New officer idea: The Shaman

[Karasu_Haruki]

Sinaqui (A fellow villager in Tir na Nog), Lunarius (King of Magh Tuireadh) and I have been discussing this idea as a possible new Office rank for World 4 for a while now. It introduces a shaman, or spiritual leader to expand on the practically non-existent skill of Hearth Magic. I'd like to know what the world at large thinks.

***
The Shaman

Villages can now appoint a new officer for the village: The Shaman

While the lawspeaker manages the political leadership of a village, and a chieftan manages the war/battle/enforcement side; the Shaman would manage the village's spiritual leadership.

To appoint a shaman, a new skill (Spiritualism) must be taken by a character.
In addition, the village must construct an idol similar to the village idol: The Altar to the Spirits

A character then announces himself as a shaman similar to the way a lawspeaker does.

Upon the finished construction of the Altar, a new bar is added for the village. This bar is tied directly to the shaman's abilities. It works similar to the way that authority points behave. Every day, a set amount of Spiritualist points are subtracted from the bar's total.

In order for a village to gain more Spiritualist points, sacrifices must be made to the altar. These are similar to the worship features to the ancestors.

The items to be sacrificed are announced to the shaman whenever a sacrifice has been met or after a set period of time. The spirits send the shaman a vision, in which they make their demands.

The benefits of having a shaman would be:

Ranged Healing on other players

The ability to conduct burial rituals on deceased characters

The ability to resurrect deceased characters, with stats regained dependant on the village's spiritualist points and the shaman's tradition/change slider in addition to his charisma and psyche
-The ritual would take 3 days, during which point the shaman's spirit would be able to leave his body and perform limited tasks. In example: collecting beautiful dreams and performing other limited tasks.

Offensive and Defensive buffers on other players while in combat (Similar to the bonuses given by the leadership skill)

Defensive totems that would slow the rate of decay and add defensive bonuses to structures within the radius, at the cost of spiritualist points. The totems work similarly to dream catchers or torch posts. They remain inactive until a villager activates them, at which point the buff enacts for a set period of time.

The effects of the totems and the sacrificial altar would be similar to the effects of alcohol. When a player makes his first prayer or sacrifice to the altar, he gains a “Faith” buff. However, if he prays or sacrifices too much, he gains the “Zealot” buff, meaning that he can no longer sacrifice and loses the benefits of the buff for a set period of time.

[Sinaqui]

Another possibility for the "Zeal" buff involves making it so that the player retains the buffs given through their actions up to that point while losing the ability to access such buffs again until "Zeal" has worn off. For instance if a player were to pray for three different buffs at their respective locations, such as Strength, Intelligence, and Health, they could also be given "Zeal" and retain each effect until it wore off on its own from its standard duration, but the durations on the beneficial buffs would be rather limited, possibly 4-6 real hours for each from the time of prayer. The "Zeal" buff, however, could last two days of real time. In itself it does not cause negative effects this way, but prevents you from getting additional benefits from your shaman's spiritual powers. There are situations in which getting those buffs would be worth it in the short run, like if you are planning on heading out for a fight on your terms. In a situation like that, where the buffs may have an essential value towards immediate survival, the inability to get further buffs for the next two days could be a livable sacrifice.

[SacreDoom]

Some of this sounds awesome, some of it doesn't... Like the resurrecting of a deceased character... That's just not a good idea :I

[Sinaqui]

The concept of resurrection, in my view, would be intended to work as follows: The resurrected character would receive a stat inheritance rate based upon the shaman's Tradition score, in much the same was as creating a descendant character would work. Having the resurrection process take time (3 days seems a bit excessive to me personally) would make it so that the whole point of resurrecting a character would be for high-value members who are maybe at full change instead of full tradition and would otherwise be essentially screwed as a descendant character. Resurrection would not be easy. It would require the target to be a member of the village, known by the shaman, whose corpse is still fresh. The corpse *must* be present, and would essentially be used as an ingredient in the construction sign for the resurrection ritual. In addition to that, the ritual would cost an obscene amount of beautiful dreams, possibly dependent upon the corpse's stats (though I would imagine that to be hard to code) or a simple common value like 200 beautiful dreams. The ritual itself would work as a constant drain on the spiritual points, and this would have to be balanced in some way to be reasonable but not easily overcome.

That's basically how I would see it working out. If you have any questions or comments/insights, I'm happy to bounce ideas back and forth.

[OvShit]

The concept of resurrection, in my view, would be intended to work as follows: The resurrected character would receive a stat inheritance rate based upon the shaman's Tradition score, in much the same was as creating a descendant character would work. Having the resurrection process take time (3 days seems a bit excessive to me personally) would make it so that the whole point of resurrecting a character would be for high-value members who are maybe at full change instead of full tradition and would otherwise be essentially screwed as a descendant character. Resurrection would not be easy. It would require the target to be a member of the village, known by the shaman, whose corpse is still fresh. The corpse *must* be present, and would essentially be used as an ingredient in the construction sign for the resurrection ritual. In addition to that, the ritual would cost an obscene amount of beautiful dreams, possibly dependent upon the corpse's stats (though I would imagine that to be hard to code) or a simple common value like 200 beautiful dreams. The ritual itself would work as a constant drain on the spiritual points, and this would have to be balanced in some way to be reasonable but not easily overcome.

That's basically how I would see it working out. If you have any questions or comments/insights, I'm happy to bounce ideas back and forth.

Actually, constant drain of power is nice idea as shaman would have to keep his powers as high as possible to be able to actually finish the ritual if the need would come.

[Potjeh]

OP idea is OP.

[Kaios]

It's a great idea but I think it needs a little more aesthetic purposes and a little less.....Well Potjeh said it already.

[Onionfighter]

The benefits of having a shaman would be:

Ranged Healing on other players
. . .
The ability to resurrect deceased characters, with stats regained dependant on the village's spiritualist points and the shaman's tradition/change slider in addition to his charisma and psyche

Absolutely not!

[aso11]

The concept of resurrection, in my view, would be intended to work as follows: The resurrected character would receive a stat inheritance rate based upon the shaman's Tradition score, in much the same was as creating a descendant character would work. Having the resurrection process take time (3 days seems a bit excessive to me personally) would make it so that the whole point of resurrecting a character would be for high-value members who are maybe at full change instead of full tradition and would otherwise be essentially screwed as a descendant character. Resurrection would not be easy. It would require the target to be a member of the village, known by the shaman, whose corpse is still fresh. The corpse *must* be present, and would essentially be used as an ingredient in the construction sign for the resurrection ritual. In addition to that, the ritual would cost an obscene amount of beautiful dreams, possibly dependent upon the corpse's stats (though I would imagine that to be hard to code) or a simple common value like 200 beautiful dreams. The ritual itself would work as a constant drain on the spiritual points, and this would have to be balanced in some way to be reasonable but not easily overcome.

That's basically how I would see it working out. If you have any questions or comments/insights, I'm happy to bounce ideas back and forth.

The way explained here, I could see how it would work. Then, there's the fact you don't get an OP ancestor so prayers become more meh.

[ThirdEmperor]

Look, when I kill someone, I'm taking a risk, a big risk, that I'll be tracked back to my HF and killed, or that the guy I'm fighting will have higher Melee than me, and all sorts of other stuff. This isn't WoW, death is serious, and if I go through the trouble of killing somebody, then I don't want him to come back just cause a guy with a fancy hat threw five rabbit meats on the fire and spun in a circle with one foot in the air.

Minus as many 1s as I'm allowed to minus.