Roderigo on Paladins

Ok, folks. I'm going to lay out some guidelines for removing people from the Crossing Paladin Guild.

First off, the Paladin Guild belongs to the Paladins. The front rooms are open to polite guests, but as would be the case anywhere, guests can make themselves unwelcome and be shown the door. I'd expect Paladins to be aware of their guest status in a similar manner when visiting other guilds.

Pretty much ANY IC reason for considering someone an unfit guest to the guild is acceptable reason to remove them, although I do ask that Paladins err on the side of restraint whenever possible with this. The only real exceptions I can think of to it being generally permissible to toss someone are: "just cause I wanted to" and "I don't like him/her" (unless there's also another reason that's better). I know that what is and isn't an IC reason is a grey area. I'll try to address some of the notable examples. Also, just to be clear, although certain issues happen to involve Thieves specifically, these guidelines are not meant to single out any particular guild. The same standard of behavior is expected of all guests.

False guild titles: obviously we don't RP that we see words over someone's head, but the title does imply that the person is attempting to appear to be what the title says. It is a legitimate IC choice for a Paladin to take offense to someone pretending to have earned status in the Paladin Guild when they have not. Yes, from a game play standpoint, the thief wearing a Paladin Guild title has earned the ability to do that, but they have not earned true status from the Paladin Guild. I would definitely ask that Paladins politely ask IC and/or in whispers that the Thief in question cease the impersonation and give them a chance to comply before tossing them. It's quite likely they are just used to wearing the title, and it may not occur to them at the time. But, if that is done and the Thief continues to wear a Paladin Guild title (impersonate a Paladin) in the guildhouse, I would not object to an ejection.

"Bad Reputation": If the person is currently a wanted criminal, this is a non-issue because the armored guards will automatically toss them out. If this is a person who can get into the guild, but you are aware of them committing frequent crimes or they have attacked you or someone you know, this is an acceptable IC reason to toss them out. Keep in mind that IC, shopkeepers and NPCs are people too, so stealing from them is also a crime for this purpose, however, please don't get carried away on this point unless someone makes a habit of being blatant about the pilfering/pickpocketing of NPCs. The goal here isn't to make it impossible to play a Thief or someone else who steals, just to make our guild reasonably clear of obvious criminals and miscreants. Also, on the past history issue, please try to give them the benefit of the doubt if it was just an instance or two of a relatively minor offense, especially if it was a fairly long time ago.

Disrespect: Badmouthing the Paladin Guild or Paladins in general is grounds for a toss certainly. If someone walks into your house and insults your family, they're getting kicked out. Debating a point politely is not grounds for a toss normally unless it's blatantly contradicting well-known Paladin teachings. "Stealing is OK" is not something wise to say in the Paladin Guild. "Vorclaf should do more about the condition of the Middens" is not bad, although "Vorclaf must die" is since Paladins don't go for treason. Insulting someone is grounds for getting booted, although if it's not really obvious that you'd be insulted, please make it clear and give em a chance to tone it down before applying the boot.

General Harassment or Disruptiveness: Generally ok to boot em for this, but again, please make an effort to make them aware it's disturbing you, and give them a chance to tone it down before removing them.

Special Case - Tossing out another Paladin: This can be done, but this should not be done for just any IC reason since it's that person's "house" too. History of trouble-making and past crimes, etc., shouldn't really be applied here since that will be dealt with by the soul system, the guild hierarchy, or by the GMs in very extreme situations. Serious insults or unpaladinly talk or behavior are legitimate reasons, but again, let's try to talk it out politely first please. Harassment or disruptive behavior should be dealt with the same way as you would with a non-paladin.

My overall message here is, the Paladin Guild is the Paladins' house, and they have a right to feel safe and respected there. What I don't want to see is Paladins being bullies about this. *Please* have a reason other than "because I can" to use it. If we find someone routinely doing it just for giggles, I'm going to come down hard. Other than that, it's going to be a NO GM situation. Yes, you have a lot of leeway to use this ability, but I'd like to see an effort made to use other methods (polite talking, especially) used first. If that doesn't work, REMOVE as you see fit.

