So was chatting with some people. Basically I should just quit playing my knight and make a new char. wtf? :p Give us some skills to balance us out then. It sucks hearing all the time i'm pretty much wasting my time. If i want to load any gear worth a crap make a different class. Sigh. there goes some serious game time down the tubes.

So it's a gear-related problem? I think there are good items out there for knights.

good knights have been getting the shaft since the day i started playing (cant remember exact year, was about 2 eyars before fireball left)

none of the coders we've had since then has given 2 shits about good knights.

the only real thing ive seen good knights get was shield mastery, and its not good-specific.

unfortunatly, good knight has a great deal of potential, but not even amazing gear can make the class worth anything.

untill the class gets some serious love code-wise, it'll be a massive waste of time to play it.

i dont normally like to dash peoples hopes, but i would switch classes immediatly drys. dont waste anymore of your time

I'm doing some development for knights, including good knights. We'll see if I have any skill in the area at all. It's not on the front burner for me right now.

If people have ideas that would make good knights fun to play from a story perspective, please post here. I've heard folks say that they think knights in general should get shield slam or shield bash, which is a knockdown ability requiring a shield which does damage and causes the opponent to be knocked down if not !BASH.

I like the idea of shields being central to how a knight plays. Shield mastery already speaks to that and might be a pre-requisite to shield bash.

I think it would be interesting if shields gave 2-3x armor for knights (if 13 acap, a shield is -13 armor – it would give knights -39 armor instead). A cool weakness would be if disarm could remove a shield. Perhaps disarm should remove anything in the hand, including a bard's instrument. But let's focus on knights for now :)

To add a bit: I want to know what makes a good knight a good knight. An evil knight is focused on destruction; a good knight seems to be focused on justice. WWAD – What Would Alron Do? A good knight should be rewarded for good acts and acts of justice, and so it seems that this leads them to be primarily a defensive and protective class – a good healer, but not as good as a cleric.

Do people use behead? Is it a viable attack? Behead does double damage with a two-hander, but many will be forced to use shields. Is this a fair trade-off or does it leave knights without an offensive ability?

What if good knights had an ability called "last rite" which said a prayer for the fallen, committing the corpse's soul to Alron, resulting in a reward of mana? What if the reward were not just mana but split between hit, mana, and move?

Let's not neglect Evil Knights. They need stuff too! Behead is pwn, especially with a Scythe of Death that you end up losing in The Fan Blades. Just set an alias to remove shield and wield beheader and then put the shield back on. You lose your shield for a few ticks during the behead waitstate but you don't have to behead every single move either.

Let's keep it positive and productive with ideas that would make the knight class, whether good or evil, fun to play.

Like the idea of shield bash. The added ac from shields would be nice as well. Would like to see some benefit from being all good tho. Increased hp/mana/move regen maybe? or add prot from evil. But as it stands now, good knights…. ug :p

One word: mounts.

I like the idea of mounts. Would it add combat value or just give you a cool way to get around? If combat, a lot of code would need to be changed. Every skill and spell in the game would have to be changed (600-700 abilities) to check for mounted and then whether to allow it or not.

Sometimes it costs fun to make fun. With the subtraction of flying eq we could have flying mounts (i.e. Nazgul, dragons) and land+water mounts for going over water (i.e. serpents, ichthiosaurus).

And how about in addition to making it harder to hit you if you are mounted and you hit harder since you have a better angle of attack, you also get assisted by your mount as if it was a summoned elemental/devil. So every once in a while your stallion would take a bite out of that neotzen you are battling. OK, maybe not. Unless they had a ridiculous amount of hp you'd be constantly losing your mount to a severe case of death and it wouldn't be practical. But I like everything else.

I was looking at holy touch and it's pretty sweet. It looks like it can cure sickness, poison, radiation sickness, blindness, gougedness, hamstring, curse, and motor spasm (in that order by gen). That's pretty cool.

http://xkcd.com/1112/

So, just bouncing an idea out there, why not make evil knights more in line with a "Death Knight", especially if they're going to give up their mortal souls, why not make them dual wiedling badasses?

And for good knights, why not make them the honor and upholding citizens they are? +armor bonus for wearing metal (i.e, opposite effect for mages for wearing metal) and the shield thing seems pretty legit.

