Arelith

Could someone either 1) remove deity racial restrictions or 2) fix the 'you lose your deity, lol' thing for druids / mages who shift into `non race` forms? It is absolutely frustrating to have to deal with this. I've been poking around with a few characters and just had this keep happening over and over.

I really also don't understand why the 'racial restriction' thing is even a thing because deities in FR, for the most part, do not care and the ones that /are/ locked, the vast majority do not restrict their priesthoods to just their creations. Corellon, Lolth, and various other powers have non-racial followers, cultists, minions.

Please. As easy as getting piety is on a druid, this is so frustrating for trying to roleplay racial deities.

Isn't there a Gift for that though?

.. A gift you shouldn't have to take just to RP an elven druid.

The issue is that, if you follow a racial deity, every time you shift into animal form you lose your deity (xp, piety). This is a clear oversight, one that should be amended because the racial deity thing didn't make much sense anyway for reasons elaborated on in the OP.

Yes, since this post my elven druid who follows a druidic deity has lost their god about- 20 times??? It's weird. lol.

Lunargent wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 17, 2018 2:30 pm

The issue is that, if you follow a racial deity, every time you shift into animal form you lose your deity (xp, piety). This is a clear oversight, one that should be amended because the racial deity thing didn't make much sense anyway for reasons elaborated on in the OP.

Aha, I see the problem now. Obviously the racial deity restriction shouldn't count when polymorphing or shapeshifting.

The gods just don't like these heathen shifters.

You could always choose Toril or a non-racially locked deity in place of the racially locked one! It is a polytheistic society after all, so it isn't as if your character need only pay homage to a single deity.

WanderingPoet wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 18, 2018 5:02 am

You could always choose Toril or a non-racially locked deity in place of the racially locked one! It is a polytheistic society after all, so it isn't as if your character need only pay homage to a single deity.

Yes, and my character is a druid and a priest of a particular god. Not Toril, and while they are very much about that- I shouldn't be getting shafted by a bug.

I will not use another a deity. I am going to endure the bug.

But I am also going to kindly complain about it because its an old bug and I will pray that some kindly motivated developer or code contributor who is also passionate about this fixes this so not just me - but - other folks can enjoy freedom from this terrible, smelly bug that has existed a long, long time.

So you know too the issues with this bug, which is (temporarily) debilitating.

You lose the ability to spellcast your level 7+ spells.

You can instantly die due to no god save.

God saves in crafting and other things may not occur.

You lose the ability to gain piety.

(this also to another extent hurts any sort of spellcaster that changes shapes, and affects druids, clerics, rangers - but just anyone who has a racial deity + has changed into something else. Being a wild mage, for instance, puts you at risk of randomly losing your deity.)

As well: Not everyone wants to have Magic/Nature. Some gnome druids might want the Trickery and Deceit bonus and aspect from Segojan Earthcaller, or a Hearth and Home healer cleric of Sheela. Not everyone is going to be using the enchantment basin on a druid, and it seems ridiculous that a whole swathe of Nature gods are made unusable because of a bug.

Making a suggestion to make someone's life easier is not the same as saying "You must do this". If you don't like the suggestion then... just don't do it? I mean obviously if you don't want Magic/Nature then you don't go Toril but you can use the other half of the suggestion (non racial locked deities) - like Akadi for Trickery/Nature, or Grumbar for H&H/Nature, Kossuth for War/Nature, etc. No need to shoot the messenger~

Fixing the bug would be the nicest solution, of course - but doesn't mean you -have- to suffer in the meantime (I would also not swap gods, I'd just shift less, personally).

Also it should prevent all spellcasting if you lack a deity while playing a druid/cleric, not just 7+ to my understanding. On the bright side when it happened to me before I didn't lose my piety, just the ability to gain more.

As much as I get that you were being helpful the thread isn't really about `alting in other deities for the ones that already exist`. Clearly we just want the deities that should work like the others to work so we can have that same satisfaction of everyone else when we're pretending to be zealots.

As much as Akadi might resemble mechanically Serjogan Earthcaller... Akadi still is not Serjogan. I will suffer the issue because it means I am playing my character in the way I am supposed to be playing my character and I am bumping a thread with hope, eventually, someone important and capable might be able to look at it / and fix it / or at the very least explain `why thing is broke`.

Do you get where I am coming from here? I find it important to play my character in the way its expected to be played for many reasons (for my fellow followers of my god for ceremonies in a slight mechanical sense, for the creating of altars for and artefacts with that sysem, and so DMs can look at my character information and not be confused.)

I personally feel one of the solutions could just be removing racial restrictions because they're sort of needless and don't quite represent FR lore but maybe whoever put it together in the Elder Days just thought it made sense and that was part of their vision for Arelith.

But in the year of our lord 2018 its kinda weird and buggy and it might be easier to do away with it because it'd probably work more smoothily. Or, alternatively - deities of the racial variety could be restricted to viewing and choosing by race through an edit of the text menu to check for people of those races or `exceptions` so not just everyone can take them but have them work mechanically the same as the others so this bug doesn't occur.

All in all, I just hope this is fixed.

I never disagreed with you, I also want it fixed - as I would also 'suffer the issue' as you put it as I also consider having the correct deity to be important personally as I said above. However, as it is a polytheistic society following multiple gods is possible, so I am simply offering an alternative for others that read this thread so that they get to make their own choice!

You do you, whatever you prefer. Hopefully it gets fixed soon!

