Hi Kodius,

I just figured this is a more appropriate place to post and it wont be buried by people bickering like the thread in the general forums. So I am just putting my post here instead since you mentioned you were thinking about what to do with prayer bead carving:


Hi Kodius,

I'd like to suggest that carving prayer beads just teach Theurgy. It makes sense, and it doesnt force clerics to take woodworking or some such. I never understood why it didnt in the first place, and these beads are used for cleric communes anyway. Also, I dont think anyone would complain about another way to learn Theurgy.

Unless I am misunderstanding you are advocating using engineering to require a part of the skill. These beads are tied to guild abilities. I dont think it makes sense for quality at the end of the carving to affect theurgy learning in your model. It would force people into taking engineering for optimal learning.

Better to just untie prayer beads from woodworking/engineering completely and just make them a devotion/Theurgy item. As far as a timer goes it would be nice to have a guild ability that doesnt actually have a stupid timer attached to it to learn

Are these the same beads that can be used as offerings to get favor orbs? I believe non-Clerics can both create and use prayer beads, so moving to Theurgy only doesn't make sense, IMO.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

>>Are these the same beads that can be used as offerings to get favor orbs? I believe non-Clerics can both create and use prayer beads, so moving to Theurgy only doesn't make sense, IMO.

With the aside that I don't have a horse in the race, as I neither use beads for favors, nor have much interest in playing my cleric at the moment..

I would think with as much a part of the devotional system as beads are (meditations, communes), allowing clerics to utilize the system via Theurogy rather then being forced to take a certain crafting direction would prove a better (or at least, less frustrating) idea for folks overall. Including a way to make them in Engineering for the layman is fine and all, but when I think Beads I tend to think first and foremost, Clerics.

Samsaren

>>I would think with as much a part of the devotional system as beads are (meditations, communes), allowing clerics to utilize the system via Theurogy rather then being forced to take a certain crafting direction would prove a better (or at least, less frustrating) idea for folks overall. Including a way to make them in Engineering for the layman is fine and all, but when I think Beads I tend to think first and foremost, Clerics.

What if the offering of beads for theurgy was decoupled from having to make the beads yourself? IMO, it would be neat if the system could be opened up so players could offer beads made of bone/wood/stone/metal created via the crafting system. Maybe opening up the system to allow clerics to offer non-bead items (we already have them flagged for favor orbs, right?) would also help keep things going without reworking how items are created.

---

Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

I cant speak for others but I dont think id want a conduit for gaining devotion to be dependent on having to buy an item from others. That just feels wrong to me. Id rather it be reversed since clearly beads are meant for clerics (its extremely difficult for a non cleric to carve a bead vs a cleric). But I dont think your guild skill should be a moneymaker neither, rather I think all should be able to carve the easiest wood for purpose of gaining a favor, but Cleric theurgy gain tied more intimately to the wood. As it is, Theurgy needs more conduits for learning it. Everything is tied to a stupid timer which makes it painfully slow to train. This was something that was recently addressed for thievery (no more running through all of the planet to train thievery thanks to timers). This seems like an opportunity to address Theurgy for clerics.

The fact that carving beads is the best way to gain devotion just highlights the need for better, more varied ways to gain devotion. Axe carved mech lore style beads, grant devotion for shaping beads and make shaped beads work on prayer chains. Add a forged/tailored bead alternative or something and you're done. Mech lore is going away - like it or not you're probably going to have to train some craft. Guild skills are not about crafting items.

These suggestions that guild skills replace crafting skills are nothing but renaming Mech Lore as Theurgy and Summoning.

---

https://elanthipedia.play.net/Main_Page

>I cant speak for others but I dont think id want a conduit for gaining devotion to be dependent on having to buy an item from others. That just feels wrong to me.

You already buy virtually every other devotion tool, just from fake people.

>realistically things like what you are suggesting take more dev which is in short supply

DR is moving everything under a core crafting system for this reason. Supporting unique legacy guild-based systems like cleric bead carving instead of using core crafting takes more dev time than is reasonable, as nice as it might be thematically.

---

"Warrior Mages don't bother covering up their disasters.

They're proud of them."
-Raesh

>>Are these the same beads that can be used as offerings to get favor orbs? I believe non-Clerics can both create and use prayer beads, so moving to Theurgy only doesn't make sense, IMO.

No, these are carved through mech lore to use for meditation. The shaped ones through engineering don't allow meditation.

__
A swamp troll looks at you.

Unless I am missing something, the beads made with shaping are tier 2 items, which take around 50 ranks to master craft even without techs. Based on that, I am not sure why there is even a discussion about what to do. The obvious solution is to change the shaping beads to work with meditate and prayer bead chains and be done with it.

