So I had a thought, maybe instead of Paladins getting bonuses from whatever god you followed, maybe the bonuses are more focused around Pray.
What if you could Pray to a specific god, and that god would give you a specific bonus for a limited amount of time.
For instance, what if you pray to Erisar, your strength is temporarily boosted by your piety, so you would get a substantial bonus to physical damage while prayed.
Praying to Aalynor may give you additional damage against undead and maybe increases the success of turn.
Praying to Dilanis may give you additional mana regen and a bonus to healing effects.
That way as a paladin you could pray as needed to step into whatever role you needed to be at the time and be more effective at it.
Some of the prays might come with a penalty if they are too strong, for instance maybe if you pray to Erisar it lowers your healing by 20% or something to compensate for the extra damage. Dilanis could do the opposite, elevating your healing ability but lowering your damage temporarily.
Paelina could double the armor and block value of your shield giving a nice bonus for a tanking paladin and allow for like a shield slam build, if you want to give paladins an ability like that.
Now the only issue with this would be what would you get for following a particular god? Maybe it would increase that particular prayer to a higher level. As a paladin or priest they should believe in all the gods so praying to Erisar when you follow Tilnar should still have effect but just not as much.
I like the thinking, but as a Paladin or a Cleric, you’re bound by the ‘holiness’ and ‘devout’. You just pray to your deity.
But I guess if we’re thinking of believing in a multi-deity ‘generation’ of thinking, perhaps its plausible. Just definitely different from the original.
I don’t think the change would make massive change vs the original game. Priest/Paladin could still be devoted to one diety, receive the follower bonus and such. It was mandatory for priest/paladin to be follower to advance in levels if i"m not completely mistaken. And everyone knew there are more than one diety. Not to mention the shared respect between dieties, unless ofcourse you go for Kyorl or something.
One thing you might want to consider here is adding some kind of timer between switching prayers. Certain cooldown, perhaps even once per day or something in those lines.
Another thing could be that each Diety gives let say X, Y and Z perks when follower/prayed.
If you are follower to Dilanis for example, you get X and Y for being follower, and Z when prayed.
If you however pray to Errisar, you keep X and Y from Dilanis and only get Z from Errisar for some extra damage during hunt or something in those lines.
That way we won’t end up forcing all paladin tank’s to go for certain diety due to the respective tanking perks and still be able to perform equally or almost equally with the rest.
Well I am not sure the exact timer on prayer, but didn’t pray have like a 5 min cooldown or something to that effect and then it lasted for 2 minutes? something like that. I am thinking the bonus only lasts for the duration of the prayer, and the inherent 5 min cooldown should keep it balanced, but then you can kind of switch prayers as needed during a hunt and its already got cooldowns to to keep it in check.
I would probably be against prayers overlapping that would probably be too strong so the perks should just last the duration of prayer. I was thinking that the perks would just last for the duration of the prayer uptime, not linger. To increase paladins power as you tier up tho, you could change the duration of pray and make it more like berserk, so that as you increase in tier, the longer your pray stays active. I think you started with pray in original Nexus but you could make it their level 10 ability, and then have it start at 1:30 seconds active duration on a 5 min cooldown, and have it increase about 10 seconds per level. Those numbers subject to tinkering if the cooldown was longer, I am not sure what it was.
That said you could still have a follower aspect, so that whatever god your following increases the effectiveness when you pray to them. But generally you would think a religious character would believe in the other gods as well if they are following one, so I think it would make fine RP sense to be able to pray to the others, but you would just receive baseline blessings from the one you weren’t following and a nicer bonus from the one you were following.
You could also do something like you said, lets say you follow Erisar and pray to Dilanis. Maybe it gives you a partial damage increase from Erisar as well as the bonus healing from Dilanis, since you follow Erisar you get a small bonus from him whenever you pray. Then if you pray to Erisar you get a damage bonus for praying to him, plus your follower bonus so it increases your damage more significantly. So yea pray might give you X bonus and following gives you Y bonus and they both activate when you pray.
One thing to keep in mind is which is the main role or exclusivity of each class in terms of mechanics and roleplay. I did recall high level paladins and clerics would call a lot of the attention of the gods affecting loads of situations throughout roleplays.
Paladins are defenders of the people, in which situation or history is Aalynor nexus at for the relaunch?
Nethra (paladin) played by my friend as well as my monk were usually asked to main tank vs powerful hybrids because her pally would also be able to heal more vs those insane spell damages. So when spells hit her she could detraumatize herself and receive healding from others.
Paladins could have a lay on hands mechanic or aura mechanic. Something not too complex. Aalynor nexus was a fairly simple game and imho succesful in that because it was very well rounded. Adding too many powers to everyone will make it hard later to nerf it. People will complain and leave the game. Best way to improve classes at first would be through items.
I really like the aura which could be a permanent bonus like the bards songs, affecting the whole room. Paladin would lose the aura if he does wrong things against his ethos. Aura could be gained at attunement/choosing of his deity.
Items: Are the least efficient way of controlling balance in a game like this. Feeling item starved for things like DT/Heal/Renew were the methods for creating economic value and purpose in the game that wasn’t just centered around leveling. It also helped keep a balance of paladins/bards/clerics as a needed part of combat. I would be more tempted to make AI based characters that provide healing, rather than making it so every class can sit in a room and level. Really I think all of us have a vested interest in the social aspect of the game, because it’s not the super sweet graphics. It’s that same thrill of playing D&D but with more accessibility. Additionally more freedom; the players should be crafting the world while myself as the programmer should be listening to balancing issues.
Mechanics: The real success of D&D or other D&D based products is the flexibility and subclasses as far as mechanics go. I think if we’re careful to not make one class so over powered in a specific mechanic or option/sub class, it means that people will only play if they really want to try something different, but the simplicity of the default base class should still be there. For instance if we added seals to Paladins, they could be based on gods or on quests, but they would need to adjust the paladins mechanics appropriately. Maybe less armor, different weapons, different spell effectiveness. Balance can be maintained without just simply stacking on more abilities with different mechanics. Just a thought.
Personally I loved all the hybrid classes and there’s not much I’d be interested in changing unless necessary. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel and cause new problems. There needs to be solid reasons behind whatever change we consider and implement and not just because “it’d be cool”.