So, I've been incommunicado for 9 months, but it's given me a long time to think about Cleric ideas and improvements. There's something for everyone here, from swingers to bolters to warders to everyone between.
Cleric spells (aka filling out the 300s and maybe improving some, all names are working names only)
Prayer of Binding - 301 EVOKE
Functions like 301 but also inflicts minor periodic damage
Possibly prevents non-corps from vanishing while under the effect
Bless - 304
Refreshes consumables with Blessing lore
EVOKE can grant buffs to target
Holy Bolt - 306
Possible Fire lore connection to become Holy Fire
Holy Bolt can cleanse a target when cast from Guarded or Defensive, granting the target buffs or removing debuffs
Bane-aligned Clerics have the acid and water damage swapped for undead and living
Deific Shield - 321
Summon a deity-themed medium shield, naturally +20
Improved with Summoning lore.
Possible bonus vs non-AS attacks as shield improves.
Deific Bolt - 322. Becomes Deific Weapon with EVOKE.
Full cost for weapon, half for bolt.
Deific Bolt works on spell aiming with Religion lore for deity flare.
Deific Weapon works on the casters melee training and Summoning lore.
Deific Weapon is naturally +20, improved with lore, can harm undead innately, and has deity flares.
Deific Weapon's base is deity dependent.
Charl - Trident
Andelas - Tiger Claw
Ronan - Backsword
V'Tull - Scimitar
Holy Ward - 323
Wards a room like Minor Sanctuary, but still allows Warding attacks while either preventing or buffering non-bolt/ranged AS and SMRs.
Anoint - 324
Anoint target with oil, grants deity specific scent and defensive bonus (Minor DS + Major TD)
EVOKE to throw oil at target with SMR check, inflicts debuffs, can ignite with fire spells.
Sacrament - 326
Turns water into wine/fills empty container with wine
Wine can be drank for buff (+AS and CS)
Gains potency from MIU training
Deific Knowledge - 331
Clerics can use spells from out of circle that relate to their chosen deity
Regular casting for utility/defensive spell, EVOKE for offensive spell
Each deity should have one utility/defensive and one offensive ideally.
Scripture - 332
Summons a book that sheds it's words and pages
Room-wide attack
Undecided on CS or AS, could be stance-dependent.
Causes debuffs and damage
MOC benefit
Summoning and Religion lore.
Misc Cleric ideas:
Guild/Cleric Stances via CMAN could provide the following
Detect ALignment/Deity
Detect Holy/Unholy site
Poison/Disease Immunity
Auto-Calm animals (Lions, Tigers and Bears, oh my)
Auto-Bright/Dark room
Auto-102 hidden fog
Lay Hands (cure poison, disease, other maladies with a touch)
Summon Altar (for offerings)
Blood Offering to restore mana (requires dagger)
Food Offering for minor buff
Auto-316 for creatures 10+ levels below you
Summon specific servant without runestone
Two Major Spirit spell ideas:
Aura Strike
Generic warding attack, however it uses 0 mana and 1 spirit per cast
Rune of Marking/Recall
Mark someone with a rune, cast again to recall them to your location. Summoning lore extends the range, Blessing lore grants buffs to the marked. Does not fade upon death.
ESTONE
LEAFIARA
Re: Lots of Cleric ideas
06/01/2021 03:26 PM CDT
Recently I was skimming through every cleric thread that's been posted after the updates in April 2019. I realized that basically almost all of the mechanics ones were people grappling with questions of cleric identity.
Then I thought about it some more, and further realized there's an even larger discussion to be had. A discussion about clerics, empaths, and sorcerers all at once. The ongoing clash between player and staff opinions of what sorcerers are supposed to be as they're being reviewed, the mechanical overlap of all three warding pures, the thematic overlap of clerics/empaths and cleric/paladins and by proxy empaths/paladins, people recently asking for pures to get weapon skills via ascension if nothing else, and so much more--it's all interrelated. Even differences in hunting ground design between cap and pre-cap.
I don't know when I'll be able to start that conversation, or even if since it's so sweeping, so let me focus on this one post for now.
What jumped out at me is that, with adjustments, some of the concepts here look like a list of plausible ideas for ascension archetypes.
The 301 idea, for example, looks like the start of a disable-heavy archetype--something that does work very well pre-cap even now, but is largely pointless at cap (much to my disappointment). At 3x spells you can just kill, but before 3x spells, most of the things you might want to disable would just shake it off right away.
The idea here of adding DoT might be one solution if it could inflict repeated stuns, though then there's an issue of overlap with 309 and 311. Maybe if it couldn't repeatedly stun, but induced RT. There's a reason 410 is so good even at cap.
The Bless, Anoint, and Sacrament ideas are basically about the idea of clerics giving blessings other than just the undead-fighting sort, and about clerics creating items. 340 gives a blessing of sorts and is also capable of creating items in Zul Logoth, but of course no one really uses it.
325 creating brimstones is sort of an underplayed element of clerics because it's just not worth the cost, but I could easily see ascension doing something there and expanding into a really out there item-oriented build. No idea how many would go for it, but at very least it would be unique.
