Removal of Priest Immunity

[Chenier]

This is ridiculous. I've said this would happen ages ago, but nobody seemed to care enough.

The Church offers Fulco an ultimatum, to repent or be excommunicated. What does he do? He switches class to priest and starts influencing the faithful. Which means that he can no longer be demoted from full membership, nor expelled, and that he can reduce follower % in regions ridiculously quickly. The effects of a rogue priest are a hundred times as harmful as the effects of an enemy priest. A single rogue priest can turn a large city's following from 100% to 1% within days, which would take years for anyone else. And nothing can be done about it.

Priestly immunity needs to be removed. It's a ridiculous mechanism. Being a priest shouldn't prevent one from being able to be cast out of a religion. The argument about class IR that was risen last time makes no sense. Being a priest of someone else's religion isn't an IR. Unless one founds his own religion, nobody can become a priest unless someone else accepts to make him a full member. It's a privilege. If it was meant to be that anyone could be a priest, becoming one would not depend on the goodwill of others. And anyone who really wants to play a priest can just go about and found his own religion. Demoting a priest has absolutely nothing with telling someone what class they can or can't play. It's about telling them what rank they can have in a religion, and adhering to guilds and religions is not an IR. The argument that one can just declare war on them to capture the priests also doesn't stand: doing so would not allow one to inflict a ban and thus a meaningful consequence, yet would result in serious realm-wide protests if the religion is popular at home.

The power that the protections given to priest yields is abusable beyond belief. It's enough that rogue priests can cause a lot of damage that is almost completely invisible, but to make them immune to reprisals?

Religion elders need to be able to demote and/or expel priests as they can with anyone else.

On another note, I'd also say that doing so should require an hour per person.

[Anaris]

I agree with you completely.

I've agreed for years, and tried to argue this point in the past. However, every time I did, Tom was firm that it was an IR issue, so I haven't pressed it in a long time.

I have, however, sent him this topic, in hopes that he will take a look at the situation, and possibly change his mind.

To add my own argument to this:

The IR are, first and foremost, to protect players from other, less scrupulous players. There are many ways in which the game could be said to "infringe" upon our IR, especially the class IR. There are a multitude of restrictions on who can become what class, and reasons why someone would have to change class, or even be forced to. If a religion is destroyed, all priests of that religion are immediately changed back to Warriors. If an infiltrator becomes rogue, he immediately loses his subclass. I can see no compelling reason to permit someone whose sole purpose is, in essence, briefing to be permitted to remain a nominal part of a religion he actually bears no allegiance to.

In the past, you have said that realistically peasants would, of course, still listen to a heretical priest, and that he should be able to incite them to whatever. This argument seems to rest on the idea that either the character in question has been a priest for a long time and they recognize and trust him, or it's nothing but the robes that make the difference.

Additionally, I recall you claiming that the word of some random noble in some random city far away that this guy is excommunicated wouldn't reach the peasants and wouldn't make a difference...but a) we have instantaneous communication for everything else; there's no reason to think word couldn't reach every temple and notices be tacked up and read publicly, and b) it would have made a difference if he had been excommunicated just seconds before he decided to become a Priest. It would, in fact, have prevented him from becoming a priest, thus, by your own logic, violating his IR possibly even more severely.

Finally, the notion that kicking a priest out of his religion requires violating the IR rests on another premise that you hold as sacrosanct that I do not believe needs to be: that a priest must, at all times, have a religion. If we could kick priests out of their religion and they'd just become powerless nonaligned priests, that would not violated their IR, it would just violate your sensibilities of what it means to be a priest. If you are dead set on preventing this putative IR violation, I'm sure we could come up with some particular restrictions that would make being a "pagan priest" about as appetizing as being a rogue noble.

[Zakilevo]

Why not just prevent an excommunicated noble from becoming a priest of that religion? Force him out to the default class if he already is a priest?

I think it is way too easy in this game to ruin years of work over a much shorter period of time. Like decimating a city completely while it takes eternity for a city to recover. Wish it would be less stressful to see things being undone but oh well.

[pcw27]

In the past Tom's said he wants it to work this way so that there's greater opportunity to have Martin Luther type priests challenging religious authority. Fair enough, but I think it goes a little too far to make them immune to reprisals. Why not just have it cause wide spread loss of followers? Maybe 10% across the board when word spreads that a priest was cast out. That way church leadership wont kick out any dissenting priest as a first resort for fear that they'll lose followers.

If someone really wants to challenge a religion and create a schism they should just found their own religion based on the original and RP it as a new sect.

The last time this came up people suggested making it harder to become priests. The dev team said that we should simply not make people full members. That doesn't work for large religions because many stay in the aspirant ranks to avoid the message traffic. If we make the full member rank's restrictive that will either severely limit the number of players that are privy to church politics or it will cause these to spill over into the "all members" channel.

How about requiring a new priest to be ordained in the presence of an existing priest? The exception to this would be the founder. That would actually be very cool, it would drive roleplay.

[Anaris]

If someone really wants to challenge a religion and create a schism they should just found their own religion based on the original and RP it as a new sect.

There have actually been plans to implement schisms as an honest-to-goodness feature for a while now. It's just a ways down the list, unfortunately.

[pcw27]

There have actually been plans to implement schisms as an honest-to-goodness feature for a while now. It's just a ways down the list, unfortunately.

