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Cinderwell wrote:

Actually, has there been official word on Paladin being a role?

It was mentioned by a Game Designer yesterday

Tork Shaw wrote:

A Cathedral (which is actually the large Cleric building, not the temple, my error) can have either additional deities added OR paladin training added (subject to alignment) Further down the line there will be other classes that may end up on the Cathedral too (its possible you may like to speculate on what those will be ;) ). So it supports 2+ classes vs. the 3 that others can.

Mine bold mark

Nice catch, it was starting to sound like you'd be able to make something similar with Fighter/Cleric and deity reputation martial perks, that's why I was wondering.

I would agree that any role that is mechanically excluded from reaching a specific attribute number (thereby hitting a "closed gate") would be at a disadvantage for a specific function. Still that would be a choice made by the player as they choose a career path and role. But, we do need to know what is required in stats, attributes and skill/role choices so we don't begin training up a dead-end career path. Experience is too expensive to gain to waste thousands of XPs on a non-functional skill tree selection.

I think what he was getting at is that Evil Settlements can't produce Lawful Good Paladins, so it's not a choice for their members' career paths.

Actually, has there been official word on Paladin being a role?

When they mentioned in the Cleric thread that deity rep would offer martial perks that a Fighter would want, it made me start to wonder if Paladin would exist as it's own role.

Yeah, even though I don't plan on rolling Evil, I can see balance issues from giving their settlements access to fewer roles.

The 5ed playtest had several Paladin flavors for different alignments, like Blackguard.

EDIT: I guess if Assassin is Evil only, we'd be even for roles.

I'm going to vote for Paladins to be Lawful only, instead of Lawful Good, if it comes up.

Developing a role for one corner of the grid would be disappointing.

I think the easy fix for log-outs is giving a countdown based on your stacks of "Being Observed." Every stack adding a few seconds so you won't make progress logging out unless the observation ends.
(if anything you become an easier target because you're holding still to log out)

As long as there's prep work to setting up an assassination I don't think this will be abused.

Cinderwell wrote:

Having Animate Dead still hasn't made Clerics "any non-good," and that's RAW evil. Correct?

There are three sections in the cleric's class abilities explaining that, yes, a cleric who casts Animate Dead is Any Non-Good. Three.

Three.

Do you know who else has Animate Dead and is any alignment? Sorcerers and Wizards.

Hell, Witches literally have a class option to boil humanoids alive, and eat them, (RAW evil) and are any alignment.

So, if poison was RAW evil, would it have changed the ninja's alignment?

It only seems backwards if you don't think it out. If I gave paladins an ability to summon demons, would you say, "Well, he doesn't have to use it"? Or would you say, "It must be some sort of special summoning that isn't evil"?

If the Poison Use ability was evil, the ninja class would be at least "Any Nongood" like the Dread Necromancer.

Let's ignore the straw man fallacy for a moment.

Having Animate Dead still hasn't made Clerics "any non-good," and that's RAW evil. Correct?

So, if poison was RAW evil, would it have changed the ninja's alignment?

The poison itself, as a weapon of combat is not evil, dishonored at best. By RAW only Paladins aren't able to use it, because its code strictly say it.

But there are some uses of poison that are an evil act, like poison someone food or water supply.

Good infos here and here.

EDIT: I was ninjaed! :/

:D

Good threads.

I wasn't opposed to the idea, just the amusingly backwards logic that an any-alignment class should be a metric for determining something about a specific alignment.

It's "Animate Dead", and no, all clerics can't. If a cleric worships a Good god, he is not of Any alignment—he must be Good. As such, he cannot cast Animate Dead without losing his powers.

The difference is that the cleric class specifically calls out aligned spells and specifically imposes limits on the cleric's alignment besides.

Yeah, you're right. A neutral cleric could worship and evil god and cast it all several times a day, but it'd still be an evil act.

The point stands that being able to do something doesn't mean it's accepted by your alignment.

Lawful Good and Lawful Evil I can see, but has there been a Lawful Neutral equivalent in literature or gaming before?

I don't have the material handy, but the 5th edition playtest had a bunch of alignment variants in the core rules (like Blackguard, for example).

Zanathos wrote:

Drug use and poison use have always been considered evil in D&D and in Pathfinder.

Really? Is that why ninjas, a class that can be "Any" alignment, have Poison Use as a class ability at first level?

I believe all Clerics can use Raise Dead, but it's still considered an evil act.

I'm still for poisons being included, but maybe the type you use should have an alignment impact or training restrictions.

If they ever add the Witch class (which I hope they do, as it's a fav), they have a level 1 spell called Gift.

Gift compels someone to consume something you hand to them, which is often a delivery mechanism for poisoned apples, etc. I could see you equipping the spell and then attaching an item to it.

Guurzak wrote:

There aren't going to be "alignment based" skills or feats.

Are you sure? I was under the impression that some of the Paladin Feats would require you to maintain Lawful Good alignment. You're generally pretty accurate, so I'm hoping you can provide a reference.

