well since everyone is posting some things about their respective classes i would make a post about some things i think good knights need :)

now that heaven is starting to expand i think that some close balanced heaven eq needs to go in that would somewhat close the gap between good and evil knights…you could make this eq hunted as well cause im sure that ppl in heaven dont like having their stuff stolen from them either so why not have a group of archons port in and go to town…

i personally think that good knights need 1 more decent remort spell…i love sanctification but divine intervension doesnt really do much except for block some spells but after a few spells it goes away…im not sure what could possibly go in as a new remort spell but im sure that with the group of creative imms that something nice could go in

Yes good knights do need some stuff added to them but good knights will never come close to evil knights. Maybe some more defensive spells like clerics do. They can get auras or something that beef em up and other divine classes and maybe some spells can affect groupies like cleric spells do. There is some classes that do need help too. But before Olek has tried to post on here that good knights need help yet nothing has yet been done. Somethings are just lost causes. For years soulless for good has been talked about yet I have yet to see anything done for it. Good divine classes such as knights and clerics are just one of those classes that you will have to deal with being crappy. mostly good knights.

Sorry to say good knights are going to get screwed all the time. But maybe posting some good ideas for skills or something might get some changes. or just complain til it happens but most of the time that wont work, I tried. :(

How about something simple, from a former Diablo 2 addict - auras.

A Good Knight (Paladin… easier to type) could gain access to what amounts to Area of Effect buffs for every member of the party. Nothing like bards in terms of numbers, but a few decent remort abilities like an increase to defense, attack damage/speed, and such. The real kicker is this - the Auras are activated skills, and only one may be on at a time! So you have to pick which one is most useful for you at the time.

For even more variety, we could add auras that, instead of helping allies, harms enemies. Maybe AoE damage upon entering (with an elemental damage boost for the paladin)or AoE effect that lowers hitroll, damroll, armor, or any other number of things.

Just a thought.

Im not asking for good knights to be givin major amounts of stuff…i would just like to see mabey a couple new skills and/or spells and a better choice of eq…i agree the blazing battleaxe is much better then the decapitator but most of the other eq from hell is !good except for bracelet of pain…im just lookin to see some nice things come outta heaven sooner or later :)

Having recently switched from a good knight to evil, I can say there is a pretty big difference. I liked the idea of being a good knight and I think the blue looks better on the who list than red, but other than that, there's not a whole lot going for good knights. So my heals did twice as much when I was good. I hardly ever take damage anymore now that I have devils to tank for me. Why aren't good knights able to summon angels? Newbies have guardian angels/devils, why can't knights? I don't think it's very necessary to have an equivalent for soulless with good knights, but they definitely need some more.

I think that good knight is one of the most appealing classes, especially for newbies, after all, if you're in a fantasy world, being a knight is badass. I agree with Kak that there should be some more !evil eq loading in heaven and maybe some specifically !evil +kni eq since knights are just that awesome.

Evil knights are able to summon spined devils and others and a bunch of them, which are the ultimate tank assist. Good knights should at the very least be able to summon angels or guardinals.

"Confirmation" could be the good knight version of soulless. along with allowing the knight to summon angels it could strengthen anti-evil spells. maybe more, any ideas?

Maybe as a low gen remort spell good knight could recall without a hs.

I'm just now learning how to play a good knight. I thought i'd throw out a couple of ideas to see what people think!

Traditionally Knights trained intensively with heavy armor to make get the biggest benefit from them. Now, in Tempus armor is armor for everyone. What if Knights could get more out of their armor with increased training? Possibly getting a greater AC benefit or reduced encumberance. This would be in the same vein as shield mastery, which is awesome.

Spells: How about a spell that lets more powerful Paladins imbue their weapon with the holy power of Alron. Holy Weapon would empower their weapon with posetive energy, making it much more powerful against evil creatures and undead.

Other people have mentioned Guardian Angels. If evil knights can summon help from the lower planes it would be great if a good knight could summon the celestial hosts to fight by his side. Since there are many different angels now, you could bring stronger allies as your gen increaces.

Since bash has the tendency to leave you flat on your but, wouldn't more experienced paladins know a better way to knock their foes down? What about Shield Bash? Using their shields they smash into an enemy, bowling them over or it could leave them dazed and confused for a short while, unable to react.

so what do you guys think?

The question is, what are knights looking to gain? A skill/spell that needs to be used actively, or passive "cast and forget" type stuff.

Also, judging from past threads, it doesn't look as if an good aligned equivalent to soulless is going to happen, so arguing for it to be added will be pointless.

While I like all of your ideas, Dolza, most of the things you mentioned seem to apply to knights in general, not dependent on a good alignment. The holy weapon idea already exists in the form of Sanctification. Again, it makes no sense to me that soulless makes one immune to Sanctification. If anything, Sanctification should do more damage to soulless, right? After all, doesn't losing your soul make you that much more evil?

