I was hoping paladins could earn a way to defend against spirit death. As an added perk, we'd finally have a use for holy water!


Sylvaeus holds holy water in his hand.
Sylvaeus types Glyph Annoint

Sylvaeus takes a hit to Vitality, Attunement, and Spirit.
Everyone in Sylvaeus' group gets a pulse of Attunement and Spirit.
Sylvaeus regenerates Spirit very, very rapidly for a time.

Yeah there could just be some watery visual effect or something.

>I'm not a huge fan of that functionality included in Abandoned Heart or Hodierna's Lilt either though.

I think it's reasonable for songs to have a minor effect on the physical measure of a metaphysical aspect like the soul. It's true (ish) in real life. And I think it's pointless to have an entire system closed off for only one guild to manipulate. It would be like saying only empaths can recover your vitality, and only a moon mage can refill your mana pool.

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I'm a badger, I be badgerin'

How would you plan on balancing Soul Attacks like Chill Spirit and Soul Attrition since they already contest TM against Defenses if you were to add another layer of protection against them without invalidating the spells? There's already the offense vs. defense contest that has to be won, now there's we're talking about a potential contest free spell/ability that could potentially re-fill the spirit?

I could understand a sorcerous scroll-only contest where you're fighting against another for their spirit, but being able to create spirit out of thin air, or to be able to manipulate your spirit just doesn't strike me as anything a non Cleric should be able to do very well, if at all. That's just my opinion though of course.

>Just to intrude with my usual negativity, but I'm still bitter about the boring, bland and infrequent development the spirit pool has seen since Clerics forcibly removed the ability to interact with Spirit from almost every other guild.

When did this happen? Be specific.

The first interaction I can ever remember from a spell was chill spirit, back before/during the gorbesh war. Which was turned off because there were no barriers, there was no protection, and it wasn't even a TM contest, so level 1 characters were literally hopping out of the character manager and going on to kill the 100/150 characters of the time with a few spam casts.

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I'm a badger, I be badgerin'

I think he was referencing the 'masters of spirit' designation that Clerics were given at one point. While true that other guilds did not have spirit based abilities, it was also explicitly stated that they would never get any since such abilities were Cleric only. This, combined with the devs at the time being divided up by guild rather than system, effectively shut down any significant sort of development of spirit based abilities.

I do find the history of spirit combat interesting. I suspect with all the development going on it'll come back more than it exists now.

Paladins are templars, right? Warriors of the gods. Part-time priests, defenders of the faith, protectors of the innocent, and the guy/gal who maintains spirit in the face of dramatic, spirit-crushing scenarios.
I watched a necromancer spirit kill a paladin in Theren. I'm not sure how it went down, honestly most of it was quick and a little over my head, but the folks around told me that a necromancer spirit killed a paladin.
Why are so many focusing, to the exclusion of most other things, on the knightly side of the paladin guild and ignoring the templar aspect? We are not just knights- we are holy knights. We have spells named 'Courage' and 'Holy Warrior' and we have a special source of energy named 'soul'- yet we can't use spirit or have anything to defend against current/future spirit attacks? Clerics getting a monopoly on spirit would be inherently unfair to the paladin guild. Clerics are already pretty awesome. There SHOULD be some overlap to the guilds- holiness is part of the definition of the word 'paladin' if you try to separate us too far from the Immortals, the Cleric guild, and the spirit, then you should rename the paladin guild to something else.
I'm starting to wonder if the dev teams have something against paladins as a concept or perhaps it just doesn't trip their triggers- none would roll up a paladin for themselves at a tabletop game I'm thinking. Raesh stated that he isn't sure what direction the paladin guild should go, which I find fair but it makes me a little nervous, and Armifer is quoted as saying paladins shouldn't exist at all- I hope its out of context and I'm not demonizing him at all but such a quote troubles me greatly.
Paladin is the only guild I play and have ever wanted to play. I love the concept, the RP, the style. I want people excited about the guild again. I don't want to go to anymore paladin mentor meetings where there is no one there or where other players feel sorry for you for portraying a paladin rather than doing something "cool".

To bring it back to point, the difference between a paladin and a commoner in plate mail is faith- including spirit. Please do not take that away.

>>Raesh stated that he isn't sure what direction the paladin guild should go, which I find fair but it makes me a little nervous, and Armifer is quoted as saying paladins shouldn't exist at all- I hope its out of context and I'm not demonizing him at all but such a quote troubles me greatly.

I think you're taking these quotes somewhat out of context.

