Aspects and Piety Gain (Again)

[Iceborn]

I don't know how many times this topic has come up in the last years that I've been playing here.
But I do know that it's a rather common thing, for very obvious reasons.

A better observation is, I don't know why War and Destruction is the only aspect that gives 0.5% per pop, making it by far the most popular aspect, while the rest of them are vastly harder to raise.
This, I have to say, and do forgive me if you disagree, is flatly stupid.

There are mobs in every corner of the server, but there are not enough plants, or for that matter, you may simply not have enough spells to raise your piety above a meager 5%, while War and Destruction can go on and on keep it easily at a stable 100%.

And this is simply comparing it to Nature and Heart and Home.

If you look at Magic, Trickery and Deceit, and Invention, you will find that in most cases you would die of age before hitting 100%. Most of these go up by 0.1%, which means that if you follow a sole Magic god, it would take flatly a thousand spells to reach 100%.

Let this number sink in for a moment.
Your average level 20~ wizard will have about 50 spells to throw about per rest.
Even if we assume that said wizard uses -all- their spells, including the cantrips, it would take 20 flat rests of non-stop casting to reach 100%. And this is not accounting the natural 0.1% that you lose every tick.

A follower of a trickery and deceit has to successfully pass 1000 spot checks, which is absurdly hard, specially considering that the first character that gets to see though will drop you on a flat 25%. Another 250 spots checks.

Oh, and let's add - if you have a deity with shared domain, you have no way to turn off the godsave when you don't need it, which may result in all the time it took to raise your piety, so be it by slowly raising it by your favored task, or spending much of your valuable time praying, being simply wasted for nothing.

Let me mention now the godsave itself.
Magic works for item creation, which only covers a percentage of all mage characters.
Trickery and Deceit only works for disguises, and when it works, it works for a very brief amount of time until your character can be examined again.
Invention works for crafting, which in most cases, tends to blow up when you are smelting ingots, bottles, or mundane things that don't need a save.

While Heart and Home, Nature, and War and Destruction, at least offer a combat raise, which is extremely important. The combat raise not only prevents a sudden drop of experience if you die in battle, but it also may be the only thing keeping your party together if everything goes south, or you simply have one of those cascade failures - a breach, a lost save, a bull*** touch attack stun, and you are otherwise dead. Boohoo.




So here I come, to question this grandiose system -
Who the hell designed this system, and why does it still work like this?!

Flatly:
Give all aspects god save raise.
Up Trickery to 0.5% per spot passed (200 saves to 100%)
Up Invention piety gain to 0.3% per Crafting Point used (15% per 50 CP. It may seem like much, but it's still limited by RL hours refresh of CP)
Up Magic to 0.4% per spell. (250 spells to 100%)
Enable a command to disable godsaves from different aspects.

There is no reason for why it works like this, and right now it feels like some aspects are flatly better than others, and thus rather than allowing characters to choose their own gods based on their RP, it leans toward gods with a god save to prevent the systematic automatic death that may, and will happen because that is the nature of the game.

[Dreams]

A wider variety of sources of piety gain would be great also. I'll write more about this when I'm home.

[SwampFoot]

words....

Having played war and destruction and nature following characters for the better part of X years, I am constantly questioning why trickery and deceit got so shafted now that I play a rogue. Can the dev team balance this out a bit?

[Terenfel]

Also, why does only a few gods have two aspects?

i would say reduce all gods to one. or set all gods to have two.

[Terenfel]

can come with a few examples of "good" gods that makes less sense then some others

Isis is only a magic god. but selune is magic and Hearth and Home. where in my opionen isis would make more sense.

Mephistopheles is Knowledge and Invention and magic, there is no other god with those two amazing aspects if your both a crafter and a enchanter, (even though alot of gods would make lot more sense for such a character, Azuth for example)

[Xerah]

The system has a lot of potentials to be very cool but it is held back by what Ice has outlined here.

For example, my character Lissa sole purpose is to do crafting and enchanting. There is one god for that as Terenfel has pointed out, which doesn't fit at all. So, I flip between Gond (i.e. Nebelun for gnomes) and Azuth (since there is no gnome magic diety for gnomes for some reason) but I'll mostly stay with the magic one since enchanting is impossible without that aspect.

One suggestion to deal with this (in addition to Ice's suggestions of more reasonable & fair piety distributions) could be:
-Every god has one set aspect
-Every god can select one of the others (to allow for player to RP as they wish)

I'm sure I'm not the only character that would benefit from this kind of addition and it seems like a generally more fair way to even the system.

[Seekeepeek]

to be honest i stopped picking gods by their name a while ago and just pick after aspects. just pick the red knight, Mephistopheles or cyric and roleplay you workship an other god. from a rp point of view it's even fine unless you play a divine class, since people workship so many gods per day in forgotten realms.

a suggestion would be to remove the link between aspects and gods. and just let you pick an aspect you'd like. say you want to workship bane, but want magic aspect. then it's possible by a simple click that make use loss xp/peity if you change aspect rather then god..

[Iceborn]

I personally like these two options.