I agree good knight could use a little bit of help. But I don't like the idea of bringing them to par with evil knight. The reason being evil knight has become too big and needs to be brought down. But also fwiw I don't see a heap of reason for them to be dead even opposite of eachother either. Just as in life you always have the choice of the hard working less reward good path or the selfish instant gratification evil path. Tempus is all about enjoying yourself, it seems most people get their enjoyment on Tempus from the fantasy of the baddest mofo on the block. There are others who will enjoy feeling like their character is noble, less equiped to be awesome, and will love the challenge.

ok good soulless is gonna be put in when heaven starts to get more levels…and for the weapon thing that dolza was talkin about its not sanctification its more like divine power it sounds to me…sanctification is good but is useless against soulless…me being a gen 10 good knight and pretty much the only one i dont think they are in a big rush to do anything to bring this class closer to equal with evil knight…

shield bash has been talked about alot and would be a kick ass skill for both alignments

i think that good align should get to summon angels…ive said that many times…but i always get the arguement back from lysol that if good knights get that then he wants an evil version of sanctification

knights in general need a lookin at, not just good align…many ppl who play knight will tell you this…but there are many classes that need more help so we will see what happens

Hmm, Why do my ideas have to apply to all knights? Couldnt Alron decide to teach his followers a new skill or two to combat the destructive power of the anti-paladins? Where does it say in the rules that every skill for a good knight has to be "good-aligned" or somehow holy? If we're using that as a benchmark why would good knights have something as 'evil' as behead?

What if there were a skill/spell for good knights that went in groups called protect the weak? If you were in a group you could cast or activate "Protect the weak". Based on the number of people in your group the knight would be get bonus hitpoints and take some hits that would otherwise strike someone grouped. This would be similar to defend but Alron would bestow increased vitality (hps) to his knights for doing their duty to protect those in their party. I know this doesn't increase their power on an Good knight vs. Evil knight scale, but it is an added bonus and might encourage grouping.

I mentioned in my last post about specific training with armor for knights, since traditionally they wore heavier armor. What if their attack speed could be increased slightly as a result of their training with heavier armors? Or what if they got greater benefit from their armor because of their expertise?

Stand your ground: A paladin stands for whats right, refusing to back down or be intimidated by his foes and barring their way should they try to get past him and attack someone in his group. When activated this skill lets the knight hold his ground against dangerous enemies whatever the cost to himself. For a reduction in dex or movement and AC the knight gains stability ( reduced chance to be knocked down),the ability to keep his enemies from fleeing a room to chase after his friends, and a bonus to hit or damage since he's less interested in defending himself just dishing out the pain to keep his alies safe. The knight would not be able to flee himself as long as Stand Your Ground was active.

Oh man…here we go again…

I hate getting into this discussion but I'd just like to throw in some opinions and discussion points from the viewpoint of an evil knight.

First off, I want to agree with Kak when he says knights in general need a look over - both alignments. Like I mentioned in Jakezor's ranger thread, rangers aren't the only older class that has been left behind. In my opinion, knights have been sorely left behind too in the form of uniqueness to the class. Not counting remort spells, knights have 4 skills/spells that are unique to the class: behead, holytouch, shield mastery, and calm. And, of these, holytouch is really the only truly unique one (it heals and depending on the alignment, gives some after effects - good: cures aliments, evil: hurts good aligned). Behead is like any other powermove, shield mastery is essentially the same as tumbling and uncanny dodge, and calm has a better form in the bard spell hymn of peace.

What I'd like to see is a bit of a revamp of knights so that they have more skills that you traditionally think of when you think knight. I've thrown out these skill ideas in other threads, but I'll put them here too. I'd love to see riding improved and have skills more oriented with riding. I mean I don't know if it's just me, but I always imagine knights riding in on a shining steed (or undead skeletal horse). I'd like to see maybe a call steed skill, and maybe knights get some additional damroll, speed, or something while fighting on a horse. Also, maybe the steed's stats would combine in the calculation of some in battle stuff. There are lots of possibilities of how this could be done. Another problem that I see with knights now is that one of our biggest defensive skills, shield mastery, requires that you're wearing the shield. However, 2 of our biggest skills require we remove our shield, lunge punch and behead (assuming you're using a 2-hander). Now, I don't see much of a solution to behead since we do have the choice to behead 1 handed. But, I'd love to see shield lunge or shield bash replace lunge punch as many many people have suggested. Finally, I think knights, out of all the past classes, would be the most tactical class in battle. It seems to me that it would make sense to have group leadership passive skills for knights. Again, this could be done in many ways, but I think knights would be good at organizing and leading a tactical strike/retreat. Maybe, if they're leading a group, all the group members could have increased damroll or something like the bard spells.

Kakorat said he's the only gen 10 good knight, and I believe I'm the only gen 10 evil knight. I think that goes to show you how unpopular the class has become. The class is a bit of a hodge podge class of other class' skills/spells. I'd just like to see some more uniqueness added to it.

