I've, as well as others, suggested this before. I do recall this wasn't received very well, but I would like to reiterate my point of view on the matter.
IMO Clerics are not about good vs evil/life and death, they're about devotion to a particular religion/faith/path. of course, some religions would only be allotted to good or evil characters, but Equilibrium, Chance, Knowledge and Faith could make room for a neutral aligned follower/disciple/cleric.
yes, we have Druids... as well as Healers and Shamans... that shouldn't -again IMO- be the excuse as to why Neutral Clerics are not permitted.
it could be a balance issue, as comments have stated in the past, but we can iron-out those issues... neutral only eq that would supposedly unbalance a neutral cleric could be remedied...
I just feel that if eq is the main reason for limiting the selection of alignment for a class, it's like we've painted ourselves into a corner.
as to the altered skills/spells for this neutral selection and what races should be permitted... I'll leave that up to the powers that be.
I had a fire giant Dkn for a short time. Loosing things like bash and iceball on a dkn really hurt, heh. It's a fun combo when you think about it, but not so much.
I would love elven Monks. They would be weaker, but so much fun.
I think neutral clerics would be weaker.
Perhaps with a custom Path/Ray for them, a bless arms and portal/sermon.
Turning with those skills they will be weaker.
From what I remember, those helpfiles were April's fools joke (giant paladin and death knights).
EDIT:
Derp. I just read them again. So, yeah, I still think fire giant death-knights and storm paladins would be viable without being overpowered without loss of skills/spells for picking the classes.
There is already demon death-knights that can eat enlarge, so seems like a moot point. A fire DKN would be way weaker than a demon, and while the bashes would lag some classes, the mental/ice vuln would suck waaaaay much against other classes. I really don't think they'd be a game-breaking addition to the game. Same with storm paladins.
Assuming they keep all the original skills/spells.
A bashless, iceballess FG is an awful combo. I would not play one without those two spell.
Could live with losing just one of them, but not both.
So what you're really looking for is a warrior with malform weapon? :-P :-P Oh wait, that's already fully possible IIRC.....
I would have been interestd to see how the FG DK played out over a period of time at lvl 50. Ranger's don't have bash and your charmie would surely be stronger than rangers pets. Also, was fireball standard or the 'roided version?
Fire DK would suck completely, even without the loss of any skills. Of course, your PK skill will compensate for some of the suckiness, but the suck is still gonna be quite big.
Besides, I would love wooping your ass on a combo you think is cool.
The fireball was pathetic due to the 15 int. No upgrade there. Only nerf. It was fun at some points though. I was an efrit and had quite a good RP behind the charecter. That's why Anume allowed it, heh.
