I realize the question of the priest classes' mechanics has certainly been brought up before, but I feel the current context of our glorious MUD deserves giving it another look. I went through some of the Ask an Immortal forums, examining empowerment interviews and rejections. The classes, as I understand it, are slightly beefier than your average class, and hence a mage class really requires SOME kind of wandlore to be on an even footing with these classes, who get sanctuary+protection+maledicting or whatever combination you choose to examine. However, mage classes were recently granted the ability to cast 'shield' on themselves in a variety of ways. Empowerment, since my absence from the game, has risen from level 11 to level 21.

With the playerbase reduced to the truly inspired and brilliant gamers that we all are *HACK* *COUGH*, we can all appreciate the mind-numbingly powerful job the staff has done in terms of class balance. The problem is that the priest classes are still very difficult if not impossible to consider for the casual player.

"Don't state the problem if you can't contribute to the solution!"

*** Tone priests down slightly across the board. SLIGHTLY! Remove empowerment as a necessity. Make the roleplay requirement retroactive instead of innately required- i.e. if someone chooses sphere X and roleplays in direct conflict with that belief system, start taking away supps! That'd make for more roleplay-intensive results anyway.

The flipside? Give the tattoo system a nice beefy chunk of love. Immortal interaction can then not be based on "Well, this guy needs empowerment, so I don't want to scrap his entire character but he has NO IDEA WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT." Instead, those who wish to discuss the intricacies of Imm religions and actually get them right, put in the time, jump through hoops for a capricious Imm, etc... can find their reward in the ink and prestige of being their Deity's TRULY chosen one. As for priests, they woud not enjoy near the status without the mark of their Patron, as used to be the case in the old days.

Thank you all for continuing to make the greatest digital game ever created what it is. I direct that to my fellow players as well as the staff and creators. Good day to you!

The Faithful of Nazmorghul
(yeah, still my fave.)

>Make the roleplay requirement retroactive instead of innately >required

This sounds like throwing in the towel to me.

I understand what you're saying, but I feel like the priestly classes are one of the only bastions of roleplay in the game. Granted, random shaman #43532 is not what I'm talking about, but I find that many druids and paladins are above the bar when it comes to RP.

I might be in the minority, but I play the game mainly for RP and get the majority of my fix from inside The Village. Much of the rest comes from random enemies (often Scion FWIW) and random priests. I find that Outlander Priests are often high up on the RP scale, too.

Feel free to disregard this entire post as I admit to not having played an empoweree, but it seems to me like a pretty minimal amount of RP is required to get empowerment. Finding your god online is a whole other matter. I think that any immortal should be able to empower/unempower any priest at any time. I feel like that would solve much of the frustration.

>Feel free to disregard this entire post as I admit to not having >played an empoweree, but it seems to me like a pretty minimal amount >of RP is required to get empowerment. Finding your god online is a >whole other matter. I think that any immortal should be able to >empower/unempower any priest at any time. I feel like that would solve >much of the frustration.

If you haven't paid attention to the various cabal induction discussions over the past year or so, imms are a little gunshy when it comes to anything they think will cause someone to raise hell when they get a new toy taken away and take it overly personally.

Most of us would rather them say 'Tough ####' in those instances since we feel they're already implying that more often than not anyway, intentionally or no.

But it goes without saying that they at this point won't accept a solution that involves 'throw the bumz out' with any moderate frequency.

And really, the inherent problem with empowerment is finding the imm online at the drop of a hat whenever you're in the mood to get empowered rather than scheduling a formal interview or praying blindly at random.

Nobody sane questions the amount of RP required to do the empowerment since forcing someone to flesh out their character is a good thing, but most imms hate empower-by-note and the ones willing to do that purely by email or note are doing it only in extreme cases where they either know they are too busy but like the character, or have been in a dialogue with them for some time or some other cariety of circumstances.

If you fix it to where the empowering imm is satisfied doing it wholly through notes without feeling the need to snoop the empoweree's behavior in levels 1-15 or talk with them personally, you will fix more problems than saying that the imms should loosen up on empowerment and then get a thicker skin from flamebait (though those of us not personally in that situation would probably largely prefer that solution, the truth is legitimate or not it will have a direct negative effect on player counts).

>If you fix it to where the empowering imm is satisfied doing it >wholly through notes without feeling the need to snoop the >empoweree's behavior in levels 1-15 or talk with them personally, >you will fix more problems than saying that the imms should loosen >up on empowerment and then get a thicker skin from flamebait
> though those of us not personally in that situation would probably >largely prefer that solution, the truth is legitimate or not it >will have a direct negative effect on player counts).

I don't understand why it isn't handled via note most of the time anyway? Looking through PBFs it becomes pretty clear that most characters either get an overall thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the staff.

Something else that could be done to give a better idea of where a particular character stands could be through npc/immteraction. How a Paladin responds to a beggar in Galadon pleading with him for help can be very telling and it doesn't matter which IMM is playing the beggar.

I have read that a certain portion of the player-base doesn't react well to this sort of thing, but if you're playing an empowerment class, I feel like it's the sort of thing that you maybe should expect.

On 4/4/10 "An Immortal" wrote:
When the Paladin Guildmaster asked ElfPally4353 to deliver this delicious pie to the Healer at the Temple of Light ElfPally4353 ate the pie and logged off. Not a very noble thing to do.

Or

On 4/4/10 "An Immortal" wrote:
When the Paladin Guildmaster asked ElfPally4353 to deliver this delicious pie to the Healer at the Temple of Light ElfPally4353 went to the baker, bought twenty pies and distributed them to everyone around the temple. The mayor was most pleased.

Just an idea.

I think one of the big things is that a given IMM doesn't necessarily want to involve themselves in another IMM's religion. Not every IMM is 100% familiar with every other IMM's religion, and some IMMs like to do things a certain way. Also, there could be implications down the line: what happens when you need to up your empowerment? Is some random IMM going to do it again? At that point, you might as well be a priest of a made-up religion.

What I wouldn't be against seeing is empowerment-by-quest. Maybe there could be some NPC immortals, with shrines and tattoos and all, with some Lich-like quests (scaled to level, of course) to become empowered and tattooed. The quest can be a pre-req which, when completed, notifies the immortals. To actually be granted the empowerment, you would still need to impress the actual IMMs, and be rewarded by one of them for the usual things (good RP, etc.).

This is similar to making your own religion, but with the added bonus of having codified religions to use which any IMM can work with.

-----
"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri."

In practice, even with a made-up religion, once one imm takes a hand in your empowerment, that's probably the only imm that is ever going to take a hand in your further empowerment. I don't see 'NPC religions' changing that.

But what would you get rid of?

If you say 'Sanctuary, until they are tattooed' I will <3 you forever.

But until you come up with some hard nerfage, it's a non-suggestion.