Now, about the whole good vs evil knight discussion. In my opinion, good/evil knight and good/evil cleric aren't really supposed to be 2 separate classes. They're supposed to be like 2 sides of the same coin, their similar skills just function differently, depending on their align. Hence, you have evil knights with stronger offensive spells, but good knights with stronger heals but they both have the offensive spells and they both have heal. Evil knights' holytouch hurts good align, good knights' holytouch removes bad effects like poison but they both have a holytouch that heals. Evil knights have damn, good knights have bless. Evil knights have sphere of desceration, good knights have divine intervention. I think the point is to make this 1 class that has 2 faces, not 2 completely different classes (but hey, I might be wrong).

Now in that vein, I do believe that good knights are a bit weaker in their choice of remort spells compared to evil knights. It's my honest opinion that from gen 0 to gen 4, good knight is the more "powerful" class due to heal being much stronger as good align. From gen 5 onward, once evil gets summon legion and soulless, they become the more "powerful" class. I wouldn't be against seeing a good equivalent like summon angel. I also don't see a problem with a good aligned soulless, as long as it's more or less equivalent to soulless. But if you ask me, soulless isn't as big a deal as most people make it out to be. If you ask me, the simple addition of more levels of heaven and better equipment for good align (or simply bringing back some of the good aligned eq from oddy) would easily compensate for soulless.

That being said, I don't ever see anyone asking for an evil align equivalent of sanctification. All I ever see is summon angel and soulful posts. I for one, like Kak said, would love to see that.

All in all though, I agree with Kak. It's not just good knight that needs some help, knight in general needs some help. But there are other classes that do need it more.

I think Lysol's post says it all.

Dolza, I think these ideas are much more good-align exclusive. I like em all.

Kak isn't the only good aligned 10th gen knight, just the only one that he knows about :P~

Go go Jeremiah? Oh and I think Masa got up to gen 10 also after lock, but I've forgotten.

Kakarot, Jeremiah, Masa, Triskaidekaphobic. Thats all that i can think of for gen 10 good knights.

First off let me just say I find it very surreal that other people are saying exactly the same thing that I've said for years. It's kind of bizarre seeing my words come out of another persons mouth :p (not saying that someone has stolen my idea or anything, I hope you understand what I'm saying)

Wow where to begin. First let me say that Dolza's idea about an armor mastery skill for knights has been kicking around in my noggin for a while now, so I wholeheartedly agree with this. In my opinion it should work like this: they should get additional defensive benefit from armor, perhaps only from certain wear positions. For example: (and I'm by no means suggesting this as the real formula, I'm simply utilising this for my point) Any AC-apply that is worn on the chest, arms, legs and head is given 1.5 times the benefit to the characters armor class. The skill could work in a similar fashion to a good knights sanctification in that it scales by 5% per generation, so that a gen 10 knight would gain 150% more AC from those wear positions and a gen 1 knight would gain 105%.

Onto the Holy weapon idea and Kitano's argument that this already exists in the form of sanctification - I agree. There's no reason that knights shouldn't get a weapon buff type spell however. This is one of the surreal points I was talking about earlier…Kitano's argument is EXACTLY what I've said for years about sanctification and it not working on souless :p

Next thing: Shield Rush and Shield Bash are skills I've suggested a lot. Shield Bash should replace lunge punch as the high level knight knockdown ability. Shield Rush should be bash on steriods, however still with the ability to miss and fall down. It would need to be elevated in the level requirement stakes. Does anyone else have trouble picturing a lunge punch in a real world setting? The mental image in my head is completely dorky looking which is why I think it should be replaced. Lunge (or the newly renamed Shield Bash) should be removed from every other classes skill list as well in my opinion, as every other class that has access to it, has superior knock down abilities hence they never use it.

And the next! I like Dolza's idea of the 'protect the weak' skill (perhaps a name change?) and also the 'stand your ground' (again perhaps a name change?) ability. I would suggest the benefit is a much reduced chance of knockdown, with a significant boost to Armor Class at the cost of all movement points (no other negatives required, read on). If this is the case it should also be coded such that a character could only activate it in battle and it wears off a tick (or a smaller time increment) after the character exits battle. It should also slow movement regen while active (or maybe completely stop it?) This would prevent a knight from activating it and then spending the next 5 minutes quaffing movement restore potions etc. By dropping their movement to 0 it would also prevent them from fleeing…and using behead.

And now onto Lysolchips comments! Agree to Lysolchips agreement with Kakarot point on all knights in general needing a facelift. I would just like to add that behead was the only power move in the game that has a counter-flag (!Behead) available on equipment that SIGNIFICANTLY lowers your damage (I think it drops the damage output by 50%). Having said that, I'm not sure if this flag is actually active on any equipment in the game anymore. Does neck equipment sometimes block behead still? As you can see it had / has some disadvantages to it.

Riding…I can see what Lysolchip is saying here. I would suggest that instead of worrying about mounts, you could instead just make 'call steed' a buff that adds a trailer and a mod to the "stand" script (sorry don't know right name). Lysolchip rides here. …he is surrounded by a prismatic sphere of light. …he is mounted upon a skeletal nightmare! or for good a noble steed / pegasus / unicorn for good females…the coders could have fun with this.

I want to comment on the aura's or passive leadership type abilites, but I think I should save that for another reply as I have a fairly revolutionary idea in that regard.

