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| Thoughts on Level Caps?; Just wondering | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 5 2012, 03:10 PM (1,653 Views) | |
| Cadence | Jul 5 2012, 03:10 PM Post #1 |
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"Act. Do. Be." -Factol Rhys of the Transcendent Order
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Hi all, I am curious on people's thoughts on Level caps lower than level 30 - both in general as well as for this server in particular. The staff is not considering it by any means, I just want to hear people's thoughts. Things to consider: Pros, Cons, What level (if any) is a good level to cap at and why. Oh, and let's keep it civil
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| Captain Vanguard | Jul 5 2012, 03:16 PM Post #2 |
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Honorary wielder of the Paladin Button.
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Not sure what you mean by that, do you mean by area levels, by level cap in general or by ECL+? |
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Justice must be forfilled, at any cost. People must believe to be believed in. One cannot expect power freely. Imagination is the key to insight. Industry is born from progress. Gods interfere with mans ambition. | |
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| Er_Nano_Infame | Jul 5 2012, 03:29 PM Post #3 |
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EL NANO!!
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level cap 30 is fine. me like epic levels. yup.
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Maewind:''That's still plant-hating! That makes you a plant racist!'' Lucelle Vand'hovar: ''Miss Maewind, i assure you, the plants started this conflict.'' Nienna: ''Razorvine is hardly a plant, in her defense.''
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| Agony_Aunt | Jul 5 2012, 03:59 PM Post #4 |
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Get a Life
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In terms of mechanics then 20 is a good stopping place because things start to go strange above 20. If we were a true RP server, we could cap at level 1.... who needs levels to RP? 20 or less are the best levels for making events for as well, because its easy to pull out NPCs who are tougher than the characters. I mean, in 1st Edition there were GODS with less than 20 levels! However, if it wasn't for epic levels then I wouldn't have Drakos and Sandy, and builds would be a lot less varied and interesting, so i'm content with 30-ECL. |
| Stepped down as admin, but still lurking. | |
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| Darkrob | Jul 5 2012, 04:08 PM Post #5 |
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Don't care for capping. I don't feel it's necessary for online play. |
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Charles Goodman - owner of The Consortium and Chairman of the Syndicate - Indep and Merkhant Daniela Nokomis- "The Enclave" - Vampiress, The woman in White, Soul Stealer, Merchant Garen Seph - Fraternity of Order B3 "You may think you have us surrounded, but in reality you have simply put us in a target rich environment." | |
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| The_Tarot | Jul 5 2012, 04:14 PM Post #6 |
Greybeard
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(Editing for Clarity) 15. So the DMs would stop saying. "Oh, A level 30 would actually be level 15 in terms of power." Which always boggles me. Compared to a level 15 of what? PnP? If so, a level 15 in PnP would be more accurately compared to a level 40, Divine Rank 3 in terms of power. The difference is astronomical. A couple feats in the Epic Levels would be need to be changed to be attainable at lower levels for certain playstyles to be viable however, namely Epic Precision for rogues. Which is almost a must have if you don't want to be stuck using Ruin weapons. Most of the Epic Feats, Save for: Epic Divine Might, Song of Reqiuem, Expose Weakness, Epic Precision and on rare occasions, Vampiric Feast are garbage anyway. Epic Levels are done, horribly. Certain classes cease scaling beyond 20 in power. While others multiply their power tenfold during that time. There are several DMs/EMs that seemingly outright refuse to have storys for higher level characters, Likely because it is difficult to manage because of these extreme differences in power. I cannot count how many times I outright missed out on interesting storylines because I was simply too high level to tag along. |
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| MadPorthos | Jul 5 2012, 04:26 PM Post #7 |
Playtesting Gremlin
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I don't like capping, but it has merits when you want a governing philosophy for a server to be a particular focus on roleplay and development, rather than on the mechanical game. While even with 5, 10, 15 or 20 levels, mechanics can be important, you will find certain elements will stay away from a server where the full gamut of levels are reduced. It's like a smaller playground, the kids don't like em so much. That can be desirable, if you feel your server content will draw and retain adults. However, if you've started a server and then restrict the levels, or wipe the vault and restart the same place, with fewer levels, it's like a pen and paper DM restarting their campaign. You will lose players, some of those who stay will be never the less irked at thier lost efforts, characters and narratives. It can be death of a server. Taking the attitude, "if they leave, we didn't need them anyways", is a luxury I do not think most PW's can afford. The attraction of starting with a clean slate, or being able to cap levels back at 20, so that your NPCs can be level 30, functionally beyond player levels is a step that should have been taken before the server was established with its' base. I recognize some have actually stated that players here are actually "not the levels" the game states they are, that they are actually half that level, so that the NPCs of Planescape can truly be more powerful. That sounds a bit like someone leading up to stating everyone get's half their level, and an cap is established at 20, after every character is reduced to half their current level, meaning they'd be 15th at most. I think this would invalidate alot of things like Mystic Theurge and other neat things we like to play on Sigil. The full 30 levels here are part of this place being a big playground Don't shrink it. Better a full wipe, if you must and face all the losses of player base. Agree with Tarot's comments above, though I'd have to say I've seen the opposite regarding events and level (Edit:Tarot originally had been a little unclear in post, sounded like was saying there were no Dms running low level stories. Since edited it, such that we both were agreeing same thing.) In the two, closing on three years I've been on this server, I've had a tendancy to play many characters to high teens/low epic. I've a few regular high level characters as well. I've been in exactly three events/dm stories, and then only very peripherally. Three times in three years. I've been actually asked to not be involved at least a dozen times, when aspects of story crossed my character's path. I'm used to it, but it is not cool, the assumption that a high level character will monopolize a story or solve it with their uberpowerz. |
