Goblin Squad Member
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I hate that in MMO's clerics are just healers/anti-undead. The characters religion may determine a few special abilities of the character, but that is it. The games do nothing to reflect any kind of religious life or gameplay. I'm not at all interested in a prayer simulator or whatever, but I would like something added that makes religion and its practice a meaningful concept for a cleric, or paladin, or even some hybrid with something else for players that want to play a religious character.
What I would like to see is players able to convert NPC populations to worship of their deity, and tend to their needs to prevent them from running off to some other god. This could be done through many different means, the obvious one is to actually go out and start talking in populated areas about how awesome their religion is.
The game could track the percentage of a settlements population that worships each faith, and at certain population thresholds the people of a faith start making demands to fit the needs of their faith. If those needs are met, a shine, temple, cathedral, etc. they give the settlement some kind of bonus appropriate to the religion. If the demands aren't met the people are unhappy and apply a debuff to the settlement based on how big the population of the faith is compared to the demands that have been met.
A global tracker for have widespread a faith is could also be an interesting tool for driving conflict if you want to actively encourage holy wars.
Certainly, more depth could be added, but his creates a situation where religious gameplay is meaningful and encourages a different kind of PVP as players push to spread their faith, or simply defend their flocks from outsider heresy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Faiths to spread, hmm...
Dammerich, the Lawful Good Empyreal Lord of Executions!
Lymnieris, the Lawful Good Empyreal Lord of Prostitution!
And Ghenshau, the Lawful Good Empyreal Lord of Ignorance!
The second two help balance out the demands of the first one. And I thought the Forgetten Realms was bad at creating a Divine representation for everything you could think of. Golarion sure has them beat!
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Goblin Squad Member
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At its basic level it could certainly be applied to factions as well. I'm more interested in adding depth to the religious classes though. I think it would be cool for a cleric of Asmodeus to show up in town take a few people slaves, sacrifice them and perform a few infernal miracles. Then announce that the people can either serve Asmodeus and be like him or they can be slaves and feed the sacrificial altars. Or followers of Rovagug roll into town and just start slaughtering people and announce that if the people beg Rovagug for mercy they just might get it. While you get a cleric of Sarenrae healing the sick doing kind deads. And the paladin of Iomedae just shows up in town and kicks the ass of both the clerics of Asmodeus and Rovagug.
As I said, I want religion to be a meaningful concept in game. It certainly doesn't need to be ee content or even early oe, but I think it needs to be seriously addressed to add depth to the religious classes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree also that there should be something more as Hark described. It would also fall under the hope that Pathfinder Online will expand to at least the other core deities than what I remember seeing before (one god per alignment). Or even the Green Faith which I believe is one of those that does not have a deity.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It does sound interesting but I do see some problems:
Will player-settlements have enough NPC's to support this feature? Right now we have no idea how many NPC's a large settlement(let us say a 1000 players) would have.
Also, I am not sure how "open" most settlements will be and let other people within their walls. I would expect many settlements to be somewhat xenophobic (militant) and then they would simply convert each of their NPC's to the Faith that would be the most beneficial for their settlement and be done with it. It would then turn into a simple settlement buff without any of the cool implications of players "spreading the fate".
Once you have converted an NPC in someone elses settlement, what would keep a settlement from simply "flipping" that NPC back to the faith that the settlement wants?
How would the converting go? Some of you may know the diplomacy system from Vanguard which would be suited for this, but I do not think GW would dedicate so much sources to such a complicated PvE system.
How persistant is a conversion?
What would the benefit be from an NPC that is not in your settlement, that you have converted to your faith?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Faiths to spread, hmm...
Dammerich, the Lawful Good Empyreal Lord of Executions!
Lymnieris, the Lawful Good Empyreal Lord of Prostitution!
And Ghenshau, the Lawful Good Empyreal Lord of Ignorance!The second two help balance out the demands of the first one. And I thought the Forgetten Realms was bad at creating a Divine representation for everything you could think of. Golarion sure has them beat!
Yeah too many little Empyreal lords to put them all into the game in a meaningful way. Allowing you to worship the pantheon of Empyreal Lords though... not such a bad idea.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe this would work:
A succesfull conversion lasts 2 weeks;, can not be converted again during that time;
Stealthed players would be the ones to do the converting in settlements other then their own; PvP opportunities.