>>> That would not be accurate if we are talking about the same beads.

Hmm, what beads are the ones in question? I was assuming they were the "a detailed <wood> bead".

My cleric with 170 engineering just finished this bead:

a birch wolf bead:
You analyze every aspect of the wolf bead and nod as your understanding grows.
This appears to be a type of shaped wooden image that is masterfully-crafted.
The bead is a very easy piece to make.
It was made by someone with abilities close to your own skill.
About 1 pieces of lumber were used in this item's construction.
You find it impossible to identify who crafted this item

He also just managed to get a Maraud orb from it:

>commune truff
[You are about to offer a birch wolf bead to the gods. If you are sure, repeat the command within 30 seconds.]

>commune truff
You pour your faith and devotion into a plea to Truffenyi, a birch wolf bead held aloft in your hands.
A faint voice murmurs in your head, ~ "You are heard, Meraud's favored." ~

Lit midnight blue, about a dozen intricate hieroglyphs appear in a constellation-like arrangement. They begin to twirl around your offering, each blurred pass metamorphosing it little by little. After thirteen flashes, you find yourself holding a glowing Meraud orb. The hieroglyphs sink evenly into the glass.

The power of Truffenyi has answered your prayer.

again just to clarify I thought someone said there are two types, I might be wrong about that but the 50 rank thing isnt accurate is what I meant.

There are two types of prayer beads. One is a legacy guild crafting system. The other is the core crafting replacement, which design codices were developed to support. The commune has never been updated to support the new system, and I suspect the two systems have been running in parallel for so long because a GM who knows how the communes work hasnt been available.

---

"Warrior Mages don't bother covering up their disasters.

They're proud of them."
-Raesh

FWIW, I was able to craft an engineering bead with 22 ranks of engineering so the transition, if it involves engineering, shouldn't be a big deal. Seems that (and I say this with 0 idea of how hard this sort of thing is on the GM side) all we really need is someone to hook the new beads to the devotion system so they can be put on prayer chains and be meditated upon.

Most people use them for the theurgy training, not really the devotional aspect i'm assuming. Pretty sure the OP just doesn't want to lose that theurgy training.

<<Unless I am missing something, the beads made with shaping are tier 2 items, which take around 50 ranks to master craft even without techs. Based on that, I am not sure why there is even a discussion about what to do. The obvious solution is to change the shaping beads to work with meditate and prayer bead chains and be done with it.>>

I actually agree with this. Why not make it a bit more simple. The detailed bead you can master craft at 50 skill (actually well before that with the right wood, its all about the workability of the wood, just like making the prayer beads now). The prayer beads you make depend on mech lore and some require a great deal of mech lore to make (500+). So make it so anyone can make the beads via shaping like we have in shaping now. That part works just fine as is.

Now if I remember right you only learn theurgy when you do a ritual on the prayer chain or in the following ways:

Praying to a specified Immortal
Praying and kissing an altar or prayer mat
Marking a prayer badge at an affiliated altar (by pushing the altar with your badge)
Praying upon a prayer badge
Pouring sacred/blessed wine on an altar or prayer mat
Dancing before an altar, in a consecrated room, or on a prayer mat
Praying upon a prayer chain with beads before an altar or in a consecrated room
Waving lit incense at an altar or prayer mat
Washing an altar or anloral pin with holy water (warning: an anloral pin will break if you interact with it if the animal represented is not the same as the Immortal from whom you received your most recent favor!)
Tithing five silver coins
Offering unskin, unlooted dead enemies in a consecrated room – cannot be undead, evil, or cursed
Planting a sirese seed and sprinkling the room with holy water (this grants sizable theurgy experience for younger clerics)
Bathing in a sacred pool with appropriate herbs
Offering of stolen goods, sprinkled with holy water, on a dark aspect’s altar
Offering of your own blood on a dark aspect’s altar (warning, this is very dangerous)
Studying the wall at Urrem’tiers hidden chamber in the Eyes of the Thirteen
Reciting a prayer parchment in a room of people
Reciting an appropriate prayer before an altar or in a consecrated room
Breaking of bread at the anlas of Hodierna’s Blessing and eating it

At this point the prayer beads are not working for the prayer chains likely because the old prayer bead system, once you foraged the stick or limb, you sprinkled holy water on it and then cast bless on it and maybe the instructions had a part to play or not. Then you did the carving. The devotion gained from a bead when used is dependent upon the quality for its material type and its overall quality. Right now we have two things that can be used for that, one is found when you analyze, it gives the quality of the item (likely masterful for most folks since 50 skill is really easy to get in engineering), and the other when you appraise it careful will have a quality number from 1 to 99, based on the wood type similar to what you have in the current bead making system. You could simply sprinkle holy water on the bead and cast bless on it and then use it on a prayer chain. None of this will teach you theurgy till you actually do the ritual with the prayer chain.

