Atonement: Evil cleric and knight. Atonement would work similar to meditate, in that the player must be sitting/kneeling, While the player is actively atoning the players alignment ticks down towards -1000 for each tick in alignment the player will lose hp equal to the alignment lost.

Penance: Good cleric and knight. Penance would work the same way but as the player gains alignment he/she would lose mana per alignment gained.

Just an idea.

Doc

Continuing in that vein, we could have altars for the gods. Being in the same room as an altar could have an affect (maybe good/evil ambience? enhanced clerical abilities?). If we did this, atonement and penance would only work at an altar.

Hmm what about performing a sacrifice in the same room as an altar of the appropriate alignment casting "essense of "?

Good Cleric spell idea: Redemption. Could work in a few different ways.

1. It casts 'essence of good' on the victim for a period of time determined by the level/gen of the caster.

2. It increases the victims alignment by an amount based on the level/gen of caster.

3. I forget the other ways i thought of. Perhaps someone else could make some suggestions.

   • wish *

Perhaps at an evil you'd have to make a living or once-living sacrifice, ie kill a mob in the room or sacrifice a corpse in the room.

At a good altar you'd sacrifice money, eq, or food? The greater the sacrifice the greater the alignment change. I dunno how it'd work, or how you'd determine what is more valuable.

Storm

Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not:p) but at the moment good and evil clerics are both pretty even, there's the whole no balance to souless thing but I won't go into that yet.

Evil knights and good knights aren't currently balanced. Now a lot of this comes down to equipment, but there is definitely an inequality in skills. Good knight remort spells / skills consist of two. Sanctification and Divine Intervention. Divine Intervention isn't even unique to the class. Sanctification is no where near as good as it once was, simply because a lot of the mobs you'd like to fight and gain the bonus against have the soulless flag. Again I'd like to say that the souless flag blocking sanctification makes no sense. It's not an attack spell like stigmata. It's a blessing on the knight himself. If souless blocks sanctification it should also block divine might as they are similar types of spells.

Once again I'm going to raise this point, in the past I've been told that evil knights and good knights are different classes. That is illogical, to follow that reasoning an evil barbarian and a good barbarian are different classes as well. It's flawed.

Following that reasoning when one alignment gains an ability the other alignment needs to gain something, either a counter or a brand new ability or the same ability. Witness the changes to damn and bless and shield mastery being good examples.

I'm posting this from work, so I don't have access to the skill lists at the moment, but I'd really like it if someone in authority would take a look at some of the remort spells / skills that evil knights gain and suggest something suitable for good. It would be nice for a start if good knights / clerics could gain a similar blessing to the souless flag, call it ascension. They could gain a 25% bonus to healing spells to counter the 25% bonus to damage spells that evil clerics / knights get. They could lose the need to sleep rather than be too frightened to sleep. It could cost exactly the same to purchase as the evil version, as to ascend the good cleric / knight must sacrifice. The only thing I can't think of is a suitable balance to being able to use hell equipment without getting hunted.

Anyway, this is a marathon post, There'll probably be a few more in the next couple of days :p hopefully not all on this subject. Ducks the expected upcoming ridicule

Atonement and Redemption sound extrasexy, especially if they're given to knights as well. I'm totally not just saying that because I'm a knight either.

Please tell me what the point of adding a skill to change your aligned is? There are pools to change it, and you can buy align changers at your clanshop, or you can get some wafers from clerics.

Sure, "what if you're leveling somewhere and your alignment changes too much?" Well gee, maybe you should have that about that before you went out leveling.

Such a spell would be useless, and i whole-heartedly agree with Elric that there needs to be something to balance soulless.

I dont think the balance between good and evil cleric exists at all. A good gen 10 cleric cant take 1 hit from symbol of pain from a gen 9 evil cleric. And there is not a skill or spell that can do that much damage to evil for good.

And I fully and completely support the idea of a balance to the soulless flag. Good clerics and knights need something similar too. Although I think it should be to the tune of more damage reduction or something similar.

