Another Cap proposal

Simon

Adept
I will go all in. What would folks thing about changing the game across the board (all chapters here) as follows:

Universal Level cap somewhere between level 20-35
Removal of All Formal Magic created items. Formal magic would be restricted to plot scrolls only (visions, blissful rests etc) Possibly also removing limited circle of power as well....not sure on COP's.

Removal of all production skills and tagged items. Maybe a new skill for refitting armor. Potion making and Scroll making disappear all-together. Alchemy gets turned into some kind of times per day point system similar to spell pyradmids, but nothing lasts past reset.

Joe Siegel
 
I'm confused.

The title of this is "Another Cap proposal," but what you're actually proposing is a vast modification to the ruleset that happens to include a cap, but what you've actually described in your OP is a bunch of changes that don't seem to have anything like a correlation to each other.
 
Eh, they do that in a lot of european games, whittleing mechanics down to almost nothin but combat stuff. Not interested. I like magic, I like tags/item cards, I like production skills and potion making and mechanically reliable things that allow for stuff outside of 'hi heres my costume, I hit you with stick now.'... your proposal just sounds kinda lame and boreing.
 
Universal Level cap somewhere between level 20-35
Removal of All Formal Magic created items. Formal magic would be restricted to plot scrolls only (visions, blissful rests etc) Possibly also removing limited circle of power as well....not sure on COP's.

Okay, instead of dismissing it, let's have a conversation. This I could possibly get behind. Many of the magic items and formal magic seems to spawn resentment between haves and have-nots. Spell casters get formal where melee classes get more profs. Formal is way cooler....


Removal of all production skills and tagged items. Maybe a new skill for refitting armor. Potion making and Scroll making disappear all-together. Alchemy gets turned into some kind of times per day point system similar to spell pyradmids, but nothing lasts past reset.

Production is very under utilized. One route is get rid of it. This route proposed is that route.

The other route, which includes getting rid of magic items (see first part of proposal), is not letting production go out as treasure. This puts more reliability on production characters. Make characters want to take these skills to make useful items as they are really needed. I would much rather see characters WANT to use production skills instead of getting rid of them.
 
Eh, they do that in a lot of european games, whittleing mechanics down to almost nothin but combat stuff. Not interested. I like magic, I like tags/item cards, I like production skills and potion making and mechanically reliable things that allow for stuff outside of 'hi heres my costume, I hit you with stick now.'... your proposal just sounds kinda lame and boreing.

Our system is almost nothing but combat stuff as it stands now, because combat is 90% of everything we actually need rules for. The rest is item production.
 
Our system is almost nothing but combat stuff as it stands now, because combat is 90% of everything we actually need rules for. The rest is item production.

Correct, hence I wouldn't enjoy seeing even more whittled off as I believe theres more potential to larp than combat even in alliance and I beleive in more enablers to facilitate that potential. Since the question was 'what would folks think'- thats what I had to offer.
 
What about:
Chapters can just start running capped games; once characters hit the cap -- they have to start over (I've seen people put their build toward an alt instead of the character they played during a weekend).

There's nothing currently stopping a chapter from running a capped game as far as I know, nor is there anything (aside from player interest) in chapters restricting these things on their own.

Are players asking for this sort of thing across all chapters?
 
I hope not. There are some stories I'd want to tell that should have a cap. There are some I'd want to tell that should have a _floor_. There are some that I want a mish-mash of everyone. Let me be clear here. The greatest power disparity I've seen isn't in build skills, it's in magic item accrual. Strip all the members of our local highbie group of their ritual magic and put them in an arena against a midbie group stripped of rituals and I suspect you'd see a lot closer fight than the current frequency of level cap discussion would indicate. As I've said elsewhere, tightening the BP curve could also make for an effective cap, even with unlimited growth. For some of our oldest players this is already the case with multiple events necessary to gain one build.

Build and level are not what makes highbies dangerous, they augment the dangerous items those PCs wield.
 
yah, no, not lookin for that around my neck of the woods so far as i can tell. Mostly if people can just refrain from bein jerks to new players and be an active part of the present (helping new players now) and future (prepping those new players to carry things on) of their game, points on the sheet isnt really the problem.
 
Build and level are not what makes highbies dangerous, they augment the dangerous items those PCs wield.

