Ceris doesn't make complete sense to me, in terms of aura changes.
If you type "help ceris," there is a section that states:
Peace is important above all, as everyone should love one another, and
forgive. Violence should never be used unless it is as a last resort, and
then only in the defense of ones own life. Many priests and
priestesses of Ceris have been known to die before they will shed another's
blood. This does not apply to all that is unnatural, such as evil magical
creatures or the undead. These are seen as a blight to nature, and abhorent
blasphemous abominations which should be destroyed at all costs.
Thus, this suggests that to truly roleplay Ceris, you would only kill the undead, and not harm the living, whether they are of good or evil alignment. However, the way that the game's current alignment system is set up, Ceris would quickly turn bluish, and be unable to heal well.
I propose that Ceris cleric alignment change be modified, possibly into something like this:
Preferred Alignment is 0 (neutral).
For every living creature a Ceris cleric kills, he or she moves away from neutral alignment. However, the Ceris cleric should also move away from Preferred Alignment when killing a grey mob. This means that:
1) Each living creature a Ceris cleric kill will change their aura by a fixed amount, regardless of how extreme the creature's aura is. However, the direction that the Ceris cleric's aura changes can depend on the alignment of the creature.
For example, if Melfina is neutral aura and kills a royal blue righteous paladin, her alignment will change by -50. If she kills a blood red marauding death knight, her alignment will change by +50. However, if she kills a light-blue temple acolyte, her alignment will still change by -50.
Why would this make sense? Because Ceris rewards or punishes based on life and death, not on good or evil.
When Melfina kills a shadow demon, her aura moves towards 0, regardless of where it was before.
However, grey aura mobs still pose a problem. If they give no alignment change, then Ceris clerics can kill them, even though they are living. If they give a random alignment change, then Ceris clerics can still kill them, because the aura changes in both directions will balance out.
This would be solved by a different aura scale, that is not bidirectional from the preferred aura. Examples:
Melfina kills a righteous paladin. Her aura moves +50 on the new scale (from 0 to 2000). She then kills that temple acolyte. Her aura moves +50 again. She then kills a marauding death knight. Her aura changes +50 again, and is now +150.
Then, she kills a ghost. He aura moves -50, in the direction of 0. When she reaches 0, and kills her ghosts, she obviously stays at 0.
This would solve the problem of grey-aura mobs. Why fixed numbers, you might ask. Well, I think that each mob is either dead or alive. Whether you want to say that one mob is more alive than another, that's another story.
A similar approach can then be applied to other neutral-aura clerics. For example, Gradius clerics should be able to slay "evil-aura" orcs and trolls all day without being punished by Gradius - indeed, they should be rewarded! However, Gradius clerics are more difficult because they have enemy mobs (orcs, trolls, etc); friendly mobs (dwarves, earthy stuff); and then unaffiliated mobs (basically everything else). Ceris is much simpler because everything is either dead or alive. The same is true codewise; each mob is either flagged as undead, or not. However, I'm not sure if all orcs are flagged as orcs, etc.
A even more difficult, but rewarding change, would be to create enemy mobs for all classes and races to which it applies. Druids and rangers would move out of alignment by killing treants, but into alignment by slaying orcs. Elves could kill dark-elves to move into alignment. The list goes on.
Just an idea =). Feedback, anyone?
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