A Damnable Idea

If a good kills a good he suffers damnation and all its ill effects.

If a neutral behaves in an evil way, it has been said, the heavens will rain down upon them.

What if damnation could be applied by immortals to neutrals in those certain cases?

Furthermore, what if damnation shifted alignment for its duration by one slot?

A healer suffering from damnation is considered neutral for the duration.

A gnome suffering from damnation is considered evil for the duration.

Do not get me wrong, I know most players can easily avoid damnation. As most would desire to.

However, in the case of a player wanting to play a Kadar (evil faerie) or sprigan (evil gnome) for instance, there remains no steps a character can make toward the goal.

The Damnation affect could also be applied to evils who are found acting benevolent too often, Damnation to an evil should be harsh as evil gods are unmerciful.

Goods suffer the most from damnation, as they can no longer request or pray. Which leads me to the meat of the Idea;

Damnation should affect reputation.

A good who suffers from damnation should have reputation lowered by one across the board. If reputation has a value of 1-5, no good suffering from damnation could hope for better than good relations with other races.

A neutral suffering from damnation should have reputation lowered by one across the board, and lowered by two when dealing with warm hearted races like elves, faeries, and storm giants.

An evil suffering from damnation would have reputation dropped by two across the board, and only by one when dealing with those same warm hearted races.

Just sharing some thoughts. Will read replies later.

Sometimes I sit and wonder how do you come up with those ideas? :P

Its fun for me to think of what a five becoming a three will do. :search:

46 minutes ago, Fool_Hardy said:

A healer suffering from damnation is considered neutral for the duration.

This would make life difficult for any good communer.  In the case of healers, you'll reduce them to basically just shield block and parry and running for their lives.  Damnation is currently three times longer than a certain qskill that'll ruin your day.  So that's 150 hours (75 real life minutes, mind you) of doing nothing other than staring at your screen while cowering in a corner.  Even if the killing of a good were intentional, that's very, very harsh.

I think if you want to roleplay Kaddar or spriggan, pick the closest race available for said alignment and apply for a custom race?

See @Fool_Hardy, even newbies get it right.

The suggestion seems to be a method to offer additional alignments for good/neutral races, but it offers no way to move in the other direction on the wheel: a neutral is unable to become good, an evil unable to become neutral/good. It just seems skewed with this implementation, and I honestly feel like alignment shifts should be monumental events in terms of roleplay required, not just some shallow game mechanic.

EDIT:

I am not a newbie :(

I just haven't played this particular mud for ages...

Being outcast from your align used to usually come with some kind of negative. Lose a skill or spell. I don't know if still does or not...but I think allowing people to basically be any align they want is not a good idea. We shouldn't just willy nilly have evil gnomes, and evil storm giants. It destroys the integrity of the race's RP. Align ultimately is a huge function on RP. I love great RP and would love to see someone do an evil gnome, or storm giant gone bad-- but we can't let them become normal, because then what's the purpose of the different races the game has?

I do, however, like the idea of fluid align to some degree. But being able to change your align with a few kills here and there? Not a fan. It would have to be alot more severe. Many actions, PK and RP, that shape your character's alignment. You choose to do one of these quests that involves helping people? + good align. You kill someone for their armor? nudge towards evil. Small things-- giving people food, + good. Someone starving in front of you? +Evil. 

But at the end of the day it would need to be balanced by some mechanic. For instance, gnomes might be incapable of being evil or good because of their fascination with the world. If they don't stay close to neutral, they lose that fascination and drop int, and lose a portion of their mana. The more evil or good they become the worse it gets.

Elves souls could be bound to goodness, and their very being starts to die if they commit sins. 

A fire giant who is good might start to go out and cool,  and eventually turn to rock and die. We could say they are fueled by their harted and the darkness of their souls.

You could iink certain skills and spells to be stronger when you are more evil and more good. A cleric who has never taken a life of any sort whatsoever in hundreds of hours of play, maybe even never attacked anyone ever-- might be able to kill someone with a dispel evil for the first time. :D The more evil you are the harder you are hit by wrath, ray, etc, but the faster your malform feeds, etc.

I like the premise of this idea - but I think you would need something more to manage it.

People shouldn't 'rubbish' ideas just because it is different to what we currently have - looking at you @f0xx.  The mud wouldn't be what it is today without people pushing for changes throughout its life time, and if we want to it to continue to live, it will do so by changing, not by staying the same.

I'd love to see a more flexible alignment system - Something like Alignment points.

-10 Align - Evil

0 Align - Neutral

+10 Align - Good

You start off with your natural score - and then it gets adjusted throughout your characters life - with required amendments + punishments along the way.  Tie this in with RP points via Journals and Logs, and you have a system that rewards good RP further, and means that people actually have to RP Good / Neutral / Evil - or face risk.

Have a system whereby certain abilities are slightly weaker if you aren't within a couple of points of your appropriate RP score, or certain punishments automatically kick in at +/-5 points from where you should be etc.

