Re: CF: Gods and spell paths

[David Andrew Michael Noelle <dave@Straylight.org>]

Doug wilder wrote:
> 
> true confusion is nice in a role play game. this is not a role playing game
> as should be noted. But looking over the abilities and disabilities of the
> gods i realized that Confusion is way over used. I have been playing this
> game for several years and can't think of one time i used the spell. i shall
> have to try it sometime to see what effect it has. i don't think it was ever
> used against me though.
    Ever fought a Big Wizard?  How about a skull, Dread, or beholder?  When
you find yourself moving in random directions instead of the direction you
specified, that's confusion.  And it can be very useful in combat against a
large group of foes.  Confuse as many of them as you can (preferably with
Mass Confusion from a distance) and let them stumble around and accidentally
beat on each other while you stand back and finish them off with missile
weapons and/or spells.  Just be prepared to throw the spell again when it
starts wearing off, and don't expect any of them to either hold still or
charge straight at you.  Most of your missiles *will* miss their intended
targets.


> Here i was thinking that life is vulnerable to those things and they affect
> life more
    Living creatures are certainly more vulnerable to poison and disease
than dead (or undead) things, which must obviously be immune, but I think if
anything, Gaea would grant protection from poison, not vulnerability. 
Living things with the specific blessing of the goddess of nature have an
enhanced "life force."  Their health is bolstered by their connection to the
element of nature.  It's that extra-natural (as opposed to super-natural)
health that protects them from death magic, life-force drain, and depletion
of attributes.  


> Name:        Freya (female.. need more godesses)
    I agree that the Crossfire pantheon could use some more goddesses, but
to oppose the chaotic fire god Ruggilli, the ice god should be lawful. 
Personally, I don't like to be sexist, but religions in general have a long
history of being thoroughly sexist, and there are very few examples of
goddesses supporting law and order.  There's Athena of the Greek pantheon,
but she's rather an odd case.
    And isn't Freya the Norse goddess of Love?  Goddess of Love and Ice
Queen at the same time?  Conflict of interest?  Besides, I think we're
trying to stay away from using the names of deities in real world religions
(or TSR-copyrighted religions).  That's why Jehovah and Lucifer were renamed
Valriel and Gorokh.

> Enemy God:   Rugilli (optional fire and earth creatures to be
>                       added to him)
    I don't understand what you're saying here.  Earth creatures?  You mean
earth elementals?  They *definitely* wouldn't be one of Ruggilli's races. 
They're vulnerable to fire and attack with cold.  And fire creatures *are*
Ruggilli's race.

> Race:        Ice Creatures (optional water and air creatures)
    Water fits, but air would be Sorig's domain.

> Enemy Race:  (reverse of Rugilli)
    That would be "consuming_fire_creatures", Ruggilli's aligned race.

> Attack Type: Physical, Cold
> Immunity:    Cold
> Protected:   Physical, Magical, Cold
> Vulnerable:  Fire
    Those I agree with, but the attacktype should be just cold, not
physical.  A god's attacktype is what Godpower *adds* to his Wounding and
Turning prayers, and his Holy Servants and Avatars' attacktypes.

> Attuned:     Weapon Magic, Cold
    Weaponmagic is an attacktype, not a path.  Attuned: Frost is obviously
required tor an ice god, but there aren't any priest spells on that path. 
I'd like to say Restoration, but there are Very few opportunities for
experience gain there.  Just curing diseases, I think.  Turning, Wounding,
and Summoning are the major paths for priests.  Gaea specializes in
Summoning and both Ruggilli and Sorig have Wounding, but none of the
elemental gods have Turning yet.  The other cold-related religion is
Devourers, and they're denied Turning, so that would be my suggestion for
this god.  It shouldn't be hard to find enough fire-based creatures to cast
that Holy Word at.
    Since only mages have Frost spells and only priests have Turning spells,
it wouldn't be unreasonable to throw in a third minor path.  If this is a
god of ice and water (icebergs?) Teleportation would work.  Nobody else
attunes that, yet.  None of the current gods attune Info or Self yet,
either.  That gives us:

Attuned: Frost, Turning (Teleportation?  Maybe Self?)

> Repelled:    ?
    Definitely repelled: Fire.  Don't want to completely deny it, for the
same reason Ruggilli doesn't deny Frost, but it has to be at least
repelled.  If Turning is attuned, either Summoning or Wounding should be at
least repelled.  I vote for Wounding, the one Ruggilli attunes.