I like the incorporation of MIU into Sacrament, since clerics (and empaths) don't have any especially compelling reason to train MIU at the moment. (Yes, runestaff DS, I know, but it's real minor compared to MIU buffing 735 and 925. Hopefully 330 helps here.) I could see this being sort of like Cylnthia's recent multi-mode 307 proposal where one could make different types of blessed consumable, each with its own benefit and mutually exclusive.
The Deific Knowledge idea of learning one or two outside spells is one I've floated before too, which seemed possibly unrealistic at the time but not so much today. After all, one of the rogue archetype proposals included them learning three outside spells and they're squares of all things. Sure, they were more flavorful than anything (though 1701 is a mechanical benefit), but if a square can jump outside spell circles and even jump outside its spheres, I'd hope that at least one pure and at least one semi has a route along those lines.
(Not even saying I'd take such a route, mind you... But, absolutely, someone would run around with spells outside their circle and I'd love to see it.)
Aura Strike might be my favorite idea here just because I think spirit isn't a tapped enough resource for clerics. That's kind of weird to say when 308 (on the living), 318, 319 infuse, and 340 can all eat up spirit, but the latter two don't seem to be used very often and the former two are utility. It feels like spirit only comes up with clerics when raising, but thematically it seems like they should almost revolve around spirit.
All that said, I'd rather see it as an attack granted by ascension or even an innate ability than a Major Spiritual spell, just so it could be balanced specifically around clerics without having to think about the implications of 1117. But I've been over that design dilemma too many times to count, heh.
Then I thought about it some more, and further realized there's an even larger discussion to be had. A discussion about clerics, empaths, and sorcerers all at once. The ongoing clash between player and staff opinions of what sorcerers are supposed to be as they're being reviewed, the mechanical overlap of all three warding pures, the thematic overlap of clerics/empaths and cleric/paladins and by proxy empaths/paladins, people recently asking for pures to get weapon skills via ascension if nothing else, and so much more--it's all interrelated. Even differences in hunting ground design between cap and pre-cap.
I don't know when I'll be able to start that conversation, or even if since it's so sweeping, so let me focus on this one post for now.
What jumped out at me is that, with adjustments, some of the concepts here look like a list of plausible ideas for ascension archetypes.
The 301 idea, for example, looks like the start of a disable-heavy archetype--something that does work very well pre-cap even now, but is largely pointless at cap (much to my disappointment). At 3x spells you can just kill, but before 3x spells, most of the things you might want to disable would just shake it off right away.
The idea here of adding DoT might be one solution if it could inflict repeated stuns, though then there's an issue of overlap with 309 and 311. Maybe if it couldn't repeatedly stun, but induced RT. There's a reason 410 is so good even at cap.
The Bless, Anoint, and Sacrament ideas are basically about the idea of clerics giving blessings other than just the undead-fighting sort, and about clerics creating items. 340 gives a blessing of sorts and is also capable of creating items in Zul Logoth, but of course no one really uses it.
325 creating brimstones is sort of an underplayed element of clerics because it's just not worth the cost, but I could easily see ascension doing something there and expanding into a really out there item-oriented build. No idea how many would go for it, but at very least it would be unique.
I like the incorporation of MIU into Sacrament, since clerics (and empaths) don't have any especially compelling reason to train MIU at the moment. (Yes, runestaff DS, I know, but it's real minor compared to MIU buffing 735 and 925. Hopefully 330 helps here.) I could see this being sort of like Cylnthia's recent multi-mode 307 proposal where one could make different types of blessed consumable, each with its own benefit and mutually exclusive.
The Deific Knowledge idea of learning one or two outside spells is one I've floated before too, which seemed possibly unrealistic at the time but not so much today. After all, one of the rogue archetype proposals included them learning three outside spells and they're squares of all things. Sure, they were more flavorful than anything (though 1701 is a mechanical benefit), but if a square can jump outside spell circles and even jump outside its spheres, I'd hope that at least one pure and at least one semi has a route along those lines.
(Not even saying I'd take such a route, mind you... But, absolutely, someone would run around with spells outside their circle and I'd love to see it.)
Aura Strike might be my favorite idea here just because I think spirit isn't a tapped enough resource for clerics. That's kind of weird to say when 308 (on the living), 318, 319 infuse, and 340 can all eat up spirit, but the latter two don't seem to be used very often and the former two are utility. It feels like spirit only comes up with clerics when raising, but thematically it seems like they should almost revolve around spirit.
All that said, I'd rather see it as an attack granted by ascension or even an innate ability than a Major Spiritual spell, just so it could be balanced specifically around clerics without having to think about the implications of 1117. But I've been over that design dilemma too many times to count, heh.
EWEST
Re: Lots of Cleric ideas
07/29/2021 05:33 PM CDT
I'm going to preface this and say that I've been back for about a year after about a 20 year absence. I'm still built in the GS3 mode: sword and board, double leather, rezzer.
Reading Leafi's earlier post about the importance of variety within professions reinforced that is my favorite part of this game, and one that is unmatched in any other video RPG. The odds of two characters being identical is practically 0.
That said, I'm very much in support of several of the ideas presented here, especially the 307 (a great spell already) overhaul. I also particularly like the idea that spirit points should be a frequent resource for clerics, as stamina is for many classes. Perhaps the INFUSE spirit verb could be used in more spells, even some in the other spiritual spheres?
