Difference between revisions of "Spirit Templars"

Latest revision as of 22:19, 26 April 2011

Die Zukunft des Spirittemplars, von EYG.

As it is, Spirit Templars get Truesight at level 20 and Know Alignment at level 51. These two spells may in fact be the most powerful ones in the game, since they allow for templars to have all sorts of knowledge about a person's role that they may not want to broadcast. As a result, I have a few suggestions about it.

Truesight:

Currently, it gives detect_evil, detect_good, +7 hitroll, and the ability to see people who are voidwalked. Now, what good is making know alignment a hero-level spell, if you knew who was evil from level 20 on? It's somewhat contradictory. Also, how does seeing the auras around someone necessarily mean that you're able to hit better? Perhaps a bit of accuracy from sharpened vision could be understood, but +7? Were the spell alone, it might be a suitable addition to the class, but combined with another +6 from bless and +10 from zeal at hero does seem to be a bit.. much. +23 hit is a huge advantage, and an addition of more than many chars have total!

So, as an alternative to truesight, I offer you:

Puresight!

A sample helpfile would read:

Drawing on the magics of spirit, this spell allows for a spirit templar to see an aura of gold around fellow followers of the light, but get no reaction from those who walk the paths of balance or darkness. The extranatural sight offered by this spell gives the templar the ability to hit their opponents with an increased accuracy.

On the whole the spell would give detect_good and +3 hitroll. This then allows the spirit templar to discern who their direct allies are at the lower levels, yet still allow the development of "sneaky evil" characters who just happen to run into said templar in the beginning of their roles. It also aids in making 'know alignment' a more useful spell at level 51, since its utility at the moment lies in detecting law or chaos, which is usually not the first priority of templars. The reduction in hitroll brings the spirit templar hitroll bonus through spells to still powerful but more reasonable level: +19.

If I had my druthers, 'know alignment' would be taken out as well, since it is not clearly defined ingame why a spirit templar should be able to simply divine this information. The current 'know alignment' help file reads: Know Alignment

Syntax: cast 'know alignment' <character>

This spell reveals the alignment of the target character.

Which is far from the providence or explanation of most of the spells in the game. I will gladly rewrite the helpfile when someone explains how spirit templars can learn this spell, and why only they can divine the lawful/chaotic bent of Joe Blow the Thief. While the spell may have a place in the game somewhere, I question the validity of it in comparison to the rest of our spells, which all add to the aura of complete roleplaying. Know Alignment, by comparison, seems somewhat lame and stock-ish, without a better explanation.

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NOTE FROM EYG:

I did not come up with this idea solely as a result of experiences with Inyaidu, or for reasons of spite for anything. It's an idea I came up with while playing Ashao, a spirit templar, in November (far before the experience with Inyaidu and Kaisyn). With her, I noticed how truly odd it is that the "important"-- in terms of an evil-quashing ST-- part of 'know alignment' is given at a relatively low level while the less important part is not offered until hero. The concept of changing 'know alignment' from its initial level (which was under 10, if I remember correctly) to 51 was so that spirit scholars/templars wouldn't wander around killing anything that came up as 'evil'. While this is not necessarily the case now with truesight, I believe that changing it to detect_good only will allow STs to know who their friends are but still giving incentive to get to hero so that they can further understand each individual's intentions.

Please leave comments below the line:

DOV:

I think this idea is fantastic. It handles detect_evil concerns and is still very useful. Nice.