Hello.

Unless I misunderstood, it would not work for the player or players like them because they need to follow a particular deity in order to consecrate altars to that deity. However, the advice of picking a non-racial stand-in does "work" as a means of dealing with what sounds to be a very long-lived bug, even if it means compromising something about their characters.

I am sure this will be fixed. I'm sorry for the inconvenience and thank the player-base for their continued patience in the meantime.

Here's the question that will boil your noodle.

WHEN you shift into the druid form... do you retain your Race? -ARE- You an elf? or -ARE- you a badger that has retained the consciousness of an elf? Exactly WHAT happens when you shift? IS it an illusion? or are you for all intensive purpose ACTUALLY a badger for the duration of the shift?

If you ACTUALLY are a badger... then the question is... how can you be a Badger -AND- an elf at the same time? Because if you are an elf.. then clearly you're not a badger, and it is just some sort of illusion. but... if you ARE a badger, then you've indeed violated the restriction of your diety, and he/she has laid upon you punishment.

Don't mess with the gods... they're petty and vengeful.

I hope you're not being serious, but if you are...

That is the stupidest thing I have read in some time. Rillifane definitely has priests who shapeshift and he approves of it because he himself is a god who has animal forms. Nature gods are for druids/rangers, and druids shapeshift so it is par for the course that they would "change race" and defending a mechanical oversight that punishes them for using this mechanic core to the class gameplay is, frankly, utterly ridiculous.

It's a bug, a mechanical oversight. It isn't an intentional "lore" thing, and it should be fixed without having to change roleplay/come up with meta excuses.

No god would punish their loyal priests or druids for shapeshifting into in animal.

Period. It's an asinine explanation at best.

TimeAdept wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 30, 2018 5:14 pm

No god would punish their loyal priests or druids for shapeshifting into in animal.

Period. It's an asinine explanation at best.

I say that half-snarky... but this fall I am taking a class in Mythology, studying stories of Myths across cultures, and having to write analysis papers on how they relate both to each other and to modern day myths... and I have to say... it's pretty universal. The gods are d!cks. Don't say "no god would XXXXXXX" ... because in every polytheistic culture, the gods are petty and would just as likely strike you down for looking at their shrine wrong as they would for bestowing you with riches for farting at the opportune moment. And the gods of Fantasy Literature and Games aren't much different.

A shapshifted elven druid isn't solely one or the other, they're somewhere inbetween the two.

Their spirit is still that of their original race, their way of thinking, self identity, self awareness of their own consciousness, etc, all remains the same.
If they were the creature they shift into in both body and soul, they wouldn't be able to think and act in any way different from the thing they turned into.

Spiritually, the person would still be their base race, and assuming the action of shifting isnt one their deity would frown on(aka nature deities+ others), then they wouldn't lose their connection with their deity due to shifting(unless the person was using shifting as a means of deliberately forsaking/disconnecting from their heritage or something of that sort, but that is a separate matter).

Shifter is the class that starts to break this line, and has a notably different set of roleplay from druids.

Yeah, sorry.

Guys this is an actual bug. I can't believe someone would code an entire system trying to racially lock deities - only to have it not work for wide swathes of the playerbase in very niche circumstances. This is a bug that we'll have to wait to be fixed.

Also deities in the FR have alignments and the fickle shitty gods already are fickle and shitty. The Seldarine and mostly of the goodly aligned racial pantheons (which this solely applies to, almost) - wouldn't do this. But then the evil gods wouldn't either? It'd be... dumb? to do that? You'd lose followers and power to do that?

I will continue to sweetly wait for the day it is fixed and I'll have to say I went an entire week where I didn't lose my deity. Which was pretty cool.

I've been trying to find an exact cause of the `decoupling` but I don't think there really is one beyond, MAYBE, if experience an RPR tick while in shape.

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But honestly I think a very simple solution to this would be to ditch racial restrictions on deities.

1) ...because thats not quite how it works in FR, and unless explicitly stated in their lore, deities generally do not care who their followers are, and even priests might be possible. Players themselves can determine whether or not they would accept on an individual basis a human cleric of Corellon or other gods, the gods, however usually do not mess with their people beyond this.

2) This particular bug only happens to these specific types of deities.

3) Some deities have these restrictions when they explicitly should not - like Bahamut and Tiamat, who are largely human deities in FR and yet they are restricted to reptilian (yes, dragons pay them heed or envy them but they are HUMAN, FAERUNIAN, deities for the most part in this setting). The Seelie Court deities, especially with the departure of fey, should be open to everyone as they are revered by many races and are essentially an extension of the elven pantheon more or less.

It might not be so simple as removing the check, but, I hope it is. It'd make things 100% more fun. I guess the "gift of exception" would become less viable but honestly its mostly a joke and actually also flies in the face of FR lore because it allows you to make CE priests of LG deities and stuff, from what I recall. I'd just ditch this gift with it and make whoever took it a legacy.

If the restrictions were removed or lessened, I'd say that the Gift of Unique Favor (or whatever it's called) should have another function. For example, a character with that gift earns piety faster. Or they have better luck with -pray and resurrect prayers -- to name a few examples.

Gifts have been removed in the past (recently, even). I don't see anything wrong with removing this one if it were to become obsolete, though faster piety gains seems cool. It might even encourage people to pick deities it's harder to get piety for, if praying was faster.

Could make it work like the harper priest, having the gift gives you piety as if though your deity had all six aspects.