-Roderigo, Windbag of Rutilor

P.S. Remember that you never *have* to REMOVE someone, it's just an option available. If you'd rather not, feel free to disregard the ability. I personally don't even remember how to do it and never actually did use it; I'd need to look it up <g>.

Category	The Paladins (19)
Topic	General Discussions (3)
By	DR-RODERIGO from PLAY.NET
On	Aug 23, 2002 at 11:31
Subject	Defenses Against "Sneak" Attacks (1266)

<<Way to defend against backstab = hide.

That's the only one I know...

And paladins aren't very good at it... >>

I'm aware of this situation, and I'm currently in the process of discussing/proposing some possible options for enhancing paladins' abilities to defend against concealed attacks of many sorts, including the above example. One thing I'd like to do is to tie this in with our "hostile intent" sense in some reasonable way. This is still in the "on the drawing board" stage, so I'm not going to give you a "soon" on it yet, but you can rest assured the P-team is taking an interest in this.

-Roderigo

Category	The Paladins (19)
Topic	Game Master/Official Announcements (1)
By	DR-RODERIGO from PLAY.NET
On	Aug 7, 2002 at 23:46
Subject	Three Weddings and a Funeral (14)

Okiedokie, here are the remaining "coming soon" items I promised when the soul revision came out. Also one other minor addition that turned up in the meantime.

As the goofy title implies, three of these things basically give you a bit more freedom (well, maybe "freedom" and wedding don't quite mesh, but you get the idea...) and one, while not totally negative does include a restriction that not everyone will thank me for. It does fit in with the way I feel soul should work though. Anyway, here goes:

1) A paladin who catches someone attempting to steal from them will have 24 real-world hours to attack in response without suffering a first-strike soul penalty, should they choose to do so. If the theft occurs in a justice zone, there is still the option to accuse instead (and as a law-abiding citizen, that's probably the best choice for a paladin, but you play your character as you so choose). Currently, the time period in which you may accuse successfully has not changed from the way it was before. That may or may not be increased later on. Bear in mind that if you choose to attack in an area with justice in force, you may still be arrested for murder even though you won't be penalized for first-strike. This is a soul change, not a justice change. Please note also, if you successfully accuse the person, you may not also attack them. One punishment to a customer =)

2) A paladin who is attacked by someone will now also have 24 real-world hours to respond without suffering a first-strike penalty. So, for instance, if someone takes a pot shot at you and runs away, you can fight back without soul penalty even if it takes you a few hours to track em down.

3) Paladins may now fight in the barbarian arenas without worrying about first-strike penalties. While it's not technically a challenge, we've decided that it's honorable, voluntary combat, so we're not going to penalize you for it.

4) Tending bleeders for soul benefit. As I mentioned before, this is now limited. Formerly, you could tend as many bleeders as you could get your hands on as fast as you could, and you gained a bit of soul from each tend. As of now, you can only tend once for the soul benefit before having to wait a while to gain soul from it again. I did lessen the blow here somewhat in that you get a lot more benefit from the one tend than you did from a single tend before, however, if you were in the habit of tending quite a few times at once, you will find that it's harder to get as much out of it. I realize this makes it harder to regain soul quickly, but with the new system, I feel it's necessary to make it more challenging, and tending was always somewhat overboard.

We *will* be adding new ways to gain soul state. Maece and I have been discussing several ideas, and there is also an idea on the table to possibly work with another guild on a feature which would benefit both, our side of it being soul.

Enjoy.

I will now slink back into the dark and attempt to cook up something new for you.

-Roderigo

Category	Abilities, Skills and Magic (4)
Topic	General Magic Feedback - CORE ISSUES -(CAST, PREPARE, HARNESS, PERCEIVE) (37)
By	DR-RODERIGO from PLAY.NET
On	Jul 31, 2002 at 21:59
Subject	Re: Worship me as god please :) (2927)

<<I am checking into things, to be sure everything is working right. The issue isn't whether you can harness 999, or 1000 -- the issue has to do with how much room power is being adjusted. It may not seem like a big deal, but it is. Mana settings are how we keep Magic balanced in the overall scheme of things. If you limit mana, you limit spellcasting. If you have a gross excess of mana, and can rip off 100-prep spells without flinching on attunement, we have some problems.

