Please bear with me. This is a long post I drafted last night, some of it repetitious (as in likely has info contained in past posts). I’m going to break it up into multiple posts for readability.

Here’s a list of abilities and spells I’ve at one point or another wished, “I’d really love to have this.” These are for a more earthly holy guild. Self-cast duration glyphs can only be traced once on a given spot (e.g., can’t use two body armor glyphs or two shield glyphs at a time). With this setup, glyph of mana and glyph of light become spells and, where noted, some spells become glyph abilities. I’m guessing these should have a long duration, at least as long as spells, preferably longer at high skill. Also, if we’re to make these something unlike magic, glyphs that are traced on opponents, should be done at melee range only.

Glyphs

Glyph Sunder – Traced on opponent. Significantly reduces armor and shield stats. When traced on head armor, it wards against armor reducing spells and abilities.

Glyph Ward – When traced anywhere on self, it makes paladin impossible to target (skill check for success, of course). When traced on the living or dead, it reduces favor cost and eliminates or reduces death’s sting (on depart if dead). The AG spell would no longer eliminate death’s sting on the recently departed and would instead restore a single scroll when cast on the dead. (I like deader abilities for triage purposes.)

Glyph Sense – Traced on head armor. Allows the paladin to sense incoming DFA and instinctively duck under his shield (almost like the helm is helping him “see” it coming). In other words, DFA spells no longer ignore shield while active. (I’d rather have this than an evasion buff but if we can’t have anti-DFA, then we can’t be the only survival tert guild without an evasion buff.)

Glyph Bond – When traced on hand armor, it enchants your equipment to grip your weapon and shield for you making you immune to tingle effects. When traced on deader’s weapon, it bonds it (same as now).

Glyph Retribution – Traced on body armor. Enhances body armor (replaces DA for armor) and Melee attacks that touch armor provoke a counter-attack with bonus accuracy and mild damage (e.g., not a full damage slice) and cause the attacker to gain 1-2 RT for the strike. (Think magnets!)

Glyph Reflect – Traced on body armor. Enhances body armor (replaces DA for armor) and TM attacks that touch armor are absorbed in part by armor and reflected back at the caster.

Glyph Strengthen – Traced on shield and weapon. Significantly enhances shield’s offensive and defensive properties and increases its durability. Increases weapon stats when traced on a weapon. Replaces DA for shield and RUE for weapons.

Glyph Shockwave (can’t think of a good name for this, really) – Glyph traced on shield. When traced, it pushes back all attackers and causes minor damage. Since it’s instant, not a duration glyph, it can stack with duration glyphs. When traced on others, it does the same for them but causes no damage.

Glyph Speed (not to be confused with the khri) – An active glyph traced on shield or weapon (i.e. doesn’t stack with other weapon or armor glyphs). After it’s traced and invoked, the paladin attacks with weapon and shield (doesn’t matter if arm-worn) in rapid succession. Obviously, this one would have some charges and cooldown on invokes.

Smite

Needs to do more than just buff OF for the attack. Against things at the edge of my skill, I can hardly tell the difference between a smite and a normal attack and against things at level or lower it has no noticeable effect. To remedy the problem, I propose adding effects to smite like:

Smite weaken: normal smite plus short offense debuff

Smite (stat): normal smite plus short debuff to the selected stat or maybe just debuff stam. That’s paladiny, right?

Smite accurately (yeah, I’m not good at naming things): ignores a percentage of evasion (larger than regular debuffs) for the one strike

Smite spell: normal smite plus opponent loses spell being prepped and can’t cast for a short time.

Protect

Protects are fine other than being somewhat broken still. I also think it’s a little overpowered that they can block any physical damage rather than some forms of physical damage, so…

Protect deflect – Melee only protect

Protect cover – Mundane ranged only protect

Protect magic – TM only protect

Protect self – A better version of the current one, which I love. Breaks snares, much shorter cooldown, no soul requirement or generous soul state requirement. Does not consume a resource like soul pool.