Onto another surreal moment; Lysolchip is saying the exact thing I've been arguing about since souless came into being. (This also addresses Narcissus post 2005-09-26 3:08 AM - that's what it is on my PC anyway). Narc says he doesn't see a reason for them to be dead even opposite of each other; allow me to retort!

Using that argument, are you saying that a good barbarian is a seperate class to an evil barbarian? No, they're not, so why, then is a good knight and an evil knight seperate classes? They are exactly, as Lysolchip has so correctly said, opposite sides of the same coin. With that in mind, when one alignment gets, the other alignment needs to get, and it's my proposition that they should effectively get counters.

Time for a nostalgia moment. At the time of the first wizlock Fireball added the first remort spells, and as knights were one of the most widely played class at the time, they got one of the first brushes. As I was even then one of the longest playing characters he asked me what I thought good and evil knights should get. Now at that time, evil knights had a much better damroll than good knights and a shitty heal, but good knights had a great heal (much better than the shite one they have now) and crappy damroll. So I suggested that good knights should get a spell to boost their damage output versus evil, and evil knights should get vampiric regeneration (my suggestion wasn't like the current version of vampiric regen). The way I'd suggested was that if a good knight effectively got a damroll boost (the evil knights strong point) than the evil knight should get a healing boost (the good knights strong point). So the evil knight should have got a percentage of damage done back as hit points, probably not in the same order as the 5% per gen boost to good knights damroll as the evil knights could use this against any alignment and 50% of damage done back as health would be unstoppable :P) But anyway Fireball wanted to give evil knights summon legion and when the discussion for evil cleric remort abilities came up I suggested vampiric regen again. The rest is history. Summon Legion used to suck until relatively recently I believe? so it was never on a par with sanctification - which is where the souless flag came from. Every monkey under the sun including the original badass evil knight (Nazareth) went good so they could run hell.

So the coders introduced the souless flag which completely NEGATES the only good knight remort spell worth mentioning. It's also become an almost standard feature of evil mobs to have this flag. I'd like to digress at this point: demons should not have the souless flag! Devils yes, demons no. Devils and demons are at eternal war at least in the D&D mythos which is where a lot of our classes and zone ideas originally come from. Why would the devils allow the demons to sell their soul for such a great benefit? Souless should in my humble opinion be the soul perview of devils and evil knights and clerics. This fits their implacable, structured desire for conquest. Demons should have their own version, but they'd let anyone of evil alignment buy it - this fits their chaotic nature. They don't care about your alliegance as long as it's to evil and you wreak bloody havoc.

Back from my digression - I would therefore humbly submit that for each good or evil knight spell there needs to be an equivalent / counter for the opposite alignment.

So phew! If you've reached this point you must care about what I think :p

Elric, praise you, you are right on in everything you've just said. Elric knows his stuff, and while I haven't been here as long as he has, these are quite my thoughts of what the night should be. I would love to beg Kakarot to tank for me because good knights should be fantastic fighters in the midst of battle and also good tanks and superb healers, second only to cleric.

Respectfully,

Merriam/Maxwell

PS: Elric! Where have you been?

ok to go back to me saying that im the only gen 10 good knight….i know you have a gen 10 knight caden but what class dont you have a gen 10 of….masa and trisk dont play anymore so they dont count

lysol and whoever else i think dolza said it right evil/good align should not be completely different…

i made this post and only few ppl at first replied to it and i just figured it bombed…i just wanted to see if anyone had ideas to kick around and now they are flowing…

shield bash- has been mentioned many times by lysol and myself since i got to a higher gen…lunge punch is good but i complete negates shield mastery since you have to remove your shield…behead i dont think is as strong with a one hander as with a 2-hander…but thats a price to pay for your powermove so i dont think that any of that has to change for behead…

good soulless- i talked with nevermore about this one day and she asked why there should be a good soulless…i told her that when heaven starts to get more levels the eq from the higher levels should be hunted as well…just because your holy dont mean that you want ppl comming into your place and stealing your weapons and such…so the good soulless would keep the angels and such off your ass when wearing the armor…now i see it a long time before a good soulless goes in cause it takes a long time to build a zone

summon angel- for me summon angel is not a big deal anymore…but for the newer good knights who decide to stay good i think that they would love to have a few mobs to tank for them while fighting…i never understood why good align never had this spell in the first place

to the point of a spell that adds damroll to weapons…this sounds alot like the cleric spell "divine power" or whatever it is…would be cool to have but i dont have alot to say about it

for a spell that gives added damroll for the knight as a group spell…this would be cool to have cause for those who are out helping a clannie or a friend level they could always use a boost in damroll…this spell should be for both aligns…

the protect the weak spell sounds cool but is a little to much…bard has a song that does this in melody of mettle…i dont see this as something a knight really needs cause they get a lot of hp in general

i think that evil knights heal could be upped a little…i personally dont know how crappy it is but i hear it sucks

No Elric. You asked me for permission to retort, and am almost regretful to say that I deny you permission. If you could please go back now and remove your response to my post, that'd be great.