Valdrik>>

Due to the concerns Valdrik voiced about the maximum power adjustment in a room, Glyph of Mana has now been changed to only work if there is not another GoM currently active in the room. If this happpens, no power will be used up in the attempt.

-Roderigo

Category	The Paladins (19)
Topic	Game Master/Official Announcements (1)
By	DR-RODERIGO from PLAY.NET
On	Jul 19, 2002 at 00:06
Subject	Soulstone Upgrade (13)

As promised, soulstones have been revised and upgraded to account for the changes to the soul system.

The same messaging that you're already familiar with is still used for soul state, however the ranges have been shifted to make them more helpful. Specifically, all three shades of white are now "positive" soul states, and chalky is now the neutral state. The cutoff for pristine white now corresponds to the "no drift" zone, so there should be less confusion about that issue.

A new feature has also been added to give you some information on your power pool. The first thing I want to stress about this is that it is a measure of *how full* your pool is and *not* how big it is.

You will come to get a feel for how much you can expect to have in your full power pool with a given level of soul. Also, as you know, various mysterious factors cause the pool size to vary from paladin to paladin, so keep in mind that equally full pools for paladin A and paladin B may not have the same amount of total power in them even if both paladins have the same exact soul state.

Unlike the soul measurement, this is not a reflection of how "good" a paladin you are. It's simply a gauge of how close to or far from having a full power pool you are, based on your current soul state. Improving your soul state may actually make your pool appear less full, but that's because you will have made more room available for power. You won't have lost any power, and over time you will accumulate more until the larger pool fills up.

Everyone let out a deep breath!

-Roderigo

Category	The Paladins (19)
Topic	Game Master/Official Announcements (1)
By	DR-RODERIGO from PLAY.NET
On	Jul 1, 2002 at 22:09
Subject	Soul System Revision (12)

The long-awaited soul system revision is here! Effective immediately, the basic structure of soul in DragonRealms has been changed. Today, we are releasing the core of the new soul system. Over the next few weeks, I plan to bring out a few more changes that make sense but are not required to get the main system in place. Further down the road, additional enhancements can be expected as the game and the Paladin guild in particular continue to grow and evolve.

I had three major goals for the revision to the soul system:

-1. Make soul logical and in character. Soul state is supposed to reflect the Paladin's degree of righteousness (or choose your favorite word along those lines). It makes sense that "good deeds" improve soul state and "dishonorable deeds" harm soul state. The old system reflected this, however, it also lowered soul state when the Paladin used legitimate abilities such as Lead and Glyph of Light. This did not make sense to me. A Paladin who LEADs others in righteous battle has done nothing wrong, and the soul system should work accordingly.

-2. Make existing Paladin abilities more valuable by making the cost for using them less prohibitive. Obviously there must be some means of limiting how often special abilities can be used, otherwise they would be "always on" and too powerful, however, the old method caused many Paladins to save things like Glyph of Light and Lead for dire emergencies only. I believe they were meant to be used more often than that.

-3. Provide a framework for future guild development that will allow new features to be both in character and used enough to be valuable.

I believe the new system accomplishes all three of these.

Ok, so what has changed?

The guts of it this: Soul is now ONLY a measurement of a Paladin's righteousness, holiness, etc. Honorable and dishonorable deeds will impact soul exactly as they did before. The difference here is that using special Paladin abilities will not drain your soul anymore. There is a new feature to handle that part. I'll refer to it as the "paladin power pool."

Basically, the power pool is how much juice you've got available to use your special abilities such as LEAD, the Glyphs that have costs, etc. For now on, when you use one of these abilities, you'll drain the cost from your power pool and leave your soul intact. This will also be case with new abilities that have a cost. Spells are not fueled from the power pool. They'll continue to work off of harness as they always did.

The size of the power pool is based on several things, but soul state is the most critical factor in it. A bad or just average soul is not good enough to provide any power. The better your soul state is, the more power you'll have available to you to use your special abilities. Please keep in mind that this is not taking anything away. You always needed to have a better than neutral soul to use these abilities. The logic here is that using your abilities will not sully your soul, however, if your soul is not pure, you have not demonstrated your worthiness to use those abilities.