Repelled: Fire, Wounding

> Denied:      ?
    Good question.  I'd suggest Detonate, since sudden bursts of physical
energy are probably the only thing more against the nature of ice than a
slow burning fire is.

Denied: Detonate

> Special:     reflect_missiles, (hp_regen 1, hunger 1, should be
>              reversed from rugilli settings)
    An enemy god doesn't *have* to be an exact opposite, but the opposite of
Ruggilli would be hp regeneration -1 and sustenance +1, which would
represent a particularly slow metabolism.  Sounds about right for an ice
god.  But why reflect missiles?


> Avatar:      2x2, 500 hp, ac -7 wc -3 dam 40 armour 50
    Looks good, but the damage is a bit low.  Most are 50, with Lythander
and Sorig tied for lowest with 40, and Ruggilli having the highest, 60.  And
you left out speed.  I'd give this ice god's avatar a moderate speed of
about 0.3 and a medium-high damage of 55.

    Now what about the holy servant?  You left that one out completely. 
Ruggilli's servant is a wyvern.  I'd suggest either a cold dragon hatchling
or an ice para-elemental.

cold_dragon: level 8, hp  80, ac 5, wc 7, dam 15, speed 0.07, armour 0
para_ice:    level 6, hp 120, ac 8, wc 9, dam 30, speed 0.10, armour 0


[...Valriel vs. Gorokh...]
> hmm, they just seemed a little limited as to what they would affect. I don't
> mind the good vs evil affect i would just like to fill them out a little
> more.
    I think perhaps the way to do that would be to involve them a little
more in the world of Crossfire, rather than changing them to have a larger
sphere of influence.  Valriel and Gorokh are apparently the leaders of
supernatural armies at war beyond the world of Crossfire, like Jehovah and
Lucifer or God and Satan or whatever you want to call them.  This is the
same war that inspires movies like The Prophecy, The Exorcist, The Seventh
Sign, the Omen trilogy, and so on.
    To fill out the roles of Valriel and Gorokh in Crossfire, what we need
is a few more quests devoted to taking part in that war.  Something like
stopping some High Priest of Gorokh from completing a ceremony empowering
the best of his personal guard with some really dangerous dark power.  Or,
for those who choose to play the other side, proving yourself worthy to
receive that power yourself.


> Here I was thinking that there are so many types of humans out there
> Barbarians, Vikings, Pirates, Guards, Cleaning Women... I couild go on for
> an hour. To call them minor is hardly right. they fill a lot of the game in
> the dungeons and towns. it just seemed fitting to put them on a hate list
> too.
    Hate, yes.  Enemies, as in quintuple damage from Holy Word and triple
damage from sacred weapons, Holy Servants, and Avatars, is a bit extreme. 
There may be a lot of them, but they're just low-level humans, not
extraplanar monsters.  Being aligned with evil and being a manifestation of
the essence of evil are vastly different things.
    Marking certain humans as being aligned with certain gods, even though
they're not officially a part of that god's race makes sense.  That would go
under the heading of the new politics.  Holy Word attacks, which otherwise
ignore anything that isn't a specific enemy, could be made to do single
damage to creatures "aligned" with the enemy god.  I recently modified Holy
Word to do exactly that with undead for the gods who consider undead neither
enemies nor friends.  That would provide all priests who have an enemy god
and a Holy Word with more opportunities to gain low-level experience,
without actually giving them a longer Slaying list.
    All this modification would require is a way to specify the god an NPC
worships.  For players, it's part of their wisdom experience object, but
that doesn't apply to NPCs, yet.  Maybe it should?  Maybe as part of the
0.96 object rewrite, all monsters should be able to have seperate physique,
wisdom, power, agility, and personality levels, which would determine their
spellcasting power, fighting ability, and so on, just as it does for
players.  That would allow drain against monsters to be more meaningful,
would make their seperate and total levels more meaningful and more
comparable to player levels.  This might also open up some possibilities for
interesting new kinds of monsters and NPCs.  It would take a good deal of
work, affecting every creature on every map, but I think it just might be
worthwhile.


            -Dave Noelle,                 dave@Straylight.org
            -the Villa Straylight,  http://www.straylight.org
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