Earth Priests

[belannaer]

I tossed the idea as a joke and I also really think that they should necromancers in a way or another. If you have an idea about druids maybe make a topic out of it on idea section. I've some ideas for it also and could add those then to that topic

[artic]

I also really think that they should necromancers

The point why e_priest have to be necromancers escapes me... I cant find any reason for why the god of earth should have anything to do with the nether. I too like the idea of them being some sort of summoners, but i dont understand why they have to summon the undead.
I thought they should summon golems- (these are creatures of earth! exmp: Mud golem, Glay golem, Granite golem what ever). But instead of summoning life to some corpse, they would have to pray to the god of earth for a token, wich they then transform into a golem. The power of the golems depends on the token the god gives them. (like if your god thinks you stink, hed give you a lump of mud, but if you are in good standing with your god, hed give you a granite so you could make a stronger golem.) And the power of the token (and if the god is willing to give the token at all) depends on the priests standing with the god - sort of a reputation thing: to gain a good standing with their god the priests would have to (act as priests and) do peneficial stuff for other players. Of course there could also be a damage related casting faction of the priests, but every priest would have to start out learning some peneficial spells and some basic earth related skills. Preacing for earth and actually turning somebody to the faith of earth would give great rep for the god. This way, a priest could not just wonder the world and kill, he would also have to aid other people to get a good rep with hes god. Also all the other ideas of making the priest get a bit hurt if minion gets hurt are possible... but why, why do they have to be necromancers?

[belannaer]

Having only 4 major deities requires that everyone of them holds lots of things in their domain. For example earth has nether/death related things, fire demons and such, air has healing and generally "holy" kind of things and water should be somehow supportive in general (water is quite large question mark actually. all others have pretty stable ideas but water is missing it's own field of expertize. They _could_ be channeler type of guild in my opinion and could have those anti-magic things that are mention in another topic).

[thoran]

... or water could also be "nature"

[odovacar]

Some ideas I had (not really earth priest related):
- Every priest should be able to summon an elemental (of the kind of element they worpship, ofcourse). This could be for a limited time, thus preventing the major undead parties of old epriests.
- Priests should be able to cast relevant-school templar spells. They worship the same god, after all. This will also make non-healing priest (non air priest for that matter) be more helpful in parties.
- Perhaps "priests" or cultists of the lost magic god could be the anti-magic guild. Robbing the other casters what was robbed from them before.
- If air priests are priests of life and earth priests the priests of death, I think fire priests being priest being demoists and such should make waterpriests the opposite - summoner of angels, or other benevolent creatures, or banishers of demons. In addition they will have supportive spells/skills, some defensive or healing (symbolizing water's importance for all living things and tranquility and blabla) and some offensive or offence boosting (symbolizing water solidifying to ice, or water's crashing force)

Cheers,
Odo

[belannaer]

Some ideas I had (not really earth priest related):
- Every priest should be able to summon an elemental (of the kind of element they worpship, ofcourse). This could be for a limited time, thus preventing the major undead parties of old epriests.

Not really, I would limit this kind of thing to earth priests only but if a GOOD generic system from such "minions" was made some other guilds could possibly also have them (druids with animal servants coming in mind first).

- Priests should be able to cast relevant-school templar spells. They worship the same god, after all. This will also make non-healing priest (non air priest for that matter) be more helpful in parties.

Possibly, but in a game we have to divide things to different guilds Also templars have the combination of all four elements in them so they can utilize them in ways that normal priests maybe aren't able to do and priests are able to do things that just petty servant of elements cannot do.

- Perhaps "priests" or cultists of the lost magic god could be the anti-magic guild. Robbing the other casters what was robbed from them before.

That's existing Mages and Sorcerers, right?

- If air priests are priests of life and earth priests the priests of death, I think fire priests being priest being demoists and such should make waterpriests the opposite - summoner of angels, or other benevolent creatures, or banishers of demons. In addition they will have supportive spells/skills, some defensive or healing (symbolizing water's importance for all living things and tranquility and blabla) and some offensive or offence boosting (symbolizing water solidifying to ice, or water's crashing force)

Yep, I would go along same lines with the water priests.

[tanstai]

and somewhat on topic, if e_priests deal with nether/raise dead, and airpriests have healing and deal with life, shouldn't they also be able to turn/banish undead?

Would make for some interesting air/earth priest battles...

Really though, I think they should...

Tanstai

[belannaer]

... or water could also be "nature"

Sure but suits better for earth if you ask me

and somewhat on topic, if e_priests deal with nether/raise dead, and airpriests have healing and deal with life, shouldn't they also be able to turn/banish undead?

Turning/banishing suits better for water as it is opposing element of fire which does deal with demons.

[tanstai]

Turning/banishing suits better for water as it is opposing element of fire which does deal with demons.

Different thing. Have water banish demons, air banish minions. If earth can raise them, air should be able to "unraise" them.