I think most of you will like the change to the two-pool method because it should allow you to use your abilities more without having to pay for it by sitting around tending bleeders, etc. every time you do. Additionally, if you take good care of your soul, you will tend to have somewhat more power available for special abilities than you used to under the old system. Your power pool is also something that grows as you advance in the guild, but it's set up so that nobody will be a "loser" because of the change. At earlier circles, you may have only the same amount of power available as under the old system, but nobody will have less than they used to.

Another nice feature of the new pool is that, unlike soul, you don't have to do anything to get it back except wait (assuming your soul is in good shape). This power pool refills itself gradually over time, similar to harness or fatigue, except it takes a lot longer to refill than those do. Remember though, your soul will always be a big factor in your power pool size. If your soul is average or worse, you'll never have anything in your power pool until you patch up your soul. If your soul's good but could be better, then you'll be able to have something in your power pool, but it won't be as much as it would be if you improved your soul state. The pool will only refill to the maximum size possible based upon your current soul state.

A few things to be aware of:

There is and already was an aspect to soul that some of you may not have known. Unless soul state is very good or very bad, it drifts slowly toward neutral. The logic behind this is that Paladins should have to do occasional good deeds to remain pure of soul, rather than resting on their laurels, and minor misdeeds can be forgiven over time. The range of soul states that this occurs for has been expanded a bit. Ultimately, it's likely that soul will drift toward neutral even from the best it can be. We'd like to add some additional good deeds to do before we make that change though. One reason I mentioned this is that you may see situations where you have no power available to use for special abilities even though your soul was above neutral recently and you did nothing dishonorable since then. This can and will happen because of the drift feature. This was already true before, but I think it may become more obvious with the new system and wanted everyone to be aware.

It will be possible to have a very good soul and have an empty power pool. This is expected. All this means is that you'll have to wait for the pool to refill (either because you used abilities which emptied the pool or because your soul wasn't very good and you just did a bunch of good deeds to improve it). This is intentional and nothing to be concerned about. If your soul is good, your pool will gradually refill on its own.

There are a few things that tie into this that I expect to release "soon." I don't use the word "soon" lightly. I'm shooting for within a few weeks. I really think that's doable, but if I don't make it by then, it won't be because I didn't try. These are:

-a change to make a caught stealing attempt against a Paladin count as an attack against the Paladin for soul purposes, i.e., if you catch someone in your pockets and choose to attack them for it, that's not a soul hit for first attack. Keep in mind that laws will still apply wherever they did before, so this won't prevent you from getting arrested or change anything resulting from arrest.

-a change to extend the period in which a Paladin can choose to fight back against someone who attacked them without the Paladin getting a first attack soul hit. This will include the above stealing situation. Right now the paladin only has a few minutes to do something. If someone attacks and runs away, this can be a problem. We're looking to increase it to something along the lines of an Elanthian day.

-An upgrade to soulstones, which will allow Paladins to get some information about their power pools as well as soul. I may also change the soul messaging a bit to make "neutral" a bit more obvious.

-Tending bleeders for soul will be limited. Currently, Paladins can sit around with a person who has several bleeders and improve soul a great deal in a short period of time. That's going to go away. Tending will still be something that will help soul, but it will only grant a limited amount of soul improvement in given period of time. Since this is something that certain Paladins have counted on for a long time, I'm giving a bit of warning about this change before it happens. I'll wait at least a week from now before making this change live. After that, it will be a lot harder to clean up a really mangled soul. This is intentional and ties in with one of the purposes for the whole soul system change: soul state should be a reflection of the good and bad deeds of a Paladin. Now that soul is not used up by using special abilities, it will only be necessary to do a lot to improve soul state when something actually dishonorable has been done. It shouldn't be extremely easy to make up for that. It will take some time.

-We do plan to develop additional "good deeds" to benefit soul. Those are not among the things I expect to get out within a few weeks though. Any ideas you have for some of these are welcome.

I hope you all enjoy the new system. I think it's good for the guild, and the changes should be beneficial for most of you. It's important to have this in place because GM Maece and I are planning to place more emphasis on the identity of the guild and defining the role of the Paladin in Elanthia. Paladins will be expected to hold themselves to a high standard. For those that live up to it, there will be rewards, but that must be earned. Being a Paladin is not easy, nor is it meant to be. Hopefully it will be something to be proud of though.

