favor
(This is another repost. This article was dredged up from my original notes on the idea of a ‘favor’ system for handling a player’s standing with the gods. It was originally imported into my personal blog in December of ‘06, but was probably written well before that. It is being preserved here for historical reasons.)
Favor starts at zero, is capped at 100, and is allowed to go arbitrarily negative.
Messages
96.. presence
76..95 very close
10..75
-1..9 brief rumble
-14..-2 loud rumble, displeased
-29..-15 bolt
..-30 death
When receiving divine punishment, your favor will be reset to zero - as the vented frustration has been, well, vented.
Skills
blessing - casting buffing spells
devotion - generating worship energy
healing - casting healing magic
judgement - casting nukes and debuffs
prayer - skill with individual high level prayers
repentance - ability to regain favor
saccrifice - used in certain spells
knowledge - know the teachings, predict changes in favor
learn new prayers
The blessing, healing, judgement, and saccrifice skills are primarily used when casting spells. There might be other uses for them later.
The devotion skill is a measurement of how much worship energy you produce, and therefore is an indication of how much interest the gods will take in your actions. This should be our two-edged sword:
- it increases a player’s chances of receiving the answer to their prayer, and improves the strength of their answers
- it also increases the amount of favor lost for transgression
The repentance skill is a measurement of how good the player is at getting out of the spiritual doghouse. It should act as a logarithmic bonus to favor gained by good deeds, ie:
- if your favor is negative, then a high repentance should help you to zero out quickly
- if your favor is low, then it should have a measurable impact on favor gains
- if your favor is high, even a large repentance skill shouldn’t affect things very much
The prayer skills each correspond to an individual high level prayer and are like the magic.spell skills. The higher your prayer skill gets, the more powerful, faster, efficient, etc… that particular prayer becomes.
The knowledge skills are a measure of how much you know about a particular god and his teachings/commandments. When you do things that could potentially alter your favor, a high knowledge will inform you of the potential change. High knowledge should also make you more accountable. The gods are not as willing to forgive someone who should know better.
Learning new prayers is predicated on sufficient knowledge skill. The success of prayers depends on your casting skills.