A question of morality.

[divinefistoka]

I played a couple of new and unique looking combinations recently in Newangband (Curse my character hopping tendencies) and ran across one that ALMOST seems to be impossible to fit into any semblance of sanity.

A vampire ranger. The reason this is a moral question, is to keep his food up, he would use his summon animals skill, and then feed upon the summoned animal. Which killed it, healed him, and fed him. This seems almost a) unfair, in that unlimited food and healing is semi-gamebreaking for vampires, and b) a bit of a traitor to the idea of a ranger being friendly to the forest.

On the other side of the fence, i could almost see this as being a sort of drizzt Do'urden kind of situation. (for those who havent read, was an dark elf from evil society who traveld to the surface tobecome a good ranger. Books by R A Salvatore) The vampire could well be asking for elderly or dying animals who are willing to sacricice themselves as food for his cause. Not sure where this will fit into Variaz's scheme of a world, but was curios as to whether anyone else had considered it.

The answer, will, most likely, depend almost entirely upon the morality of Variaz. So, what is the answer to this question of morality?

[Variaz]

Err...didn't really think about this one... hmmm... I guess, like you said, the vampire would feed upon elder/sick animals, to end their suffering while feeding him/herself. But it's true it may not make much sense... And I really didn't stop to think whether or not a Vampire Ranger was logical or not!

But! In 1.8.0, there IS an Alignment for the character. It starts at 0, and can increase or decrease depending on your actions. I'll probably make it so that if you willingly kill a friendly creature, you will lose some alignment and tend toward evil. Same thing with killing the townsfolks, or doing some more evil quests.

In the current beta, doing Old Richard's quest will lower your alignment by 1, as it involves stealing an elixir only so that Richard can make more money, even if you know the elixir can be hazardeous for the peoples health. I'll probably make it so that if your alignment becomes too low, some classes will lose their powers(for example, a Paladin/Justice Warrior with a negative alignment could lose all it's abilities until he/she gains the points back!).

[grindorin]

It seems to me that if some classes are going to be penalized for being evil, others ought to be penalized for being good. Paladins certainly should be good, and rogues could easily be considered evil, but what about all the other classes? Some classes have both good abilities and evil abilities (priests have Heal and Turn Undead as good, while Harm and Dark Prayer are evil.)

[Variaz]

I haven't decided about the restrictions yet. Priests won't be penalized by alignment like Paladins/Justice Warriors. Right now, there is no real "Evil" class, though now that alignment has been implemented, evil classes could certainly be created!

[Lipa]

Also, some sub-quests (those that are not critically important for the completion of the game) could only be available to good, and some only to evil characters.

[Variaz]

It's already coded in fact! In the dialogs, you can put some alignment conditions. So, some quests will only be available to good characters, while some will only be available to evil. Race and sex conditions are also there, so every characters can get a different experience!