Ideas for improving long term interest...

[GM_Chris]

I think ther perception of hero points doesn't meat the reality of hero points.

Basically hero point giving runs intot he same problems as treasure giving. We really need a reward person to just hang out at NPC camp and work on giving out rewards.

To be honest hero points were suppose to be very common when we first talked about them. I got the idea from Babalon5 the RP game.

[Atrum Draconus]

I've been a (somewhat reluctant) part of the political system since it was introduced. I can tell you that there's not really a problem with getting enough points most of the time, it's a problem with having enough people. I'm pretty sure that Donovan, Kels, Corbyn and I have enough points together to maintain a 1st level 3rd tier org (RPO I think).

What types of skills should be worth 4 levels? 8 levels? 20 levels? do you have to declare at 20th level you're saving your next 20 levels to get a skill? How do you balance the fact that a priviledged human is giving up ALOT more than a savage non-human? I like the inventiveness of the idea, but there are just way too many problems with balance and you are suggesting there be new skills added to the game that are exclusively for these "feat" type skills and personally, part of the appeal of the game is that you don't have 300 different skills that all do the same basic 5 or 6 things.

I truly think the fear of some uber powerful character with a full path, and 3 full disciplines or 2.5 paths or something like that is really a moot point. Lets look at a basic build.

Full path full discipline 2nd level discipline 1 other 20 pt skill. Lets say you make that skill a path skill. You have 15 pts left over so in 3 event you could buy another basic path skill. It will take you 40 pts to buy the other 2 basic path skills, or 20 events (10 events with the change I proposed) 120 pts or 60 events (30 with the proposed change.) to get the advanced skills from a 2nd path. Thats 43 events WITH the change (or just over 5 years at 8 events a year) to gain 6 skills, none of them master skills. with Disciplines it would be 34 events with the change to get that 2nd level path to full. I don't see anything wrong with that, it gives very long term players a mechanical reason to keep going. Right now unless they are a political type character there is 0 mechanical incentive to continue playing a character. I've been in the game since the very first event, I had a few events Atrum wasn't around, and I have 3 more skills (all base level) than a 4 event character.

LIke I said, there is 0 mechanical motivation to continue playing a character. Everyone keeps comparing stuff and taking stuff from video games, except the ONE thing that keeps people playing ALL of those video games, getting better or more skills and abilities. Yeah some of those games have a hard cap, but they cap out where you're a mad uber badass not a 3 trivial skills better than the person that hasn't played long enough to even really know the rules.

[GM_Chris]

Are you guys looking for a mechanical change in which people get stronger and stronger so that they can do more and more than the 4 event character?

Basically kinda like CARPS where a vet can just chop chop through the legions of newbs

[Kalphoenix]

I agree, it's a dilemma, because how do you make characters better without raising the bar too high for newbies. I AGREE that I would rather see it stay the way it is than turn into a carps-style ruleset where a new player will never touch the level of an older character.

I'd like to see higher-level characters have more utility, as opposed to more leet-ness.

do you have to declare at 20th level you're saving your next 20 levels to get a skill?

Yes, because I am saying that the PC has to find someone to train them. There needs to be an element of role-playing required in the process, or it doesn't work. If they decided to drop out at some point, I think it's fair to let them have the levels they were going to spend on the trait (Which were held in the interim). Yeah, it would suck to miss out on that skill after spending so much time trying to learn it, but if it was easy, it wouldn't be epic. It happens with Arcanes, Craftsmen and Alchemists all the time.

It's still growth and small, but it's something to work towards without raising the bar too high, too fast. And it requires work on the side of the PC, as well it should. I'm not specifically talking about anyone here, just the internet crowd in general, but really tired of this instant gratification thing the online gaming crowd has (I'm one of them). Epic things should be hard. Not necessarily tedious (Which is what most game companies seem to have trouble with), but it should require sacrifice and dedication.

You're right, it needs work, but I think it has potential.