This thought is very much why I added the rest of the items to the build cap. This proposal is an effort to get at the rest of the things the Have's have, to make them more equal to the have not's, to turn a phrase. So yeah, I wanted to see what those who like the ideas on level caps, and item restrictions think about going all in. Is there a line? Where is it? Are people willing to continue their discussions underneath the final logical outcome, or are they only comfortable holding the conversation incrementally? These are all honest questions, and I want to see what the discussion around them looks like.

Joe S.
 
Yeah. You cannot apply build to another character if you are PC'ing at a chapter. You have to apply it to the one who is there.
 
This thought is very much why I added the rest of the items to the build cap. This proposal is an effort to get at the rest of the things the Have's have, to make them more equal to the have not's, to turn a phrase. So yeah, I wanted to see what those who like the ideas on level caps, and item restrictions think about going all in. Is there a line? Where is it? Are people willing to continue their discussions underneath the final logical outcome, or are they only comfortable holding the conversation incrementally? These are all honest questions, and I want to see what the discussion around them looks like.

So YMMV, but for what it's worth (and note my main hasn't even hit level 20 yet), incremental changes in a national organization are probably for the best. If you change things too drastically too fast, you risk splintering. Now with that said, the increments that should be worked on are probably the most egregious first. Which is why I agree with Mike V. that at a national level Master Construct need either a major overhaul or should more properly not be an available ritual. Next in line, in my opinion, would be build replicating rituals in a general sense, even if it was worked one ritual at a time. Then I would look at level caps.

Keep in mind these are my opinions and speculations. I'm making an educated guess, based on my personal, biased, experiences with humans and group dynamics. I very much recommend more caps/real item restrictions and the like happen in chapters throughout our community. Not only because I believe them to be a better play style, but also because they act as proof of concept and real world experience.
 
I agree incremental steps go down better. But I am showing where it ends because I want to know where people think we should stop.

Joe S.
 
So here's where I think we should stop: when we reach a point when players can reasonably state that when two players that are of reasonably equal OOG skill, and a difference of about 10 levels of combat build, there is a good level of uncertainty of who will come out on top if they engaged in PvP, including all their gear.
 
Why boil it down to a PvP comparison? Alliance is meant to be a team game (as repeatedly stated by Mike V.) and is most predominantly played as PvE.

In my opinion, any sort of end state for Alliance should be evaluated on the survivability of a team that can compensate for each other's weaknesses, not an evaluation of an individual vs. an individual. Otherwise, you might be advocating for a class-less system that is more PvP-centric (which isn't to say that isn't a good game, just that it wouldn't be Alliance anymore).
 
Can we stop with PvE and PvP ...this isn't WOW its a LARP, if my character wants to attack your character its done on IG actions based on what transpired between them. Also, high level characters don't ruin the game for low level players and I am tired of seeing post about it, opinions are fine but don't make seem like its fact because it isn't, its the person playing said character NOT their level. If you want to discuss about what's wrong with the game then talk about how broken High Magic is.....now back to the same handful of people who have the same discussions on these boards all day.
 
Sounds like you have a strong opinion about high magic. If you'd rather see that discussed, why not write it up and post it?
 
Can we stop with PvE and PvP ...this isn't WOW its a LARP, if my character wants to attack your character its done on IG actions based on what transpired between them.
I believe you have a misunderstanding about our approach. Please allow me to clarify this for you. :)

What a PC can expect from combative interactions with NPCs is usually different than what a PC can expect from another PC. Example: A PC won't ever be an Elemental, a monstrous humanoid, a dragon, a gryffon, or capable of throwing dragon magic. A PC also won't have any immunities*, won't generally have super-human strength*, and a number of other things that NPCs can be affected by.

*Barring golems, Greater Transform rituals, and Plot weirdness.

Also, high level characters don't ruin the game for low level players and I am tired of seeing post about it, opinions are fine but don't make seem like its fact because it isn't, its the person playing said character NOT their level. If you want to discuss about what's wrong with the game then talk about how broken High Magic is.....now back to the same handful of people who have the same discussions on these boards all day.

I think you're misunderstanding other parts of the conversation. Generally, a lot of people who believe that levels are part of the problem aren't blaming the players of high level characters, but instead are talking about the difficulty that the level disparity in this incredibly old LARP is creating for balancing for an entire audience of players. We're talking about the scaling system, -not- about behavioral characteristics.

As a side, I'm certainly interested in discussing High Magic on a separate thread, as the player of a 27th (maybe 28th now?) E-Scholar with a bunch of Formal.
 
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