I'm cautiously hopeful that Paladin will only have a Lawful requirement, with Good/Neutral/Evil flavors. (which would make it a parallel to Barbarian)

I really wouldn't want them to spend time developing a role that is only available to such a specific subset.

T7V Avari wrote:

Stephen Cheney wrote:

Churches are also faction buildings, and will eventually offer faction-limited content in addition to domains. Some of this faction training is likely to be available to non-Clerics that raise faction with the church. So you train all your Cleric of Iomedae stuff at the Iomedae temple, but also, for example, Fighters with high Iomedae faction (and compatible alignment) may be able to train special Iomedae-themed Longsword attacks there that are really good for a Fighter build.

ok...that is major news! Glad I asked!

+1

I like this.

Will characters be limited to a single faction?

One of the earlier dev posts indicated that raising rep with one deity would lower what you had built with any others.

I'm intrigued that deities will offer things to martial roles too.

Ah, if we can shift things down the road this system sounds fine. It also sounds like domains aren't as big of a deal.

[...]In Pfo, how many of a deities domains may a cleric pick? (2 in TT)

In Pfo, how many domains benefits (e.g. increased perception or increased bluff) are active at a time? (2 in TT)

In Pfo, how many slots added per spell level? (1 per spell level in TT, spell level increase every 2 class level)

According to another thread, it's sounding like your deity will only have two domains, and domains can be equipped in feat slots. (Correct me if I'm wrong)

It's rather disappointing that in this one role you'll be constrained even beyond your alignment. It feels very contrary to most of the freedom the rest of the game offers.

So alignment will impact your deity decision, which in turn will limit your domains? Are these all one-time decisions?

If that's the case, I hope the domain options per deity are more flexible than in pen & paper. (ex. you can have any domain that doesn't conflict with your deity's ideals, instead of only ones they specifically support)

Again, I use th dagger thrust example....

A Lawful Good dagger thrust would be a precise and clean strike. This would no be a one-shot kill, but a finishing blow that would be mercifully quick.

Whereas, a Chaotic Evil finishing blow might be a dagger trusted and then twisted in a victim's gut, spilling his entrails.

Yes I know this is not Age of Conan, but you get the gist of what I'm taking about, or at least I hope you all do.

I think it would add a lot of animation work to make each swing reflect every possible alignment combination, per race/gender.

What might be viable is having a different fighting stance for lawful vs neutral vs chaotic (reflecting how disciplined you are as a combatant).

From my limited understanding of how Unity blends animations, this wouldn't add as much overhead. Time to add this to ideascale?

Cinderwell wrote:

Actually never heard the word "gownsman" before today.

Nor had I, but I've enough knowledge of European university-stuff to grok the fullness. Another great word.

Oddly enough, the easiest language--and one of the easiest things--I ever learned was Japanese. It was described to me in the beginning as "5000 years old, and all the irregular verbs have been worked out".

That's interesting, I figured learning the characters would be a harrowing experience.

I've met no one who thinks English is an easy language. Our habit of stealing loan-words from other languages, if nothing else, is enough to make people want to continue using their mother-tongues.

Yeah... I would only consider romance languages easy to learn, as they follow their patterns more closely.

Actually never heard the word "gownsman" before today.

Sound like yous got boar'd.

Har har har!

Hahah, well played =P

One thing I hope they do with "Beasties" is avoid having the same beasts appear over and over at different power levels. Nothing has ever been so disappointing to me in an MMO as zoning into the Plane of Justice(?) and seeing level 52 rats. LOTRO has a really bad habit of putting boars in every zone at every level. This goes a long way towards destroying the feeling that you're actually advancing and getting more powerful.

Funniest part of entering the Burning Crusades content in WoW: Oh, these are "hell" boars...

Have they posted about how religion will be handled?
Is it going to be a one-time choice, or will you be able to swap between deities that aren't in conflict with your alignment?

Interesting thread, in Final Fantasy XI (the first MMO they made), Rangers were always ahead in damage, with the justification being that the player-crafted ammo was so expensive that it was justified.
(we used to joke that they were using Gil Toss)

What the devs did get frustrated about was the fact that most Rangers would stand in melee range and only use dagger auto-attacks until they had built enough TP to do a finishing move with their bow/crossbow/etc (TP being similar to a Warrior's Rage in many MMO's, except every martial class used it).

Their solution was to make the damage vary by distance, so there was a sweat spot you had to stand in to be effective. It was a rather ugly solution though, because there was nothing in the GUI that indicated you were standing the correct distance, and add-ons for the game were strictly illegal in the Terms of Use.

I'm not suggesting that this was the right solution, but I could see an accuracy debuff while moving making sense (something you could diminish by investing in to archery).

Line of Sight would be a start, but in a lot of AAA MMO's you can strafe at full-speed and fire at someone chasing you without much difficulty even with that in place.