are you trying to say?

Merriam

I have to agree with Merriam on this and Lysol. Good clerics are not meant to deal out damage like a evil cleric and evil knight. Good alinged clerics and knights heal about 25% better then evil alinged counterparts. Also, the sleep thing is just a annoance to evil alinged clerics and knights. Lysol and Merriam are right on key. I wouldn't object though for some type of good alinged changes. Maybe for good clerics, a remort greater regeneration spell. This increases regen x2. Perhaps make some type of holy soulful thing you can get as a knight and cleric. However, if good clerics and knights get something like this, souless should really resist sleep for real. Not the way it works now.

i don't noe about u guys but i think that !sleep would make Lysolchip almost invincible, cuz the mage and psi stuns doesn't really last long enought for the spell downs. (well, drowsy and stun don't always work either, but at least there's a chance of fully spelling down the target after drowsy)so y not just take away the spammy stuff and make it say something like Nightmare falls upon you. :D

Shrug, the spam is annoying but when I'm drowsied and flooded it's not like the spam is distracting me from anything. I've got no problems with it. I'd say it's more spammy for the awake people in the room.

I do think that waking from the floods and drowsies is overpowered. I think soulless is pretty balanced as it is right now (cost-benefit). It's hard to get, and rewards seem appropriate, especially considering no other classes get anything like it.

Good-evil equivalents are needed, however.

how bout giving evil knights/clerics with souless a cheesy Painful Punishment!

instead of getting hunted and ATTACKED by devils, a mama/papa devil hunts you and spanks you for stealing hunted eq.

these appear less often than the devils that hunt and attack, and they disapear after they are finished.

:D:D:D:D:D:D

I disagree with the whole good and evil need to be exactly equivalent to eachother yet different.

That's flat out impossible, if it's what you want, you're never going to be satisfied and you're never going to get it. There's more to balance than balance between good and evil within knight and cleric, there are all of the clases, remort combination possibilities combined with racial possibilites to consider. Realize too, there are games published all the time that have tons of people with huge budgets backing them such as Blizzard, and even they will have tweaks here and there after release to try to "balance" things, yet it's never really quite balanced and it never will be. Nothing and the team are awesome but lets keep things in perspective.

I'm not too new to remember when good knight was king and all the evil knights did was piss and moan about fair this and balanced that. Before then evil knight was king, it has come around again now that evil knight is the most popular, keep playing and you will see it swing again. It's the ebb and flow of and ever changing game.

By the way, there is nothing that cannot be done with any primary class. Adragan (some may know him better as Polaris? I don't even know who he plays now) has proven this time and again. He has pratically violated the game with his mastery of it. The possibilities are in the creativity and resourcefulness of the player not the character.

well said clap