My guess is just about anyone can get 50-100 engineering making beads for favor orbs, so if you add in a prayer bead use, it wont take anyone long to get that. You wont need any techs or hobby or career in engineering to get to 100. And it will happen quick. Where you get your variance is on the workability of the wood and how much effort it might take to find it (don't underestimate this last part of finding the wood). The old list of how hard a wood is to make a prayer bead will end up changed with the new crafting system so that would have to change to the workability numbers used in [https://elanthipedia.play.net/Category:Crafting_materials] list for the woods. Now based on what I know about engineering and the lumber so far, to make a detailed bead from bloodwood, diamondwood, or smokewood (workability 5 for all three, hardest three to use so far), might be 150 to 200 skill in engineering. A lot less than the mech lore you are currently needing.

It seems to me this could be used as the basis for making the prayer beads work and you would get to a point where you will get the most from your efforts, sooner than you do now. Something I think most clerics would like.

So bottom line you can simply forage limb and use what you find (low quality - and do that till you get one type you need), you can lumberjack (highest quality - but will be harder to get a rare wood) to get what you need, and last you can buy lumber from the shops (engineering society - medium quality and limited types, trader shops - mostly higher quality and more rare types and more expensive). So the basis for making this work is there, I just don't know what kind of effort it would take to change that over.


Ranger Pfanston and his soggy pup.

Meditating on a prayer bead is actually one of the better ways to raise your devotion - devotion is already an annoying balancing act with training Theurgy and taking away/moving one of the more productive ways to something like engineering is frustrating. Why do we need to study engineering as Clerics - this makes absolutely no sense. I believe the new beads should function as normal via the engineering system for people to turn into favor orbs - and the legacy crafted should just swap it's check from mech to theurgy. Keep both systems - and keep one non-craft related.

I think the best stop gap solution (least effort) is to convert the old system over to Theurgy from Mechanical Lore. The new system does allow non-guilded people to obtain favors.

Going forward, I would like to see:
*Shaped bead template updated to weigh a lot less (compared to old system beads, they weigh way too much)
*Shaped bead template updated to work on prayer bead chains
*Primers removed from game
*Once this done, the old bead system could sunsetted and removed from game

Right now my favored suggestion is to convert old beads to a Theurgy only system, and make Shaping beads usable as offerings. I poked around a little, but it'd be helpful if someone could show me what a Shaping bead looks like. I've never played with the design codex, and Elanthipedia doesn't list what the final product looks like that I can find.

All of this is, of course, pending discussion with other GMs. The reason I favor the above method is that it is the easiest to implement method of having both a Theurgy based bead system and a non-Cleric favor offering creation system.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

Javac here is what goes into carving a bead.

prep bless 7
forage stick
That won't affect your current attunement very much.
You begin chanting a psalm to invoke the Bless spell.
>You manage to find a cypress stick.
Roundtime: 4 sec.

>get bott from my cloak
sprinkle bott on stick
You get a cloudy glass bottle set with a brooding onyx vulture from inside your watersilk cloak.
>You sprinkle a cypress stick with some holy water.
put bott in my cloak

>You put your bottle in your watersilk cloak.
>cast stick
You gesture at a cypress stick.
You twist the mana streams of your Bless spell in a chaotic motion, inciting them into unpredictable patterns.
A pure golden glow surrounds a cypress stick for a few moments, and is slowly absorbed.
>get knife from my boot
carve stick with my knife
You get a watered-steel carving knife with a polished mistwood handle from inside your suede boots.
>You begin to hack away at the cypress stick with your knife.
Roundtime: 8 sec.

>carve stick with my knife
With fluid strokes, you strike your cypress stick with your knife, carving away with fanciful abandon.
Roundtime: 10 sec.

>carve stick with my knife
You continue to whittle away at the cypress stick with your knife, rounding out a large knob toward the end.
Roundtime: 6 sec.

>carve stick with my knife
You grow more careful in your movements, narrowing the connection between the stick and the block you've carved out at the end with your knife.
Roundtime: 12 sec.

>carve stick with my knife
With a final deep cut the rest of the cypress stick falls away, leaving you holding a rough wood block.
Roundtime: 16 sec.

THIS PART IS TO MAKE THE BLOCK, next is the Primer

>get vult prim
You get a parchment vulture primer from inside your calfskin haversack.
>open prim
You open the cover of your vulture primer to the first page.
>study prim
You studiously begin to peruse page 1 in your primer.

You begin to study the primer, careful to absorb the information held within. The first page seems to detail the monotonous processes of preparing to carve...

