Aspects and Piety Gain (Again)

[BrilliantInsanity]

Firstly, I didn't mean all spells. I simply meant if the devs want those spells to be rare and expensive (sure seems like it, given the piety costs/costs of scribing scrolls for raise/resurrection) that there are ways to do so, without piety, and there is nothing expensive about arcane spell components on arelith, yet wizard 9th level spells should also be gated behind thousands of gold worth of components.

There's no reason cleric spells shouldn't or couldn't have similar reagents to cast, and remove piety altogether, or only have it apply to god saves.

So for clarification purposes since this got Top paged: [for ease you can replace Cleric with Druid and its still accurate]

Since I lack any documentation on 3.0 specifically, I'm pulling information from 3.5: Both wizards and Clerics require 1 hour in preparation/supplication to regain their allotment of spells following a good rest. That's it. Level 1 cleric/wizard Level 30 Cleric/wizard matters not. It takes 1 hour to either study your tome and memorize your spells, or supplicate before your deity and be granted your miracles.

Allowing Wizards to simply regain their allotment of spells by resting, and needing to only bring relatively cheap reagents to ensure they can cast them for extended periods of time, (as wizards can bring several hundred , if not thousands of components along with them) vs. Cleric's being limited by a maximum of 100%, and 7th, 8th, and 9th circle spells (and 10th for those epics) being 1%, 2%, 3%, and 5% respectively, this seriously tips the balance of power in favor of wizards for longevity purposes.

Their mechanics should be similar, and staying power equal. It makes zero mechanical or thematic sense for clerics or druids to have to abandon whatever they are doing to wander off somewhere, potentially far afield, to find an altar to pray at. It is a thing they should be able to do anywhere, at anytime.

With this in mind, I am advocating a reagent system like that for arcane casters for Divine, with reagents being as easily craftable and acquired as those for Arcane casters. With this done, piety could simply be a thing for god-saves.

I should clarify also, I do not have as extensive playtime with clerics as I do with my wizard so if the aforementioned problem isn't ACTUALLY a problem, then feel free to disregard the hell out of it.

[-XXX-]

Spell components are a despicable heinous atrocity. Is your hatred for clerics really so powerful that you would want to subject them to such undeserved excessive abuse?

[Iceborn]

Fair points raised here, not so much the tone used in the original post though.

Let's keep it civil and use this thread to brainstorm some more on ideas to improve the system.

Sorry about the salt
I ran out of coffee and it's been mining on my manners.

[BrilliantInsanity]

Spell components are a despicable heinous atrocity. Is your hatred for clerics really so powerful that you would want to subject them to such undeserved excessive abuse?

Nope. Love clerics Don't like them objectively being comparable to wizards with 2 full bags of spell components at best if they wish to go on adventures at high level. Since Piety cost for spells are flat whole percentages that are directly equal to the same spell component cost for wizards, a wizard with a measly 4 bags of components now has twice the staying power for high level spells(not even accounting for piety loss over time spent IG) of a divine caster. This is the thing I don't like.

Don't want to go the component route? Fine. I feel you, but if we're going to forevermore tie piety to 7+ level spells for divine casters, then piety costs across the board need to be cut, piety gains need to be increased, and/or a portable altar needs to exist for "The Cleric on the Go." Especially since god-saves for divine casters that aren't War (looking at you my precious trickery priest) are going to cost you up to 25% piety with no easy way to get it back. Not a pleasant spot to be in.

[flower]

Components are certainly not the way to go.

There just needs to be more ways to regain piety.

Holding ceremony or praying should not be depandant on altars. Cleric should be able to perform it anywhere. Make it a command.

The price for that is that it takes time. When done without altar make it like +0,1 per tik. So when priest needs to "commune" with his god, the party has to stop and wait.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Here's my obligatory post:

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=12753&p=106017&hil ... ad#p106017

My opinion on it has changed:

- remove "activity" piety generation (killing, fruit picking, casting spells) [it can never be balanced and hinders player-choice in character creation]
- increase prayer ticks
- remove *prays*, except for rangers, druids, clerics, paladins, and blackguards
- piety decreases every 12 minutes, instead of every 6

[Hunter548]

Here's my obligatory post:

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=12753&p=106017&hil ... ad#p106017

My opinion on it has changed:

- remove "activity" piety generation (killing, fruit picking, casting spells) [it can never be balanced and hinders player-choice in character creation]
- increase prayer ticks
- remove *prays*, except for rangers, druids, clerics, paladins, and blackguards
- piety decreases every 12 minutes, instead of every 6

See, this just sounds like it makes generating piety for the classes that need it even more cancerous and unfun.

