Two quick ideas about altars, and I'm certainly no expert on altar crafting, Arelith religion or NWN scripting, so forgive if redundant or just plain inane:
1) Allow sacrifices of items. This was and still is, in many parts, much more common than donation of money itself. Value of the items sacrificed might be adjusted for specificity to the consecrated deity: bonuses for books for knowledge-oriented, weapons/armor for war-oriented, food/drink for home/hearth-oriented, seeds/fruit/berries/nuts for nature-oriented, etc. Possibly sacrifices would just add to the deitiy's presence, and not the player's piety. I suspect this might require making them a container placeable, with a dialogue like that of settlement trade ministers, or scripting like persistent chests/shops, to pop a dialogue when closed. If the contents of the container remained visible (until reset, at least), how many stories might one see in the offerings left by the faithful?
2) Allow more varied aesthetics to altars. A shrine with the begging hand just doesn't always look right, and the result seems to be shrines with a great many placables/fixtures to achieve the builder's aesthetic concept, yielding a degree of, well, clutter. Holy clutter, but still. More craftable altars might do it, but instead, might it be possible for a variety of fixtures to be consecratable? To have the act of initial consecration (possibly with additional cost in materials/piety/gold?) turn it into an altar capable of sacrifice? In this way, statues, urns, even bookshelves for knowledge gods, for example, might become altars, possibly requiring examination or interaction, even, by players to determine that.
Just some thoughts, with no real concept at all of the scripting or database mods to support them, but I think both might add to immersion, and to rp.
Altar thoughts
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