I know batmud has a lot of user created content, and I don't know what's
involved in creating a guild, but I've been wishing my evil religious toons
could access some other guild stuff. I've been kicking around the idea for a
cross-faction "Oathbreakers of Loki" guild. I just wanted to put the
idea down somewhere.

So from a lore standpoint, Loki is the dark god of lies. He kind of gets along
with the chaos gods (deception being one aspect of chaos) but he doesn't get
along with any guilds that require an oath or adherence to a creed. So if you
join the oathbreakers you can't join the triad, or the squires, or faerwon or
tarmalan or the nuns.

They also don't receive blessings. Any kind of a blessing. If the spell says
"blessing" in it, it doesn't work on you. If someone casts a blessing
on you, you will get a message that says "the gods turn their face from
you" or if it's like the blessing of Tarmalan, it would say "Tarmalan
turns his face from you" because you are scorned. That's part of what it
means to be an oathbreaker.

That said, the guild gets some access to civilized, evil religious, and good
religious guilds. Less good religious ones, because they have more of that
honor and creed stuff that require oaths.

They get levels 1 through 15, and a "mastery of deception" skill that
goes (shock!) 1 through 15, with you gaining access to 1 max level every level
of the guild. What this does is let you train 1 level in a guild outside your
faction. So if you have 5 levels in Mastery of Deception, you can train 5
levels in merchant, or in ghost liberators if you are a evil religious
background. Or 5 levels in reaver if you are a good religious background.

But it's only available if you are civilized, good, or evil. Nomads and magical
can't join. There's a reason for that. The guild gets three special spells:

Deceive Evil: A buff that for X minutes and changes your alignment to be evil,
and makes you appear to have an evil religious background. It doesn't actually
change your background, just lets you join certain evil guilds that don't
require an oath.

Deceive Good: a buff that for X minutes and changes your alignment to be good,
and makes you appear to have a good religious background. It doesn't actually
change your background, it just lets you join certain good guilds that don't
require an oath.

Deceive Neutral: a buff taht lasts for X minutes and changes your alignment to
be neutral, and makes you appear to have a civilized background. It doesn't
actually change your background, it just lets you join certain neutral guilds
that don't require an oath.

That said, while you do have to pray to the gods of chaos to join them, they
are happy to make use of a Loki worshipper. However the evil priest guilds
(triad, curate, seminary) require more commitment that oathbreakers aren't
willing to make.

I imagine they would also have sneak skill and invisibility spell. Maybe also
stuff that makes wimpy work better - like if you wimpy you conjure a phantasm
of yourself and you go into stealth when you wimpy out. "mastery of
fleeing" maybe?

What they wouldn't have is an abundance of combat skills, healing, or
teleporation. I'm imagining them to be committed to stealth and deception, and
using deception in fun or even annoying ways.

Maybe a "False Accusation" skill that lets you accuse a monster to
have other monsters in the room turn on it? Kind of a crowd control skill?

Now the reason they can't do anything with Nomad is because Nomads tribal
culture is difficult for them to break into by weaving lies. Nomads will just
kill you if they find out you're a liar. They are also much better at reading
body language, and also have more close-knit communities where there aren't
many strangers and they know each other better. Oathbreakers just end up dead
when they try to deceive nomads.

As for magical background, they have telepaths. Oathbreakers can't deceive them
no matter how hard they try. They just get laughed at.

I imagine there would be quests that involve less combat and more role-play and
fun. Go to this place and masquerade as Baron McGrumpyface and sabotage their
war plans and also dump rotten milk in their castle well. Or go to this
diplomatic summit masquerading as the ambassador from Furnachia and cause
absolute chaos by sneaking into the bedroom of the catgirl ambassador and
stealing her undergarments, offending their faction and preventing a key
alliance from being formed. Basically you ruin people's good name and make the
entire world hate that other guy. It sucks to be him. Each quest gives you +1
mastery of deception, letting you add more non-native guild levels.

Anyway, any thoughts? Would it break too much? Is it too complicated? I really
just wanted to join civmages as a evil religious and cast floating disc. Bit of
a roundabout way to do it, I know. Does it cause a nightmare of balance issues?
Am I dumb?