In all seriousness, it's a matter of opinion. The knights, good and evil, as you propose them are fine by me, I have no objection to that.

I just take a different view, as knights of lesser skill being very simliar to eachother except in where their heart lies. Being in selfish service to themselves in a quest to become the greatest, or to the selfless service of that which is greater than themselves. This is reflected very well in evil knight with going soulless, which is basically the ultimate sacrifice for sheer power. These are two very different outlooks and goals which, in my opinion, would lead to two very different classes, similar only in title of knight. But even that is a fine line on Tempus. I believe the "official" title for evil knight is Anti-Paladin, and not Knight at all.

As far as I know, the classes that have no damage redux are knight, mage, thief, bard and merc. Mages have mana shield, bards have audience members and plenty of buffs, and thieves shouldn't be standing and fighting in melee much anyways. Mercs could use it, but I think they're also kind of the same as thieves in that they're more the hit-and-run type of fighters. What about knights??

It seems to me, knights and barbs should be the biggest tanks in the game. Seeing as we don't get any redux primary, this clearly isn't so. Now, evil knights get summon legion and hell eq, which makes me a pretty good tank, but good knights don't really have anything. Perhaps they can get a form of Sanctuary that gives redux. A good knight remort spell? Or maybe just tack on some damage redux to Sanctification. Seems this would be okay to leave exclusive to good knights seeing as evil is more concerned with damage and destruction than protection.

just giving good knights a dam redux dont fix anything…giving them sanc isnt fair 1. because if good gets sanc so should evil 2. becuase it is just another spell that is borrowed from another class and knights have enough of those as it is…

im looking for things that are unique to knight…i dont want something that another class has…im not looking for 5 new skill/spells either im just looking for something to make good knight but mostly knights more buffer then they are now

alot of the things that are mentioned aside from good soulless and summon angel are for both align not just good…things like the group spells and such should go on both aligns cause that would make knight as a whole better

Narcissus what you are saying is 100% correct from a roleplaying perspective…but Tempus isn't played like that. To some extent people do take on the role of the character they are playing but not like you're describing it. From what I've seen, people on computer games are not about roleplaying choice; they're all about POWER. On Tempus power is granted by levels, generations, skills, spells and arguably most importantly equipment.

It's a simple fact that at the moment there isn't enough incentive to play a good knight; they lag behind the evil knight in terms of spells and equipment. It's also my opinion that knights as a whole are lacking. In my previous marathon post I mentioned something about a "revolutionary" idea.

Narcissus you brought up that an evil knight is correctly called an Anti-Paladin; I disagree, and yet agree (confused yet? :P) As it currently stands, knights are knights are knights and the only thing that SHOULD seperate them is the choice of alignment. They are a single class which is why the scales of balance should not be tipped in favour of either choice.

Now onto the Revolution! I'd like to see 3 things; The knight class broken into 3. Paladins, Knights, and Blackguard (Anti-Paladin sounds like crap in my opinion). They are then 3 seperate classes and then they no longer need to be compared against each other, just in terms of the whole. Basically any knights that currently exist would be given a choice to go to a Paladin (and they then have to remain good), or Knight (and remain Neutral) or Blackguard (and remain Evil). If this were to occur, you could easily bring in ideas from other sources for the Paladin class, Blackguards could become even more focussed on devilish mayhem, and it would open the way for a neutral knight; Sworn to duty to their lord and bound to follow any order. You could remove their spell casting ability all together and then create offensive and defensive abilities.

Nyeh, the neutral knight part is probably more trouble than it's worth, but I still think splitting knights into Paladins / Blackguard would allow for my diversity.

I'm fully down with the 3 knights thing. I wouldn't say the neutral knight is more effort than it's worth at all. Yeah you're right Elric, people that play the mud don't roleplay, they're just in a quest for power. But there's no reason the creators can't have that roleplaying mentality with the classes that they create ;) And with knight as you'd like to see it, there's plenty of room for that :D

For starters I'll leave the postulating about what knights should be called or what direction to the rest of you. I have no idea where the coders want to go with knights but i'll keep throwing out ideas until we get something that sticks!

I will say that i think it's great to have so much discourse on these topics and the best part is that we're not sniping at each others ideas, bravo.

So! Someone mentioned giving knights mounts or a ride skill. I dont know what would be easiest but it seems like just adding an affect like Elric said. Here are some skills that could be used when riding.

Charge: When riding his mount a knight can make a charge attack against an opponent. this would only be usable at the start of combat. It would inflict massive damage against the enemy.

Trample: You use your mount to run over your opponent. This one would definately do damage and knock the opponent down as your mounts hooves crush them.

Horsemanship: A battle trained steed can make attacks of its own against an opponent that his Knight is fighting. This wouldnt something too spectacular, just an occasional extra bite or stomp from the horses hooves.