A global count will be kept of the convertees of all Faiths, and give benefits to anything that is tied into a certain Faith. Obviously the strength of the benefits would be related to the percentage of convertees fo that Faith; for instance certain spells could be stronger if a certain Faith that is connected with that spell is high;
Converting would be a simple process of a short dialogue with the NPC: the gameplay is to be found in a player stealthing into another settlement to convert an NPC, not so much in the converting itself.
Only players of that Faith could convert NPC's to their Faith.
The act of converting would flag a player as.....heinous? Enemy? Criminal? Maybe a new condition, called Zealous? ;)
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Personally, I have zero problem with settlements being xenophobic and enforcing a state religion. I would probably giggle with glee if those settlement got inquisitions, and the ability to burn heretics at the stake to enforce their religion.
I do kind of hope that the game mechanics will discourage xenophobic behavior and successful settlements are those that are open and freely trade with outsiders. But part of the pvp element is figuring out how to make your conversions work. I think to allow for easier access, players might convert NPC's at POI's and those npcs in turn spread to settlement attached to the POI. I also expect low percentages of a faith to be much more resistant to conversion than large percentages, the few die hard followers and all. So once a religion is in your community you really need to work to get it out. You can easily control the majority, but controlling everyone is very hard work.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am still a fan of abstracting the deities out and having clerics choose domains separately to construct their gods. Perhaps icons and holy symbols can be added into the game for shrines and flavorful decoration. It would be really simple to expand the deity set that way. The more things that get tied directly to a god makes adding more of them so much more work.
A lot of the ideas presented here could be generic "religious acts" with various acts being associated with a deity's alignment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It could be apportioned over winning over the players who own buildings in a settlement each of which I guess comes with it's own contingent of invisble bar being a number Common Folks? Might have renewal period where the Common Folk's zeal keeps them "believin' " and things like the owner players "taking time out" to go to worship/make an offering etc boost their zeal -> converts to "faith points"?
I mean in studies of world religions there's an opportunity cost to attending to such duties that obviously is worthwhile (group bonding) to offset the energetic costs et al of practicing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not so sure that conversion of players is that viable of a gameplay mechanic. Not to many players are interested in hearing about how awesome your fictional deity is. And even if they are inclined to roleplay they aren't likely to be interested in changing their character concept for you. Thus I use the npc workers as the target population because we can freely manipulate them and nobody in likely to get offended.
As a different kind of mechanic, what about building npc missionary groups at a temple then sending them as a convoy to a target settlement to convert a portion of the population? They convert a portion of the population based on how many make it to the target settlement alive. Gives content a way to fight against conversion and a safer alternative to hanging out in a hostile settlement preaching to the npc's.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope even though PFO is going classless, they are at least taking pages out of the core classes and making them part of the game. The reason you want a large number of religions is not for the actual religions, but for the combinations of domains and weapon choices for the cleric that the deity provides.
In the core book alone there are 20-30 domains, each give a cleric a few powers, each cleric gets 2 of these domains according to what deity they choose. (domains, like fire,earth, water chaos, good, lawful,war, travel, strength, undead, sun, healing, protection, knowledge.. etc)
So you want a cleric that is quick on his feet and geared toward fighting, go with travel and str/ or war.
Want the original posters classic cleric go with sun and healing ( saranrea offers these two..)
I guess what I want to stress is that clerics can become decent in many areas in tt. To just state clerics can do things against undead and can heal, is very short sighted, and instead of trying to figure out how to spread a religion. I think better devs time could be spent with how to flesh out the domains and the channel negative energy portions and essentially how clerics can be more than heal boxes and undead hammers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope even though PFO is going classless, they are at least taking pages out of the core classes and making them part of the game.
They definitely are. There will be a Dedication Bonus for slotting Abilities from a single Class (Role). They're also planning on getting all of the Classes from the Core Rule Book into the game.
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@Nihimon That's hardly fair. Everything is better with escalations. You idea does give a constant reason to stay on top of your settlements religious needs, and a provide a solid PVE element to it as well. Players probably wouldn't feel nearly as bad about burning evil NPC cultists at the stake either.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not so sure that conversion of players is that viable of a gameplay mechanic. Not to many players are interested in hearing about how awesome your fictional deity is. And even if they are inclined to roleplay they aren't likely to be interested in changing their character concept for you. Thus I use the npc workers as the target population because we can freely manipulate them and nobody in likely to get offended.
