Askers vs. Weavers

[miltonyorkcastle]

So, yeah, for the new game, will we get to really see/play up the fact that a cleric simply asks for something, and poof, it happens? That is, the cleric no longer "casts spells." It's all prayers- all asking.

So that when you come across a "Wizard" or a "sorcerer" (whatever incarnations they have in the new game), you can tell that they're performing magic, while a cleric or paladin is performing a miracle?

Granted, the lines will be blured a bit in the case of Lucinda, perhaps, but still, would be nice to have a very defining difference between the two.

[Acacea]

I guess in concept that is cool, but what exactly would be considered showing a difference? Mechanically, spells and prayers are the same thing, right? In fact, combat maneuvers in most games are really the same as spells as well. So would you be looking for visual effects, or what? Just wondering what mechanical ideas backed up the desired concept

[miltonyorkcastle]

*chuckles* I don't know. Maybe a cleric takes a knee and kisses their holy symbo, then simply says. "Smite them, oh mighty Toran." Instead of performing very intricate gestures, and reciting strings of unintelligble words.

I guess, to put it simply- with magic, the casting of it is almost as fancy as the magic itself... or I think should be.

With miracles, the "casting," or more appropriately, the asking, isn't fancy. For that matter, miracles are seldom flashy- devastating sometimes, but more a show of force than of skill. For instance, using a few classic biblical examples, when healing the blind man, Jesus smeared mud (that he made with his own spit) on the blind man's eyes. That was it. The blind man washed his eyes and could see. Nothing intricate or fancy there. When Moses parted the Red Sea, all he did was lift up his arms, and stand there. The sea parted. when he put his arms down, the Sea fell back in on itself. No skill required. No flash. No intricate weaving. Just a prayer under the breath and a visual sign (holding up your arms, smearing mud) that you have faith in your god. I hope that makes sense.

[lonnarin]

If we have any spell components in the next version, I'd love those spells which required holy symbols visually on the screen rather than a hidden amulet, with some specific symbols for each diety. So then you have Toranites and their ankhs, corathites and their skulls, Aeridenites with their leaves, Aragenites need to read from a book, etc. Every time a cleric casts a spell, he's essentially saying a prayer if it has verbal components. Making visible, holdable holy symbols for some of the staple spells (especially bless) would make the channeling more apparent, and would somewhat balance casting and combat since you can't be holding a sword witht he same hand.

Mages would be doing complex thamaturgical displays with arcane speak I would think. With mages too It'd be fun to have staves which channelled spells and visually pointing them, shooting beams from the tip. That would be some wicked Gandalf-style choreography. Maybe for other spells like wards and the like, he can stoop over and draw a circle around him, for others he can read from a book he has to hold. Now if only Corathite clerics sacrificed a squirrel or cut open his own hand dripping blood on the ground for casting visual effects, heheh. Some other ideas for rituals could be chanting, dashing holy water, swinging those insence braziers on chains for summoning, etc.

[Eight-Bit]

I really like the idea of Clerics being more symbolic and less like lit up Dragon Ball Z characters. Mages, on the other hand, ought to be flashy.

[Dorganath]

Without answering either way...

Mechanically, there's no difference between what we have now and what you suggest. Calling it one thing or the other for RP purposes is simple, clearly. In terms of what happens in-game when a cleric "casts" versus what a mage does, however, does boil down to a matter of game resources. Specifically, we're talking animations and visual effects.

Of course it would be really wonderful to have distinct actions/animations/visuals for every single spell/prayer action and effect. However, as with all things, they require time and investment.

If we take a look at NWN, you see there's a lot of visuals, which is appropriate. However, in terms of casting/praying, there's only a handful of animations/effects for the process itself. If for example, we had 100 spells that fit into what a "cleric" would cast (again, being skill-based, try not to consider that as a class-based comment), and we look at those spells and say, "If I was going to pray for this effect, how would it look?" probably 80% of them might have vastly different "looks". Things like various levels of healing would all more or less appear the same, but they'd be rather different from blessings and holy smites and the like.

Of course there's a goal for making things as rich as possible, but there's also going to be some things that will be more crucial to releasing the game and game play in general, and those are the things that will see the most attention.

[Acacea]

What if he's a cleric of Shadon?

Hehe. Yeah, sorry, I'm being difficult, I know. The whole "clerics should be non flashy and mages should be flashy" thing seems like it should just depend on what kind of mage you are and what deity you are a cleric of. I never want to think of a cleric class again, I want it gooone. I want to think of "Lucindite priestess" and "cleric of the Lifegiver" and "Dread priestess of Corath."

As well, one thing in all games that is carefully considered is if time should be spent with tons of animations for something that not everyone will like and might be better left to user add on and imagination. Specific custom ritual animations for every spell (or ever prayer which then requires a difference for every god) are a lot further down on the list than things like "make sure god actually answers..."

I know you know, I was just thinking of how many things I'd rather see than never using my imagination on my rituals (But I think it would make an awesome add-on, like the alternate combat animations for NWN!)

[Acacea]

Ninja'ed by Dorg! I give up! *Goes back to relative preparation and such...*

[Yllyrryon]

We're on the topic of weave-oriented versus divine oriented casting here. Pardon me as what I wish to say is slightly off topic, but reading this thread brought it to mind.

Assuming monk-like classes will be present in the upcoming game, it would be cool to include some form of wisdom-oriented subclass or build option amongst "monks" that could use ki as the basis for powers that appear to be spells, effectively enabling this subclass or build to be casters.

Playing my monks, I have developed notes on how the weave and ki interact. In some cases gm's have allowed my monks to perceive things when I roleplayed them doing stuff based on these concepts. Wisdom rolls are normally required for such things.

In nwn, if you had a pc monk with all the monk feats, plus casting, that would present what I would call a balance issue - the character would simply be too strong. To allow such a suggestion as above while taking into consideration this fairness/balance issue, perhaps the ki casters would have to give up some of the other advantages of standard monks in order to pursue their focus on pure ki techiques enabling them to achieve casting-like effects.

This could be achieved by multiclassing, sort of, but not really. Multiclassing monk/cleric or monk/weave caster destroys the concept of the monk who achieves these things not thru divine power or the weave, but thru his/her heightened insights into ki and how it generates perceivable effects in the physical world.

Such a monk would be less of a physical warrior and more of a mystic. Training would have consisted more of countless years worth of deep meditation. Physical activity would have been included in moderation in affirmation of the importance of the physical body; but instinctive understanding of the flows of ki underlying perceivable reality - and applying that understanding would be the focus of their training.
There you have my meager suggestion - tear it to shreds folks!

[Dorganath]

As was stated in another thread, there are no classes for the MMO, and thus no sub-classes either. It will however be entirely possible to build a "monk-like" character with divine and/or arcane abilities.

That's not to say there will or will not be anything like "ki", however, meaning a statistic/attribute/property of that name, whether specific to a monk-type character or not.