There ya go, three more ideas to kick around.

dolza

As far as Kitano's comment, "As far as I know, the classes that have no damage redux are knight, mage, thief, bard and mercenary" goes. This is not entirely accurate. Knights have shield mastery, mages have mana shield (reduces damage to hitpoints by taking it from mana–now stacks with damage reduction as well), thieves have uncanny dodge, bards have tumble, and mercenaries have nothing. So really the only class that has nothing is mercenary, and I think they're a balanced class that only needs remort appeal.

Shield mastery, electrostatic field, thornskin, tumble, uncanny dodge, and other such skills are not damage reducers, but damage cancellers–far superior to damage reducers in my opinion, because they can reduce 100% of the damage of a hit!

Keep on trucking, ye folkes! Good work on Knights :)

Merriam/Maxwell

i forgot to comment on the mounting ideas that lysol posted and now dolza added too

as for the skill ideas that dolza added i think they all sound pretty kick ass…mabey being mounted on a horse could give you some added damroll druing the battle

also mabey in another note mabey some eq that you could put on your steed and add some power to your horse…things like spiked horseshoes and a battle helmet with a spike or something to that effect

The problem with Shield Mastery, as has been brought up before, is that to use any of the useful skills knights have, we have to remove our shields. When I'm fighting melee battles, I'm usually either spamming lunge punch or beheading. I've got an alias to remove my shield for lunge punches, but the result of that is that I'm hardly ever wearing it, not enough to take full advantage of the bonus.

I don't see why a shield needs to be held and not worn. I think, for example, you could wear a shield, hold an item, and wield a weapon, but not wear a shield, wield a weapon, and wield a weapon. Does that make sense? You could wear a shield with your left arm whilst holding a voodoo totem with your left hand and fighting with a hammer of Mjolnir in your right, but not wear a shield with a rose-star disc in your left and a hammer of Mjolnir in your right because fighting with a shield and two weapons would be impractical.

Merriam/Maxwell

the reason you hold a shield is so you have the ability to move it around and block attacks…if it was worn on your arm you wouldnt have the same dexterity as you do with it being held…

as for having to remove shield for lunge and behead…this will just have to be done forever till they possibly put in an idea like shield bash to replace it

Oddly enough you guys are both right. Typically a shield has two straps. You slide your arm through the first one and grab the second one with your shield hand. This gives the ability to move it around like Kak said but the strap helps to hold it in place like Merr said.

On another note, i think one of the best points that's been made is about the knights having to remove or change eq to use their skills. this makes playing a knight fairly cumbersome. If it were changed so that their skills could be done one handed or new one handed skills replaced that would be a great improvement for Knights of either alignment.

dolza

Another small complaint that I have about knights is behead. I often miss my beheads when I have a sleeping/stunned victim. Now I understand that when you're beheading something, it would be hard to be accurate and precise. I can live with the missing in battle, but I think missing stunned/sleeping beheads is just silly.

Have any of you other knights run into this problem? I'd say I probably miss around 1 in 4 times against a sleeping/stunned victim.

Yeah, the missing thing happens to me too. Maybe it has something to do with their height when sleeping? Just speculation.

Yea i miss too…i just thought it was me but i guess not

I imagine it has more to do with just everything has a chance to miss, even against sleeping. missing isnt probably more likely because it's behead when someone is sleeping, my psiblast seems to miss alot when people are sleeping as well. though it might have to do with height , i doubt it.

You should be able to miss when someone is sleeping or stunned, but only if you critical fumble on your attack, IE: roll a 1 on a d20 to hit. This is just the "oops you tripped over a rock" factor, or a bird crapped on your head when you tried to psiblast and distracted you, that sort of thing. That being said, I don't think this is how it currently works, it seems that at the moment we're all missing on prone victims more than 5% of the time. I'm not so sure current hit success is taking into account the victim being prone, but I could be wrong.

I'm all for a shield bash skill, but realistically, it's going to be harder to bash someone over with your shield than it is with a lunch punch. Reason being the victim is going to see it coming easier, and the attacker has less reach with a shield bash than with a lunge punch. But the success should be no different than normal bash. I don't know how lunge punch and bash compare to eachother. One or the other might need to be tweaked, but that's just the perfectionist in me.

With the whole behead/shield mastery complaint I hold no sympathies. It is not required that you behead with a 2 handed weapon, it is just an option knights have to increase their beheading damage. If a knight so chooses to remove his defence to grab a 2 hander for greater offence, that's the sacrifice they make for the extra damage. If it's really a problem, hack away with the shock rim (does it still exist?) or rose-star.

Behead doesn't bother me too much since I only really use it in arena or to finish off a mob, and I have an alias that makes it quick. What really sucks is the lunge punch part. I usually spam lunge punch when I'm fighting, and the end result is that I'm almost never wearing my shield. I don't even wear a shield anymore…. I just tank with devils. I think I'm repeating myself in these posts…. I don't think a shield bash would be any harder to hit than a lunge punch, since in order to get enough momentum to knock someone off their feet, it'd end up being pretty slow to lunge punch. Shields are big and harder to dodge, and might even be faster since you can charge with your entire body to knock them over.

So, me and everyone else seem to be arguing a lot about why evil knights are so much stronger than good knights. I think I'm going to see why good knights are better. Or at least might be considered so.

