Last Rites considered harmful

Jay Gischer (gischer@puget.mti.sgi.com)
Tue, 13 Sep 94 10:13:19 -0700

Rich Skrenta writes:
> The problem would seem to be that there is no way to protect from
> LR being performed on a noble you wish to resurrect. Is this a
> problem?
>

This looks to me like another case of where the design intent will get
subverted. Yes, it is handy to perform Last Rites at a distance. But
this means there will NEVER be any corpses for Necromancers to play
with and there will NEVER be any chance resurrect nobles, given some
opposition. If I'm a priest and I have an enemies list, why shouldn't
I simply perform last rites on every noble on that list every turn, on
the off chance that one of them died, preventing their resurrection.
If they aren't dead, it will fail and I've spent no time or mana.

If a side is victorious, and controls the graveyard,
I can see that they might want to resurrect the dead and persuade
them. But the noble might escape... But if you don't control the
graveyard, just do some last rites, and control of the graveyard
doesn't help.

One thing you might do is to cancel the "teleportation" of bodies to
the graveyard, in all or some circumstances. Require last Rites to be
done in a graveyard. So if I'm victorious, I can take the bodies to
the graveyard and perform last rites. And the other side can try to
bushwhack me along the way to get them back. That makes life, er,
death a lot more interesting, and gives meaning to "a proper burial".

-j


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