Altar Desecration

[Drogo Gyslain]

So one feature that has come up a few times over the past year has been Altar Desecrations.

Altar blessings and desecrations are something of a unique tool for Arelith, being that there are so many deities around, that these altars can be sanctified to literally one of dozens of gods from over a dozen pantheons. Which means you are going to have altars for a lot of different gods that have very few followers and also lots of altars for the main gods.

What we lack, is a more significant way to investigate their damaging and desecration.

Altar Desecration is a glaring hole in the abilities of anyone who tends to the altars of their own god, pantheon or other pantheons and wishes to bring light to damage. As the current status quo is, people can just... walk up and 0 RP desecrate an altar with 0 repercussions beyond a -50% piety cost. It is quick, it is vile, and the altar is left unusable for its intended purposes until repaired which, for some gods... is VERY difficult because of the lack of clerics of that deity about.

Desecrating an altar is an inherently holy/unholy act, and it has lasting impact even after the person does the damage, but the balance of being able to destroy an altars attunement coupled with the relative quickness and inability to investigate means that this is something that can be, and Is abused.

Some things that can help fix this issue and make altar desecration more roleplayable:

Firstly, make altar desecration -investigatable by those with either High Cleric level or Divination. Altar desecration is a holy act, you can't just spill paint on it and make it not talk to god. You are using Divine or Unholy power to taint that altar and disrupt it's connection. This isn't a free action, you're spending quite a lot of peity to do this act. There is no way to NOT leave a piece of yourself behind that a talented or experienced cleric or diviner wouldn't miss. Having the ability to track who has performed a desecration would act as a small stop to those who abuse the system and do fly-by-night desecrations on altars, as well as open the doors for further Roleplay on the subject and encourage in game solutions to be sought other than "Welp... Altars desecrated again. Gotta go get bob and reconsecrate it again.

Second, make the action of desecration take longer. Desecrations take 5 seconds to do. Someone can literally walk up in a quiet moment with noone around, desecrate the altar, and walk away. This is INCREDIBLY unbalanced. Desecration of an altar should take time. You are damaging an severing the connection with someone's god. This should be something that has a timer to perform like a long cast and you have to stand there and dedicate time to perform. This introduces an element of risk for the person performing the desecration by forcing them to stand still unobstructed while performing a -cast or -conjure emote in the air. What if I'm walked in on? What if I'm interrupted? What if someone catches me? These are things that someone desecrating altars SHOULD take into consideration, because as it sits now, someone with a literal quickness to them can just walk up, *boop*! desecrated!.

Third, make the act of desecrating an atlar cost more. Currently it takes 50% of your piety. Piety comes back relatively quickly for some characters, and slowly for others depending on god and actions. Desecrating an altar should take more out of the one performing the desecration than just a bit of their divine connection. Adding additional Piety damage wouldn't really work because as it stands, someone at 50% piety can still desecrate another altar and be good. Having some kind of debuff applied to the priest performing the desecration could work, a bit of divine feedback from the action that stuns/dazes/magically debuffs the character like a death debuff, that can't be removed by magic.

[The Rambling Midget]

Altar desecration does feel a lot like a drive by, instead of a meaningful RP act. Ever since the change from the power/presence system, altars have also become far less meaningful as an element of group RP. Most of the time, it seems like desecration is just a "haha no pray 4 u bcuz different god kbai" without any greater meaning beyond making a hassle for whoever's been tending the shrine.

Making it a progressive act that requires multiple attempts would reduce the amount of careless desecrating that goes on, but I'd also love to see a return to a system that encourages people of the same faith to work together in order to maintain their holy sites.

[Gouge Away]

I'd like to see the vandal be able to leave a message on the desecrated altar. Like "Lathander sux! Cyric rulez!" but not so middle school. Then at least you could get some RP out of it if the culprit wants you to know who did it.

[Itikar]

Desacration used to cost 5% piety, it was increased not too long ago. Honestly, I think the cost of 50% piety is already pretty high. I understand that all types of damage to fixtures or theft, that takes place when people are not around the place, can be frustrating, but I think this may fall most of the time under the "be nice" rule.

For instance if you know a certain faith has no active priests, maybe do not desacrate the altar, but leave other signs of hostility against such faith.

[sarithia]

Is there no way to add like a 'fill' system or something to an altar similar to how thirst and food work? So, you have a percentage of piety on an altar which has to be restored and tended by an applicable priest, and in that same effect, it can be reversed by someone intending to desecrate the altar?
Say an altar of Ilmater is at 89% piety. It can be restored by a priest of that designated god to 100% and kept that way. In the same manner, said altar can be desecrated to, I don't know, 0% and when it hits the 10% it can be defined as 'Desecrated'. To those whom have desecrated it, add a similar code to how blood stains have with divining attunements, 'This person whom desecrated this is attuned to air' or something so it remains in line with the whole divination thing, so 'person x who did this must obviously be [Naturally, FOIG because of divining information.] It adds a time element too, which I personally believe would be good for creating RP. I know naff all about coding so I have no idea how hard or easy this would be to do.