The only other thing I can think of (I like this one too) is to give out more hero points and let players use them as normal, or cash those in for epic skills that unlock at certain levels. We had something like this in elementary school (Ok, not skills, but a similar process) where you earned pieces of wrapped candy (Hero points) for doing certain things. You could eat the candy (Hero heals, heroic strike, etc) or you could save the candy for a small toy (small permanent skill: similar to Track) or for ordering a book from the scholastic catalog (BIG permanent epic skill: Sage Enhancement - The sage now counts as two sages for the purpose of sage hints...man I loved books when I was a kid). And I don't think players cheat this way, but the hero points would need to be character specific (You couldn't earn hero points for your other character or your buddy) and hero points from RPOs or whatever (The ones that you get at the beginning of every game) would have to be used as temp ones. There is still an element of risk and sacrifice to it (Save up those Hero Points or spend it on a quick heroic strike), but it would be easier to track than using levels. The other caveat is that unless you charged pretty big amounts for the skills, you would still have that L33t thing going on. You could limit the number of epic skills a player could have at one time (increasing it as the player leveled), or only allowing a player to unlearn an epic skill at a HUGE loss of points that were spent learning it.

I still like the idea of skill grouping for lower level abilities as epic skills, which is what I meant by different skills that do existing abilities (IE: Hunter - You receive the benefits of track and wilderness survival).

But again, this would only work if players received more hero points than they normally do, or we run into the same problem now of generally only combat classes getting hero points and getting better. I'd like to see the growth leading to more utility as opposed to more combat skills, but both could be done if handled carefully. The benefit is that anyone can earn Hero points, at least in theory.

[dier_cire]

Just to ask the obvious...

What's the difference between saving up points for a leveled skill per your suggestion and and saving up for a regular skill? You aren't going to be able to afford anything else in either case. As a higher level character, I'd always buy leveled skills as they'd be far cheaper, seeing as 20 levels is only 10pts for me which is more or less useless.

As for hero points, we get them for things other than leveling? I don't believe I've ever gotten one other than that. You learn new things every day.

I am not looking for a way to get more powerful like Carps, but rather a way to give those that have been around a while something extra but at a cost to their current power. Ie you can gain a perm skill, but you sacrifice all your political clout and all your levels.

[Atrum Draconus]

Chris, did you read my example? No it would be NOTHING like CARPS because you are still only gaining an extremely small amount of pts each event. Do the math, some of it's already done for you in the post I put up there. Once you get to the points I described above it gets harder by nearly 3x. Basically with those changes the difference in Atrum right now would be I could have 2 more basic warrior\sage skills or 1 more 1st level discipline skill and 1 more basic warrior\sage skill since it would be a 4th discipline. Hardly "newbie chop chopping". Besides, you were at the play testing of newbs vs 20th level.

Levels after 20th really have very, very little value. and the value is different for every type of lifestyle and race combination so it's nearly impossible to balance, it adds a complexity that isn't needed, and for a "simple" game there are enough complex rules really.

I hear you on the hero point thing Ried, I've gotten 1 ever.
And I don't ever think it's a good idea to base mechanical advancement on something that is subjectively given out like hero points.

On the other hand if something like this was implemented I'd be against the RP portion, thats what hidden disciplines and paths and stuff are for. It should be something that's open to anyone without causing the GM's more work or having to get approval from a GM. You don't have to ask a GM if you can buy your next level of a skill, you don't even have to ask to unlearn.

Edit: What about a choice? You can either get the other stuff you get with each 4 levels or you can get double pts. Of course then that set up the at 40th 80th and 160th etc you can choose to get all the stuff and a life pt. But I don't really see that as a problem seeing as it will take you about 7 or 8 years to do so.

[Kalphoenix]

*chuckles* That's why I said:

The benefit is that anyone can earn Hero points, at least in theory.

Players are supposed to get them for things other than levels. Personally I always felt the level hero points were "Sorry we forgot about you for 30 levels, here's a hero point." Of course, GMs can't be everywhere at once. I'm allowed to say that because I know I miss out on totally awesome scenes between PCs at WH because I am helping to run the game. I also know because I've been in these kinds of scenes as a player, where it was the most awesome scene/discussion/roleplay ever, but no one except the people involved would ever really know about it. Probably my all-time favorite discussion was a one-on-one with another PC. Don't get me wrong, I've had awesome in-character NPC scenes and I LOVED every second of them, but I think many of the PC moments trump them, which is great because it makes a game where all you do is interact with other PCs possible and entertaining. But how can a GM reward someone for something they don't see?