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| The_Tarot | Jul 5 2012, 04:40 PM Post #8 |
Greybeard
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Clarifying possible confusion to the above quoted portion. I had to edit my post. I had orginally typed. "DMs/EMs outright refuse to hold events for lower level characters" which I meant higher. I've had a similar experience approaching three years. Ignore my forum join date. I joined it several months after being bombarded by friends to do so. Three years, and around three whole events as well. Aside from half a dozen or so completely unfinished ones, and a multitude of others I simply could not participate in because of my level. On the other hand, I haven't had various characters, I've stuck with, for the most part one. |
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| jukejointjezebel | Jul 5 2012, 05:22 PM Post #9 |
Blood
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Has reducing the cap to from its previous high ever worked before on any server? Pros for lowering the level cap back to 20: Casters and Melee are firmly inline with each other. Challenges are more manageable and easier to design. Cons: Players will hate it, including me. |
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Thrym HammerClang - -Reluctant Dwarven Merchant Jarlz Bergh -- Ogre WeaponMaster Yew're Kiddunmeigh -- Elven Light Bow of Solonor Sstrepekorr -- Yuan-Ti Halfbreed StormLord Plitzsskin -- Yuan-Ti Halfbreed Ranger | |
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| cryptc | Jul 5 2012, 05:23 PM Post #10 |
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Advisor
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If you prefer, you can think of it as NPC's level limits being 60 instead of considering yourself 15th... Point is that we don't want to run a server where players go up an bitchslap Thor because they are "max level"... some players like power levels like this, they are welcome to play elsewhere, since here there will always be npcs that can kick your characters ass, no matter how long you've been grinding. (disclaimer: that said, DM's are discouraged to use said npc's just to kick players asses, unless they are discussing how to bitchslap Thor) |
| "One of the most curious statements I've seen on this list is that PlaneScape is a logical world. I must have erred. I was trying to create a world that defied logic." - David 'Zeb' Cook | |
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| Darkrob | Jul 5 2012, 05:35 PM Post #11 |
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:lol: |
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Charles Goodman - owner of The Consortium and Chairman of the Syndicate - Indep and Merkhant Daniela Nokomis- "The Enclave" - Vampiress, The woman in White, Soul Stealer, Merchant Garen Seph - Fraternity of Order B3 "You may think you have us surrounded, but in reality you have simply put us in a target rich environment." | |
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| Agony_Aunt | Jul 5 2012, 05:40 PM Post #12 |
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Get a Life
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Since a couple of posts seem to be assuming that we are actually considering this, let me just emphasise what Cadence said. |
| Stepped down as admin, but still lurking. | |
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| MadPorthos | Jul 5 2012, 05:57 PM Post #13 |
Playtesting Gremlin
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Sorry Agony, you'll note I did do the pros and cons, but I did feel compelled to comment also on the relevance to Sigil, as I've heard this mentioned no less than five times in the last few months, either in our IRC chat, or quippingly in tells and the like. Makes one tend to state something concretly about it. Admittedly, someone might overreact to us reacting or commenting on this specifically. Sorry. That was not intended. |
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| Ravel's Heart | Jul 5 2012, 05:59 PM Post #14 |
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Disclaimer: My views do not represent those of anyone on the DM team or the administration except my own. There is no discussion of rolling back the server. There is no discussion amongst the team of level caps. There is no vault wipe pending. This is a response to the question the OP asked and nothing more. I'm in favor of a server capping somewhere between 10 and 20. My view on this has changed over the years. The reason has less to do with balancing the classes, though Tarot is quite correct when he says that "Epic Levels are done, horribly. Certain classes cease scaling beyond 20 in power. While others multiply their power tenfold during that time." In fact I agree with pretty much everything Tarot and MP said. My issue with epic levels it is that is much, much harder to do things spontaneously for a party of five level 25-30 PCs without a lot of planning beforehand and having a fairly good understanding of what resources the party has in terms of feats, skills, and items. Comparatively speaking, it's much easier to come up with a spur-of-the-moment adventure for a group of level 7-14 PCs. I also am in favor of aging PCs and the equivalent of a "scaled income tax". Alternately, I am in favor of allowing people to set their level, equipment, and gold on login without going through the process of killing things and raiding their remains for valuables, anthema as this seems to the notion of D&D. |
| "What can change the nature of a man?" | |
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| The_Tarot | Jul 5 2012, 06:08 PM Post #15 |
Greybeard
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Never thought once that any of the staff was considering doing it. Thought it was pretty obvious. That being said, the cons outweigh the pros if it's done on a server with just vanilla NWN2 and the expansions without adding additional options for characters, and even done correctly, it still takes the ability to accurately gauge a character's power on just a glance so people don't run into the roadblock of "Sorry, You're too powerful for this event." A level ninety-nine thousand Paladin is still not going to idly stand around watching something unfold if it it goes against his believes. He will intervene. Even if they are 1/4 CR Kobolds that he can get rid of with but flick of his finger. If that happens, then, well. A larger threat might take notice. At the end of the day, that's what It's about, in my opinion. If something arbitrary as level inhibits RP, then something is seriously wrong. |
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