[Adonthell-general] Clerical/Priestly classes and abilities

[Andrew Phillips]

I've been thinking about our special abilities (magic) system and I'm
trying to puzzle out where a tradition cleric/priest/white mage would
fit, if anywhere at all.

In a party-based system, the Cleric is indispensible. In a
single-player game, the function of the Cleric might be more useful
for NPCs than in the Player. But I hesitate to leave the clerical
classes out of the game system entirely. The very idea of doing so
confuses me.

I suppose what I'm driving at is: do we implement a priest class for
Humans and Dwarves? Given what Kai has said previously about avoiding
an ability system where the races are outwardly different but inwardly
the same, I almost wonder if the answer should be 'no.'

With Elves, it's entirely possible for a good-aligned geomancer to
specialize in healing spells. Membership in certain religious factions
may in fact reward this. Given that all Half-Elves have the power to
develop considerable healing abilities, the priest class may be
implemented in specific faction memberships - for example, Druidic
Orders which deliberately neglect the Songs of Bird and Beast in order
to master the songs of the Trees.

Of course, there is another side to this question. I was assuming that
the priests in question were of good alignment who focus on the arts
of healing and of bringing peace to both living and dead. In the case
of dark priests - those who prefer mastering the dead rather than
bringing them peace and inverting the healing energies around them to
do damage - the magic system seems to require that they be Elves. No
other race has ready access to direct damage abilities.

In sum, it almost seems that the likelihood of meeting a priest in a
given race is correlated to that race's degree of abstraction. With
Dwarves, the only way I can think of to direct healing energies would
be by applying runes to items and then equipping those items for a
small benefit to health. However, given their higher base hardness,
the need almost does not exist. One might find some priests among the
more reflexively powerful Runebadgers.

Humans, because they can develop some healing potions, ointments, and
salves, and have the potential to develop some magickal skills at high
character levels, might have some capacity to become what we would
think of as clerics, but in these cases, a truly powerful cleric is
almost godlike in his abilities (as well as being more likely to be
evil), possibly combining knowledge of runecraft, alchemy, magick, and
songs.

Of course, I've already mentioned the potential in Elves and Half-Elves.

Andrew