As a different kind of mechanic, what about building npc missionary groups at a temple then sending them as a convoy to a target settlement to convert a portion of the population? They convert a portion of the population based on how many make it to the target settlement alive. Gives content a way to fight against conversion and a safer alternative to hanging out in a hostile settlement preaching to the npc's.
1. I was thinking human interaction is the key
2. Each building can variably have x common folk who are the constituents3. By via building different competition and deals in a settlement building by building canvassing by religious preachers
4. connect the congregation total to power-ups distribution in some form or other.
5. very much think it should be player choosing a deity with an effect, not a biography detail only (maybe I'm wrong here).
6. I think this way you're going to get preacher wars which is tangible religious influence and conflict across settlemens and nations?
Flying ideas out there at a rate of knots!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think sending a NPC mission to another Settlement could be considered an act of war. In my mind this would have be done by a player that could reasonable be able to enter the Settlement in the first place. I'll move on from there...
I am talking TT Pathfinder here:
Conversions would be a Charisma check from a Diplomacy skill. Clerics are Wisdom based casters and are not going to spend points on Charisma.
A Paladin on the other hand would be ideally suited for this type of conversion. So the idea of making the clerics have more meaning in game I don't know.
I like the idea especially from the stand point of a city being harder to siege or take over if the populous is against your dirty foreign god.
However, I don't see it happening.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am still a fan of abstracting the deities out and having clerics choose domains separately to construct their gods. Perhaps icons and holy symbols can be added into the game for shrines and flavorful decoration. It would be really simple to expand the deity set that way. The more things that get tied directly to a god makes adding more of them so much more work.
A lot of the ideas presented here could be generic "religious acts" with various acts being associated with a deity's alignment.
I'd like there to be a build-your-own heraldry system that allows players to mix & match various symbols and colours, and the same system could be used to create holy symbols. There will probably be many attempts to make something resembling a penis, but then, that's just a fertility symbol in some cultures, and like other user-created content, they'd probably be reportable.
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I think the absolutely essential elements when picking a deity is alignment, domains, favored weapon, and that God's name / a brief description.
Rather than a mix and match / create your own God, I'd really like to see them pour through the lore and give us access to every God that has those things. I don't see why we couldn't have that for every God in the books as part as the MVP. Some favored weapons and domains would be missing but oh well.
The less essential features are visual unique holy symbols and shrines, factions, etc. Those should be added in for the more major deities and pantheons as crowd-forging demands.
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I'd prefer to steer away from NPC use. Would prefer PC's interaction and their calculations on the souls collected of invisible "Common Folk", by which I mean their spiritual energy or "manna" is harvested as a measurement of religious power or boon etc for a temple etc etc.
Oh...a divine casters power multiplier could be based upon the current spread of their deity. This power would be relevant to heals and damage. This would give divine characters a real interest in spreading their "gods message".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have hoped that Clerics would represent their Deities through performing acts reflected in the Deity's Domains and Sub-Domains.
For example: Calistria (CN)
Domains Chaos, Charm, Knowledge, Luck, Trickery
Subdomains Azata, Curse, Deception, Lust, Memory, Thievery
Perhaps through acting with these as motivations or by actually performing these acts, this is how the Cleric would gain access to his or her Devine powers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have hoped that Clerics would represent their Deities through performing acts reflected in the Deity's Domains and Sub-Domains.
For example: Calistria (CN)
Domains Chaos, Charm, Knowledge, Luck, Trickery
Subdomains Azata, Curse, Deception, Lust, Memory, ThieveryPerhaps through acting with these as motivations or by actually performing these acts, this is how the Cleric would gain access to his or her Devine powers.
Cleric takes Curse and Lust Subdomains then goes around cursing anyone that succumbs to lust.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Cleric takes Curse and Lust Subdomains then goes around cursing anyone that succumbs to lust.I have hoped that Clerics would represent their Deities through performing acts reflected in the Deity's Domains and Sub-Domains.
