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[✗] [Rewrite] The Clerics of Tahariae


Nekkore
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22 hours ago, Nekkore said:

 

Blessed Waters - Tier Three:

  A Cleric may, through an intensely taxing and long ritual in which they must spend almost all of their Light, bless a pool of Water to aid in healing. The Cleric must ask for Tahariae’s aid, explaining the purpose behind the pool before its creation. When in such, it casts a passive T2 Cure Minor Wounds spell on those inside. It does such five times before needing to rest a full RP day to regenerate the Light held within. If you cast this as a Tier Five spell, it instead does a passive T3 Cure Medium Wounds spell up to seven times per day.

On 9/28/2018 at 6:15 PM, Lark said:

Whether it be an Astral Garden, or a crystalline temple to Aeriel, the massive presence of Aeriel’s power in an area may allow Astra to be physically stored in the Mortal Realm; an entirely unprecedented ability for anywhere else. Beautiful, ornate fountains and crystalline pools may hold the divine liquid and serve as a potent lure to all around; as the waters aggressively aid in the regeneration (Three times increased natural wound regeneration) of injury and disease for both mortals and the Archaengul’s servants.

There's some overlap here with the Tears of Aeriel lore. My 2 cents are:

> Tears of Aeriel is more focused as a water theme in general. Blessed Waters is a bit out of left field in comparison to the rest of the rewrite.

> Astral pools give a constant, passive effect which is more manageable and simple than the healing effect of Blessed Waters. Who is going to track whether a pool has actually been used 7 times a day? What if someone doesn't document their use? Someone would need to look at the lore to determine a difference between a T2 healing spell vs a T3 healing spell.

 

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10 minutes ago, Master Sage Delaselva said:

 

 

There's some overlap here with the Tears of Aeriel lore. My 2 cents are:

> Tears of Aeriel is more focused as a water theme in general. Blessed Waters is a bit out of left field in comparison to the rest of the rewrite.

> Astral pools give a constant, passive effect which is more manageable and simple than the healing effect of Blessed Waters. Who is going to track whether a pool has actually been used 7 times a day? What if someone doesn't document their use? Someone would need to look at the lore to determine a difference between a T2 healing spell vs a T3 healing spell.

 

Sadly, this rewrite predates the entire mandate, and thus didn't particularly take anything into account. I think this idea came from "liquid light" as a holy water meme, but I can't be sure. 

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2 minutes ago, The Templar said:

Sadly, this rewrite predates the entire mandate, and thus didn't particularly take anything into account. I think this idea came from "liquid light" as a holy water meme, but I can't be sure. 

I think it came from Divine Warden

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6 minutes ago, Snelfma said:

I think it came from Divine Warden

Actually yeah it did. Thanks! Lightwells were also supposed to be added as a ward replacement, but the other clerics decided to axe our wards 100% with no replacement. 

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I've come back and actually given this a proper read through. I see a lot that needs to be changed and honestly a general lack of focus with the magic as a whole. As a person who's been with the magic since 3.0 I'm more than happy to give my feedback over discord regarding the rewrite. 

 

 

 

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I wrote the last accepted lore, and there are a number of things that jump out to me here that worry me. Don’t get me wrong, I 100% agree a rewrite was needed; I was writing one a month after the one I wrote was implemented. I am an inactive player, so feel free to disregard what I have to say, but I want to make sure that the heart of clerical magic RP remains the same: a fun, intriguing religious and holy experience that shows the power and character of an Aengul to fellow players. I’ll focus on my concerns for the FUN AND UNIQUENESS portion of this first.

 

FUN AND UNIQUENESS

 

The complaint of Priest Healers stealing RP from normal doctors has been one that has plagued every holy healer since the dawn of time. This is valid, which is why I made an effort to focus in my lore to detail the rituals and technical process one might go through in order to provide a good, fun, unique experience for players. It is NOT a replacement for a doctor visit. I find your statement that clerics turned into “healing bots” that did “instaheals” very concerning, because that would indicate clerics waving their hands and making wounds disappear. Is that really what happened?

 

This rewrite also does not solve the conflict between mundane and clerical healers. A straight nerf does not help. The only solution is for magic healing to be used less, and when it is used, to be a drastically different experience to mundane healing.

