Tue Apr 17 19:35:33 2007 by 'Baerinika' at level 51 (127 hrs):
I know you're short on allies in Tribunal, but you sure hang out with Empire a LOT. Why don't you just blood oath?

Regarding this comment from Bawgor's PBF, it reminded me of a question I had regarding taking the blood oath. Bawgor was a gnome and therefore neutral in alignment. If he took the blood oath it would make him evil. Wouldn't that mean that he would lose his supplications due to an alignment change? Or is joining Empire the only exception to the detrimental nature of losing spells/supplications? And if that's the price of changing alignment what do the melee classes lose? Obviously they have no spells/supplications to give up.

And why is it that Empire is the only cabal that allows you to do an ethos/alignment change when you join the cabal? What if someone who was neutral or chaotic wanted to join Tribunal after a series of circumstances caused them to ICly help out magistrates? They couldn't join because the cabal is Orderly only. But then so is Empire. Yet they could go join Empire if they wanted.

Some clarification please?

>Tue Apr 17 19:35:33 2007 by 'Baerinika' at level 51 (127
>hrs):
>I know you're short on allies in Tribunal, but you sure hang
>out with Empire a LOT. Why don't you just blood oath?
>
>Regarding this comment from Bawgor's PBF, it reminded me of a
>question I had regarding taking the blood oath. Bawgor was a
>gnome and therefore neutral in alignment. If he took the blood
>oath it would make him evil. Wouldn't that mean that he would
>lose his supplications due to an alignment change? Or is
>joining Empire the only exception to the detrimental nature of
>losing spells/supplications? And if that's the price of
>changing alignment what do the melee classes lose? Obviously
>they have no spells/supplications to give up.

The comment in the PBF was a figure of speech, not necessarily supposed to be taken literally. Yes, Bawgor would've lost supplications. Bawgor would have had a chance to earn them back, but I personally wouldn't take that road unless taking the bloodoath was Imm-driven in the first place. Melee classes? Warriors lose specs when they change alignment and have to try to earn them back. Bards lose songs. As to thieves/assassins/rangers, I've never seen one change alignments but I'm sure they get some penalty (I've seen assassin lose assassinate when turned evil but that was not associated with the blodooath and may have been an Imm penalizing the char). As for evils that are not orderly, you will not lose any skills/spells/songs when you bloodoath. For empowerment classes, it is a little different based on what Imm you follow (I'm sure Lyristeon would take issue if one of his evil/chaotic priests suddenly bloodoathed).
>

>And why is it that Empire is the only cabal that allows you to
>do an ethos/alignment change when you join the cabal? What if
>someone who was neutral or chaotic wanted to join Tribunal
>after a series of circumstances caused them to ICly help out
>magistrates? They couldn't join because the cabal is Orderly
>only. But then so is Empire. Yet they could go join Empire if
>they wanted.
>

All of this would have to be Immortal-driven. Other than Immortal involvement (and busting your ass), the only way for a player to change alignment to join a cabal is through bloodoath and certain items.

>Some clarification please?

AFAIK, you can't actually take the blood oath if you're not evil. Maybe Empire imms can give it to non-evils, I have no idea. It's sort of a facetious comment.

This was different back in V1.0 of Empire, but the way it actually played out in practice was that only super noobs would change alignments to join Empire, and they inevitably were perma-screwed by that. The people who were qualified to weather the alignment change well pretty much would just make evil characters in the first place if they wanted to be Empire.

A chaotic or neutral evil who takes the oath suddenly becomes orderly evil. Are you then saying that changing ethos doesn't come with any downsides?

You say that only evils can take the Oath yet I remember there being a gnome shifter (Necore) and an elf warrior (Arkan) that both joined Empire within the last year alone. So it is possible that the Empire IMMs stepped in there. Anyone willing to step up and confirm this?

And are you also able to tell why joining Tribunal doesn't cause an ethos change if a neutral or chaotic person wanted to join?

>And are you also able to tell why joining Tribunal doesn't
>cause an ethos change if a neutral or chaotic person wanted to
>join?

As a rule that you can't join an aligned/ethosed cabal if you aren't a match. You can't do it with any cabal EXCEPT empire, and I think that makes RP sense. If you think about it, the empire is out trying to force everyne to conform. The bloodoath is part of that. No other cabal really has that kind of "join us or die" motif. That's why it makes sense that you can take the bloodoath if you're non-orderly.

>A chaotic or neutral evil who takes the oath suddenly becomes
>orderly evil. Are you then saying that changing ethos doesn't
>come with any downsides?

Depends on who you are. Possibly the downsides may be few or minimal if you're taking the Bloodoath.

>You say that only evils can take the Oath yet I remember there
>being a gnome shifter (Necore) and an elf warrior (Arkan) that
>both joined Empire within the last year alone. So it is
>possible that the Empire IMMs stepped in there. Anyone willing
>to step up and confirm this?

Smart money says they were already evil when that happened, or were oathed by an immortal.

>And are you also able to tell why joining Tribunal doesn't
>cause an ethos change if a neutral or chaotic person wanted to
>join?

Because Tribunal doesn't have as one of their major powers an awful, soul-bending ritual of magical compulsion to make it so? (Unlike Empire. :) )