... if any of this makes sense, excellent.

edited: for clarification on some areas

[cornelius_4]

"...but I'd also love to see a return to a system that encourages people of the same faith to work together in order to maintain their holy sites."

Perhaps you mean the "Goddamit, who used all the hot water again!" system (eheheh) of shared piety for spell casting. I was nice sometimes that it felt shared, it might be nice with a shared system yeah. No doubt one that works differently, perhaps serves a different purpose and certainly doesn't allow one or a few high level players to bring a gods users spellcasting abilities to it's knees throughout the universe.

[The Rambling Midget]

Perhaps you mean the "Goddamit, who used all the hot water again!" system (eheheh) of shared piety for spell casting.

Yeah, one that isn't awful tho, kthx.

[Skibbles]

Lots of cool ideas in here. I'll support anything that eases the burden on people who make and maintain fixtures versus people that destroy them.

While some of it does fall under the 'be nice' rule it can both be tiresome and difficult to enforce/report when you don't know who did it or, probably more importantly when it comes to the logs, when it happened. Or even if it's the same person.

I don't think applying Stat debuffs is the way to go but I like the idea of a short animation or some indication of what you're doing that increases your risk of being caught or at least might make a player engage more with the act.

What might be neat, to preserve holy places in populated areas, is that clerics of the faith in a small few area vicinity get a notification "Someone is defiling a shrine to your God nearby!" With the location non specific of course. That way I think walking into the Temple of Lloth or some other big city's equivalent to desecrate it would rightly be suicide, (or a big event!), compared to a wayside shrine.

[cornelius_4]

Perhaps you mean the "Goddamit, who used all the hot water again!" system (eheheh) of shared piety for spell casting.

Yeah, one that isn't awful tho, kthx.

I mostly wrote the post to make a hot water reference as the thought of it made me snicker. The ending is also more to get the thought of a few indiduals bending the gods to their knees, just going about their day, in peoples minds .

The real story of how Mystra had to change the rules of magic
Oh yeah, I also thought of this, but I thought it would get too long. You see, old texts will have you believe that it was a Netherese mage by the name of Karsus who cast magic so powerful, it caused all magic to cease functioning briefly and thus high level spells where barred afterwards to avoid this in the future.

But oh no, it really wen't like this:
*old mage sits at his table, calmly having a sip of tea as he looks over the worried students, about to be tested*

Marcus the Paranoid he was called by some, and he had, uncommonly for his time, agreed to teach some powerful spells to some promising students and so the first exam of high level summoning began.

"You shall all proceed to cast protection from evil and then summon forth a creature, one by one as I tell you to begin" Marcus spoke gravelly as if to say they were toying with powerful forces, not to be underestimated.

One by one, the students proceed and succeed to conjure various creatures, demonstrating that they have control and releasing them once more. Clearly they had prepared well for this. That is until Tom gets his turn. Tom was a good student, yet unpredictable at times, occasionally missing just a few syllables much to the dismay of Marcus who was always very punctual and methodical.

Tom makes his ward and attempts to summon a Couatl - a magnificent winged snake-like creature, but the spell fizzles and nothing seems to happen. Marcus watches carefully and all is silent for a moment, untill Marcus' voice booms through the room "TOM! I knew it! You always did struggle with the prononciation. Now I'll show you just this ONCE and if you cannot do it, then I'm afraid you're OUT!"

*Marcus takes a moment to settle down, having another sip of tea as he wheezes a bit from his outburst, his body old from age and no longer able to keep up quite like it used to. The wooden chair creaks as he reaches for a spellbook and he makes his way to Tom who is standing near a large hole built into the room, covered by sturdy metal bars - like an oversized grill made of stone and as wide as a water tower.*

"Now listen carefully" Marcus says with a stern look to Tom as he turns to look towards the hole and begins to utter the arcane words for the summoning. He speaks a little louder and slower than he usually would and Tom listens intently, but as the spell comes to an end, nothing happens and they both look through the metal bars in disbelief for a moment.

Meanwhile, before the class began, Mystra is going about her day, drinking godly tea and reading the godly newspaper when suddenly she starts to feel a bit dizzy. As she checks the weave gps, theres an unusually high number of blips right at Marcus' classroom. As they continue to cast spells, Mystra gets increasingly weakened. "OH GOD!" Mystra exclaims as she begins to run towards the weave emergency shut off valve. "Why does it have to be all the way down in the basement!" Mystra mutters as she runs down the stairs. "AUGH!" she yells, nearly falling on a step as a student cast another summoning spell.

