As it stands right now, theurgy as a professional requirement provides less to a player than most (if not all) of the other guild-specific skills.

I believe right now it does the following:

* Reduces the chance/removes the prone/kneeling aspect when resurrecting or doing Meraud's blessing.
* Increases the mana and/or the duration of Meraud's blessing.
* Increases the strikes on Kertigen's blessing.

And some plans for the future to help with our version of sorcery, somehow.


The first part is helpful, but I feel after that theurgy does not serve really any purpose other than to a) circle and b) provide TDPs. The boost to Meraud's doesn't make much of a difference, as when you're ticking around 700+ ranks of theurgy you're going to have at least that (likely a lot more) in attunement, and most rooms you're going to hang out in are going to be high holy mana rooms. The boost to Kertigen's blessing doesn't really do much, IMO, since you can just bless your weapons anyways. Besides Xala'shar, there isn't much of a ladder for undead in between tuskies and bone wyverns - so it makes Kertigen's blessing even more of a moot point.

In turn (and without making it game breaking), I suggest that the more theurgy you have the more devotion you get from performing a ritual. This would make sense in a practical way - the more times you do something the better you should be at it, thus you'll know how to make the most of your ritual each time you do it. This would help alleviate the constant circle grind of: Do rituals - gain devotion, do communes - lose devotion, do rituals to make up for the loss of devotion from doing communes, etc etc.

Another alternative would be to provide a boost to theurgy experience gained from doing a ritual. However, with how small of an amount of experience you get currently, I find a percentage boost much less appealing than a devotional boost.

If either of these two suggestions are already in play though, could they be increased a bit?


Also, regarding Sacrifice.. using SACRIFICE on a creature that's 'near death' is pretty difficult in 3.1 because of how combat is.. i.e. everything takes forever to die. Could this be readjusted in some way to make it more practical? I would actively use it, but there is way too much of a risk in something surviving an attack to make it worthwhile. Maybe make it so if it dies in the next 3 or 5 hits, or something.

>>I personally want to be able to "Locate" dead people.

That would be pretty cool, actually. Vaguely like a spin-off from old spirit beacon. RIP spirit beacon.

I'll admit though, one of the reasons I went with the 'drilling holes in the ball and chain' is because it's easier to implement. Most of the stuff I've thought of I don't even wind up posting about because of:

>>dev time and priority assigned...yeah. Just yeah.


Otherwise, I'd say having abilities like locating dead souls, or even being able to separate your soul from your body and be able to travel from one shrine to another shrine, then perform a ritual on the other side to realign your body with your soul (clerical teleport of sorts.) Maybe make theurgy be able to dictate the distance, but each time you do it you lose all your devotion or you lose a favor, etc.

However, I'd rather take the holes in the ball and chain if it's something that can be done in the near future over 'going forward' with the cleric teleport that would stay in dev purgatory for 5+ years.

Not a complaint about/towards the devs, just keeping it realistic.

It does seem rather unfortunate that the only "real" reason to train Theurgy is because it's required. Alas, I can't think of anything that would make it more enticing that wouldn't also require more development.