My biggest thought at the moment is Pacifism. Something no IRE game truly has. You cannot be a Pacifist and still function in the game. Even things like grace in other IRE games don't really lend completely to Pacifism as you can't do many of the things you would normally do while graced. With that said, I think that Pacifism should be introduced into Lusternia in the means of a skillset, or single ability. Perhaps it could be a specialization, or something. However, as a Druid, and a peaceful one at that, I do not really do combat. I rarely hunt, if ever, and I do not fight players. Not because I can't, simply because I don't want to. I've really learned that fighting in IRE games just makes situations worse, having been a big PvP type in Imperian, I don't want to bring that here. Furthermore, it's part of Eldrich's nature to be peaceful, and lose his life before he murders another. It's part of the RP and I like that aspect. A divinely gifted spell or such that protected you from all harm (and doing all HARM, note I said harm, unlike grace in IRE games which stops you from doing a lot more then just harm) for say... an hour would not hurt. It could cost a ton of mana, and take 5 minutes to complete. Perhaps you have to be at your nexus to do it or some such. Perhaps if you decided to specialize in this pacifism skillset, ALL of your offenseive/harmful abilities would be removed. In any case, just a thought.

Oh, and PS, The Elder Wars scroll in the library is still blank!

I'm sure that the combat system was not created to allow for pacifists. If someone wishes to roleplay a pacifist in this realm or any other, they simply must avoid any form of physical or verbal conflict. Make use of your shield spells and if you happen to get caught in a bad situation, your role dictates that you should die without resisting and you will simply be resurrected to live your peaceful life again.

I've only ever known one person to successfully roleplay pacifism and she had a very, very difficult time for it. Good luck to you in your pursuits of peace in this world of turmoil.

If you never join in conflicts, which includes grabbing bodies during fights to immolate them, or prevent them from getting immolated (which pacifists often like to do), you won't ever get harmed.

You know, I'm really confused by your post because when I first saw Lusterina one of my responces was... Wow an IRE game that would have let me play my Pacificst version of Daganev. There is a great skillset called Influence, and everyone starts with a trade skill, and you have plenty of protective magics in high or low magic alone. Infact, not only could you be a pacifist but you could be completely guildless as well.

Forcing someone to "not get harmed" or "not harm others" is not pacifism, its called God-mode with Clipping on.

to be a true pacifist you have ot have the same risk of death to a open mouth as anyone else.

I personally don't think having special protection for pacifists beyond grace would be a good idea...

For one, it'd make it possible to abuse being a pacifist.
I agree that it's annoying how much grace limits you but unfortunately that's a necessary precaution against those who'd try abuse the system... And even the way it is right now, there's still enough loopholes for that.
You can still pick up corpses while graced, for example. You can still heal someone's ego while graced (I think you can *smirk*). Yet, you can use both to influence combat quite some. It sucks for the others to not be able to really do anything about it though, since they can't touch the graced person.

Also, I think it'd make being a pacifist pretty cheap.
It's easy to not ever resort to violence if you can be sure nobody will be able to harm you. That's not what pacifism is about though. Pacifism means you don't harm others because you do not want to, not because you do not need to. Most characters wouldn't resort to violence unless they had to.

That being said, I agree that grace could maybe use a tweak or two. Or three.



@Daganev:
I agree, Influence is a great step towards making pacifist RP more intersting.
Yet, I have to say that I had trouble with the options influencing provides you with.
I'm trying to roleplay an honest pacifist friendly-to-all healer kind of character.
Now let's see what my character can do with influence...
Paranoia: I doubt my character would be the kind of person to make others paranoid enough to be suspicious of everyone and fear for their lifes.
Weakening: No good either, since it's obviously very negative.
Strengthening: Well, that might be an option. Probably the best influence can do for my character, as long as he's not the kind of person who wants to have no part in combat at all.
Begging: That's a point of personal style I guess. If you have no problem living off other people's earnings, that's something for you. Everyone else will probably not resort to begging. My character didn't, at first, but I soon realized that I couldn't do anything else with influence so now he does...
Of course, once you can do begging-type influence with means like "charity", that can be seen from a different perspective, I guess.