*Mystra crawls along the basement floor, delirious and somehow still cluthing her newspaper and just about managing to turn the wheel on the weave plumbing as Tom is about to cast his spell* "Phew!" she says, wiping off godly sweat and glancing remorsefully at her now somewhat ruined Godly News - monday edition.

Next day, while Mystra and Oghma have their weekly coffee & bagels. "You know, I'm kind of embarrased about this whole thing. Might just give people an epic story about the Netherese or something. Perhaps in an epic struggle for their life... yeah" said Mystra. "People deserve to know the truth. Although I will admit, it doesn't look too good." said Oghma thoughtfully, although Mystra seemed distracted by the bagel still being chewed in his mouth at the time. "... right right." said Mystra, slurping a sip of coffee. "How about this - you keep the real story, well documented, but hidden away for only the most diligent and skillful to find, while I go and give a more "realistic" version to the masses? I doubt we'd be able to convince the academics that all magic was just going through a tube in my basement anyway". "Fine" replied Oghma with a smile, wiping off the crumbs from a piece of paper as he reached for a pen.

And thus it came to be, that the mages around the world suddenly where very busy studying and cataloguing what spell components where necessary for what spells and an epic tale of Netherese mages and falling cities reached those who looked closely into the matter. Although a few who kept digging, might have found another tale to tell on the matter.

[Hazard]

Lots of cool ideas in here. I'll support anything that eases the burden on people who make and maintain fixtures versus people that destroy them.

While some of it does fall under the 'be nice' rule it can both be tiresome and difficult to enforce/report when you don't know who did it or, probably more importantly when it comes to the logs, when it happened. Or even if it's the same person.

I don't think applying Stat debuffs is the way to go but I like the idea of a short animation or some indication of what you're doing that increases your risk of being caught or at least might make a player engage more with the act.

What might be neat, to preserve holy places in populated areas, is that clerics of the faith in a small few area vicinity get a notification "Someone is defiling a shrine to your God nearby!" With the location non specific of course. That way I think walking into the Temple of Lloth or some other big city's equivalent to desecrate it would rightly be suicide, (or a big event!), compared to a wayside shrine.

This idea sounds awesome. If followers of that faith are nearby, a god could totally send a message to their priests/priestess', especially Lloth who intervenes constantly with mortals.

Would love to see something like this, even if it's only for permanent altars placed by the module.

[Hazard]

The current cost seems to be 50% piety and you get hit with a greater ruin.

I've only desecrated 1 altar (it was today) in the past MANY years. My character happened upon an altar to their gods worst enemy, in enemy territory, so naturally it was desecrated. They got whacked in the face with a G-Ruin from the heavens, and it was pretty hilarious.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Shifting deity presence to an individual level rather than a server level did make playing gods of unknown deities easier to play. Alternatively, has made the entire notion of faith to be not-society-based, but individual-based, which is just a weird idea.

Altar desecration is meaningless. Piety gain doesn't require much prayer. Piety needs to be rebalanced hard to make faith-based roleplay more meaningful.

Piety >>>>> spell components. Start tripling (or quadrupling) the costs of piety for divine spellcasting, and people will start paying more attention.

[strong yeet]

Piety >>>>> spell components. Start tripling (or quadrupling) the costs of piety for divine spellcasting, and people will start paying more attention.

Sorry, I disagree with this very strongly. Spell components are way more convenient & easy than piety.

Components are weightless and can stack up to 100, only taking up 1 space in the inventory. With a modicum of effort in collecting the laughably easy materials (not that I want food/water tier useless minigames to have more meaning placed behind them) have a hundred times more components than available spells/slots to use them with. Or you can simply buy them at 5 components for 500-1000 gp.

Piety only goes up to 100. The only way to get more piety is to burn gold (only up to 80%), sit in front of an altar or do piety-related things, any of which either take more time than gathering spell components or are more expensive. I hate being tied to piety, but spell components are a tiny, minor irritation that's more a frustrating gate during leveling (trying to find a spell component pouch involves trying to find someone willing to make it which involves someone willing to make tanning acid which involves someone willing to make glass vials -- but you only have to do it once, unless you mess up.)

I do not think piety needs to be more frustrating and annoying. Roleplay is meaningful because it's roleplay and that's the point of the server, not because sitting in front of an altar is something you occasionally might have to do.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Piety >>>>> spell components. Start tripling (or quadrupling) the costs of piety for divine spellcasting, and people will start paying more attention.

