Do you like Permanent Duration?

[phedre]

True, though not every chapter drops two per year; I'd say a more realistic rate is 1 every 3 years (some possibly even longer, depending on chapter size).

I don't think that's true, unless you've been doing a lot of chapter hopping that I don't know about. OR has put them out on the order of 2 per year, but possibly as low as 1 per year (I've personally had two in my hand at the same time as a PC, so my perspective may be a little skewed, but I guarantee that they're out there). Seattle has put out just over one per year (some years just one, but usually two) for the past few years, too.

If a chapter puts out less than 2 permanence catalysts per year, that's on them. They can put two out per year, per the treasure policy in the bylaws. If they want to put out a third, they must put out two of every other catalyst before they can do that. At 25 people per catalyst, with the number rolling over from game to game for the calendar year, putting out 2 of each catalyst means you're having lots of events with relatively high attendance.

I like the "times it can be recharged" idea. Would you apply it to Regen and CSS, or would you make those instant, like race change or Spirit Forge?

 

[obcidian_bandit]

CSS will die soon. It's soooo clooooose...

Anyways, that's neither here nor there. Regen will be around for a while, and the question is really the same for one as for both. I could go either way. I know of quite a few Regens, and all of the ones I can think of are Permed. I know of a few CSSes, and while some of those are Permed, at least 1 or 2 are Preserved. I personally don't see a really good reason to treat them any differently than any other ritual, but I wouldn't screw with wording one way or the other if it made it look like a 'per use' system was going to pass a vote.

 

[Avaran]

I don't think that's true, unless you've been doing a lot of chapter hopping that I don't know about. OR has put them out on the order of 2 per year, but possibly as low as 1 per year (I've personally had two in my hand at the same time as a PC, so my perspective may be a little skewed, but I guarantee that they're out there). Seattle has put out just over one per year (some years just one, but usually two) for the past few years, too.

This might be better suited to a private question, but I'm curious; so my question is, "If these items are such a problem, why add to it at the maximum rate allowed?"

Is it because players want them (which goes without saying)? As a general philosophy, if chapters cater to what players want, it will ultimately be bad for the game because you will inevitably end up with everyone running around with a permanent magic item. And if you're going to make sure you put out two per year, why not go that extra step and make sure someone new gets it every time? It's a slippery slope. I'm not accusing anyone of doing that, but I think it is a concern -- look at the discussion we're having based on all of the so-called rampant permanent magic item problem (which I don't really see).

So why can't chapters take more responsibility with this issue and just not put out as many permanence catalysts as it can? At the extreme end, there is a larger difference between having 1 permanent 20-rit item every 3 or even 4 years versus having 2 every year (and that just gets more likely the longer the game goes given stockpiles of scrolls).

I personally don't see a really good reason to treat them any differently than any other ritual...

The biggest reason I can think of is because it has an indelible effect on a character -- deaths incurred while regen'd or CCS'd cannot be bought back. You can take away any other ritual or item and not have that effect on a character.

 

[obcidian_bandit]

This might be better suited to a private question, but I'm curious; so my question is, "If these items are such a problem, why add to it at the maximum rate allowed?"

We shouldn't. I was addressing your comment of "Perm cats only go out at a rate of 1 per 3 years," which may have been a typo on your part, since it seems like what you may have meant was "Perm cats should only go out at a rate of 1 per 3 years."

We put them out at all because of the expectation that they'll go out. People complain when they don't go out. No one want's to drop 19 rituals and components on an item that will last for anything except the maximum possible duration. That's the problem with all solutions that revolve around "make the max level harder/cost more/whatever to get." You're not raising the maximum, you're raising the minimum. People will pay whatever it costs to get 'the big one.' Permanence is a fine example, but when was the last time you saw a Rit of WOE cast at anything except the D level (with the rare A 'just for the stake'). I've never seen a Rit of WOE B or C cast, ever, and I've only seen one A. Same goes for Golems. Has anyone ever seen a PC cast a golem at less than 45 points? There are 5 tiers to the Master Construct level, but people cast 45 point golems or 60 point golems. There's no such thing as a 55 point golem, a 30 point golem, or a 15 point golem. The 'minimum' is 45 because it doesn't require a catalyst, and 60 points if you happen to be able to come up with one.

There's no 'in between' levels for anything. Preserve is the closest thing we've got, but only because Permanence is so damn hard to get. Extend Duration was removed because no one would cast it, it was a worthless ritual. You could put in a 2 year extender right now, and no one would cast it, either. It's Preserve, Perm, or nothing. If you put a catalyst requirement on Preserve, it would go away too.