-Roderigo

Category	The Paladins (19)
Topic	Game Master/Official Announcements (1)
By	DR-RODERIGO from PLAY.NET
On	Apr 19, 2002 at 23:45
Subject	New Paladin Advancement Requirements (2)

Greetings Paladins,

As you've probably heard, guild advancement requirements are undergoing a revision. The following are the new requirements for our guild. They'll go live when they've been coded into the system and checked appropriately. We'll try to give you as much advance notice as possible when we have a good idea of when that will be.

I'll comment briefly on a couple of points here:

The physical combat requirements were beefed up quite a bit. I think this is appropriate for a warrior guild, which our guild is.

The shield requirement represents what I consider to be a compromise. In some ways, I think it would be fitting to put a substantial shield requirement in place for the entirety of a paladin's career. This would really be pretty harsh for someone who has devoted a lot of time to two-handed weapons and not much to shield. What we settled on is a moderate shield requirement through circle 30. After that, there is a secondary armor requirement. Those that wish to use shield to satisfy this can do so. The alternative is to train a second type of armor.

The overall lore requirements are lower than the existing ones. I'm going to take a wild guess that most of you will not be in tears over this <g>. It is still possible that paladin-specific lore skills will be developed, but we're not introducing any at this point.

The magic requirements are still fairly modest. Some paladins choose to emphasize magic to a greater degree than is required. That is, of course, a legitimate choice, and they are free to do so.

Darius is to blame for any changes that are considered unpleasant. I'm just the hired help.

<stomps back into his Development cave>

-Roderigo

*************************************************

 ARMOR SKILLSET

 Shield
 1-10 2 ranks
 11-30 2 ranks

 Armor
 1-10 4 ranks primary
 11-30 5 ranks primary
 31-70 5 ranks primary
       3 ranks secondary (starting from 60 ranks)
 71-100 5 ranks primary
        4 ranks secondary
 101+ 6 ranks primary
      5 ranks secondary

 Note: Secondary Armor may be Shield

 WEAPONS SKILLSET

 Weapons
 1-10 3 ranks primary
 11-30 4 ranks primary
       2 ranks secondary (starting from 0 ranks)
 31-70 4 ranks primary
       3 ranks secondary
 71-100 5 ranks primary
        3 ranks secondary
        3 ranks tertiary (starting from 0 ranks)
 101+ 5 ranks primary
      4 ranks secondary
      3 ranks tertiary

 Parry
 1-10 3 ranks
 11-30 3 ranks
 31-70 4 ranks
 71-100 4 ranks
 101+ 5 ranks

 Multiple Opponents
 1-10 2 ranks
 11-30 2 ranks
 31-70 2 ranks
 71-100 3 ranks
 101+ 4 ranks

 LORE SKILLSET

 1-10 1 rank Teaching
         1 rank Scholarship
         1 rank in each of 3 other Lores
 11-30 2 ranks Teaching
         2 ranks Scholarship
         2 ranks in highest 1 other Lore
 31-70 2 ranks in each of highest 4 Lores (4th Lore starting at 10 ranks)
 71-100 3 ranks in each of highest 3 Lores
 101+ 3 ranks in each of highest 4 Lores (4th Lore starting at 90 ranks)

 SURVIVAL SKILLSET

 1-10 1 rank First Aid
         1 rank in each of 5 other Survivals
 11-30 1 rank First Aid
         1 rank in highest 3 other Survivals
 31-70 1 rank in each of highest 4 Survivals
 71-100 2 ranks in each of highest 4 Survivals
 101+ 2 ranks in each of highest 6 Survivals (5th and 6th Survivals starting at 10 ranks)

 Note: Hiding, Stalking and Stealing do not count for Paladin advancement requirement purposes

 MAGIC SKILLSET

 1-10 1 rank in each of 3 Magics
 11-30 1 rank in each of 3 Magics
 31-70 1 rank in each of 3 Magics
 71-100 1 rank in each of 3 Magics
 101+ 2 ranks in each of 3 Magics