Sorry, I disagree with this very strongly. Spell components are way more convenient & easy than piety.

Components are weightless and can stack up to 100, only taking up 1 space in the inventory. With a modicum of effort in collecting the laughably easy materials (not that I want food/water tier useless minigames to have more meaning placed behind them) have a hundred times more components than available spells/slots to use them with. Or you can simply buy them at 5 components for 500-1000 gp.

Piety only goes up to 100. The only way to get more piety is to burn gold (only up to 80%), sit in front of an altar or do piety-related things, any of which either take more time than gathering spell components or are more expensive. I hate being tied to piety, but spell components are a tiny, minor irritation that's more a frustrating gate during leveling (trying to find a spell component pouch involves trying to find someone willing to make it which involves someone willing to make tanning acid which involves someone willing to make glass vials -- but you only have to do it once, unless you mess up.)

I do not think piety needs to be more frustrating and annoying. Roleplay is meaningful because it's roleplay and that's the point of the server, not because sitting in front of an altar is something you occasionally might have to do.

This is fair. The issue is that if you're playing a cleric, you gain piety from ticks. Maybe I should've specified that the piety gain as a cleric is out of sync. If you play a divine non-cleric class, I can see it being more of an issue.

Cleric piety gain is super easy. That should be tweaked.

And I do think if clerics needed to take prayer into consideration, mechanically, you'd see a greater emphasis on these altar mechanics rather than just a nicety or a whatever.

[strong yeet]

As far as I'm aware, every religious-based class gets equivalent or near-equivalent piety-on-tick to clerics.

Cleric piety gain is super easy. That should be tweaked.

Again, I disagree. I remember what playing a cleric with "suboptimal" domains was like and it was annoying and tedious. It didn't make a bunch of roleplay out of the fact I had to sit in front of an altar for 20 minutes every time I logged on to have enough piety to play today. It just wasted my time.

I like less busywork, not more -- especially not more in the name of fostering roleplay that never actually happens, since forced and artificial "RP" is just as stilted and tedious as boring mechanical constraints. Which is what you're suggesting.

[Skibbles]

I have to agree with Strong Yeet on piety gain.

I really don't like the arbitrary minigame of food/water/rest/piety. It doesn't create meaningful roleplay. A character with 100% food is just as likely to put together and host a dinner party as a character with -13% food, because people are interested in interaction.

In fact, before an event whether it's a dinner party or not, I'd be capping up my food/water beforehand just so I don't have to deal with it while I'm focusing on role-playing instead of standing up from a chair and punching hands together three or four times to 'eat'.

Nobody I've interacted with IG cares enough to reflect these numbers in roleplay because roleplay centered around being mechanically thirsty (or thirsty for piety according to topic) every hour doesn't build a story.

It's the same with rest, or why people don't sleep they just eat restoration wands, or the fact that every wizard is a crippling drunk because that's the only way you can change your spellbook to go along with whatever is happening in the moment.

It's all campy and dismissed with a collective roll of the eye in order to get to the good stuff: the story.

Piety is the same. A cleric with 0 piety convincing a few people, through thought provoking and character building religious debate, to turn to their God? +0 piety lol do you even know how to proselytize?

Afk at an altar for 30 minutes? 100% God loves you best cleric ever. Anyway the point is that being mechanically pious shouldn't be better than being RP pious.

I understand there's balance issues surrounding piety gain (like godsave for example), but I seriously doubt making piety more difficult will make the RP surrounding it more meaningful. It's up to the players to make it meaningful, just like all RP.

[Nitro]

I completely agree and feel the same way about spell components. They're never an actual problem except when you're getting your first component pouch because those can be hard to find at times. Otherwise it's just a tax you have to pay for having the audacity to play an arcane caster if you want to use all your class abilities. It doesn't add any RP, people just buy stacks of 50+ components from stores or silently bulk craft them themselves, and it certainly doesn't add any gravitas or weight to 7-9 level spells when you still HAVE to use those spells to get through the PvE content.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

If they're annoying and busywork, and don't validate roleplay in any meaningful way, they should just be scrapped.

I've played religious builds that have never ever struggled with piety, so my perspective is skewed, and I guess that's part of the issue.

If piety is meant to control or restrain divine mechanics, then it largely falls into 2 categories:

1 - you are playing characters/builds that have absolutely zero issue gaining piety, and thus piety penalties are meaningless (me)

2 - you are playing characters/builds that necessitate praying in front of altars alone for X minutes every session, and thus piety penalties carry much greater weight

[Tyrantos]

Would be cool if praying at a consecrated altar to your deity gave some sort of buff. Maybe like temp HP? Or a bonus to saves? I don't know. In any case, it would be nice if one could make a small description modifications to altars when you desecrate them.