Still more changes

Take away War Blade. Change it to a movement buff or something combat related, but not an outright combat spells. Movement buff, Tag defense, Body buff, etc...

Um no?

Aid has been moved to Rank 3 at the cost of 4 FP and changed to read as follows:

"Aid

3 FP; Traits: Divine (Sacrament), Latent
This prayer imbues a target with 15 temporary body points and to strike for divine damage for a duration of 5 minutes."

Please make sure you re-read the initial post, because there week be changes made regularly to that.

And remember to remain constructive in your criticisms. As James said earlier, think before you post, re-read them. Ask yourself "will this offend anyone".

May I argue that instead of changing many of the Divine abilities to be mental you should introduce more Divine Defenses? I don’t understand the design goal behind adding more traits to the attacks. If the problem is that it is far too easy for a divine character to conquer someone that doesn't have Divine Negation then I agree. I think the solution presented is very radical and could have deeper consequences. Making divine prayers mental means that they cannot be used against any Demon and most Undead. Most of the plot of the last year and a half has been focused on undead and demons. That would mean that those that rely on their divine prayers for attacks, such as myself or a spellcasting priest, would be rendered useless for those events.

I would also argue that making divine prayers mental changes the entire flavor of the ability. I considered divinity to be puppetry. You cannot mentally resist a God. Allowing players to do so kinda weakens the argument of divinity. Adding more Divine defenses or adding diminishing return defenses would solve the problem of the power of divine prayers as well as allow divine characters to continue their RP. I picked Enax because it fit my RP and specifically because it was not mental. Making it mental makes me reexamine my character choices.

There are many places to add Divine Defenses. Dodge and deflect work against most non master cast prayers as they all have the ranged trait. Divine Negation is the only non-master/heroic spell I know of that protects against divine. Why not add divine resistances to the races that don’t worship the gods, such as Khitan and Londwyn. A defense does not have to be all or nothing. You could also reduce the effectiveness of a skill. A skill could have its duration reduced by half rounded up and its damage by half rounded up. If a player stuns a target for 5 seconds and deals 50 damage an “Endure” ability would mean the target takes a 3 second stun and takes 25 damage. There are already these types of defenses in game for elemental types. It would not be out of character to add.

Commoner (15), Priest (8), Cleric (8), Scholar (10), Khitan (10), Londwyn (10)
Endure (Divine):
Skill (periodic), Defense
This defense skill allows the defender to ignore half the duration and damage of a Divine Prayer. The defender must not be baptized to the God that the attack originated from. The defender becomes immune to that specific prayer for the duration of 10 minutes. All damage and time which is reduced by half is rounded up.

Thanks!

I agree;
I believe their are too many Divine attacks , or that there are too many attacks of a similar nature in general.

Either reducing the number of Divine attacks might solve the issue, or "cleaning up" the attacks which are essentially just rehashes of each other. Would improve clarity and also improve balance.

Adding the "Mental" trait to divine attacks removes virtually all of the flavor from Divinity in general as it is not necessarily (at least in my opinion) the caster who is afflicting someone, but their deity acting in their favor.

Second note: We still face the issue of there being leaps and bounds more Ranged damage attacks from "Evil" prayers/spells. Defenses against ranged damage prayers are few and expensive, which means it is very much more build-efficient to be an attacking "Bad" guy than a Defending "Good" guy.

Additionally: The #1 least fun thing that happens in any game is that you cannot play, whether its playing an online game where you are "stunlocked" or playing a LARP and you find yourself under the control of another player or an NPC.

Loss of control mechanics or lengthy stuns are, as we all know, a death sentence and , not fun. The only thing they make you feel while you are afflicted by them is "Well I should have just designed my character for efficiency and combat instead of taking a bunch of RP skills, because now Im just standing here"

Thanks for the hard work guys.

We have not instituted any changes yet. As many have seen, James is very busy right now with important issues, and until he has the time to go over these, we will be in a holding pattern. I do appreciate the positive input people have given me both on this board and through PMs.