But why bother? It's not really needed. SA has had two schisms using only the existing mechanics.

[Chenier]

Any deterrent to sanctions against priests that doesn't consider the amount of time the person was a priest is ridiculous. In this specific case, I don't think the guy was ever a priest before being explicitly being threatened with expulsion. Kicking out this kind of priest should never yield any negative results.

We can't in one hand say that for the game to be fun, we need to be more open, less paranoid, and involve others more, and on the other say that any random schuck has the right to the ability to cause debilitating damage to years' worth of efforts with absolutely no effort themselves.

[OFaolain]

Maybe you should consider not giving them the opportunity to repent and just expel them from the church; after all, they can always repent after their castle has been auto da fe'd.  Not that I think the priest's ability to never be kicked out of a religion is good, but that is a method of working within the established ruleset.

[Chenier]

Maybe you should consider not giving them the opportunity to repent and just expel them from the church; after all, they can always repent after their castle has been auto da fe'd.  Not that I think the priest's ability to never be kicked out of a religion is good, but that is a method of working within the established ruleset.

No, it isn't a solution. Arbitrarily kicking someone out without notice is a good way to incite others to defend him by becoming rogue priests themselves. The only way to prevent THAT would be to kick EVERYONE out of the religion. And for a a social game, skipping all interaction makes a poor fix anyways.

[Penchant]

But why bother? It's not really needed. SA has had two schisms using only the existing mechanics.

Because Chenier is ignoring the class IR which is why priests have the immunity. The only way for it to not break the class IR is to kick the priest such that he creates a sect.

[pcw27]

Because Chenier is ignoring the class IR which is why priests have the immunity. The only way for it to not break the class IR is to kick the priest such that he creates a sect.

Or have "pagan priests". Or just accept that "class IR" is inherently limited. There are already classes that you can lose if the right circumstances occur. If you kick a priest out of a religion and cause them to default to warrior it doesn't mean they can't be a priest anymore it just means they can't be a priest of that particular religion. They can still join another religion and become a priest of that. They'll still have the right to play the class they want, they just wont have the right to play the religion they want.

[Tom]

No, the IR is not "limited". As Tim said, and as is explained on the IR wiki page, losing your class due to a game mechanic is something else entirely. The IR is to protect you from other players, not from game mechanics.

I agree that rogue priests are a problem.

I disagree that a mechanic to kick them out of the class is the solution.

The solution is the schism Tim mentioned. Basically, kicking out a priest should result in a new religion being founded with him as (involuntary) founder. How big a share of your religion follows him would depend on different factors, and how long he has been a priest would be one of them. In the extreme cases like this, I would say 10 peasants in the region he's currently in follow him and that's that. In the case where you kick out when of the oldest and most active prophets of your religion, you might lose most of your temples and followers, or not if he's only one of 20.

But that game mechanic is, as Tim said, way down on the TODO list. The solution for the moment would be a complaint against the player for griefing. Unfortunately the Social Contract does not contain a passage explicitly forbidding griefing or trolling because it hasn't been a problem so far. But I think we all agree that someone is exploiting a game mechanic here so this is a §2 issue.

[Zakilevo]

But that game mechanic is, as Tim said, way down on the TODO list. The solution for the moment would be a complaint against the player for griefing. Unfortunately the Social Contract does not contain a passage explicitly forbidding griefing or trolling because it hasn't been a problem so far. But I think we all agree that someone is exploiting a game mechanic here so this is a §2 issue.

I doubt the schism mechanic will be finished in a year or two. Who knows, it might never get finished. What will happen for breaking the §2 of the social contract?

[D`Este]

But that game mechanic is, as Tim said, way down on the TODO list. The solution for the moment would be a complaint against the player for griefing. Unfortunately the Social Contract does not contain a passage explicitly forbidding griefing or trolling because it hasn't been a problem so far. But I think we all agree that someone is exploiting a game mechanic here so this is a §2 issue.

It would be a problem if Fulco was excommunicated and they couldnt force him out of the religion. At this moment, it all depends on his answer to an ultimatum, for which he even has given a deadline when he will give that answer. As for the damage done to the peasant following, I admit Fulco has experience as priest, but he has no plans to unreasonably use his abilities. So in this case, Chenier could just have send me an OOC without becoming paranoid.

[Chenier]

Send you an OOC message saying what? Threatening to report you if you do things I don't like? That's against the rules. And besides, priestly immunity is something I have hated for ages, and evidence needs to be gathered before a case is opened.

I cannot understand how this is being tied to the IR at all. A priest being expelled isn't being told he can't play a priest, he's only being told he can't be a priest for THAT religion. Back in the early days of VE, I really wanted to become a priest, but no one wanted to promote me to full membership. Was my IR being violated? Is it fine to prevent someone from becoming a priest, but kicking him out after being one for 5 minutes isn't? When I founded my religion for the first time in Gaxano, I lost my lordship doing so and the next lord closed my temple. My religion was lost and I was forced out of being a priest. Was my IR violated there?

It's ridiculous that a five minute lapse can change whether it's okay to expel someone or not. A kicked out priest can always go join another religion or found his own. He is, in NO WAY, being told he can't be a priest. Schism is also an impractical and unknown-deadline solution. Someone who has been a priest for 5 minutes does NOT deserve a schism.