For example: Calistria (CN)
Domains Chaos, Charm, Knowledge, Luck, Trickery
Subdomains Azata, Curse, Deception, Lust, Memory, ThieveryPerhaps through acting with these as motivations or by actually performing these acts, this is how the Cleric would gain access to his or her Devine powers.
Actually, I would imagine it would work the other way around, and curse anyone who does not succome to lust.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Either could be fun to roleplay.
One possibly raped or was the result of rape and goes around cursing those that succumb to their lust.
Another going around and forcing others to lose control due to their lust for whatever reason.
But neither of those will be options in PFO. I don't see the Lust Subdomain being put into PFO.
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I for one hope GW stick with the Golarion pantheon (just the ones from the Core Rulebook should be sufficient, maybe even trimming out a few to start). The Gods of Golarion make a good point where they can more strongly tie the game to the IP, and put more "Pathfinder" into "Pathfinder Online".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd prefer to steer away from NPC use. Would prefer PC's interaction and their calculations on the souls collected of invisible "Common Folk", by which I mean their spiritual energy or "manna" is harvested as a measurement of religious power or boon etc for a temple etc etc.Oh...a divine casters power multiplier could be based upon the current spread of their deity. This power would be relevant to heals and damage. This would give divine characters a real interest in spreading their "gods message".
Exactly right. The pause for thought is which buildings have a certain amount of common folk, how many common folk equal one manna point and what ratio of say Clerics/Preachers of the player population to common folk/buildings is suitably enough to go around but not enough to avoid competition. Could scale up eg Top Temple equivalent of a Cathedral that then has it's surrounding churches which themselves have their surrounding altars?
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They had said earlier they only plan to realease with 9 gods. 1 for each alignment. I don't remember all of them but I'm pretty sure Iomedae, Desna, Cayden Caliean, Phrasma, and Asmodeus were among them.
The best I could find was this thread from May discussing the now-hidden Crowdforger Poll #2. Alexander Damocles' post has the list of gods as of then.
(Edit: Spellhammer's post a little way down has the list s/he copied from the original poll post.)
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I can see a cleric-roll skill tree for proselytizing. Clerics could buff settlement populations in time of war to sustain or improve some DI components. Converting NPC guards for shrines could buff effective defense. As has been mentioned, disguised players could undermine the confidence of NPC populations of player settlements to de-buff DI in preparation for war or attacks on settlement linked PoI. I think that there are plenty of possibilities for newbie players to aid war efforts in this way, giving them a meaningfull role early (like the tacklers mentioned in Ryan's post).
I especially like the idea of cleric buff/de-buff for PoI structures.
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They had said earlier they only plan to realease with 9 gods. 1 for each alignment. I don't remember all of them but I'm pretty sure Iomedae, Desna, Cayden Caliean, Phrasma, and Asmodeus were among them.The best I could find was this thread from May discussing the now-hidden Crowdforger Poll #2. Alexander Damocles' post has the list of gods as of then.
(Edit: Spellhammer's post a little way down has the list s/he copied from the original poll post.)
I think this is the list of Golarion Gods in PFO.
LG-Iomedae
NG-Shelyn
CG-Desna
LN-Abadar
TN-Gozreh
CN-Gorum
LE-Asmodeus
NE-Norgorber
CE-Lamashtu
I think Calistra and Torag should be included for the Elves and Dwarves. I know a lot of people also wanted Sarenrae, Pharasma, and Cayden Cailean.
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I think this is the list of Golarion Gods in PFO.
[snip]I know a lot of people also wanted Sarenrae, Pharasma, and Cayden Cailean.
Thanks for digging that up, Fiendish; it'll help background research for my characters.
Since it's Pharasma who's returning us to life, it's hard to believe she won't make her presence known in other ways as well.
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I hope they throw Calistra in, otherwise its Asmodeus, Norgorber, or Lamashtu for me.
I would love to see if a priestess of Lamashtu could make alliances with the goblins, orcs, and ogres of the River Kingdoms.
This second bit does make a lot of sense for the ability that GW has hinted at to improve escalations through payer action, rather than only being able to fight them. Though of course, you might go with a priest of Urgathoa for an undead escalation (assuming Urgathoa gets in at some point), a priest of Desna for a slave uprising escalation...