>>I'm starting to wonder if the dev teams have something against paladins as a concept or perhaps it just doesn't trip their triggers- none would roll up a paladin for themselves at a tabletop game I'm thinking.

Paladin is actually one of my more common archtypes in RPGs (Though mages and, to some degree, thieves get a lot of play too. What can I say? I'm diverse).

At the risk of speaking incorrectly in the place of Armifer, what he's getting at is that the traditional role played by a Paladin is already filled by Clerics in Dragonrealms which makes it extremely difficult to develop Paladins as uniquely defined guild. Contrast Bards vs Warrior Mages or Rangers vs Empaths and then look at Paladins vs Clerics. Yeah. It's a big problem.

For myself, I'm speaking purely from a mechanical point of view. There are clear flaws with the Paladin guild that need mechanical solutions. Many of the more obvious or traditional ones simply won't work - some due to mechanical limitations, some due to lore conflicts, some due to trying to separate out Paladins and Clerics.

That doesn't mean we're going to give up, it just means we haven't quite nailed down what the solution is yet. That's true of several guilds (Traders, for example, we're still refining some ideas about what's going to happen with their magic and Bards need some serious revision to the initial plans for Bardic Lore). It's a natural part of the development process. To quote Mark Rosewater "Restrictions breed creativity".

Paladins are actually one of the guilds I've been giving a lot of thought to lately, which is why I've been sharing some of my thoughts on them (Moon Mages, Traders and to a lesser degree Necromancers are the others that have occupied a decent share of mind space lately for various reasons).

As we move out of the major game rewrites phase we've been in we're planning to do focused team-wide development on certain guilds instead of largely leaving them to one person. I can't promise Paladins are up next after Traders (It's unlikely to be strictly linear and priorities are likely to shift as other developments play out) but they're certainly on our minds.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

<<Because in DR, the Templar role is actually filled by clerics. >>

Yet Paladins get the Holy Warrior, Templar, and Crusader titles, while Clerics get the Temple Guard titles. Paladins get the holy weapons, while clerics get the ability to raise the dead. Yes, clerics are martial in this reality, however, it does not mean they can be the only holy types who wield weapons in the name of their gods.

Back before I took my hiatus there was a definite push for Paladins to become more 'Crusader' oriented. There was a push for Paladins to become the holy sword of the immortals. Then got derailed, it seems, when our guild gurus from back then left. Since then, my understanding is that Paladins have not had a consistent advocate, and as such, has been largely marginalized.

As with Sylv, Paladins are the only guild I want to play or choose to play. In any RPG, I go for the Paladin archetype. I have played the same Paladin here since I began playing in 1998, and will continue to do so until I retire permanently from the game. I have seen the guild at its pinnacle, with great development and direction. I have seen it at its worst with little of either.

--Just a Squire

I am reassured by your posts, Raesh. Thank you.

<<Combat oriented abilities, buffs, glyphs, auras whatever. With a leaning toward defense. Some good anti DFA defenses, spirit defenses, magic defenses etc. >>

Defense, defense, defense. I am tired of everything having to be about defense. Yes, we are armor prime, and hence armor should be a focus. However, we also have defenses as secondary (parry) and tert (evasion) skills. Until we become "defense prime" (at which time parry and evasion become part of our primary skillset), how about about we put some thought into offense. We are, afterall, weapon secondary.

--Just a Squire

I did put out some thoughts about holy weapons in that regard, Lennon. That might keep things interesting. I'm hoping to spark more ideas from others.

<<I'd really love to see more on shield as another tool for offense as well as defense. I mean, there exists shield slam but it's very weak even with a shield that weighs more than a massive suit of plate armor, and it comes with a bunch of limitations and parsing issues (related to the slam verb and multiple opponents).>>

The biggest issue I see is that we can slam with an arm worn shield.

--Just a Squire

<<The biggest issue I see is that we can slam with an arm worn shield. >>

Sorry, that is supposed to read: "can't slam"...

--Just a Squire

I still hold out hope for Headbash and other multi-paladin shield strikes. ;) To combine the topics, shield moves that consume spirit would be fun and could be more powerful and supernatural than abilities that do not pull from a fuel source while not overtaxing soul pool. Then, this Anoint glyph could be used to either 1) keeping Elanthia some degree of sane by preventing necro-initiated spirit death upon a holy warrior and/or 2) refueling the spirit-based shield bashes or possibly spirit-consuming holy weapon smites when hunting critters. This way, in a sense, soul pool would fuel big-umph things that you wouldn't use all that often or wouldn't make sense to put yourself at risk of spirit death to use while spirit would fuel the more rapid-use abilities.