I appreciate this is spit-balling - and would need fleshing out - but I was really impressed by certain aspects of the recent Storm Giant Crusader to Vampire Conversion - and even more so after reading the journals etc that lead to it . 

I'd love to see a coded system that supported things like this, and as I'm a bit of a stickler for RP, I'd love to see a system that also impacted people who don't RP their align properly - without it being as heavy handed as an outcast.   Play your Neutral a little to 'evilish'? End up at -5 align with extra lag on your recall and a +ac debuff.  Get yourself back on track through some decent Logs / Journals and see it disappear.  This encourages, and even teaches people what the Immortal staff consider to be align appropriate RP.

2 hours ago, English lad said:

People shouldn't 'rubbish' ideas just because it is different to what we currently have - looking at you @f0xx.  The mud wouldn't be what it is today without people pushing for changes throughout its life time, and if we want to it to continue to live, it will do so by changing, not by staying the same.

I am all for changes, as long as they are well thought and presented, not random changes made just for the sake of change.

The flexible alignment system has always been a bad idea.

Alignment is like religion - it should be changed only as a punishment or very good RP.

You see, the whole MUD is build on the foundations of Alignment. It should dictate how your character acts, not vice versa. The idea is that the Dungeon Master i.e. the IMMs should have a general idea of how you are building your character so they can easily decide whether what you are doing is within your RP or is simply driven by OOC motives.

Having flexible alignment system will make managing the mud. Not just that, but other characters that interact with you should know how to treat you. Being neutral today and evil tomorrow, then neutral again the week after, will make things very hard and messy.

How are you even going to punish/reward someone if there are flexible alignments?

Characters do things based on their RP. If your RP is  good, then you will sometimes make decisions that harm your characters because that's his RP. On the other hand, many characters twist or even break RP so they are not put in such situations. You can not be a zealous purity follower only when there are weak Evils around.

Change is good Yes, even necessary at times, agreed.

Flex-alignment would not benefit this mud or make it grow in my opinion. It would be a huge amount of work for an unmeasurable gain. Not only would it be a huge job to design and implement it would also require massive upkeep from the staff.

You can already achieve almost anything through RP, why does this need to be hard coded? I just don't see the benefits, it would totally change the game almost out of recognition.

If something should be changed is not aligment, but ethos.

It should show your character "aligment" to order/chaos not law/chaos.

Having a lawfull evil character that has his rigid code of conduct but can't break the laws of their enemies is a bit frustrating.

The reverse is having someone like a Lawfull evil who lies and cheats and breaks his word just because his word is not the law.

but lawful evil would not break the laws...they would use them to their advantage in unethical ways.

In FL, Kyzarius is absolutely right.  Straight from the help file:

Lawful Evil:

Deceptive and manipulative,** lawful evils augment their own power

through their use of laws and circumstances**.  Direct confrontation

is seldom necessary when there are more efficient and clandestine

ways to solve one's problems.  When pressed, however, lawful evils

are prone to violently shedding their guise of unwillingness, in

sudden and unexpected displays of force.  **They will not break laws

even when it appears safe to do so**, both out of the possibility of

the abrupt arrival of Justices and to avoid the appearance of being

blasphemous to the gods of order.

But in other settings such as D&D, I refer back to the Palladium parallels:

Lawful Evil (originally Aberrant):

1. Always keeps his word of honor.

2. Lies and cheats those not worthy of his respect.

3. May or may not kill an unarmed foe.

4. Never kill an innocent but will harm, harass or kidnap.

5. Never torture for pleasure but will to extract information.

6. Never kills for pleasure - always has a reason.

7. May or may not help someone in need.

8. Respects honor and self-discipline. Has no time for the law.

9. Will work with others to attain his goals.

10. May take dirty money.

11. Never betray a friend.

Having a floating alignment system in FL, while possible, isn't feasible without restructuring nearly everything from equipment to classes.

@Kyzarius

Yeah, like a Trump, Clinton, Bush, or Nixon. :)

I am not sure if that was a jab at politicians in general, or just politicians that you do not approve of, but I would actually place all of them in the Neutral alignment rather than Evil (e.g Stalin, Hitler, Pinochet, etc). There's people being selfish assholes, and then there's people being outright evil.

15 minutes ago, Fool_Hardy said:

@Kyzarius

Yeah, like a Trump, Clinton, Bush, or Nixon. :)

are blowjobs unethical? i geuss....

1 minute ago, Kyzarius said:

are blowjobs unethical? i geuss....

Depends on which Clinton you ask.

Just now, Lexi said:

Depends on which Clinton you ask.

hahah zininng!

I always thought it would be neat if we pushed character creation back, which is basically what flex align is.

You could basically just have the char creation process ask what race...then you're in the game. You go join a guild in game, you pick your align by making decisions in your first 5-20 levels, etc. At some point it becomes mostly fixed because the weight of a previous decisions is hard to change with an occasional decision here or there.