As for the align changers… it is a good idea. Nothing and I were kicking around an idea of a spell we found in the D&D manual. "Hallow" and "Unhallow" where, when casted, it changes the room into a good ambience (like Amoria) or evil ambience (like Hell) for a brief period of time.

just skimming through all this but you have to account for good clerics getting more protection from sanc… making them better tanks…

Ok, the balance between good and evil clerics is good. Good clerics aren't supposed to, and if I have my way, never will do the kind of damage that evil clerics do. The ONLY reason to be an evil cleric is for the extreme damage they can do to good aligned foes. Everything about a good cleric, with the exception of damage capability, is better than the evil counterpart. Take shield of righetousness for instance, that's a great spell. It provides significant damage reduction. Good clerics also get up to another 10 percent damage reduction when the moon is full. Divine power is just sickeningly good. However, if you consider the role of the classes, in a one on one fight, a good cleric should not have a chance against an evil cleric. They're not fighters, they're not supposed to be fighters. The strong point of evil clerics is inflicting damage, the strong point of good clerics is preventing and healing damage. Good clerics do have means of reducing damage from evil divine magic, and that balances the classes even more. From this standpoint they are balanced. Balanced does not mean equally good at everything. Balanced means equal on the whole.

Good clerics, better tanks? Yes. Evil clerics, better damage moves? Yes. What about knights? Without soulless, good knights and evil knights are very nicely balanced. What the evil knight does in damage, the good knight makes up for in heals. However, when you throw soulless into the mix, and the evil knight's damage increases, the good knight's damage helper is totally negated, and the evil knight can't even be put to sleep. This is all well and good, except the good knight gets the shaft. The good knight still gets the normal heals, but can no longer do the damage it expects to the evil, soulless knight, and it can still be put to sleep by the evil knight. Bummer deal.

As far as Atonement and Redemption go, it's still a good idea. Not giving classes that rely on their gods these skills based on the 'You should have thought of that before you left' argument would make it unjust to leave Rangers and Clerics with their food making skills, because they 'should have thought of that before they left.' Granted, the way I thought this through won't work, because the food skills already exist, and Atonement and Redemption don't. There's just some food for thought.

Thanks for listening

Trisk

maybe make bless/damn give alignment. If you are soulless then i think being blessed should give a ton of increased alignment, or just totally vaporize em or something. imagines evil knight getting burned by all its damned equipment

either that or add a good version of soulless… like soulful?

Heh, it's too bad we can't show Cest some of the old posts about soulless and a counterpart.

But I guess I'm too young to worry about such matters.

A couple Good Knight Ideas: Skills:

Defend: Protect a group member from attack, basically rescue them before they are attacked. If you are fighting you can not defend them so defend must be "reapplied" to the target after each battle.

Blocking: This skill allows the player to attempt block an exit when player opponent tries to flee out of combat.

Organize retreat: This skill allows the knight to make an organized retreat rather than a hasty one and will take his/her entire party with them.

Gen 1 Remort Spell:

Holy Binding: Puts both the knight and the target in a waitstate, in which neither can use skills, spells or even attack. At higher gens the knight’s waitstate will become shorter than the mobs but only slightly. This would be a very taxing skill both spiritually and physically and would use both mana and movement.

This Binding skill would rock, especially in league with the group skills. Other members of the group could attack while the good knight is doin the bindy-thing.

I have a problem with Binding that it would bind them from castin spells, movements (attacks and whatnot) and even regular attack hitroll. That's just a tad overpowerful. I think the victim should be able to do something against this spell. I think skills would be more realisitc, because I think mage should get the spell binding ;) check out that post!

-Aco

Good clerics should not be able to beat an evil cleric? What nonsense is this? Fine… evil clerics can have the uber unreal damage against good aligned mobs because they are a "damage class." Then good clerics should get 'the uber armor of righteousness' that is nearly impenatrable by evil since they are a 'protect and heal' class. Unless that happens… I dont see the balance. All the heals, restores, divine powers, and shields of righteousness in the world means precisely crap if one symbol of pain kills you.

One backstab could kill someone, are thieves overpowered? Hamstring is a pretty powerful move, are mercs overpowered? It's more or less the nature of pkill that it's over and done with in one hit. A mage doesn't have a huge one-hit kill, a phys doesn't have a huge one-hit kill… neither does a good aligned cleric. It doesn't meant these classes are imbalanced, they just have different strengths.

Who said anything about over powered?

My point is… that good clerics getting slaughtered by one hit from an evil cleric is not balance. And why does it make sense? Mages and phyzes have a defense that good clerics dont. They dont have to be good. Your point is moot. If there are classes that can kill in one hit… the classes that arent able to kill in one hit should have better defense.