"First, you must forage a limb of any type of wood. You must then anoint it with holy water or oil, and consecrate it with a Blessing of the gods."
Roundtime: 6 sec.
>turn prim
You flip forward a page in your primer, tearing a page in the process.
>study prim
You studiously begin to peruse page 2 in your primer.

You continue to study the primer, absorbing the information held within. The second page goes on about the preparation processes of carving...

"Once you have a consecrated limb, you must take a knife to it and begin to carve. Keep your strokes even and careful, and corner off one end of the limb into a large block. Discard the rest of the limb once it is separated."
Roundtime: 10 sec.
>turn prim
>
You flip forward a page in your primer.
>study prim
You studiously begin to peruse page 3 in your primer.

You continue to study the primer, absorbing the information held within. The third page goes on about the preparation processes of carving...

"Finally, your block is prepared. This will become your bead, with a bit of careful shaping. From here, simply follow the diagrams and instructions on the steps of carving your prayer bead into the shape of a vulture."

A diagram below the words details the first handful of basic cuts to make to the rough block.
Roundtime: 10 sec.
>turn prim
You flip forward a page in your primer.
>study prim
You studiously begin to peruse page 4 in your primer.

You continue to study the primer, absorbing the information held within. The fourth page is fully dominated by a large diagram that details the finishing cuts to make a simple bead.
Roundtime: 13 sec.
>turn prim
You flip forward a page in your primer, creasing a page in the process.
>study prim
You studiously begin to peruse page 5 in your primer.

You continue to study the primer, absorbing the information held within. The fifth page is again dominated by a large diagram, detailing a few cuts to flesh out the intermediate features of the vulture.
Roundtime: 13 sec.
>turn prim
You flip forward a page in your primer.
>study prim
You studiously begin to peruse page 6 in your primer.

You continue to study the primer, absorbing the information held within. The sixth page contains several segmented diagrams, captioned by words that describe intermediate strokes of the wood shaper that will promote the desired result in creating a vulture bead.
Roundtime: 17 sec.
>turn prim
You flip forward a page in your primer, creasing a page in the process.
>study prim
You studiously begin to peruse page 7 in your primer.

You continue to study the primer, absorbing the information held within. The instructions grow more complex, the diagrams more artistic. You begin to comprehend the subtle intricacies of the vulture's body.
Roundtime: 17 sec.
>turn prim
You flip forward a page in your primer.
>study prim
You studiously begin to peruse page 8 in your primer.

You continue to study the primer, absorbing the information held within. The instructions display more complex strategies in carving the vulture bead.
Roundtime: 17 sec.
>turn prim
You flip forward a page in your primer.
>study prim
You studiously begin to peruse page 9 in your primer.

You continue to study the primer, absorbing the information held within. The techniques taught on this page cover the fine detailing of a vulture bead, seeming to explain every feature imaginable on the true beast.
Roundtime: 20 sec.

>turn prim
You flip forward a page in your primer.
>study prim
You studiously begin to peruse page 10 in your primer.

You finish studying the last page of the primer, fully absorbing the information for carving a prayer bead in the form of a vulture. With a little luck, you think you may be able to carve it after all.
Roundtime: 23 sec.
>close prim
You close your vulture primer.

>put prim in my hav
You put your primer in your calfskin haversack.

Now for the third step to CARVE THE BEAD

---

>get shaper
You get a puffy-white haralun wood shaper with a handle resembling storm-clouds from inside your crafting satchel.
>get block
You get a rough wood block from inside your calfskin haversack.
>shape block with vult
You masterfully begin shaping your wood block.
Roundtime: 3 sec.
>shape block with vult
>
Trying your best, you masterfully run the shaper over the surface of the wood block, trying to coax out the shape of a vulture.
Roundtime: 5 sec.
>shape block with vult
With heavy strokes, you masterfully scrape and scratch the wood block in an attempt to further refine the image of a vulture in its surface.
Roundtime: 8 sec.
>
shape block with vult

You smile with satisfaction as you continue to masterfully buff and shape the surface of a rough wood block.
Roundtime: 10 sec.
>shape block with vult

You notice the wood block taking shape in the form of a vulture as you continue to carve at its surface masterfully with a puffy-white haralun wood shaper with a handle resembling storm-clouds.
Roundtime: 13 sec.
>shape block with vult

Pursing your lips in concentration, you continue to shape the surface of your wood block masterfully.
Roundtime: 16 sec.
>shape block with vult

You focus masterfully on bringing out the details in the primal, animalistic form of a vulture in the wood block.
Roundtime: 20 sec.
>shape block with vult

Your spirit soars with pride as you place the last finishing touch on your rendition of a vulture, completing a wood vulture bead.
Roundtime: 23 sec.


Hope that helps Javac.

Cadderrly