 

When I had played a cleric, I identified firmly with being a Priest Healer. That title comes with three responsibilities: you are a priest first, a healer second, and lastly you are a priest healer (in the magical sense). A religious dedication to healing spurred clerics to learn how to assist the wounded and sick, which necessitated studying anatomy and traditional healing. By the time you’d learn how to heal someone magically, you were already a very competent doctor. Because of how strenuous clerical magic is, clerics really should be using mundane methods of healing before even thinking of using their magic, otherwise its a waste of energy. And the magic was strenuous; a Tier 5 cleric would barely have been able to manage more than a few Tier 3 healings in an Elven days. One Tier 4 spell would have been a workout, and a Tier 5 spell would’ve been crippling. If there were healers running around without playing the weaknesses of the magic, that is its own problem, and I fail to see the necessity of a rewrite to appease doctors because people weren’t playing the magic right.

 

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No longer can Clerics “infinitely progress”, as is defined in the previous lore.

 

I read this and was immediately confused. This must have been misinterpreted. The progress in power was never supposed to be that quick or prominent, which is why it is defined as “slowly” and “gradually”. A year-old Tier 5 cleric would be mildly better than a cleric who just crossed over from Tier 4 to Tier 5, and a cleric that was three or four years old would be recognizably better, but not “I can snap and people’s bones seal together” better. To be fair, I never actually specified that in the original lore - another failing of mine - but I kind of figured clerics might have common sense when it came to that. You’re not going to become an OP clerical god after three years, you just maybe wouldn’t throw up blood after reattaching a limb. That said, establishing a limit is fair, the IC reasoning being too much Aengulic energy would likely kill a cleric.

 

The change of priest healing becoming gradual is… Unnecessary, in my opinion. The issues people have with priest healing are that it steals fun RP away from doctors and that its used too much for being such a powerful magic. The nerf doesn’t really make it any less of a powerful magic, and it honestly seems MORE like a replacement of mundane healing now, with patients leaving with bandages and casts and needing to allow their limb to heal normally. The RP experience with a cleric is also unchanged, clerical scar recovery is RPed exclusively by the patient. You’re not holy EMTs. You’re miracle workers. It remains just as not-fun for doctors and now it’s arguably less fun for the clerics.

 

I’m reading a lot of comments here that point out how Tahariaean clericism brings nothing to the table that Ascended and Paladins of Xan don’t already. This is valid, and before I left the server, I was trying to figure out ways to change that. I think what may prove to make things more fun and interesting for both clerics and their patients is making all healing ritual-based. No more of this “simple prayer, conjure light, put light on person until healing done” process. That isn’t interesting and that’s how every holy caster has always done their spells. Heck, do away with the tiers entirely, and just have spell rituals that can be learned by clerics with a week or month of study or something. Is it still magic healing? Yes. But you aren’t just a healing bot anymore, you’re proper priests. ANY healing magic becomes a real event, and mundane healers become extremely important again, as they can provide aid to people more immediately.

Because at the end of the day, with non-combat magics, it isn’t about how OP it is. It’s about how FUN it is. It’s about providing good RP with our magic. It’s about everybody having a good time. Making priest healing - and cleric magic in general - ritual-bound makes it unique and fun for cleric, patient, and the pleb non-cleric doctor who now gets patients who don’t want to wait for clerics to whip out the candles and incense and sacrifice a goat.

As far as War Clericism goes, though… I don’t have an answer. I’ve never liked doing war cleric RP as much as I liked priest healing RP. Clerics share flames with the Ascended from the brief time that clerics had Aeriel as a patron. They share weapons with the Paladins of Xan because… Well, I don’t have a reason for that at all. I would suggest war clericism be done away with entirely, and instead replaced with blessing and warding magics. Imbuing Aengulic power into objects beforehand, and using those items, instead of a whole branch of magic made up of spells that are borrowed from other holy magics.

I also can’t speak to divine wardenism as I never saw it in practice, but if merging it with clerical lore makes sense, so be it. However, it was a neat magic that made clerics more unique, and I feel that this lore took some aspects of Wardenism without actually keeping much of the uniqueness of it. As others said, this lore is really basic. It’s just fine. But clerics shouldn’t just be fine, they should be unique, and with holy magic kind of being oversaturated, we gotta stand out.

 

HOLY EXPERIENCE

 

Clerics are religious. There is no way around that, and it kind of seems like there is a push to make clerics more low-key and magical healers/warriors than they should be.