I think the point is that a good aligned cleric shouldn't even really be fighting. A cleric should sit in the background and heal the group.

tempus isn't exactly a "group" sort of game, the cleric will have to be able to level on his/her own

I agree…

If this were a more 'group oriented' mud… a cleric's place would be in the back of the group and healing. But as it stands, if any of us were dragging along a cleric that did nothing but heal, that person would be less likely to be asked into a group again.

Since we are not a group oriented mud, they need to be able to fend for themselves like everyone else.

ehh i drag good clerics around rhtom sometimes, but maybe im just some kind of sick freak who likes who have hp? ya never know

wow i really didnt mean to sound like that much of an ass above :-)

jakezor, im sorry, but after reading your comment on this, as well as your comment on the recent pking article, i have concluded that you are both more heartless and foolish then I. I give you my full congratulations.

thanks for being on-topic Craedric!

i was posting on something you said. I was commencting on something that you wrote that i thought was completely outrageous. Is this not allowed?

I was over at roan's house today. I watched Lysol fight a total of 7 players and live for over 15 mins in a quest that Logic ran. It was Roan, Turbopimp,Schizo,Spyd,Istari Evil knight is very good class and I love the new shield mastery for both good knight and evil knight.
I do think that both evil knight and evil cleric are a better choice for damage and both can heal very nicely too. If good knight would get one more remort spell and good cleric would also, I think the balance would then be perfect.
For example, good knight for a better defense could get holy blaze or holy flame or holy fire, the point is, it could be the same as mages fire shield. It is not the big of a bonus and I don not think I have ever seen a mob hit fire shield but it would however give more ac and could maybe do more damage to evil when they do hit it.
Wish stands here. …he is engulfed in blazing storm of holy flames.

As for good clerics. I would make sense if they could summon a defender or gaurdain angel. Not a very power mob, and only allow them to have one at a time. After all, you only have one guardian angel? Could be a generation 1 spell considering evil cleric gets alot more remort benefit then good cleric, death kneel gives a nice bonus to evil clerics and I think a good cleirc should be able to counter, not with force but with a guardain angel for more protection. Give me your thoughts on this one.

ok the whole thing between good/evil knights…evil knights are WAY stronger then good knights, with legion and soulless and yummy hell eq they take the cake…good knights have no where near the eq selections evil does…needless to say heaven has some new eq thats pretty good but good align still lacks some kickass eq…ive been patiently waiting for good knights to get something cool since im like the only prime good knight on the mud anymore…and needless to say good knight sucks pretty bad as a whole right now…everyone is always tellin me if you dont like it go evil…but im want to wait it out and see if anything good goes in like a good align soulless of some sort or some new yummy heaven eq when the newer levels start to open up.

the whole fire shield thing for good knights is pretty ridiculous cause its really not that good of a spell…if i want fire shield ill buy some potions from the shop in clanhouse and thats works just fine…

lol, fireshild and the post above are differant spells. If you would gain the holyfire which should be able to damage evil aling foes even with protection fire it would be awesome. Not to mention if you went to your clanhouse and got a fire shield potion you would even have more ac and damage reduction assuming your ac is better then -300. So yea, you would have fire shield and holy fire shield. Can't complain about that…

As for good knight v.s. evil knight. Much like the argument about clerics. Nevermore's point should rest in all are heads. Its simple. Good is not meant to do as much damage. Evil is not meant to be able to heal as well as their good counterparts. Just the balance of the game. There are some other gen 10 good knights. Nexus has one, some Blade dude…?

I've been playing Evil Cleric for a long, long time. I havn't hit Gen 10 yet, but that's mostly my own laziness. So, I guess I can only speak from the point of view I have.

Evil Cleric is amazingly hard to play. My Phys is easier, and my other pre-lock multis were easier. I do, however, have more fun with the challenge. That is why I have been playing the Cleric.

The argument about evil clerics being damage machines is valid, but only to an extent. Symbol of Pain is amazing, but I really only use it for the Dex damage. If it just happens to be a good-aligned mob, all the better. Then again, a single-shot huge damage skill that cannot be used again isn't that great for PvM, IMO.