 

[Duke Frost]

I used to like Permanent Duration.

But that was back when we had one +1 permanent magic sword in game.

Meeemory, all alone in the moooonliiiight, I can smile at the old days...
:tears:

You can come visit that sword if you'd like. Gary traded it to me for a +1 perm shortsword. :thumbsup:

 

[Lurin]

Oddly enough I dislike Permanent Duration, but not because of item bloat (it's really simply not that much of a deal in my neck of the woods, there's one 20 rit wand, and one 20 rit sword I think in the next chapter over) My biggest dislike for Permanency is the way it functionally discourages smaller items. For example my 'Big' item (after 5 years, but I play mostly as a solo guy until recently) was a 6 Rit Sword with a preserve. It was irritating how much pressure I felt to 'wait' and not waste the scrolls until I had a Perm Set.

Granted I could have filled in the rest faster than the first portion as people usually come together out here once someone gets 'close' to their big item. The sword I made has proven to be a wonderful tool that gets passed around my little baby group. It means a lot to the level 7 fighter to be handed the +3 aura/earth aura blade with a few spells in it when they are going on a mod (With or without undead) To be frank a 20 rit perm item would work less effectively, especially for younger players that might have trouble remembering 15 extra effects (Cloaks, Expands etc.) on top of their...4 skills on card? (Huzzah for 2x disarm, slay and parry!)

It also creates an extremely heavy negative pressure on plot teams to treat super item with kid gloves, who wants to DFM some guy's 'Super Stick' that he made last event? Or who wants to DFM Duke Frost's Blade of Nobility knowing that it will 'force' him to rejoin the stuff quest game three years later?

That said, please remember the above is influenced by someone running a younger game (going into 5 years already though...wow!) that is by design less MI heavy (despite our LCO goblin policy) as we favor shorter lived items from our policy over Longer lived ones (however there IS a mix of both, we just tend to drop 1-2 year MIS) But that might be partly due to our lower APL as our game is constantly growing year over year average attendance (how sweet is that) which keeps the average level down.

Ultimately, from my point of view, in general a Preserve is just as good as a permanence in about 75% of the cases. 5 Real life Years is a long time, and people switch characters etc. Which means 75% of the time permanence has the same relative effect on the game as a preserve timing out from retirement/loss etc. The exclusion to this is player made 15-20 rits which I expect just about never leave the game.

 

[Darkcrescent]

I also come from the same chapter as Lurin above, and as a player I enjoy seeing more 1yr-2yr type items. When you have that big Perm item, it’s assumed that everything is put into that, making it 20rit to make it “epic”. With this, there really is only 1 item rep, where when you have a bunch of little things, they all add and pretty soon you have 20 small little trinkets that you’ve collected (or 20 HUGE trinkets if they are from SoMN).

Granted, I do have a 6 Rit, LCO Perm Artifact from the chapter that I absolutely enjoy, but at the same time I have various little MIs that only have 1 RIT on them and last a year. While I’d love to hang on to these longer, that’s what Preserve is for. 5 years should be enough for an item, any more and I think it would just get stale. These super items are cool and all but even after 5 years, wouldn’t you want a change?

Maybe it’s just my perspective since I’ve only been playing the game for 2 years, and in a Chapter where the APL hovers around 10-11 per game, with really no one over lvl 17 (except the owner of Chicago and maybe a few of the 50 PCs we normally have)

-Ryan

 

[obcidian_bandit]

I’ve only been playing the game for 2 years

Sorry, I'm totally about to be 'that guy.' So, I know how this is going to come off, but them's the breaks.

I do have a 6 Rit, LCO Perm Artifact

Lots of people have LCO items, and the fact that it's an Artifact necessarily means that it's going away for some plot purpose at some time, and that it came into existence for some plot purpose. It didn't have to come out of Treasure Policy, and it's not sticking around, you probably didn't have to do anywhere near the amount of work it would take to create the item on your own, so it's really not comparable to a restricted permanent item in any way.

5 years should be enough for an item, any more and I think it would just get stale. These super items are cool and all but even after 5 years, wouldn’t you want a change?

Nope. It takes more than 5 years to make a 20 rit item, which is where Permanences tend to live. I think mine took about 6 to make, maybe 8 by the time it was 'completely done.' I've had it for about 5 years after that, half of those years I haven't been PCing that character. So I've had the item basically done for about 7 years, used it for 4 or 5, and haven't touched it since. Capping all rituals at 5 years means that the scramble for scrolls/components never ends, since if it takes 5 years to get all the stuff together to make an item, you have to start the instant you make your current item to keep up. Five years is a long time if you haven't even played for five years, but when you're pushing 15, it's only 'good enough for now.'

