ArcoBlood Mod Finished

[Zen]

I am not offended.

<3

[Scott Hebert]

BTW, Zen, could you mod some pretenders to have some path combinations that are seen nowhere in the game with any use? Such as, Fire/Water or Air/Earth? Earth/Astral on anything but the Shedu would be nice, too.

Oh, I still find the Humanoid Pretenders to be not so useful.

Finally, is that the 'kami' kanzi?

[BigDaddy]

I like blood and holy priests. I don't think that blood magic has anything to do with unholy. Quite the opposite, I think that Blood magic is about life, and unholy magic is decidedly about dead things. Blood is life afterall.

[Arryn]

Holy and unholy *should* be about "good" and "evil" (except in Dom 2, where unholy magics mainly boost death-related powers and holy magics mainly counter unholy). Necromancy is about death, which does not inherently have a good/evil inclination, though the practicioners of necromancy tend to be opportunistic and amoral, hence often "evil". *Unwilling* sacrifices, which is what most blood nations perform, is an "evil" behavior. But since Dom 2 doesn't tag behaviors as "good" nor "evil", holy and unholy have been redefined by the game's designers to revolve around death magics. Since this is so, then holy should also enhance nature (life) and unholy should degrade them, which they at present do not.

Personally, I'd like to see holy/unholy decoupled from life/death and be given more of their own unique powers. I'd mod something along these lines (as well as adjust all blood nations to unholy) except that to my understanding, it's not currently possible to do what I envision with the mod system.

[Scott Hebert]

Y'know, anyone who can say Blood magic deals with life sickens me.

I agree with Arryn that Unholy priests are much more thematic for Blood nations than Holy priests.

I mean, come on. If you kill people for their blood, a logical next step is to use the bodies for SOMETHING, right?

[Ighalli]

Arryn seems to think of it like I do. Blood magic is evil and all, but has nothing to do with necromancy (and thus the current unholy magic). The manual describes blood magic on page 25.

It is the vital force inherent in all life.

Y'know, anyone who can say Blood magic deals with life sickens me.

So I suppose you're not a big fan of the devs?

I can see why the devs decided not to focus on good and evil. After all, We're Good and They're Evil. It seems to me like angels in the same armies as demons, and the commanders leading the demons banishing undead and bolstering morale is kind of silly. I would rather see some form of morality implemented.

Edit : I can't spell.

[Arryn]

Ighalli said:
It seems to me like angels in the same armies as demons, and the commanders leading the demons banishing undead and bolstering morale is kind of silly.

Yes. Since when do demons and zombies need their morale bolstered? I also think that having angel-summoning spells in "astral" rather than in "holy" is silly. It only makes sense from the perspective that since summoning devils is via Blood (and not Unholy), then the counterpart of summoning angels must be something other than holy, ergo Astral. It also relates to the mechanic of using up some "object" (pearls or slaves) in the summoning process, which cannot be done in holy/unholy as those two magics have no related consumable objects.

Holy (or unholy) power should derive from a nation's dominion strength (not its max candle height, but the sum total of all its candles). The bigger and/or more devout the nation, the more holy/unholy power it should be able to wield. Alas, I don't think I'll see such a change even in Dom 3.

[BigDaddy]

Scott Hebert said:
Y'know, anyone who can say Blood magic deals with life sickens me.
(snip)

That sickens you? Blood of the LIVING/DYING is used to fuel the power of the spell, which implyies that the loss of LIFE is used as fuel. Therefore LIFE powers blood magic. I never inteded that is wasn't inherently EVIL. Nor did I intend that it was good.

The term UNHOLY implies something unclean or evil. Perhaps because unlife is unnatural. Whether or not it is EVIL is moot (moot means arguable by the way, look it up!).

HOLY implies a direct opposite of UNHOLY and should therefore counter it. It does also counter blood to some minor extent. Therefore, blood magic is also unnatural or unclean. Whether or not it is EVIL is moot. You see? It's philosophy, to defend unholy is to defend blood.

Edited to include:
Moot - subject for debate

[BigDaddy]

BigDaddy said:

... Blood of the LIVING/DYING is used to fuel the power of the spell, which implyies that the loss of LIFE is used as fuel. Therefore LIFE powers blood magic. I never inteded that is wasn't inherently EVIL. Nor did I intend that it was good.

Oh come on now BigDaddy! Isn't killing people about DEATH?

I propose that all blood and death priests have UNHOLY.

[Evil Dave]

Scott Hebert said:
Y'know, anyone who can say Blood magic deals with life sickens me.

My hazy understanding is that the real people who practiced blood magic (ie, human sacrifice) believed just that. Apparently, in tropical jungles, people saw new (plant) life rapidly growing on decaying dead things, and concluded that the "life force" was recycled into new living things. I can't remember the intermediate stages of the idea, but the final form was that sacrificing living things -- especially people -- was necessary for the world to keep living.

From that viewpoint, Dom2 has the wrong effects for blood magic. "Real" blood magic should produce effects like nature magic does, but in bursts when blood slaves are sacrificed.

I think the current Dom2 view is essentially that of Christians, in that Mesoamerican and African human sacrificers didn't intend to summon demons or other "unholy" beings, but merely didn't want the sun to go out.