If it was based on hero points, then it could be easily standardized and certain kinds of abilities restricted based on level or amount already obtained. Hero points also have the ability to be variable and can change throughout leveling up (IE: Not static numbers) which is the benefit. The fact is that there aren't many handed out generally to certain types of characters, which is a drawback.

The benefit of sacrificing levels for powers is that the player has to give something up for it (political clout, extra hitpoints, leveled hero points, etc), thereby adding a balance and the GMs don't have to worry about making sure people get Hero points, since people always get levels for an event. The drawbacks are that the system could be messy with no way to restrict abilities based on level, there is less sacrifice for a savage character to give up levels than a privileged one, you couldn't really make a political skill in this system because it would seem weird.

I don't like the idea of straight-up points because there is no making it different from normal leveling. That's boring and makes it seem like a treadmill. There is no element of sacrifice or real work to it, you just get it for being there. That's not epic.

My other idea was for adding skills at certain levels based on lifestyle, since there is pretty much zero incentive to level post 30 unless you are a political/privileged character. I tossed out that idea when I learned that you could somehow change your lifestyle, even though there isn't really a mechanical way yet in the book . I suppose it could still work, but it would get messy when someone changed lifestyles. Do they loose all their previous skills and move over to having the ones they would have normally for that lifestyle? Or do they keep all the ones they had up to that level and then switch over to gaining the ones for the lifestyle they swapped to? There is also less ability to customize with this line of thought, which could be good or bad.

Good discussion, it helps me with my project, even if it doesn't end up helping here.

I'm roleplaying first, always, but I also like my mechanics and the problem with roleplaying for a lot of our straight-up rules folks is that it's hard to standardize. If it was, it wouldn't be roleplaying anymore. I say roleplaying should trump mechanics every time in a LARP where the rules get sketchy and that's why I push the way I do for things to be slightly better defined. I want things done fun and fair for everyone. It's not always fun for the rulefolks when something can be fudged as per-the-rules because they aren't well-defined (IE: field calls). Not everything can be well-defined in Live-Action, but they can usually be corrected and clarified as best possible, hee hee. Believe me, I've learned a lot this year.

[dier_cire]

See to me, currently levels end ~70ish when you get the ability to have master path, a 4th level and a 3rd level discipline. Up until then you can play with your level 1 and 2 skills to optimize your character every other event or so. I tried quite a few combos over the years. Though ultimately, I've found my favorite.

As for doubling the points after 20, while it's not bad, it's still just a grind and ultimately that grind ends. Compare to Diablo 2 when they nerfed xp after level 80. It didn't do anything except make people base characters off of level 85-90 instead of 99. This would be the inverse of that but end in the same result. I'd stop playing the character due to boredom.

Now, in KoL, I've been playing the same character for 3 years and still have so many skills to hc perm that I'll be playing for a good number more, then I might level grind till I get bored but that's still a few years off. This is why I find this idea better in the long run.

Hey, and to steal another idea, we could do the D2 style HC characters where you declare at creation that this character cannot be rezed (and maybe a couple extra nerfs on healing in negs). The benefit could be increased leveling (like +1 an event) or an opened up set of skills, etc.

[Atrum Draconus]

Heidi, my whole point about hero points is that they aren't standardized in anyway, so they shouldn't be used for leveling or skill buying. Thats one of the things I always thought was silly about AD&D, that each character got individual points based on how much the DM thought they accomplished and advancement shouldn't be subjective. The level hero points were always meant to be something to compensate the higher level characters since they didn't really get anything else out of the mechanics. As you can see, very very few people get a hero point given to them every 2.5 games. Ried and I are always in the middle of just about every really big plot and we don't even average a hero point between the two of us every 5 years.