Protect all – Protect someone against everything for a large defensive penalty (within reason) so it can’t be abused. This would be the triage protect (Raesh’s guardian archetype).

Sacred Insight

As much as I loved the quests, they’re all mostly useless nowadays and I understand GM resources are finite so it’s probably best to just scrap these. Maybe extend paladin’s people power perception to determine things like stat contests (paladin mark of sorts)?

My best suggestion would be to gut the cleric spell book, strip a lot of the purely martial effects, give them to Paladins, and give clerics a secondary version back. The entire slew of 'curses' should be Paladin effects; clerics are 'meta magic' mages, not front line defenders.

I'm aware this won't happen and will be a deeply unpopular opinion. But the core problem is 'clerics did it'. And as magic prime...anything they get they get better, since everyone has to run off magic for everything.

<<My best suggestion would be to gut the cleric spell book, strip a lot of the purely martial effects, give them to Paladins, and give clerics a secondary version back. The entire slew of 'curses' should be Paladin effects; clerics are 'meta magic' mages, not front line defenders.

A more reasonable suggestion along these lines would be to do what the Traders have done with lunar magic: figure out the stuff that the more developed guild dabbles in but hasn't really focused on (e.g. crystal moonlight and illusions in the case of Moon Mages/Traders) and run with it. Instead of gutting Cleric magic, for example, look for the things that Clerics only have a minor emphasis on and go with that. Possible examples: Soul/spirit as a barrier as opposed to direct damage/healing/regeneration abilities. A focus on retributive strikes and reactive barriers as opposed to direct damage and defence buffs. A focus on favour orb enhancements possibly tied into armour - e.g. imbuing your armour with a favour orb to power defensive boosts, barriers or retributive strikes, etc.

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I'm a fan of the 'Thorns' aspect of Holy Warrior, and not be opposed to more effects/abilities/spells along those lines.

Samsaren

I forgot an important one. Glyph Charge - Traced on legs. Reduces engagement time for the meleedin.

Might I suggest we propose glyphs, abilities, and maneuvers over spells? We are quite limited on spell slots.

--Just a Squire

Meh. It really doesn't matter what form people propose it is if the effect it something that catches my eye.

-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

I think there's an argument for making BoT an ability rather than a spell. The spell description doesn't give much info on how the physical manifestation of the ghostly banner is important to the effect, so maybe it isn't. Taken a step further, just as paladins can stir people to fight with fervor through a special kind of inspiration that runs off soul juice (lead), it's easy to imagine a paladin curbing peoples' desire to fight by similar means kind of like an anti-lead.

The method by which the paladin should invoke an ability like BoT, however, shouldn't be like a lead because the area effect is important to the current spell's appeal. In other words, it should enchant an area rather than only affecting people in a group. Perhaps it could be made into a glyph or something similar; a glyph of truce traced on the area or ground if we go with "must enchant an object" definition of paladin glyphs. That of course leaves room for other similar abilities traced on an area like the ones VOLCANUS suggested above, which are cool IMO, maybe even abilities that replace Lead.

> I like this idea a lot.

I disagree. It's fine as a concept, but development wise it doesn't make sense. You're asking to take something that works, is in a flexible template, and is tied to a core system that's easy to maintain/extend, and then you want to recreate it in a system that's not yet finished.

I agree with the ability vs spell. BOT gives paladins a chance to be mediator in conflict and create a safe spot to heal, regroup, etc. The problem with BOT as a spell is the spell contest makes it difficult to pull off unless you're a pretty powerful paladin.

I'd like to see paladins keep the number of spells/slots they have and also get a suite of abilities built around tanking and/or Diablo 2 style auras that run off of soul/spirit/whatever.

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Holy Sword: enchants weapon to dispel on hit. I stole this from Neverwinter's oath paladin ability list. Not sure if it makes more sense as a spell or ability but I'd really love this.