If you want to see real damage dealing, look at mages or monks. They can deal an obscene amount of damage over a short time with spells like Pris Spray, Fire Breath, and Lightning Bolt, or skills such as Combo and Backstab. There are inherant weaknesses to these skills, but they are STILL more damaging than anything I can hope to throw out. Symbol of Pain is one-shot, damage vs Good only. Disruption is one of the most easily saved spells I have ever seen. Harm is less saved, but the damage is a joke compared to an unsaved disruption (I have seen my disruption hit for 1300+ unreduced to standing things… I think my cap is 1350). I find I cast Spiritual Hammer the most out of all my spells - the damage to mana ratio is greater than anything else I have!

The real killer spells that let me fight have been Vampiric Regeneration and Unholy Stalker. That spell, and that spell only, is what keeps me alive with Cleric. Everything else I have, other classes can do better. They can even get Sanctuary with other reduction spells I don't have, giving them better reductions overall! Evil Cleric is on the low end of the power scale, with two massive redeeming spells, in my opinion. I find that I rely more on my secondary for Hamstring/Dual Wielding rather than my primary skills set. This is both for PvP and PvE.

That said, I'm all for evening out Good/Evil Cleric/Knight. I would be happy to break out my old collection of DnD books and try to find some stuff we could use.

Sorry if this came off as kind of whiny or anything, I just have had to deal with working with Cresc for so long that I feel kinda weak in the grand scheme of things :P

3 Cheers for Nothing's post. That was pure eye candy.

Solving the one hit kill thing is easy. Reduce PvP damage significantly. beats the drum of his cause yet again

And instead of pointing at the king of the player-class hill and shouting "We all need to be as big and badass as he is!"

We should find the lowest bottom of the barrel scumsucking weak and pathetic class and castrate the rest down to that level. Now that's some balance! It's alot easier to do, you know all the imms would cackle gleefully, and hey… Balance is Balance.

drum drum drum

Here's the problem with reducing PvP damage though: no one would ever be pkilled (not that I'm opposed to making the mud !pkill :-P). But anyway, most pkill is done with 1 hit kills. If PvP damage is reduced, how do you stop people from fleeing and recalling? Even if you removed recall items from the game, there's still the recall spells, recall potions, recall scrolls, local teleport potions, spacetime, etc. And, even if all these are removed, why couldn't someone just flee and run the hell away, spamming north or something? I'm not saying that reducing PvP damage isn't a good idea, I just think there's a major flaw with it.

I just noticed something disturbing about Nothing's post up there.

Read the sentence that starts from "The ONLY reason to play…"

Is there really no reason to play Evil Cleric other than to whap some good aligned things? I sure hope not. Even if it feels that way some days.

-With DnD books ready to snag skills and spells from, Timeless

Glad you asked lysol. I don't think instant recalling should be in the game at all regardless of instant pkill or not, but that's just me.

What you do is you put all of the teleportation spells into a folder, and you only allow people access to that folder that have not engaged in pvp combat for x amount of time. This way, you have to actually lose your pursuer for a resonable amount of time before you can just recall away. Getting in touch with a buddy for a helpful summon however I don't see as a problem. As this requires a little more activity from the victim rather than just smacking the recall alias. And also requires you have someone to call on for help, are able to, you know that they are on, and they are able to oblige.

If someone doesn't think pk would be possible this way. I have two points. First, look at the running man quest. The majority of the runners are killed. Secondly, never underestimate the ability of the playerbase to figure out how to get what they want. It took a day, maybe two days for them to figure out how to kill Lysol's "you can't do anything in this room except punch" mob. And the whole point of that sillyness was to make the mob challenging to kill. Well, he's not, all you have to do is know how. If the pkillers what to pkill you, they'll figure out a way to make it happen. The upshot now is, you the victim have a fighting chance to give them a fat lip instead, or pick up and run to the best of your ability. Rather than the SURPISE! R.I.P. situation we have now.

Furthermore, it lessons the need for all the hand-holding stuff going on now to keep people from being slaughtered in the popular zones. Alot of the pk stuff that has come into the game over the last few years has been to try to bring some reasonability to the one-hit kill situation. What makes this so challenging is the lack of flexibility in pk right now. If it's too loose, pk is rampant and rediculous, if it's too rigid, pk turns off like a switch. All of these problems are rooted in the fact that player killing is just too easy to do. By making the killers work for their kill, some of the responsibility of staying alive is handed back to the targets rather than all of it falling on the game designers and administrators. Which is unfair to them.