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One thing about Golarion that most people aren't mentioning: most inhabitants are pantheistic. Worshiping Shelyn doesn't bar you from worshiping Desna. People often pay homage to many gods, depending on what you need at a given moment. Pregnant wife? Pharasma. Worried about a trade caravan? Abadar. Deadly orc uprising? Iomedae.
Your average citizen will worship quite a few gods in a given week.
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LG-Iomedae
NG-Shelyn
CG-Desna
LN-Abadar
TN-Gozreh
CN-Gorum
LE-Asmodeus
NE-Norgorber
CE-Lamashtu
LG pretty much has to include Iomedae first, for the same reason LE has to include Asmodeus first. They're the powers associated with two of the NPC towns in our starting corner of the RK, so they'd be dominant in the area at least until players get into building. For Shelyn, I mostly think "who?" and have to go look her up. Desna and Cayden Cailean would both have been equally good choices for CG, but going with Desna means that the initial powers for Good are all goddesses.
Abadar is a great choice for PFO since trade, cities, and civilization in general are his thing, appropriate to an economy/settlement-building game. Gozreh is an odd choice for NN, though, since Pharasma is apparently responsible for making our PCs into 'un-mortals', Gozreh is a God/dess of the sea we're quite far from, and the druids which aren't even in EE are able to directly serve nature without any need of a personified power. Calistria would've been a decent choice for CN, but she's a bit like a less-fatal Loviatar and maybe GW isn't ready to euphemize their way around BDSM. Gorum fits PFO well as a war-god which seems inspired by Thor, but with less emphasis on hammer time.
Asmodeus is the patron of all Hellknights, but he's the most common one, and they're the foil for the Iomedaens. Norgorber seems to fit the assassination element of the game, and I'd guess Lamashtu takes the CE spot because she's the divine matron of goblins.
I hope they throw Calistra in, otherwise its Asmodeus, Norgorber, or Lamashtu for me.
Zon-Kuthon would seem to fit as the more evil version of Calistria, just shifting from the borders pain/pleasure all the way into actual torture.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing about Golarion that most people aren't mentioning: most inhabitants are pantheistic. Worshiping Shelyn doesn't bar you from worshiping Desna. People often pay homage to many gods, depending on what you need at a given moment. Pregnant wife? Pharasma. Worried about a trade caravan? Abadar. Deadly orc uprising? Iomedae.
Your average citizen will worship quite a few gods in a given week.
This is definitely true and should be the case since it does occur in Golarion. But I think the OP was looking for something else for the "classes" that are divine based getting more use out of their religion other than saying "I worship so and so".
In that light, perhaps it isn't so much as converting people to solely your religion, but perhaps getting them to realize there is more to X god that they first realized and could either devote to them or start paying heed to them in addition to who they already nod to.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I completely agree with the desire to see clerics being able to do more to support them being members of the clergy. Something that makes it clear that they have a purpose more than thumping heads and binding wounds.
I also unfortunately think that it belongs well past Minimum Viable Product.
Now, as for my ideas:
A settlement can set two gods as the chosen gods of the city. That doesn't mean you cannot worship others, but these are the focus. Each god grants a small boon to the town, scaling with piety (how much the clerics do the good works related to that faith). Clerics of other gods can attempt to convert the populace to a different god. If at any time, a different god is more worshiped than one of the official gods, you take a penalty related to the god not in the top two, as well as one from the god you are being undermined by. For example, Abadar might boost your tax income by 2%. If he is no longer in the top two, your taxes are 5% lower. In addition, the cultists of Rovagug lower your NPC guard presence by 10%. It means religion is an active part of each town, you have the ability to lay a shadow campaign against a town, and you get all the fun of chasing down heretics trying to change your town.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing about Golarion that most people aren't mentioning: most inhabitants are pantheistic. Worshiping Shelyn doesn't bar you from worshiping Desna. People often pay homage to many gods, depending on what you need at a given moment. Pregnant wife? Pharasma. Worried about a trade caravan? Abadar. Deadly orc uprising? Iomedae.
Your average citizen will worship quite a few gods in a given week.
While the common folk may be fully polytheistic, clerics and other religion-focused characters are more likely to be monolatrists or henotheists that recognize many deities but focus on one above, or to the exclusion of, all others. Many druids and others who follow the Green Faith seem more like pantheists or panentheists.