Mara being difficult, or just strange...

[Desirsar]

First, I notice when I sacrifice inherently evil creatures to other
gods that will accept my sacrifices as a neutral good layworshipper,
it angers Mara that I sacrifice to them, but seemingly the fact that
I'm sacrificing something evil not only relieves all anger the act
causes, it actually raises my favor with her as well! Is this normal?

Once becoming a follower of Mara, is it normal that I can no longer
choose necromancy as a spellcasting specialization and cannot learn
pure Necromancy spells from books?

[Frumple]

On Nov 3, 6:58 am, Desirsar <c...@inebraska.com> wrote:
> First, I notice when I sacrifice inherently evil creatures to other
> gods that will accept my sacrifices as a neutral good layworshipper,
> it angers Mara that I sacrifice to them, but seemingly the fact that
> I'm sacrificing something evil not only relieves all anger the act
> causes, it actually raises my favor with her as well!  Is this normal?

I'm... not sure, really. Layworshipping acts strangely in respect to
god anger; you're noticing the anger via wizard mode, or the character
screen, or via messages? Iirc, layworshippers don't seem to get hit
with the 'sacrificing to other gods' bit of anger, _but_, if they're
devoted to a god, they can get hit with that anger. It's a fairly
small hit in most cases; so...

Anyway, to try to clear up my reading, you're devoted to Mara, but
sacrificing to other gods; that sacrifice is angering Mara, but
actually improving favor with her and negating any of said anger? The
anger should be normal unless you're sacrificing to Hesani or Essiah,
but the favor gain for Mara -- especially if you're saccing to another
god -- is indeed a bit odd. The saccing and/or killing of inherently
evil creatures _is_ a good act though, so that might be where the
favor's coming from.

> Once becoming a follower of Mara, is it normal that I can no longer
> choose necromancy as a spellcasting specialization and cannot learn
> pure Necromancy spells from books?

Unsure. There may be an alignment and/or favor level restriction on
Mara worshipers casting necromancy spells; it's mentioned in the
pantheon blurb, but I'm not seeing anything specific in the .irh file.
Are you playing as an elf? That'd be the most obvious cause; they
can't use necromantic spells.

[Desirsar]

On Nov 3, 4:55 pm, Frumple <sakkaku.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 3, 6:58 am, Desirsar <c...@inebraska.com> wrote:
>
> > First, I notice when I sacrifice inherently evil creatures to other
> > gods that will accept my sacrifices as a neutral good layworshipper,
> > it angers Mara that I sacrifice to them, but seemingly the fact that
> > I'm sacrificing something evil not only relieves all anger the act
> > causes, it actually raises my favor with her as well!  Is this normal?
>
> I'm... not sure, really. Layworshipping acts strangely in respect to
> god anger; you're noticing the anger via wizard mode, or the character
> screen, or via messages? Iirc, layworshippers don't seem to get hit
> with the 'sacrificing to other gods' bit of anger, _but_, if they're
> devoted to a god, they can get hit with that anger. It's a fairly
> small hit in most cases; so...

I would sacrifice the corpse, get a message of anger by Mara, get the
message of acceptance and value of the corpse to the god of the altar
in question, then get a message that Mara's anger had faded. Checking
after the sacrifice showed small gains in favor with Mara in addition
to the favor with the other god.

> Anyway, to try to clear up my reading, you're devoted to Mara, but
> sacrificing to other gods; that sacrifice is angering Mara, but
> actually improving favor with her and negating any of said anger? The
> anger should be normal unless you're sacrificing to Hesani or Essiah,
> but the favor gain for Mara -- especially if you're saccing to another
> god -- is indeed a bit odd. The saccing and/or killing of inherently
> evil creatures _is_ a good act though, so that might be where the
> favor's coming from.

Must be that it's a good act. Hesani, Essiah, Kysul, Xavias,
Semirath, Aiswin, and Sabine all gave this same result. (Of course,
Aiswin and Sabine's usual conditions for player killed corpses
applied.)

> > Once becoming a follower of Mara, is it normal that I can no longer
> > choose necromancy as a spellcasting specialization and cannot learn
> > pure Necromancy spells from books?
>
> Unsure. There may be an alignment and/or favor level restriction on
> Mara worshipers casting necromancy spells; it's mentioned in the
> pantheon blurb, but I'm not seeing anything specific in the .irh file.
> Are you playing as an elf? That'd be the most obvious cause; they
> can't use necromantic spells.

Ahh, I missed that in the elf descriptions, yes, it was.

I should mention that this was a "partial cheat", where I had a second
level warrior who had no trouble dispatching the huntsmen sent by
Maeve when sacrificing to Mara initially, then subsequent huntsmen
corpses to Sabine and Aiswin at first, converted to Mara, then noticed
the effect I was asking about when accidentally killing one standing
on the altar to Xavias, so I proceeded to sacrifice all the corpses to
get at least three blessings by the various gods that would give
them. (I found that something else on the level had killed piles of
huntsmen that weren't summoned near enough to the parthenon and
wandered away to a particular room, since Aiswin and Sabine wouldn't
take them in that case...) The huntsmen I did kill gave enough XP at
level 2 to gain up to level 10. Seems like Maeve needs to send more
of them at once, possibly teleporting the offender to an open area
first, and they should have a higher difference in CR to the player.

[Kalkkis]

On 3 marras, 14:58, Desirsar <c...@inebraska.com> wrote:
> First, I notice when I sacrifice inherently evil creatures to other
> gods that will accept my sacrifices as a neutral good layworshipper,
> it angers Mara that I sacrifice to them, but seemingly the fact that
> I'm sacrificing something evil not only relieves all anger the act
> causes, it actually raises my favor with her as well!  Is this normal?

This may be because Mara likes good acts and sacrificing to good gods
is good act.

[Journeyman]

Yup -- in fact, good acts soothe Mara's anger toward the player,
thereby
creating this odd set of unintended consequences (anger from god
jealousy
being soothed by the good act of the same sacrifice).

This wasn't design, obviously.