Also, going back to the temporary no-recalling thing. This is only a problem for the players that don't know the zones that they run like the back of their hand. I admit that I don't know alot of the zones that I run as well as I could. But this is because I don't need to. Were pk to change into looser rules but fight for the kill rather than the tightly-governed bitch-slapping that it is now, I would make it a point to know the zones I go to so that I can make my escape as best as possible if need be. This also works on the other side of the table in that it is in the player killers best interests to know the zones that they are hunting in. I think we can all agree that players knowing zones better is a far cry from a bad thing. Take undermountain as an example. It is full of hidden searches and secret passageways. If I as a victim know the zone better than my attacker, I have a most excellent chance of ducking down a route that he doesn't know and getting away. This is something builders could also keep in mind when building new zones or revamping old ones, which personally would add another level of enjoyment to building.

Honestly, when good aligned holy classes took a hit in their healing and cure critic spells/redux change/AI for mobs- it for the most part made things painful for good aligned. I did in the past think that good aligned healing could be taken down a notch to balance things out- That was before souless/redux/AI changes were put in.. just IMHO, which means nothing, believe me - i know..

I've tried in vein to take the first level of hell with my good knight a few times, i generally run out of mana in the first room and have to face the stay and die or flee and run debate (run and get owned by the AI {see ya in the morning, good knight! :P} that the now-a-day mobs have) Shield mastery is fun for the class as a whole, indeed. It's always fun to see the ebb and flow with the mud. I will never "bitch and moan" - i completely thank everyone who has contributed to the evolution/intelligent design of Tempus, I'm merely going off of the premise that good/evil divine/unholy classes are balanced.

As for the whole single hit player killer talk that seems off topic, I remember the first time i had a character live through one of holy's (thief/psionic) backstabs/snake plisskin's (badass/pimp) attacks with a ranger/mage, hooching much redux with stoneskin/other. Since then it has become a lot more difficult to perform a "one hit wonder". I have personally witnessed a neutral thief character with a 104 dam roll, dealing out 1000 points of damage with a straight up stun/backstab.. So to that extent, i cannot understand anyone saying that it is "easy to cap anyone with just smacking them" as it stands.

And since this is off topic anyway, i think the loss of PimpDaddyLando was a great tragedy to the MUD. Hoodlum forever!!

Some classes are imbalanced, but every class (cept ranger) has it's pros and cons. I have both gen 10 good/evil clerics, and both are fun to play. It's just that evil clerics require more skill to play, as they have more tricks up their sleeves. Good clerics can stand there and take a beating, and heal through mostly anything. Evil clerics use vampiric regen to heal. I have to admit though, evil clerics are much more fun, and can do a lot more. Can run level 7 hell no problem with evil cleric. Cannot run level 7 hell with good cleric. Strange?

Since this thread is off topic, i'd like to talk about Bards, and how powerful they are. They are outrageously cheap, and require hardly any skill to play. They are the "shamans" of tempus. For those that don't know, in World of Warcraft, shamans are overpowered in that they have spells/skills of nearly every class. And yeah, they just rape. Bards have this advantage in tempus. Being the first legit gen 10 Bard (ridic), I know we are overpowered. They can dispel, they can heal, they can summon minions, and WTFHAXORZ is mirror image melody? Lecture/scream, welcome to the menu.

But anyway, I do agree that Good Knights need to be fixed, for they just suck.

Learn2Play

good knights are supposed to be paladins, and maybe they should be able to get a horse, and maybe be able to use something like call something from heaven, just like evil knights can call a devil from hell.

But is it noble to have a cronie fight for you, or for you to man up and take the hits yourself. A rhetorical question really. It doesn't fit the bill of a Paladin for them to hide behind a tank. I don't see why they couldn't call upon assistance that wasn't able to rescue or defend but rather just assist.

maybe they should be able to summon an army, then they just order 'charge', then they rescue their minions when the foe is about to die.

Cast, I believe this topic was discussed ad nauseum in the thread, Spit-balling good knight stuff (or something like that). I'll reiterate the point I made there (or somewhere else… I forget).

Like Narc said, it really isn't in the nature of a holy and noble being to be summoning angels to die for him. He is supposed to be a defender of all that is good. I think good knights could use another spell or two, but I don't think summon angel is it.

ok….how about ….. holy glare stuns a neutral target, damages an evil target….back grip reduce weapon damage, increase attack speed….war cry triples attack damage, but reduce hp by 200. how's that?