I'm a RP over mechanics person usually too. But some things just work better as mechanics. But as long as the mechanics were sound and everyone had access to it without limitations like "oh that npc isn't at this game" and such I'd have no problem with the GM's having a rp quality to it. That'd be up to them if they wanted to do the extra work.

I haven't really played KoL in awhile, I actually signed in to mess around with it and farm some pixels and found the hole in the sky gone, which apparently happened quite awhile ago. Maybe I need to finally go beat the naughty sorceress and see what this ascension thing is all about.

[Eilonwy]

In a nutshell, I like the idea of unlocking skills and the video game influenced ideas in general.

As long as new characters are allowed to be useful from the beginning as they are now, I don't see this causing a huge gap; it will just give a slight perk to characters who are really old... if used in moderation.

"Re-popping" Hero points would be cool, even if the number of them goes down. Believe it or not, non-warriors have gotten them in the past for reasons known only to the GM's (though the point was used in combat by a relatively non-combat PC for rescuing purposes).

[Kalphoenix]

Heidi, my whole point about hero points is that they aren't standardized in anyway, so they shouldn't be used for leveling or skill buying.

I'm sorry, I meant standardized as in "This skill costs X amount of hero points and you must be Nth level to access it." I guess I wasn't very clear there.

The problem with giving people goals to work towards is that it should require more work than your pre-20 games, which would make it tougher on the GMs. I don't think it should be things that you just get for showing up and continuing to play your character. I think it should take WORK. If the GMs handed out hero-points that could go towards perm-skills, it would probably cause even more bad blood than it does now with people feeling like they are getting passed over. I feel that part of the reason why the system caps out when it does is to give players an incentive to play someone new and take some of the high-end characters out of the system. Most of the high-end characters right now are already pretty bulked out with magic items so I can see the hesitance to add more in the way of growth without adding some kind of counter-balance.

Re-popping Hero points would be useful, I guess, but it doesn't seem like much of an appeal push for long-term advancement, even if you gave people more hero point "slots" per event as they advanced. We also run into that "Well, we'd like to give him another one, he really deserves it, but he has enough." issue.

[dier_cire]

I don't think the high point characters have as many magic items as you'd think. I don't even have 1 and Ka has been around since the beginning. A few people may have multiples and a few have some that I consider broken but I don't think that they are the exception more than the rule. Plus, I'm hoping some will get eaten between seasons.

As for KoL, the Hole in the Sky still exists, plus on alternate runs the gender changes from male to female (ie instead of fighting a one eyed serpent you'll fight a little man in a canoe ). They did roll some things back pre ascension to avoid people being in the middle of the tower so that may have been what you saw. Course now the game runs to level 13 (two more quests) too.

[Kalphoenix]

I noticed that about the hole in the sky this ascension, but now you're getting me off track.

[GM-Phil]

Ok, I finally have to pipe in, but since I just got home from work I will not go into great detail...

Ideas for Higher level advantages...

How about something along the lines of abilities that improve current skills that a character is capable of picking up upon reaching certain levels.. Ex..

1. Reduce the time of a skill by 1/2
2. Increase the ability of your Hero points.. +10 life, Reduce a skill by 5 minutes.
3. Remove the penalty from the Lvl 4. Swashbuckler.
4. Remove the 5 second cool down for Warrior : Rage skill.
5. Add Additional things a Sage could Buff or increase currents ones.
6. Increase the amount of time you can use the Flee skill.

I could probably come up withe more as can many other people .. but these are just ideas of what I was thinking..

Mechanically what would happen is when you reach a level such as 40, 60, 80.. so on.. (or whatever levels are decided).. they could pick one additional ability for their character.. making them a bit more unique.

I will probably add more on this as the posts roll in.

[dier_cire]

My only issue with the idea is there's no negative / trade off. It's still just more skills for higher levels and this just pushes back the boredom factor a year or so. It's working on the same logic as increasing the points given past level 20, which doesn't solve the larger issue. The idea isn't to push boredom out from 4 years to 6, it's to push it out to beyond 10. Also, you have to think not in increasing the current character necessarily. This encourages the division of newer characters and older ones.