I already had to spend half an hour AFK in front of an altar every couple of days on my epic cleric in order to appears the server gods that I should be allowed to actually play the game. Why make that worse?

[flower]

Clerics should be given features benefitting them and their party/allies/followers and sending clear message their powers come from gods.

That means make proces of using these features ceremonies and alike to contribute to the party/present characters for the actual IG day. (This is a general thought).

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Here's my obligatory post:

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=12753&p=106017&hil ... ad#p106017

My opinion on it has changed:

- remove "activity" piety generation (killing, fruit picking, casting spells) [it can never be balanced and hinders player-choice in character creation]
- increase prayer ticks
- remove *prays*, except for rangers, druids, clerics, paladins, and blackguards
- piety decreases every 12 minutes, instead of every 6

See, this just sounds like it makes generating piety for the classes that need it even more cancerous and unfun.

I already had to spend half an hour AFK in front of an altar every couple of days on my epic cleric in order to appears the server gods that I should be allowed to actually play the game. Why make that worse?

Piety generation has always been unfun though, right? Unless you are W&D, piety has always required some manner of deviation from what you're doing. Some more egregious than others.

I think there's a couple flaws with piety that hamper how you can work with it-
- everyone is one the 100% scale, but piety that high only matters for divine spellcasters and people who use divine feats.
- everyone can use *prays*, which I always thought was counter-intuitive considering how we constantly try to insert more polytheism - a sudden direct boon always strikes me as an award for the absolute faithful, not the soldier trying to get by.
- there's no reward for picking a faith that is more popular on Arelith, which greatly benefits lesser known deities, but flies in the face of the FR principle that worshippers fuel deities
- I don't see how you can ever ever make piety generation as easy for other domains as it is for W&D

Overall, I think piety should decay slower. If it was up to me, I'd implement that and wait and see if it half-fixes any of the issues.

[flower]

I never had an issue with piety loss in time.

Well how about:
No loss of piety over time

Cleric gains piety +1/hour

Consacrating new altar restores piety to full

Desacrating costs no piety but performer can be punished (high chance to strike cleric and his party, no SR, DC based on levels of cleric - te higher the less powerful revenge).

Ceremony no longer restores piety. It may grant random bonus effect to party in it's end (chance = cleric's level) in various form, lastin until character rests/gets killed, is part of new ceremony or after 144 minutes. Cleric may perform only once per day (per IG day not rest).

All spells cost a piety now
1-3 circle 0,1
4-6 circle 0,2
7 circle 0,3
8 circle 2
9 circle 5 piety

WaD domain
-gets piety per kill +0,5
-offensive spells cost no piety

HaH domain
-piety per hour is increased to +5 each time cleric is in living area
-healing spells cost no piety
-crafting food gives cleric one time piety equal to DC of item

KaI domain
-if used crafting skill points, then gain per hour is increased to +5
-divination spells cost no piety
-interaction with bookshelves grant one time boon of +5 piety (once per day each one)

TaD domain
-when disguised, and someone fails spot check, +5 piety
-casting trickery type spells + 10 piety (invisibility, improved invisibility), and they cost no piety

Na domain
-when in outside/groove area, gains + 5 piety per hour
-tending plants yields + 5 piety (one plant per day)

Ma domain
-1-7 spell circle cost no piety


Godly intervention:
god raise auto use
enchantment, disguise, crafting -on command (after use of command it will be used for the first failure next 18 minutes)

[Rockstar1984]

I think the only thing that really needs to be done is raise the piety gain so that all of them are on equal terms and then give each deity two aspects. I like the idea of raising the gain from activities .1 to .5 so they are all on par with each other. I would also argue that the H'n'H aspect should apply to using healing kits as well as healing spells.

