Praying for (clerical) spells

[Faldred]

(Note: I've also posted a variation of this suggestion at the NWN vault)

Even more so than in the base NWN, Layonara has an "active" pantheon.  To be a Cleric, one must get those powers from one of the gods.  However, beyond that, it is completely up to the player to RP spell selection.  (and I'm not saying that anyone in particular, or in general, is doing a poor job with this.)

But that really doesn't make sense, given the active nature of the deities.  Should Aeridin routinely grant Inflict XXX Wounds, Poison, Slay Living, and the like?  Would Vorax be in the business of bestowing Sanctuary spells?

So... on to the suggestion... would it be possible to add scripting so that when a cleric "prays" for spells, the spell selections are checked against lists for his or her deity.  Specifically, I'm thinking of two lists:

1) Spells the deity disapproves of
2) Favored spells

On the "disapproved" list, any spell that goes against the deity's tenets would be added.  Following the spell name would be two numbers, the first being the percentage chance that the deity will refuse to grant the requested spell, the second being the percentage chance that if the spell is refused, that it is replaced by a different spell (spell of the same level, from the "Favored" list).

On a DM quest, of course, the DM should ideally be able to override any random decisions.

[Witch Hunter]

I like this idea... it will also balance out clerics a bit, beside its RP value.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Agreed.

Also, I'm rather disappointed that Neutral clerics aren't limited to one type of energy (positive or negative). Would it be possible to code that a cleric either uses Cure spells or Inflict spells?

We could limit it by deity, or, in the case of a truly neutral deity, (in terms of good and evil,) perhaps give an extra bonus feat to Clerics at first level that allows them to pick one or the other.

Then, seeing as the Negative clerics would be limited to the Inflict spells, we could increase the damage dealt by them to be comparable to Cure spells of the same level.

Perhaps even altering the Death domain powers to Empower the Inflict spells the way Healing Empowers the Cures.

[Dorganath]

Stephen_Zuckerman - 3/1/2007  3:15 PM  
  Also, I'm rather disappointed that Neutral clerics aren't limited to one type of energy (positive or negative).

 Why should a neutral cleric be limited to one type of energy?

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

It's a staple of the channeling of positive and negative energy in D&D.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/cleric.htm

Spontaneous Casting

A good cleric (or a neutral cleric of a good deity) can channel stored spell energy into healing spells that the cleric did not prepare ahead of time. The cleric can "lose" any prepared spell that is not a domain spell in order to cast any cure spell of the same spell level or lower (a cure spell is any spell with "cure" in its name).

An evil cleric (or a neutral cleric of an evil deity), can’t convert prepared spells to cure spells but can convert them to inflict spells (an inflict spell is one with "inflict" in its name).

A cleric who is neither good nor evil and whose deity is neither good nor evil can convert spells to either cure spells or inflict spells (player’s choice). Once the player makes this choice, it cannot be reversed. This choice also determines whether the cleric turns or commands undead.

Basically, the idea is that a cleric either channels one type of energy, or the other. It's a pretty big decision, and keeps, say, a cleric of Corath from pumping up his party with Cure Serious Wounds.

[Weeblie]

In NWN, neither are good clerics limited to sponanteous heals nor are evil clerics limited to spontanteous inflicts. So, the discussion about why neutral ones don't pick "side" is kind of far away.

In my opinion, a system like this is far too much effort for far too little gain, as it can already be handled in game (i.e. you simply don't use the inapprotiate spells). Besides, if you cast a spell that's really out-of-deity... say... Slay Living with an Aeridinite... Don't expect to be able to do that for long without losing your powers (or at least, being "talked to" ). *Coughs.*

[Dorganath]

Well and to add...you're taking something that is for spontaneous casting and implying it should be applied to all casting...which does not make sense. A neutral cleric should be able to heal or harm. The spontaneous casting bit is another issue entirely, and yes, yet one more thing that is not handled by NWN.

[Polak76]

I'd like to see people choose and cast spells to their alignment/deity. I agree that it would be too much trouble to adjust them specifically to deities.

[Dorganath]

Adjusting the spells to deities would not be difficult...time consuming perhaps, but not difficult.
  Adjusting what was available to a given cleric however is a different issue, and likely something that cannot be done efficiently or reliably within NWN.

[DiegoBastet]

You know, in the PNP, for those who know (and for those who don't), a cleric can not cast spells of opiste aligment. So, if you are a cleric of a chaotic good deity, you can't prepare spells that have the Law subtype, nor ones with the Evil, like let's say, Order's Wrath (Law) or Blasphemy (Evil). That alone limits pretty much the cleric on his choices, since if he did not have this, it wouyld be too easy to play a good cleric to beign able of spontaneous casting Cure spells, while you prepared the great Evil spells of the game. It's a thing of rp too: If the cleric is the cleric of a good deity, the deity lets him wield POSITIVE energy, that's why the cleric can cast spontaneous Cure spells and TURNS undead, if he's a cleric of a Evil deity, he wields NEGATIVE energy, that's why he rebukes undead and cast spontaneously Inflict spells. Neutral clerics must choose (unless his deity states otherwise) if they are going to wield negative or positive energy, and that, along with aligment, states wich spells he will be able to cast.