Evil knights get devils, but from what I see, most players don't like pets that much. I do cuz I'm a pansy, but in all honesty, pets are a pain in the ass. Horned devils are great in that they can't be hit by most mobs, but they also attack fast and hit hard. Unless I'm very careful, I'll lose half my kills to the devils. Also, keeping track of them and killing them when you're done is annoying. I'm sure I do just as much work when leveling as a good knight would do. They just make me feel safer.

Sanctification is awesome. Throw in bless, and good knights attack a lot better than evil knights. I think this makes up for the hell eq discrepancy from soulless.

I hardly ever use flame strike or spiritual hammer, so added damage to those isn't all that useful. Having twice as much healing power, though, truly is. I think this again makes up for the AC that good knights miss out on from not being able to wear hell eq.

With all that said, I don't think the knights are as unbalanced as they seem. The one place I think they falter the most are in arena. Summon legion and taint are just too nasty. Sanctification not working on soulless is ridiculous too. If it was really made, as Elric said, to keep good knights from running hell, what's wrong with good knights running hell?

Giving it some more thought, I don't think good knight soulless or summon angel is all that necessary, or appropriate. What holy being would conjure angels to fight and die for him? Wouldn't he be fighting to protect the angels? I still think some new heaven eq and a redux skill/spell would make the balance just about perfect. Armor mastery or some holy blessing of some sort?

Just something I was tossing around for good knight. Probably insane to have and a nightmare to code, but hey, its worth trying :P. But how about a spell "word of alron" or whatnot, that allows the knight/maybe the people in his group to become temporarily immune to death for say, the remainder of the tick. It'd cost a stupidly huge amount of mana, and it couldn't be recasted for something like 20 minutes. The person under the effect of the spell could still take damage mind you, but anything that would bring them below 1 hp would instead reduce them to 1.

word of alron sounds pretty cool but i think that its a little overboard. i think that if knights were to have something added like protect the weak in a different form for grouping would be cool. instead of getting extra hitpoints i think was the original idea i think that they should get a boost in ac during battle only to help take away some of the damage that is taken during fights. mabey a certain percent for the amount of group members.

i would also like to agree with whoever said that knights attack the slowest outta the fighter classes. compared to any class that is a fighter aside from monk i think that we should be close to the top. the reason for that is knights are meant to protect people and to fight in battles, so they should be damn good fighters with a sword whether that is a 2 handed weapon or a one hander. so it would make sense that they attack close to as fast as or faster then the other fighting classes. i would say that monk and barbs should be the fastest outta the fighters and monk being the fastest which i think they are anyway.

Actually, I think I disagree that knights would hit fast. When I imagine knights, they are heavily armored and all that armor would make them attack very slow and "clunky", so it makes sense they're the slowest of the fighting class.

However, I think that while they should hit slow, they should hit HARD. It may just be me, but I don't see knights as a very finesse type class.

I totally agree with Lysol on the image of the huge, heavily armored knight. I definitely think that knights and Barbarians fit into this image of hitting slower but way harder, while Monks, Mercenaries, Rangers, and Cyborgs are built a lot more for speed.

Monks get natural speed bonuses, plus the speed of attacking bare handed. The others get double wield and some other bonuses to attack fast. Barbs have the wonderful skill, Berserk, which I think is a great skill and fits perfectly into their class, giving damroll, damage redux, and speed.

Knights, however, get nothing. We're still slow, and we hit no harder than anyone else. Being heavily armored doesn't give us any defensive skills really, besides the spell, Armor. Shield mastery's cool, but what about the rest of the stuff we're wearing?

Knights get nothing?

Summon Legion is nothing? Sphere of Desecration is nothing? Taint is nothing?

pwned.

Hey, I didn't mean we get NOTHING. I think our spells are great. I just think knights should have some kind of attacking bonus like all the other fighting classes have (double wield, berserk, etc). Especially good aligned knights who miss out on the best of the remort spells.

maybe good knights should get a quad hit high gen remort skill

flury of blades or something.

I'll agree that evil knights have some good remort spells, but they each have their downsides.

Summon legion is an absolutely great spell and it's the best pet spell out there. But I think Kitano already mentioned its big weakness. That is, the devils hit hard and often times steal kills from you, making getting exp harder that one would normally have thought.

Sphere of desecration and its good knight/good cleric equivalent, divine intervention, are pretty useless. It absorbs offensive holy spells of the opposite alignment, and how often do you see good clerics casting offensive spells? It's a pretty useless spell, especially being a gen 6 (for knights)/gen 4 (for clerics) remort spell. In fact, the only time that I ever use sphere of desecration is when I'm in Heaven or Amoria in order to prevent my alignment from shift to good. Other than that, it's pretty useless.