In the end, the only thing that really works for a pacifist is doing quests, but even there you can get quite some trouble figuring out which sort of quests your character would do. Certainly not the finks' hero or gnome saviour ones, since those involve either the finks or the gnomes getting smashed, and involve killing something at some point. Even if it's only a rock hog.

A pacifist is someone who does not wish to fight and avoids it, not someone with a magical shield of divinity protecting them from conflict.

If you wish to be a pacifist then just use the influence skill with denizens, and when dealing with other players just act your pacifist out. Avoid conflict though your words, and your actions; and if you do get into a fight, there are numerous skills to help you run away.

Simply being able to become 'Totally apart from PK' would be unfair and unrealistic.

Oh, another thing regarding raising your level without killing; I think it would be great if healing other players, ect. gained you experience.

If I'm not mistaken, Strengthening is more about strengthening the will. not the actual body. But my strenghtening or weakening the will it affects the body. I could easily see any healer going around telling everyone how great they are and making them feel good about themselves. Also you left out seduction which makes people fall in love with you, and protect you. Theres also the option to parlay for yourself and others eventually. And Begging is great not just to get gold, but also to help you complete quests that you might otherwise have to kill for. And the quests that really give exp don't require any killing, (unless you do them wrong)

I really think people need to investigate more before they start jumping to conclusions. Although during beta-testing one of my biggest complaints was that people wouldn't find influnece as "usefull" to bashing becuase of ease. Then again I chose Tae'dae so that one day I could influence to my hearts content when my charchter gets old and crotchity and doesn't have the stamina to fight. But that won't be till I'm 100 so I guess that won't be for another oohhh.... 84 years

Pacifism eh? Well lets not get things mixed up. As one of you mentioned up there, Pacifism is very different from Invulnerability (God Mode). Grace/Invulnerability/God Mode is a GOD thing. Immortality.

Lets face it. We are but mere mortals in Lusternia. That is the whole point. We can die, and we face the risk of death every single day.

That said, i do not discredit the "pacifist" approach. The Influence Skill-set, though unperfect is a VERY NICE option. Quite a change from the usual bash and PK fests. Being a pacifist, in a war torn world is even harder than being a psychotic warmonger. Not just because everyone with a blade will take advantage of you, but also because its faster to get XP and levels by the path of violence.

To counter/balace this, more importance should be given to Influence, and certain higher level quests should be avaiable , that give GOOD XP for HIGH levels. Because there is a time when a character stops getting enough xp to level up, and leveling becomes an arduous task. Forcing many people to resort to violence and PKing. Thus defeating the point of being a "pacifist".

Perhaps there could be quest that can ONLY be solved with Influence?

Thats all for now.

Oh yeah, I do agree with the suggestion someone mentioned just now.

Things like healing people with the Healing skillset, Chanting (ego healing and such), brewing potions forging weapons and such .. ALL these things should give XP. Maybe not tons. Maybe not even standard XP .. But it is REALISTIC if people can learn from every day life as well as combat. As long as we get even the flimsiet amounts of XP for everyday things , it would be sooooo nice.

You know, I myself dabbled in pacifism...not in 'Nam of course.

Thing about trying to RP a pacifist is the first allmighty kill kill kill person that you come across will just kill you no matter what you say, possibly more and more afterwards for the free experience and no one likes to issue. Lots of people in the game will kill anything for experience, it starts at the newbie Quest mobs and branches from there.

I whole heartedly support the idea of gaining XP from tasks such as cooking or brewing potions. Perhaps the xp could filter directly into the skill you gain it from..eg. The more you cook, the better you get at cooking.

Bashing by slaughtering people on non-prime planes is always fun...

Actually it's worse exp than bashing astral

@Daganev: Agreed, I forgot to mention Parley and Seduction.

Seduction again is something my character wouldn't use, if I really stick to my roleplay. As I see it, Influence usually involves getting the target to do something they really don't want to. At least, the influence abilities I've had so far hint at that. Flattery, compliments etc all hint that you trick them into whatever you're trying to achieve.
Parley, aye, is the only influence ability I haven't found any problem with so far *grins*

Strengthening and weakening, as I understood it from the ab descriptions, affects the level of the Mobile, so they're easier/harder to kill. Granted, since my character doesn't kill sentients and since those are the only ones he can influence, I haven't had a chance to actually test that yet.

