Chaos knight conversion
issueid=1847 01-25-2013 07:43 AM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by grobblewobble: 72
Chaos knight conversion

If you are a chaos knight, converting to N or L is currently very simple, but also very tedious. You need to sacrifice about 220 gold pieces one by one at an altar. This is bad because:

a. It is not realistic.
Alignment is supposed to represent your moral values. The fact that sacrificing coins one by one changes your alignment far more effectively than any actual good deeds is not realistic at all. It's acceptable as long as it serves gameplay in other ways, like making it more fun or balanced. For other classes it works fine, imo. However, for chaos knights..

b. It does not help game balance in any way.
There is zero risk or challenge involved. For game balance, there is simply no difference between sacrificing 3 coins or 220.

c. It is not fun.
Robotically repeating the same keystrokes over and over for minutes is something most people hate to do. Games are supposed to be fun.


There are of course many possible ways to change this and I will suggest three options:

Option 1. Simply make changing alignment work the same as it does for other classes. Changing alignment is already discouraged, as you will take repeated fire damage, your stats are lowered and you lose all your class powers. One could argue that this is enough as it is.

Option 2. As option 1, but in addition let the lawful and neutral gods hate the character at the start of the game, so that they punish the character when appealed to. This would make conversion truly more challenging. My most preferred option.

Option 3. Make converting in conventional ways impossible and introduce a quest for it instead. This is what I proposed earlier in another RFE, but now that class powers no longer work for non-chaotic chaos knights I think this might be overdoing it. Still, it would have the advantage of added realism and story.
Issue Details
Issue Number 1847
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Suggested
Priority 5 - Medium
Suggested Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 11
Implemented Version (none)
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 6
Votes against this feature 0
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




01-25-2013 11:18 AM
Senior Member
I think the simplest solution is to make it so that gold works identically irrespective of how quickly you sacrifice it. That is, sacrificing 200 coins, one at a time, should be exactly the same as sacrificing all 200 at once, with regards to piety and alignment. And it should apply to all races and classes.

I assume that the "one-at-a-time" trick works because the alignment change of a sacrifice is a constant (or close to it), while piety gain is proportional to current piety or something, so that sacrificing all at once is worth more (since the current piety is lower) than sacrificing one at a time. Or at least, that it's something like that.

01-25-2013 12:29 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Aielyn
I think the simplest solution is to make it so that gold works identically irrespective of how quickly you sacrifice it.
Sometimes you want to convert yourself and sometimes you want to convert the altar. The way it works now, you can choose. Small amounts to convert yourself and large amounts to convert the altar. A bit counterintuitive, but it works and doesn't need changing imo. If what you say is done, how would you control this?

01-25-2013 01:54 PM
Ancient Member
I think Option 2 is very sensible.

01-25-2013 04:15 PM
Senior Member
Option 2 has the side effect of making it significantly more complicated (especially for a low level char) to convert an altar. I like the idea of it still being possible to convert the way it's possible now with the added possibility of a quest. Thomas has mentioned in another thread he likes the idea of a quest, IIRC. If "repeat last command" is implemented somewhere down the line (it's been suggested in comments in another RFE), tedious repeated sacrifices of a little gold will become a little less tedious.

By the way, has anyone confirmed (I guess this could be testable with enough scrolls of balance) whether it actually takes more for chaos knights to move alignment away from chaotic or if this is simply due to the fact that they start the game so incredibly chaotic making it a longer road to begin with?

01-25-2013 04:24 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by aerol
Option 2 has the side effect of making it significantly more complicated (especially for a low level char) to convert an altar.
Neutral altars (like the one in DT) would be easy to convert to chaotic. Sacrifice 5000 gp, the gods fight, altar is converted. You won't be punished in that case.

Quote Originally Posted by aerol
By the way, has anyone confirmed (I guess this could be testable with enough scrolls of balance) whether it actually takes more for chaos knights to move alignment away from chaotic
This is obviously the case. You can't become more chaotic than 10000 black stones. Other classes don't take nearly as many sacrifices to return to neutral at that point. It's also obvious from the number of sacrifices it takes to go from C to CN to NC.

01-26-2013 09:16 AM
Ancient Member
To be honest I've always thought that the whole "convert yourself by sacrificing 1 gold at a time" was a bug, for any class.

01-26-2013 01:08 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by grobblewobble
Sometimes you want to convert yourself and sometimes you want to convert the altar. The way it works now, you can choose. Small amounts to convert yourself and large amounts to convert the altar. A bit counterintuitive, but it works and doesn't need changing imo. If what you say is done, how would you control this?
I'd control it exactly how you're supposed to - by actually committing deeds that change your alignment for alignment change, or by making valuable sacrifices to convert the altar.

I don't see why conversion should be easy in any respect. The way it currently works, it's practically trivial to change alignment, as long as you can find appropriate altars.

If people really want to be able to convert by sacrificing to the god of the appropriate alignment, then let the player choose whether to sacrifice to your current god or the god of the altar when sacrificing at non-aligned altars. Sacrificing to your current god would particularly upset the altar's god, and risk retribution - but may also convert the altar. Sacrificing to the god of the altar would of course upset your current god, but it would pull you towards the altar's alignment. Of course, the option is redundant if sacrificing at a co-aligned altar, so it wouldn't be asked in that case.

02-17-2013 03:13 PM
Senior Member
Since Thomas is receptive to the idea of a special quest being available (see his comment on 1630), if anyone has ideas for that, you should post them on a separate ticket :)

04-23-2013 02:04 PM
Junior Member
This is good suggestion, upvoted it. Maybe it is worth to consider reducing power of class abilities instead of removing them, when changing alingment

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