 

[Avaran]

We shouldn't. I was addressing your comment of "Perm cats only go out at a rate of 1 per 3 years," which may have been a typo on your part, since it seems like what you may have meant was "Perm cats should only go out at a rate of 1 per 3 years."

Yeah, you're right, for some reason I thought I typed out "should". Ug. :blink:

We put them out at all because of the expectation that they'll go out. People complain when they don't go out.

See, this to me is an example of piss-poor sportsmanship. I don't see how it is any player's business what goes out and what does not go out; the only people that should be a concern for are the plot team in general and head of plot specifically. I get the whole customer service side of it and the desire to keep as many players happy as possible, but I think there are times when the customer is wrong and that's one of them.

I think with anything else, you'd see people telling players to piss off (not in so many words, but effectively).

Say players had an expectation that every monster they killed had to drop 5 gold (or more), and they got upset if it didn't. Would you seriously consider their complains about something like that?

If you run 6 events per year, and you drop 2 permanent catalysts in that time frame, that means that 1/3 of your events are seeing permanent catalyst drops. That, to me, is an absurdly high percentage. Once every 3 years drops it down to 1/18 events, or 5.6 percent of games, more reasonable but still too high (imho). I'd rather drop Preserves at a 33% rate than Permanence.

No one want's to drop 19 rituals and components on an item that will last for anything except the maximum possible duration. That's the problem with all solutions that revolve around "make the max level harder/cost more/whatever to get." You're not raising the maximum, you're raising the minimum. People will pay whatever it costs to get 'the big one.' Permanence is a fine example, but when was the last time you saw a Rit of WOE cast at anything except the D level (with the rare A 'just for the stake'). I've never seen a Rit of WOE B or C cast, ever, and I've only seen one A. Same goes for Golems. Has anyone ever seen a PC cast a golem at less than 45 points? There are 5 tiers to the Master Construct level, but people cast 45 point golems or 60 point golems. There's no such thing as a 55 point golem, a 30 point golem, or a 15 point golem. The 'minimum' is 45 because it doesn't require a catalyst, and 60 points if you happen to be able to come up with one.

There's no 'in between' levels for anything. Preserve is the closest thing we've got, but only because Permanence is so damn hard to get. Extend Duration was removed because no one would cast it, it was a worthless ritual. You could put in a 2 year extender right now, and no one would cast it, either. It's Preserve, Perm, or nothing. If you put a catalyst requirement on Preserve, it would go away too.

You're right, I certainly wouldn't want to have anything cast if it wasn't Preserved in the least; I think the lowest I'd go is 3 years, but I still might feel funny about it.

I think the only time you're likely to see something not cast at its full power is if there is no time to wait; like, "we have to go tonight because the moon is full and Count MuckWithThings only reveals his true self during this moon during this month..."

I think a better solution would be to put expiration dates on scrolls. Give them all 3-5 years of magic; after that, they go away and lose their power. Put a time constraint on them. Which is better: having an item to use (of any size), or not having an item to use? We do it with components, why not scrolls too?

Here are other changes I'd suggest:

Add a 3-year extender ritual. Works as-normal.
Change preserve and permanence so that they come with a mandatory spirit link (no item swapping). If they want to swap items around, they have to blow a Transfer ritual.
With existing items, I'd let players and teams get together and decide who gets what, then after a certain date, whomever is in possession of said item now as it Spirit Linked to them.

So there's a choice:
Make an item not last as long, but you can pass it around to your friends OR make an item last longer but take away the ability to swap items unless you want to blow a Transfer ritual. As was pointed out by RiddickDale (I think in the other thread), Permanence by itself isn't the problem, being able to load someone out with 60+ rituals worth of stuff is. I think limiting the total number of rits someone can carry should be an option that is on the table as well. I don't think that just changing Permanence and Preserve is going to fix anything as it pertains to MI bloat, there have to be other changes as well. Another alternative would be to put a cap on the number of rituals a Permanence and Preserve can do (like Paul suggested in the other thread), with the 3 year being a 20-rit cap.

 

[Dreamingfurther]

What if Permanence could only 'perm' 5 rituals?

Preserve could 'extend' 10 rituals. And this 'new' 3 year extender could extend up to 15 rituals...

Everyone seems to like the idea of some small number of things being able to be permanent, why not just keep that and reduce the number of rits?

 

[evi1r0n]

What if Permanence could only 'perm' 5 rituals?