Tanstai

[janeti]

Make their undead unusable during the day. They dissapear underground at dawn. And, if you're feeling REALLY viscious, you have to be in the same spot at dusk when they rise or they .. (aggro/"die"/whatever).

[thoran]

[quote="janeti"]And, if you're feeling REALLY viscious, [/quote]

I am. My basic idea is to keep those minions powerful, but having conjuring/creating/upkeeping/handling them be a pain in the ass. It should take time and resources.

[silv]

I eagerly anticipate the day when each element has it's own active priesthood. As far as the Earth Priests go, I really like the idea of them adapting aspects of (or transforming into) an Earth Elemental/Golem. Reading the little blurb about the Earth Element, it says that the Earth Element is the strongest in the physical sense; emphasizing Strength and Constitution. It would make sense to me to see them embrace this elemental philosophy to cast spells which transform them into powerful melee fighters, and targeted spells which enhance strength in allies or strip strength away from their enemies.

Things like:
"Tremor": Reduces accuracy of all enemies in the room/prevents enemy(or all) spell casting.
"Shockwave": chance to Stuns all enemies in the room.
"Quagmire": Reduces enemy attack speed.
"Stone Skin": Increased Defence/damage absorbtion
"Embrace of the Earth": Transforms Priest into a hulking behemoth, dealing massive damage with slow, open handed attacks.
"Heart of Stone": Increased Con/HP/Poison immunity?
"Strength of Mountains": Increased Str/Damage

[If you still want to the Death aspect]
"Return to Mother Earth": Buries all corpses, heals HP/SP/EP for everyone in the room.
"Dust to Dust": Transform corpses into powder, useable to make incense? Or which can be used in a blessing or sprinkled over a campfire to some effect.



blah blah blah... it's 6 am again... sorry... I do weird crap when I'm tired... Arr!

[khade]

if you want a guild that is almost necromantic, here is an idea. right now i call them oath-born: fighters who refuse to die until an oath is fulfilled. you would join in a blasted castle and when you became one, you would age to the end of your races lifespan. main skill would be intellegence, as it is your mind that holds you together. the guildmembers would, when they log on, have to use a spell to pull every remaining bit of them back into its place, and then cast another spell to make their soul tangible to hold the pieces together and to replace anything that is gone permanantly. so attacking one of these would damage the soul, not the flesh.

[aieon]

An idea about the e-priests natural/element side: they cause a bleeding wound to themselves and transform the blood into disks of clay and hurl them at their enemies. It'd be kinda the templars' sacrifice attack, but ranged. Of course they'd be bleeding the whole time. The disks shouldn't be able to be stored, but used straight away.

How about maintaining minions cost df, sp AND ep?

[seryn]

Just adding my 2 silver, but since I very much miss being an epriest I'd like them to come back as cool as they used to be (just not as powerful).

Anyway, Thoran's idea of dividing the guild into a caster section and a crafting/engineer section sounds like a good idea... Along that general line, since it was the ability to mimic a party, thus getting much more than their fair share of kills and loot that was the main problem (and all those level 20 necros with level 80 mummies) perhaps the new version of the guild would be better served by the priest putting all his attention into a single minion.

To make your minion you would need to gather the raw materials. These could be body parts from monsters you kill if you want to keep the necromancer feel, or perhaps you could buy refined ore from people in the mining subguild for more of a direct interpretation of earth priest. The crafting half of the guild would cover turning lots and lots of raw materials into different parts of a body for your minion. Skills and masteries would control the types of materials you are able to successfully work with, and other skills/masteries would determine your success in working the materials (so the material you use + your skill in working it would be used to determine the minion's armor). Further training in crafting would let you sculpt certain parts of the body certain ways, such as spiky hands for piercing damage or spikes all over for a miniature version of templars' elemental barrier with piercing damagetype. Possibly other changes like adding wings if/when flying is coded, or more efficient legs to help with endurance points.

The casting guild would be concerned with the spirit you call to inhabit the construct you created. The different skills/spells would allow you to summon a more powerful spirit to the shell. Not too sure of ideas for this part, but maybe different types of spirits can be summoned, and since they're spirits of the dead they take on some of the traits they had in life, like skills, spells, battle settings, vision, maybe even feign some personality.

Limiting to one or two minions would cut down on pretend-party abuse, and making the minions saveable would make it okay to spend a lot of time on minions. To make it more of a pain to live vicariously through minions they could get dents, joints come unriveted, head gone flying, leg bent sideways, etc. from battle damage requireing spells and maybe raw materials to patch up.

In essence this would be a summoner guild like old epriests but with your minion(s) being its own mastery in a way, since it will grow as you go along and can be saved. It will also be trouble to have one minion, since it will need repairs and will need to be replaced (but with same spirit?) as you gain knowledge of crafting. And much more trouble to have more than one because of cost of raw materials and time spent repairing damage.

Hopefully something here that's helpful or usable.