Both knights have behead, but why not give good knights some more defensive skills? Maybe a 'stance' (could even apply to more physical classes like ranger/barb/monk/cyborg) that give bonuses to blocking and damage reduction? Maybe give knights a "riptose" skill that acts like counter-strike for Rangers?

I still think a good knight soulless like this would be the best equalizer. Evil knights are quite powerful and capable of running hell and cybertech, from what I understand think they need much work (but I also haven't played them much).

Pledge of the Paladin

This is a permanent affect for Good Knights.

Good Knights - Level 20 - Gen 6

By making a sacrifice consisting of part of their own life, their constitution, and a large amount of gold, followers of Alron have discovered a way to gain sanctuary and be able to defend innocents more effectively. Once they pledge their eternal loyalty in life and after death to Alron, he grants them immunity to both sphere of desecration and holy symbol based attacks from an evil source.

This affect also teaches the Pledged Paladin to "Summon Seraph". (equivalent to summon legion except you summon good aligned archons)

That should read:

Evil knights are quite powerful and capable of running hell and cybertech, from what I understand, I DONT think they need much work (but I also haven't played them much).

Realms needs editing.

Pledge of the Paladin sounds pretty heavy handed. How about something like Sainthood. Also, good luck with the immunity to holy symbol based attacks.

Let's not go running about talking about how great evil knights are, either. With a full army of 8 horned devils (that takes about 15 minutes to fully summon due to them loading without following or getting stuck with bone devils) I can do level 5-7 hell. It takes hours and I have to stop multiple times to resummon or recall and come back and hopefully catch up to my followers or I'm in trouble because I can't summon more. Lvl 1 hell is out, though, as is Lunia and any place that negates followers as a knight tanking himself won't last a long time against anything worthwhile.

For clerics and knights, I view them as four classes when you consider alignment, not just two. Just because evil knights have soulless doesn't mean good knights need soulful. I thought they were doing OK, though.

My first character on Tempus was a good knight (got up to lv 35 or so), I haven't played good knight much past that but from what I hear it's just a bad class/align combination, most people like the idea of being good and righteous but when the reality sets in of how much more useful the evil align is… and everyone I've talked to discouraged me from it.

Is it heavy handed because of the summon? Remove that suggestion from the equation. How about this version without the summon:

Pledge of the Paladin affects are:

1) Immunity to both sphere of desecration and holy symbol based attacks from an evil source.

2) Sanctuary (which I think fits the protector part better)

Soulless gives:

1) Immunity to both sanctification and holy symbol based attacks from an good source.

2) A damage boost to all divine spells.

3) Can use powerful hunted eq without penalty.

Since good knight won't have a summon the sanctuary suddenly seems more fair. What do you think?

I would suggest that eq from Heaven be deemed hunted as well by archons. Then you could have protection from that.

Is eq from heaven comparable? Except for the Hammer of Mjolnir (which only goes up to 49.5 avg right?, and never seems to load), there are lots of good things but nothing is really that amazing.

I don't think most heaven eq is even in the same level as a 60 avg dam gruesome or ³⁄₃ and 23 ac apply breastplate of armageddon. It's very good, but a level below.

In my opinion. :)

What about a manashield type idea but for knights. It would be like the portrait of dorian grey type idea where anything that ages him or hurts him gets done to his portrait rather than his body so he can live forever. Except a portion of the damage would be dealt to your soul that now resides in hell (or heaven?) so it saves your body from the pain.

It could work for good knights having their own soulless but it could be called Ascension (with the soul going to heaven) or Rapture (a la Left Behind).

As fun of an idea as it is, I don't think any mana shield ideas are getting implemented.

Plus, what happens when your removed (or wherever it is) soul absorbs it's max hp in damage? It dies?

If it's just an endless damage soak, we should just make it damage reduction like I was talking about with giving good knights Sanc with their version. Otherwise it probably gets too complicated for coders.

I'll throw these two ideas for good knight (which may be interesting, whack, or unbalanced, I don't know) because I think it would put some mix into gameplay. I think they should both be remort spells.

1. A spell that redirects all or some of the damage dealt to the knight's group members toward the knight himself.

2. A spell that causes all damage dealt by the knight to instead heal the knight, and even increase the maxhit of the knight.

In regards to the 1st item, isn't that what "defend" does currently?