As far as taint, it's a good spell, but I look at it as weak for being the only gen 9 spell. First off, it's very to land PvP because of all the sav_spell out there. And secondly, it's breakable. Taint works by damaging the person based on the amount of mana required to cast a spell. So, high mana spells would deal a large amount of damage, while low mana spells would only deal a little amount. So, I'll give you an idea of what it's like trying to use taint in a PvP battle with someone with good saves:

I will spend all my mana (taint costs 180 MP to cast by the way) trying to land taint on the person. After 10-15 tries, it'll finally land, and the person will run away. They will then proceed spamming very low mana spells, drinking a grail/chalice to heal, and running until the taint breaks. And usually, by the time I catch up with them, the rune is already gone.

Anyway, my point is not to complain about evil knight remort spells, but just to raise understanding and awareness that these supposed great remort spells do have their weaknesses.

While I like a lot of the ideas presented here, I have to make what I feel is an important point.

I have to call bullshit…

Good and evil knights are not, should not be, and never will be equal and opposite. They are NOT two sides of the same coin, any more than Veloth and Alron are two sides of the same coin.

Veloth and Alron are brothers, not multiple personalities. They are NOT OPPOSITE. Alron is the diety of justice and protection for the weak, so forth and so on. Veloth is all about cruelty, pain, agression, valor and warfare (none of which are necissarily an injustice). While the two are certainly diametrically opposed with respect to their places on scale of good and evil, their means and ends are not.

Alron gives powers to his followers to enable them to fulfil his goals. Veloth does exactly the same thing. If their goals are not equal and opposite, why should the powers they grant be?

As for the argument about barbs, mercs, mages…whatever it was…not being different just because they are aligned differently, I just have one thing to say. You didn't think that one through very well, did you? Why do you think knights lose all their powers when they go neutral? Of COURSE alignement doesn't change the powers of other classes significantly. Their powers aren't derived from a diety.

So, all that being said, you guys should really start thinking of good/evil knight/cleric as 4 separate classes. If it was actually worth the work I'd take Elric's suggestion and actually separate them, but it's not.

N

order tome kill halfling

>child That's right!

Ooooo, I can hardly wait!

I think "shield bash" should be called "shield smite". I just think it sounds cooler. Besides the name, I think that replacing lunge punch with this would be a good start and require a use of a shield (obviously) instead of having a freaking free hand. To add onto the idea of it. I thought it might be cool to not always do the same thing when the skill is used. Though it would always do some negligible damage, it would either knock-down (like lunge), add some small waitstate to the receiver (like deathtouch but not as much), or stun by a very small chance (like crossface).

shieldsmite crashes to the ground as a result of your smiting! (knockdown)

has trouble recovering from the blow! (waitstate)

You smote , leaving him/her standing in a daze. (stun)

Another idea involving the shield. But in the form of a spell. Based on what Nothing said, I thought about divine intervention and thought that why should Guiharia and Alron provide their follower's with the same protection? Well, maybe they should, but maybe we should change it for the sake of changing good knight. (We all know something is going to be done.) I say get rid of 'divine intervention' for good knights and add a spell that's on the race track but that's a different car.

Let's call it 'Magical Reversion'. A remort spell because I think it's too rockin' to be a mort spell. You cast it on your shield and as long as someone uses the shield, then you get an affect like 'divine intervention'. But instead of absorbing spells from an evil align'd, it will reflect ALL casted spells. So if someone casted flame strike on you, it MIGHT reflect it back to the caster. If someone casted word stun on you, it MIGHT reflect it back to the caster. If someone casted heal on you, it MIGHT reflect it back to the caster. If you casted heal on yourself, it MIGHT reflect it onto a mob that you're fighting.

Consider it. Dissect it. Glue it back together. Make it better. By all means, please do that.

Actually Nothing, the only reason Neutral knights lose their powers is because I suggested it. :P

Spit-balling sounds really gross…

Just because you suggested it doesn't make it any less right! :P Neutral knights lose their powers because they are out of touch with their deities.

If the above is true, then a knights powers must be a direct result of their links with their dieties.

If THAT'S true, then it stands to reason that their powers reflect the virutes of their dieties.

Therefore, if the virtues are not two sides of the same coin (and they aren't) the resulting power will not, and should not be.

With all of that said, I hear the knights plea for help, and I'm doing something about it. I understand what you are all saying. That good and evil knights are not balanced and they should be. But the way to balance them is NOT giving one a counter for everything the other has. My point is that that doesn't make sense.

Rest assured, they are getting some serious help!

FYI, I totally am using some of the stuff from this thread. I didn't use anything verbatim, but you'll know it when you see it!

Thanks for the good ideas!

N

Oh yeah I know what you mean! It's just that is the easiest way to balance them. It may have sounded like what I was suggesting was exact counter-points (in some cases I was, but these were from discussions years ago) I was merely trying to put across that the scales of balance were coming down in favour of the evil :p

Good news anyway :)

Seriously, who the hell says "spit-balling"? YUCK!

biggest difference between Knight and a Barb: Steeds, would be cool if knights could have horses they buy, as you get higher in gens, you move from something like a goat or a pony to a war horse or a mammoth or something cool. Skills based off mounted combat would be pretty cool.

Biggest difference between a knight and a barb: Alignment based skills. Steeds are the second biggest :D

<– Masa. I rolled another paladin =p