First off, the Tenets. Not sure why the order the tenets are listed was changed from the traditional order it has been since Braxis wrote it, but whatever. I notice you apply a veeeery liberal interpretation. Why are clerics becoming self-centered? That doesn’t seem cleric-like at all. You were handed a mission from a god; this isn’t just a magic.

 

 

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Things will not be killed for being impure, but for being evil themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

Now that you’re changing the mission of the clerics, you’ll have to define evil and why Tahariae had a sudden change of heart. In the past, not killing impure creatures was only done when leaving them alive would lead to more impurity eradication. Tahariae’s concept of purity was also simple and clearly defined. “Evil” is not.

 

 

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If you sully the name of Tahariae to a Cleric - not sure what to tell you. A Cleric is perfectly allowed to kill one who would speak ill of their Lord.

 

 

 

 

 

What the heck is this? Since when did Tahariae have such a fragile ego that people cursing his name must be eradicated? That seems like a waste of time in his mission of cleansing the world of impurity.

 

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Others do not apply to this; you need not rush to the aid of anyone who does not follow Tahariae.

 

 

 

This rubs me the wrong way. Tahariae’s mission involves protecting the world and the Descendants from impurity. Clerics MUST rush to the aid of Descendants if their purity and safety is threatened, otherwise they’re failing to be truly dedicated to Tahariae’s cause. If there’s an innocent man dying in the streets, clerics don’t get to just walk past him. If a Dread Knight comes in to kill some civilians, you don’t get to just ignore him. Clerics have a mission, and from the moment they accept their connection and adopt clericism, they are bound by that mission.

 

The aura colors, too, seem iffy to me. These are a bit different to how they were originally designed, especially White and Blue. White I don’t mind as much, as the description I wrote for White never felt right. However, Blue is just… Too much of a change. You specify that they favor combat strength over anything else, but half the Blue-light clerics I had known - me included - were devout priest healers who were rarely involved with fighting. The descriptions should be (and were) observational, not prescriptive, and also open enough that players still had flexibility to play their cleric how they want. Take the “value combative strength over all else” out of the blue light description, and stick with one that doesn’t shoehorn a blue-light cleric into becoming a War Cleric that only reluctantly heals.

 

That’s all I have to say about that. Clericism needs to be fun and unique for both the player and the people that get to experience it. As it stands, this lore is not unique, and makes it arguably not fun, especially for doctors still. It is largely the same as the lore currently in place, with only very subtle changes that seem unnecessary and don’t address the complaints made. A more drastic change is needed.

EDIT: I totally forgot to ask: where are the Utterings of Tahariae? Those were the actual words and instructions of Tahariae for the clerics, generated through four in-game events in which Tahariae spoke through the prophet Ashanaak. You’re going to need some sort of RP reasoning for those being tossed out.

Edited by Ventusyr
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51 minutes ago, Ventusyr said:

EDIT: I totally forgot to ask: where are the Utterings of Tahariae? Those were the actual words and instructions of Tahariae for the clerics, generated through four in-game events in which Tahariae spoke through the prophet Ashanaak. You’re going to need some sort of RP reasoning for those being tossed out.

Utterings have been declared non-canon due to how strict they are. the LT had refused to enforce them and so they’ve been scrapped despite the protests of the old guard wanting them to stay. 

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50 minutes ago, The Templar said:

Utterings have been declared non-canon due to how strict they are. the LT had refused to enforce them and so they’ve been scrapped despite the protests of the old guard wanting them to stay. 

 

I know I don’t really matter any more and you guys can do whatever you want with Tahariaean morality, but “don’t ***** around and maybe act like a religious person when playing a cleric” doesn’t seem that unreasonable or strict.

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12 minutes ago, Ventusyr said:

 

I know I don’t really matter any more and you guys can do whatever you want with Tahariaean morality, but “don’t ***** around and maybe act like a religious person when playing a cleric” doesn’t seem that unreasonable or strict.

I agree with you. Unfortunately, it came down to votes and the votes came out strongly against enforcing them in any way, shape, or form that could be applied to the entire group. 

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Eh. Let clericalism die out already. Deity magic hurts my soul more than any other magic.

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This lore is pending, you will be contacted regarding the issues raised by the lore team so you may fix it. You have 2 weeks to make the changes, beginning from when you are contacted. Once you have edited your piece, send me a forum PM and your piece will be reviewed to ensure the changes have been made.

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This Lore has been denied. The reasoning will be edited into this comment shortly.

 

Topic moved to Denied Lore forum.

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