[Commie]

Polytheism is the norm in the realms. Picking 2 aspects would just be a way to RP that.

Additionally make it an option to pick aspects for people that, say, worship the whole Elf pantheon, and a specific deity option for others who worship one above all others.

We already have this sort of implemented, being able to worship specific 'aspects' of the lower planes for example, so just add 'aspects' for the various combinations to the existing system and let people pick them via changing deities, same as they do now.

Just my 2 cents.

[telmarael]

Absolutely agreed on selectable aspects. Yet, there's one thing: aspects are tied (in almost all the cases*) to the god's potfolio, and making one aspect prefixed, and one aspect selectable would be an ideal solution.

*For example, i have no idea why Selune has the Heart and Home aspect, where as Sehanine Moonbow doesn't, although she is a part of the Elven pantheon that's responsible for the afterlife, just as Kelemvor is.

[Dunshine]

Fair points raised here, not so much the tone used in the original post though.

Let's keep it civil and use this thread to brainstorm some more on ideas to improve the system.

[Ebonstar]

Another way to raise for rogues or trickery deceit chars is make sure accessible altars are actual altars and not the sacrificial ones.

for example

the Temple of Mask has a wonderful temple built with one major flaw. its main altar only gives .1 for praying. Why because its not a consecrated altar. the only consecrated one is locked inside a quarter that gives access to its temple chamber and the big wonderful temple and leaves everyone else out who may not interact with the owner of said quarter. This said temple owner also gets access to all the locked rooms and chests and bonuses of the big wonderful temple as well by owning that one quarter.

this would be great if it would change.

make all temple altars be consecrated ones not just sacrificial. this alone will help with the main trouble of this post.

[TimeAdept]

Flatly:
Give all aspects god save raise.
Up Trickery to 0.5% per spot passed (200 saves to 100%)
Up Invention piety gain to 0.3% per Crafting Point used (15% per 50 CP. It may seem like much, but it's still limited by RL hours refresh of CP)
Up Magic to 0.4% per spell. (250 spells to 100%)
Enable a command to disable godsaves from different aspects.

I think all of these are great. I also think the Disguise godsave (if it stays and doesn't become the raise) should be coded to work for the next 5 ticks. If it's going to take 25% and be difficult to get back, it should at least for for awhile - 30 minutes seems pretty nice, rather than 6.

My followup Suggestion: All gods get 1 aspect ingrained, then PCs can choose one other aspect freely, similar to how clerics get to choose domains.

[Commie]

Just giving every deity 2 aspects would be sick.

[susitsu]

Fair points raised here, not so much the tone used in the original post though.

Let's keep it civil and use this thread to brainstorm some more on ideas to improve the system.

I think there's a fairly reasonable bit of tension on the topic. It's been one of the ones that despite massive amounts of civil discussion and suggestions, as far as I can tell, it's been outright ignored.

[Hunter548]

Just giving every deity 2 aspects would be sick.

Correcting some of the weird aspects, as well. A lot of them seem to be weird, or ignoring large portions of the deity's dogma, for the purposes of avoiding multiple aspects. I suppose this would be moot if you could pick your own aspect as I've occasionally heard suggested, though.

[Ridiculously Circuitous Plans]

Love the idea of toggle-able saves, would be amazingly useful for all aspects, particularly T+D and K+I, though I would LOVE it if I never had to burn another godsave on a 95% enchantment.

As another option for T+D, i've always thought it would be great if piety could be obtained through things like picking locks, disabling traps, setting traps, that sort of thing. Making the bonus 0.5 for disguises would certainly help as well. Maybe even make the save cost less here? 15% or something of that nature?

Hearth and Home could definitely use some love, particularly given that many characters who have RP reason to worship a H+H god might not have access to healing spells, and is therefore relegated to potions and salves. I've always thought it would be cool if H+H replaced the -0.1 decay each tick with a positive bonus when in rest areas such as homes and inns.

Knowledge and Invention is one that I've only tried a couple times, mostly because I found that it is nigh impossible to keep one's piety high if one does a lot of crafting. The godsave triggers on ludicrous things, almost never when you are actually risking materials. Maybe its possible to make the script only have a chance when using materials? Not sure if that would be possible.

Nature I haven't tried a great deal, but it seems both a lot more valuable now that planting space is limited and a lot more difficult to raise now that planting space is limited.

W+D seems fine, so long as its being used as the standard for changes to the others, IMO.

[Commie]

Have a druid, nature is really easy. I think it's 1% per plant picked.

[BrilliantInsanity]

While I understand the concept behind piety (presumably... to prevent high level clerics/druids running around casting high level miracles like it was nothing) I do not agree with its implementation at all, for reasons I will attempt to outline below: [Granted much of this will fall into NWN isn't PnP territory but it should hold some merit]

A cleric, of any deity, has set times of day they stop what they're doing to pray to their deity and implore them for miracles (spells) for the coming day. (mechanically represented in NWN by Resting) It's essentially a contract between them and the deity at the time of prayer, in exchange for their prostrations and worship, the deity has looked upon them favorably enough to grant them these miracles. They do not then need to further appease the deity to cast them as, even if a cleric fell from grace/lost their faith, they still can cast whatever spells they had prepared up to that point.