No, defend (which inconceivably all classes can do) forces you to automatically rescue party members if they are struck by mobs. The idea as proposed is that the party would "share" damage with the knight.

Yeah I must have seen "all or some" as just "all" :P

Perhaps Good Aligned Knights could have an "Expert Defender" skill which they can set a player target and something like 50% (or maybe a higher percent as the knight gens up) of the auto attacks are redirected to the knight.

So something like this:

GoodKnight is using Expert Defender on his/her party member SquishyTarget

SeriousMob deals out x4 PULVERIZE! towards SquishyTarget, out of those attacks:

• x2 hits! Ouch!
• x2 GoodKnight expertly defends SquishyTarget, valiantly redirecting the blows to him/herself!

Defend also only works on one player.

I think Calm should be changed. Make it an AoE. Can't cast it in battle. Lasts for 5 mins makes all evil mobs not aggro unless protected from soulless.

You said AoE but are you thinking of a room effect, like when a room is temporarily made smokey/radioactive/ablaze?

I was just talking the current mobs in the room but a room effect would be pretty interesting.

I was just talking the current mobs in the room but a room effect would be pretty interesting.

That's a good idea. Calm is almost worthless unless you want to quell some fight with a summoned creature.

So back to the mount thing. Maybe there could be a knight remort spell/skill that lets you call in a mount. For evil knights a shadowmare for good knights maybe a pegasus. Or a unicorn for wrath. They could make it so knights can fly :p Plus I can use this riding skill finally. Also why not let knights get double acap from shields used in the shield position?

So kind of messed around with mounts a bit. You can initiate an attack from them. But you cannot hit with your melee weapon. Maybe that should change if you had a long spear or pike? Make impale worth something. You also get promptly knocked off your mount when fighting. It'd be pretty nifty in my opinion.

Alright I really wish I could delete posts. Anyways about that knight skill/spell allowing you to call on your trusty steed. Should be a gen 1 skill/spell that improves as you gen up. So gen 1 you might only be able to call on a mini pony Gen 2 a donkey Gen 3 a mare then a colt, maybe a clydesdale next and finally a pegasus for good Knights Shadowmare for evil knights. I mean why not? Knights and mounts seem to go hand and hand.

So what should you be able to do on your mounts? I'd think pretty much everything you can do standing with the exception of a few things. Makes sense to have to use a larger or longer weapon to reach your enemies. So maybe you can only hit with two handed swords and axes or one handed/two handed spears, pikes, huge military forks yadda yadda. Probably shouldn't be able to shield bash or lunge punch while mounted but why not bash? (the horse would do the bashing) Except you wont fall over if you fail. Maybe just fall off the mount? Added damage bonus to impale but less damage for behead or cleave. Hard to swing a 25 lb two handed axe and stay seated i'd imagine but impaling someone should be more effective with a large animal backing you up. Hiptoss and whatnot should probably dismount you. Not sure what else would need to be different…

Also maybe another skill for barbarians rangers and knights called charge. Doing slightly different things depending on what kind of weapon you are currently wielding and how large your mount is. A large hammer might have a chance to stun. A large axe or sword something similar to cleave. A spear helps kabob a few mobs. So you can't charge mobs in the same room but have to start from at least one room away. Allowing you to charge into a room and get the first 3 or so mobs attacking you right away while doing some damage to them.

Either way I think mounts could be fun and add a lot of options in the game for other classes like Ranger or Barbarians. These are just my thoughts for Knights.

Drystan

I like Drystan ideas for mounts. These mounts are in the game and under utilized. When I first started, I got a nice mare. Travel was easy, combat wasn't.

I think flying mounts were in progress, that is why flight eq was removed. I could be wrong.

Charm animal would be useful for rangers to get upgraded mounts and bonuses. Charm a tiger or dragon. Or maybe even charm and mount your own Tarrasque!

They can have unique bonuses and skills.

Ride around ordering Tarassque to eat mobs.

Knights with lances are a classic combo. Charging into batte sounds fun. Maybe adds fear into mobs.

Being mounted should give defense bonuses. Harder to hit a person on a mount, especially if flying.

Being mounted could allow a knight to CHARGE. It could be a skill that would attack multiple mobs in the room. You can base it off the strength of mount and some kind of momentum and have it hit the mob that you originally target as well as as many mobs in the room as you can hit until you run out of momentum or are dismounted.