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally happy about influence, I've been waiting for something like that for years. I'm just pointing out that there's some issues with it, especially if you want to do the hardcore pacifist type thing. But that's part of that kind of roleplay that it's really really tough to keep it going, since your ethics forbid quite a large bunch of all available options.


Concerning XP from using abilities:
Aye, that's something I greatly miss at IRE realms so far. I really would like to see that actually using abilities affects something, either give you XP or make the abilities more potent, or modify a chance of failure. Maybe reduce the amount of mana lost for a spell that didn't work, for example, if the reason is that you couldn't have properly used it in the first place. A character who does the spell all the time would most likely have realized that in the first place and not thrown all his mana into it.

Thats because everyone is so puny...just wait until they grow nice and juicy and full of experience, ripe for the picking.

And to whomever believes that Influence is all bad and something a "Nice" character wouldn't do, all I have to say is you're wrong. In fact, you're so wrong, I decided to go out and prove it.

Here's a simple extract from using:

Compliments Point out how fit, beautiful, and smart others are.

You compliment a furrikin farmer on his
outstanding intellect and physique.

Influence has something for everyone. You have to look at the individual skills much more so than the "Battle Types". I mean, the individual skills are like the way you do it, the battle type is a general goal, like Seduction just basically means winning someone to liking you.

There are still a few bugs with it though. I found a Furrikin farmer who was quite immune to my influence (Being a Tae'dae with Adept Influence). Normally it takes me 10-12 shots to take them down, but I counted over 100 with this farmer, and he just wouldn't go down...I must've wasted 5 bromides just trying to push this one guy over. Oh well.

Influence is not about making beings do what they don't want to do. It is about *persuading* them to do something. You cause them to change their mind, which is quite different than beating them over the head with a stick. It is no different than if a pacifist chimes in a news forum about which candidate for GM is the best; that is like engaging in the influence skillset against players instead of NPCs. So unless you think it is wrong for a pacifist to persuade players to do things, there is nothing wrong in influence at face value.

On the other hand, some of the city influence may not qualify for a pacifist. I believe some of Magnagora influence text hints at physical repurcussions for not being persuaded, which would mean that the player would have to back it up with force if the village goes elsewhere if he is to RP consistantly. (Then again, I don't know how a pacifist could exist in Magnagora in general!) Similarly, if you are pacifistic to the point of not deceiving people then the paranoia influence is probably not acceptable, unless, of course, you truly and honestly do believe that they really are out to get that NPC, in which case you are acting on an honest belief.

As for begging, that depends on the motive. If you do not need what is begged for and wish to play an honest pacifist, that is not an option; you are lying about being destitute. If you do have need for the gold or whatever then it is like the beggar on the street without a job and home asking for charitable alms to feed his starving family. This depends on your RP intent, but it does not depend on your status as a pacifist.

I believe that summed it all up in a neat little package. I can't think of anything else to add to Lord Roark's post...

I can add a little more. If you are pacifist for want of not doing harm, I forgot that of course the weakening one is no good because such a pacifist would not insult and degrade people.

On the other hand, some creativity may fit it in. Can a passivist be insulting and degrading to others and still be principled? Roark's book of principles is not finished (hope to have it published this week), but a creative person could put a small twist on his principles to justify a pacifist that advocates non-violent forms of subversion. Such a pacifist could exploit the weak-willed through lying and intimidation. This would not be a very nice pacifist. Rather, he'd be a twisted yet principled one. It's too complicated to explain here so just read the journal when it comes out.

And I'm sure there are other creative twists for pacifism. What about a pacifist who dogmatically blames all the world's violence on the economic system? Perhaps he would refuse to participate in the economy and make a living entirely by begging, attempting to not only contribute nothing to the economy but to aid its destruction by leeching off the fruits of those that do drive the economy. Mildly subversive, but still principled. (I'm vaguely reminded of the freegans who eat out of dumspsters as a form of social protest even though they make more than enough cash to support themselves.)

Perhaps you could have the vigilante pacifist. He could try to demonstrate the wrongness of violence by going to fights and attempting to slaughter whomever comes out wins. He'd not be a very principled pacifist as he does resort to violence to teach a lesson, but his goal is to get people to drop their arms and he only attacks those who benefit from violence.

Certainly new twists to an old story. I am sure someone would figure out a way to criticize the Vigilante Pacifist though. But, very good points.