Shattered Kingdoms

False.

Fist skills used to stack with self defense, brawling, and wild fighting.

The no-barbarians rule used to be a very general rule that people just sort of followed. Of course, being the jackass that I am, I pushed the issue with Dulrik early in my first stint as an immortal. The original argument against barbarian fistorz was that they would be unbalancing. Dulrik's original vision of the Fist was for it to be a lightie mage/priest cabal as a balance to the darkie mage/priest cabal (Adepts). Barbarian fistorz with wild fighting + fist skills would be overpowered.

Of course, when the real SK went down, and we were running on the test server for a short time, and we had all kind of fun opportunities, with Reina's help I built a griffon barbarian with the fist skills and I plowed through the wastelands at level 30-35. Solo. With Reina's help I also did testing between a half-elf barbarian fist and a griffon merc fist (for the n00bies, griffons used to have the merc class available to them rather than the barbarian class, and mercs & griffons ARE allowed in the fist). After running plenty of tests, I found that it was actually griffon merc fisties who were the most overpowered, rather than a barbarian fistie.

It was in light of my overwhelming evidence and irrefutable argument that if the issue was balance then it should be griffons barred from the Fist, not barbarians. This is when the current en vogue argument of "the cabal and the class are inherently set in a mutually exclusive way" and "The sole reason for disallowing barbarians was for rp purposes" came into play and became the Official Reason for Disallowing BarbariansTM.

Given that fist skills do not stack with self defense/brawling/wild fighting anymore, this remains the only "valid" reason for banning barbarians from the cabal. Unfortunately, this is one of the very few cases where a particular class is FORCED into the narrow vision implied by the help files and the implementor's personal opinion of how that class should RP. Barbarians are not prevented from joining the other cabals, which all involve use of magic. Hellions are not prevented from joining chaotic cabals when they're supposed to be knightly. Paladins are not prevented from fleeing. What's unfortunate is that by the very virtue of roleplay and by the depth that is required to flesh out a character concept beyond the narrow constrictions of a generic character frame, this kind of shallow restriction hinders good RP & character opportunities. It's not the same thing as an evil paladin or a good-hearted drow- not even in the same league. And there is no harm in allowing it. It's just another case of "I said so" and needing that decision to have the weight of law.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Thank you for the history lesson. Explains a lot!

I do enjoy being right.

Peltic was a Griffon Mercenary who got into Fist on the live server.

Dulrik even threw a bunch of NPCs at him one quiet night online, over and over, when he was out soloing in the wastelands. They had a good chuckle about it (Peltic chewed through everything that was thrown at him).

A few months later (by my vague recollection) Dulrik fixed up all the various skills that were stacking with unarmed cabal skills. The easiest reason to my mind being that immortals would no longer need to check that cabal leaders weren't inducting race-class combinations that had been previously been barred.

I'm not sure when the brief running of SKTEST fits into the above timeline... it's all a haze.

Necromancers shouldn't be druids. They are insane completely, all diabolics are. You could probably make a half decent case for keep any diabolic out of the druids.



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There has already been at least one druid necromancer.

I can think of an RP whereby it's possible to play a necromancer geared for the druids.

When I orginally made Salak, the idea was to play him as a darker shaman type of character in the S'hochi, and try to RP my way in. Then all my companions went to other characters or became Imms and well, he evolved in another direction. I've heard of a few other players trying to do something similiar, but never saw results.

It's a shame it's discouraged by the past and the helpfiles and the community. It could be fun.

The hellion code fits very well with the druid concepts, especially during the times of Cilek and Ibudon. The paladin vows conflict in some instances, but for the most part a well played paladin can maintain a place in the druids. I was going to force the ain paladin in our ranks to break his knightly vows and father at least one child so that he would not be holding himself above the cycle (abstinance means no children, which to the druids at the time meant breaking the cycle which is why we didn't like many paladins), unfortnatly the rp never got around to going underway as the paladin pretty much quit playing before I could spring it on him.


I could imagine some necromancer rps for the druids, but it would take an open minded player base. Much more open minded than they are now.

*points to the open-minded Druid Leader*

Oh wait, thats me.

Dude, hook me up!