In the end, I think that the only need is to create some kind of script that would make this kind of spell selection in the NWN. Chaotic Good char? No Lawful or Evil spells. Good cleric? No spontaneous inflic. Neutral cleric who choose rebuke undead? No spontaneous Cure spell. I don't think that this kind of script would be hard to make, but I'm not such a good game developer to tell that. I only think. Besides, it would give a more immersion feeling on the game, speacly on a RP server like Layonara.

[Acacea]

Agree on spell selection limitation (already exists on vault), not in its incarnation here but close, but I've already rambled about that yesterday...disagree about basing it on alignment, as I would only limit things that are totally out of dogma for the deity and not something that can be fudged or made exceptions for with penalty.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Diego actually explained the spell limitations pretty well. That's how it's always worked in my PnP groups, and I've always wondered how it worked in the PnP Layo.

I understand that this isn't PnP, but it's still pretty poor RP, in my opinion, for a cleric of Pyrtechon the destroyer to go around healing people.

[Dorganath]

Ah...but a cleric of Pyr would heal himself and potentially other faithful of Pyr in order to further spread the faith and thereby the destruction.
  Corathites...Pyrtechonites..neither would not just go "whoops, there goes another", because the faith would die out pretty quickly in that case".

[Acacea]

I understood perfectly well that it is how it worked in PnP. I merely stated my opinion saying that I do not personally wish to adapt that here, as it makes no sense to me and seems overly restrictive considering the smaller spell list we have to work with. Instead I think there should be a FEW spells that a deity WILL NOT GRANT under any circumstances, some that perhaps can be done with penalty if possible, and some that are granted only to a certain deity for flavor purposes. Breaking down the entire spell list is too much work for me with little purpose.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Understood, Acacea; my post was directed at Dorg.

And understood on the points in the body of your post, too.

I think I'm going to go sleep now.

[DiegoBastet]

I think that any cleric could be able to prepare Cure spells, since not doing this would certainly lower the number of alive clerics of an evil deity. The point is: Evil, or neutral who choose rebuking undead clerics, should not be able to Spontaneuous Casting the Cure ones. Preparing yes, spontaneous casting no.

[Dorganath]

While Layonara tries to get as close as possible to the PnP experience, there are sadly many things about PnP that are simply out of our hands, or too far beyond the grasp of practicality so as to be not worth the effort to implement, even though it would be "simple" in a PnP environment. We are in some things limited, and in others prevented, by what NWN provides to us.
  Now, while there have been some important and interesting suggestions and concepts given here, it's also important to point out some of the issues and problems with some of the ideas. Even though many of these things may be D&D staples and may make perfect sense in many, many ways, there are often technical reasons why they are impractical or impossible within the framework of what we have. To list a few:
  NWN does not really support the concept of deities in terms of game mechanics. Sure, it has a field for that in one's character info, but that's about as far as it goes. We can set that and read that in script, but beyond that, NWN doesn't hook deity information at all. All the deity-responsive systems we have in-game are coded by us specifically with no mechanical support from NWN.
  Something like limiting what spells a cleric of X deity can see/choose/memorize or which ones they can cast spontaneously is something which is beyond our control. If someone has created a practical system that can do this and fit well in a Persistent World environment, then I'd love to see it and evaluate it. Otherwise, it simply cannot be done in this framework. I say this because debating the merits of such a system becomes rather pointless, even though it would make a ton of sense.
  Scripting is not the answer to everything. By that, I mean that it's easy to say, "Oh, just write a script to do this," but in reality, what we can and cannot script depends on the facilities available to us either through NWN or NWNX.
  With all of the above said, I will say that it might be both possible and more importantly practical to code a system whereby some spells were sensitive to the choice of deity of the caster. Destructive/deadly spells may fizzle if cast by an Aeridinite cleric, for example. However, having said that, there's yet another limitation in NWN that could make this problematic. When a spell is cast, NWN does not differentiate between whether it was cast via divine means or arcane means. This is only a problem for those spells which overlap different classes, but that list is not as small as one would like. A prime example:
  Curing spells: A staple of clerics, but also of druids (divine), rangers (divine) and bards (arcane). When it is cast, we can't tell which class is casting it. It's only a problem for multiclassed characters, the bard/cleric mix does exist out there. I'm sure there are other combos as well.
  So again, we're kind of limited by what NWN provides, or even by what it doesn't provide.
  One other problem with this approach is one of balance. Is it balanced for a cleric of Aeridin to not be able to cast spells that kill or harm, but it's still OK for a cleric of Pyrtechon or Corath to be able to cast spells that heal? In other words would clerics of such deities have access to a greater list of spells as a result?
  One thing that as been suggested by Acacea is that we could have some domain specific options, which would not really address the original purpose of this post, but it could give more flavor to specific groups of clerics.
  Again, interesting suggestions, but it's important to note just some of the key limitations of the system.