Many potent miracles (looking at you Resurrection) were balanced even in PnP through the fact they consumed thousands of gold worth of reagents (resurrection required Diamonds totaling a value of 10,000gp) on top of being an innately powerful enough cleric to cast the spells in the first place.

As mentioned, the mechanical act of resting in NWN is the same as prayer. It is not merely the act of sleeping, since wizards as part of their RP, can use rest to "memorize new spells from their spellbook" [can't do that while sleeping!], so too should this be the Cleric's time of prayer(renewal of their spells).

I would prefer to see the implementation of new spell components for divine spell casters for the upper end spells, and, if necessary, special coding for spells like raise dead and resurrection to require either 5k or 10k gold (respectively) in flat coin, or 5-10 diamonds (set diamonds to have a flat value of 1000) if you want it to be REALLY rare. Have these costs be paid by the caster at time of casting, and remove any requirements for the spells being cast from a scroll.

[Hunter548]

The component system is one of the worst aspects of P&P's magic system, to my mind, and not one that I think should be copied over. Adding a 5-10k requirement per cast of raise dead/ressurection would essentially require ever cleric to take 15-20k hard cash with them when they go adventuring.

[Baseili]

To play devils advocate, I'd suggest removing god raise entirely. Being saved from a loss of XP and a potential end to an adventure is incredibly useful but it is far too powerful when compared to other bonuses despite its low chance. Though admittedly the remaining bonuses do feel somewhat underwhelming.

Just off the top of my head, what about?

War & Destruction: Chance to gain haste for X amount of rounds.
Hearth and Home: Small piety gain within populated areas and a chance to gain Sanctuary for X rounds on being hit.
Nature: Small piety gain for killing hostiles in nature areas and chance for a divine spell to not be consumed.
Crafting & Knowledge: Chance on gaining additional crafting points instead of a saved failure.
Tricky & Deceit: Gain piety passively and when diguised but lost when disguise is broken or used on save.
Magic: Enchanting save plus chance for spell to be refreshed.

Some gods would need to have their aspects readjusted or have a secondary added to better reflect their portfolio. Eldath for example would need Hearth and Home added due to her healing and passives ways.

[BrilliantInsanity]

The component system is one of the worst aspects of P&P's magic system, to my mind, and not one that I think should be copied over. Adding a 5-10k requirement per cast of raise dead/ressurection would essentially require ever cleric to take 15-20k hard cash with them when they go adventuring.

By and large I would even agree with you, but for the sake of some middle ground between the system we have and a system that's actually enjoyable, I'd rather see the arguably two most potent miracles (bringing people back from literal death) being gated some other way than through the piety system. Frankly IMO, short of God saves, the piety system should just be removed.

If we're going to argue that the system remain in place then every divine spell caster should start with a non 1000lb portable altar to their deity so that you can RP worship and prayer on the go, as nothing says "Get F'd" more than the piety system on a high level cleric/druid and finding yourself unable to cast anymore high level spells without leaving behind whatever you're doing in order to go spend several IG hours staring at an altar. Or simply add a large, flat increase to piety every time you complete a rest to simulate the fact that you would have also spent time in prayer[like a wizard studying their spellbook]. Handwave it as the accepted norm.

[Diilicious]

I would prefer to see the implementation of new spell components for divine spell casters for the upper end spells, and, if necessary, special coding for spells like raise dead and resurrection to require either 5k or 10k gold (respectively) in flat coin, or 5-10 diamonds (set diamonds to have a flat value of 1000) if you want it to be REALLY rare. Have these costs be paid by the caster at time of casting, and remove any requirements for the spells being cast from a scroll.

oh my god i cant think of anything that I wouldnt want less than this.

[Astral]

Suggestions:

Knowledge
Finishing different products gives different piety rewards, according to the DC and/or CP requirement of the product, only if you crafted it by yourself.

Nature
Tending to different plants will give different piety rewards based to the size and/or rarity of the plant.

War
Less piety for a single mob, but a boss kill will reward all war/des characters in the party with a significant amount of 20%ish.

Hearth/Home
Add healing kits. They're too valuable in current economy so the case of people spamming kits to top the piety wont happen because sacrificing gold for piety would be more efficient at that point.

Trickery
Saves on broken disguise will have higher frequency to happen and will cost less piety.

[Commie]

I would prefer to see the implementation of new spell components for divine spell casters for the upper end spells, and, if necessary, special coding for spells like raise dead and resurrection to require either 5k or 10k gold (respectively) in flat coin, or 5-10 diamonds (set diamonds to have a flat value of 1000) if you want it to be REALLY rare. Have these costs be paid by the caster at time of casting, and remove any requirements for the spells being cast from a scroll.

oh my god i cant think of anything that I wouldnt want less than this.

I have to agree. I have no idea what purpose making 9th level spells or raise dead prohibitively expensive to cast would serve.