Preserve could 'extend' 10 rituals. And this 'new' 3 year extender could extend up to 15 rituals...

Everyone seems to like the idea of some small number of things being able to be permanent, why not just keep that and reduce the number of rits?

I could get behind something like this.

 

[Mendacity]

What if Permanence could only 'perm' 5 rituals?

Preserve could 'extend' 10 rituals. And this 'new' 3 year extender could extend up to 15 rituals...

Everyone seems to like the idea of some small number of things being able to be permanent, why not just keep that and reduce the number of rits?

I like this quite a bit!

 

[Alavatar]

What if Permanence could only 'perm' 5 rituals?

Preserve could 'extend' 10 rituals. And this 'new' 3 year extender could extend up to 15 rituals...

Everyone seems to like the idea of some small number of things being able to be permanent, why not just keep that and reduce the number of rits?

If something like this goes forward with the Owners, can implementation wait until after I complete my 20-rit item?

 

[evi1r0n]

Odds are if something like that was implemented the existing perm items above the max would be split into separate items. This isn't something that would work if we made the switch but let all the existing 20 rit perm items, still exist.

 

[Dreamingfurther]

right if something like this was implemented I'd expect that current 20 rit perm items would be broken down into 4 five rit items, or maybe 5 items (to deal with the 'extra' permanency rits required) or something like that.

Yes all those 'old timers' would essentially get their 'free' extra separate perm rits... But at least it would be a step in the right direction.

 

[Avaran]

right if something like this was implemented I'd expect that current 20 rit perm items would be broken down into 4 five rit items, or maybe 5 items (to deal with the 'extra' permanency rits required) or something like that.

Yes all those 'old timers' would essentially get their 'free' extra separate perm rits... But at least it would be a step in the right direction.

Would you add free spirit links/locks too? Which weapon would get the Damage Aura? The Slayer? The Reaver? What about those Spell Parries? And the Spell Strikes? Are you then going to force people to purchase two weapons, florentine, or style master to deal with all of that?

*IF something like that were done, it's probably better and cleaner to just leave current 20rit items alone, or you're going to either have a lot of really unhappy people or you're giving away a lot of free rits. I wouldn't want to have to separate the DA, Spell parries, multiple spell strikes, slayer, or reaver; they were put on one item/weapon for a reason.

What about how it would affect NPC's and the giant amount of items they'd have to carry? Unwieldy and annoying.

 

[Gilwing]

right if something like this was implemented I'd expect that current 20 rit perm items would be broken down into 4 five rit items, or maybe 5 items (to deal with the 'extra' permanency rits required) or something like that.

Yes all those 'old timers' would essentially get their 'free' extra separate perm rits... But at least it would be a step in the right direction.

Would you add free spirit links/locks too? Which weapon would get the Damage Aura? The Slayer? The Reaver? What about those Spell Parries? And the Spell Strikes? Are you then going to force people to purchase two weapons, florentine, or style master to deal with all of that?

*IF something like that were done, it's probably better and cleaner to just leave current 20rit items alone, or you're going to either have a lot of really unhappy people or you're giving away a lot of free rits. I wouldn't want to have to separate the DA, Spell parries, multiple spell strikes, slayer, or reaver; they were put on one item/weapon for a reason.

What about how it would affect NPC's and the giant amount of items they'd have to carry? Unwieldy and annoying.

This happened once before when the 20 rit cap was put into place.

 

[Dreamingfurther]

Right it used to be there was no 'affect limit' cap, or the cap was like 100 right? Either way it's better to just 'get over' the pain and move on...

And if you have a sword with 15x Spellstrikes or 10x Monster Slayers... congrats you now have two! The only think you'd 'duplicate' would be a Perm... That's still a massive boon without getting a free 'illegal' item...

But all this hypothetical talk about what would happen if this is sort of pointless...

 

[Gilwing]

Right it used to be there was no 'affect limit' cap, or the cap was like 100 right? Either way it's better to just 'get over' the pain and move on...

And if you have a sword with 15x Spellstrikes or 10x Monster Slayers... congrats you now have two! The only think you'd 'duplicate' would be a Perm... That's still a massive boon without getting a free 'illegal' item...

But all this hypothetical talk about what would happen if this is sort of pointless...

Correct. You would get 2 items that were perm instead of one.

I wouldn't say its pointless. If that's the case the whole discussion section along with rules theory is as well. Its healthy to have this.

 

[Zymm]

I would not be bothered if I was told I had to split my sword into multiple items. Just sayin, before someone says nobody would do that willingly.