Some deities have two aspects and some do not and I don't see any particular pattern for this. And there are a lot of deities that could easily be given a second aspect. For example Sune currently has Hearth and Home, but I believe she should also have Knowledge and Invention because her followers are supposed to create beautiful things or even Nature, for the care and protection of the world's natural beauty. Hanali Celanil is a goddess of love and enchantment worshipped by elven enchanters, yet she doesn't have the Magic aspect. I could go on with more examples but basically for almost every god that currently has only one aspect I can see in their lore an easy explanation for a second aspect. It makes no sense that some deities have two and some of them even have two of the most easy to raise aspects (looking at you Malar and Nobanion) while a lot of them just have one.

[Tetra]

Toggling with the crafting & disguise mechanic sounds great to me. I see almost no situational use for Trickery, since there's no way you would trust the "pass a failed disguise" to fire when it really counted (sneaking past guards if exiled, for example) and otherwise it just seems to be a random big piety drain when you pass high spot NPCs you don't care about.

Maybe what I would like would be a "pray" system where you could spend piety to pray for specific things. "-pray_craft, pray_disguise.." etc. When you do so, you would take a piety hit to have a greatly improved chance of success for a short period of time.

[susitsu]

godsaves are still run off of chance, anyway. except maybe W&D, that seems to always save the day. so it's not like making it toggable would really hurt this process that those above me insist on being the case. no harm in toggable saves, and a lot less headache as your god for once doesn't intervenes on a 95% chance +2 discipline enchant, but for some reason nothing else for two weeks straight.

[Scurvy Cur]

Tl; dr suggestions here:

W&D is fine, and should be the standard for piety gain for other aspects.

K&I, if gated to crafting point expenditure, go to 0.5% per point expended. Add a bonus for item completion, because 25% piety per IG day is still way short of the mark.

Magic should be bumped to either 0.5% per cast spell or 0.1% per level of cast spell.

T&D should have gain bumped to 1% or even 2%, but be limited to one gain per npc per IG day, which will relive ooc incentive lap npcs to try and grind piety.

H&H includes a lot of protectively-minded deities, so allow 0.1% piety generation every time -guard redirects an attacker to the H&H follower. Furthermore, flag healing gains not to spells cast, but to hp restored; 0.1% piety per 5 hp restored by any means, rounded up.

[BegoneThoth]

I don't see why the healing domain can't also count heal kits. You can't spam them on full health targets so you can't just idlespam piety, and why does a deity care if you're using bandages to the point they won't show their favor for it? You're still healing, curing disease, and purging poison.

[Xerah]

Tl; dr suggestions here:

W&D is fine, and should be the standard for piety gain for other aspects.

K&I, if gated to crafting point expenditure, go to 0.5% per point expended. Add a bonus for item completion, because 25% piety per IG day is still way short of the mark.

Magic should be bumped to either 0.5% per cast spell or 0.1% per level of cast spell.

T&D should have gain bumped to 1% or even 2%, but be limited to one gain per npc per IG day, which will relive ooc incentive lap npcs to try and grind piety.

H&H includes a lot of protectively-minded deities, so allow 0.1% piety generation every time -guard redirects an attacker to the H&H follower. Furthermore, flag healing gains not to spells cast, but to hp restored; 0.1% piety per 5 hp restored by any means, rounded up.

Those all sound reasonable, specifically for the Crafting and magic ones which I have first-hand experience in (one note, the 25% per day for crafting is something you have to be diligent about, 5x spending your points is not typical).

The one other thing was evening out the distribution for dual aspect deities. Either with giving everyone a hard 2, or giving a hard 1, and let players choose 1.

[susitsu]

Magic is honestly fine by itself and very good when supplemented by something. Crafting is not great with constant and punishing godsaves for something like a nat 1 on an item you have 5 more ranks in the crafting school than the DC actually is.

[gilescorey]

I don't see why the healing domain can't also count heal kits. You can't spam them on full health targets so you can't just idlespam piety, and why does a deity care if you're using bandages to the point they won't show their favor for it? You're still healing, curing disease, and purging poison.

It's apparently a NWN limitation, something to do with kits being hard-coded; it might be possible to workaround this with some programming magic but I've always heard that it wasn't.