Cormyr and the Dalelands

Just a suggestion (and posting as a reminder):

Can we please have these widgets deduct gold in the amount of a their appropriate scroll?  (Teleport scroll cost for the teleport widget; Raise Dead scroll cost for the revive token)

That's going to be rough on the lowbie characters. Maybe add that for levels past 8-9?

Also, teleport gives you the ability to go to any place you have keyed. The teleport stone is only back to the Warbling Seraph. Maybe it should be slightly cheaper since it is a single place teleport? So a level 3 or 4 scroll cost instead of 5?

For the teleport, I could maybe see that. I don't see any issue with the raise widget at any level since I don't usually see lowbies worrying over raises, especially when sticking to level-appropriate areas.

Hmmm. I don't see a point in it. For high level it is as problematic as spending let's say 50k to buy supply of scrolls. I agree with Wittle Dreamer that it will mostly kick new players.

The Teleport stone is meant to be an OOC mechanic, as I understood it.

Both are, to be honest.

The stone was mainly put in to allow players to get out of places they may have been trapped in.  I could easily add in a scaling gold cost.

The revival token was made because I could not get the wild/dead magic zone exemption for Raise Dead to work.  It should probably have a cost... and play an animation, not sure why it doesn't at present.   Maybe it'll just cost diamonds.  <_<

Originally, the teleport widget was also put in because of some players who were abusing /killme and raising themselves as a "get out of this dungeon quick" exploit.

Scaling cost (at least) should factor in, as it -is- a free teleport back to Arabel.

It should definitely be free below a certain level. I'd say diamonds are fine, assuming the ones that you can buy from the jeweler in Arabel work for it? And I'm assuming the shop sells them (if not it should).

Probably say... free for below level... 7? 8? And then scaling upwards, but never more than the cost of a scroll. For raise, what should matter is the target level, not the user, too.

I like this.

I'd actually like the raise widget diamonds to be something harder to come by. I mean...I may be alone, but it would be nice if revival from death or near death was a slightly less common thing.

It was explained that it's OOC mechanism that saves us from mistakes/bugs/lags and all other plagues of PC adaptation of P&P. I don't think you can resurrect anyone ICly just like that, even using the scroll that -anyone- can use now.

I think Death alltogether should be taken more seriously but not when it comes to mechanics. That's the real issue I think, personally. Raise dead scrolls are totally OOC and always considered some form of healing instead of literally raising the character from death, which is understandable. No one wants to be that character that died 10 times and gave no s***?

So really bringing a higher cost to revives and the like should equate to the mechanical death system not existing till a DM kills someone off. That's my take on it at least.

*Edit

Unless you are looking for a money dump ofcourse as there are characters that are filthy rich from just a run or two in a dungeon, I don't think this is the way to go. Better find another thing to use as a money dump.

More that last part. Even with the money dumps we have on the server now, as you level you acquire insane amounts of gold and the higher you get the less you have to spend it on...even worse if you know a good appraiser. Having raise require diamonds that have to be found encourages people to run dungeons for more than exp and takes coin out of the equation to some extent.

That said, the reverse side of that coin is that having to buy diamonds is a gold sink that impacts that wealth you've accrued and having the widget and/or scrolls deduct gold from you accomplishes the same. Honestly, there are lots of ways it can be done, and I'm not fussed personally about any of them.

Ideally, though, I'd like to see some system put in place that removes some of the triviality of mechanical death. Even if your character 'got knocked out' instead of killed, I think it makes for more meaningful roleplay when there's a cost to revive them. Gives the character a reason to be more careful, IC, or to be more prepared for their allies' sakes.

*shrug*

Just my opinions, though. Ultimately, I think the server at large prefers mechanical and/or dungeon death having less weighty consequences. I've always been a fan of raise dead / resurrect costing the cleric casting them (or person) a chunk of exp, and raise dead costing the revived person a chunk as well. That's probably a bit hardcore for CD, though.

I've seen the 'death needs to mean more' option on two dozen servers and I've never seen a method proposed that didn't make death meaningful for the person proposing it without either alienating everyone else or, most important for me: having a 'get out of the game crashing/lagging/justplainbeingabuggy10yearoldmess' card for when no force on earth could have stopped you from getting instagibbed during a thunderstorm or some nonsense.

Also I just don't care for it on a visceral level, like, who cares? You make it cost money? People will go farm. XP? Farm. Whatever change is made will be irrelevant in a week.

Yeah, that teleport stone is abused.  Should it cost the lowbies coin?  I don't think it should.

The whole raise dead thing?  I feel like that's been beat to death in the 10+ years this game has been around.  Would enforcing some sort of mechanical side effect make death mean something?  I don't know.

Mechanics based 'death' in NWN honestly should probably just be considered a KO rather than "death", because it happens way too fast in many instances. The PNP rules it's based on allow you time to react to things that in a computer game happen in real time. Tabletop comes down to initiative and choices, whereas in NWN you have to realize that something is happening, click the buttons, and then see the response take place with an overall delay of several rounds (most likely).

This would require a lot of editing though to make it appear that way 100% in the client, which we've never really taken the time to. The bleeding/death system code we use could be rejiggered to allow more leeway, but at the moment probably isn't lenient enough? Maybe we should look at that, mostly toning down the "ignore bleeding because of massive damage" type stuff.

As a note about whether death "means anything", I think back to a game I played once where you lost a 1/3rd of a point of CON every death (or, lost a point of CON every 3 deaths). If your CON hit 3 you were permadead, no ressurection possible. For reference, default Tabletop is 1 con per death.

Most people on CD would be permadead ten times over before even coming close to epic level at that rate.

More I tend to find it discourages exploring 'Well we could go try this place out, take a gamble but.... yeah the cost' I like CD's because it discourages gaming the system, you can't die respawn and rush back, because if you do, it starts hurting but you don't lose too much if you take a punt, die and return to Arabel. This is especially nice in the early hours when not many folks are on, you can try that place out, and if you die? Well 30 mins sitting around is a small price to pay. Be very annoying if you made death 'meaningful' against the machine.

Of course all this flies out the window with Plot line deaths  but I havn't seen them treated cheaply too often, most people seem to realise the difference between death from dungeons and death by plot.

Pretty much this. I feel like there's a "beating a dead horse" joke to be made here.

I just treat it like a KO. Adventurer's get punched too hard, they fall over, knocked out, and then Steve the Selunite Acolyte shows up to bring them to the recovery ward in Arabel. Might find some gold missing... Well, you had to pay your medical bills, right?

If you want to make death sting on this server, make it cost RP XP. But that might just be so much a sting people would be scared to do anything.

I mean, the Raise Dead spell isn't even like the Raise Dead spell in P&P. Raise Dead should take a solid minute to cast, as it is a bit of a ritual. Resurrection is 10 minutes. NWN just restricts it down to a single round to cast for the sake of gameplay. Going down the rabbit hole of making it more accurate, you have stuff like the HD drain part of Raise Dead being completely permanent. If the game is going to cut down things for ease of play/logic, I think it is fine the server does the same and consider mechanical death just a knock out.

You show me a pnp DM that makes you sit there roleplaying waving your hands over someone for a solid ten minutes and I'll show you a pnp dm way more concerned with how Rules Abiding Hardcore they are than the fun their players are having.

I think most DMs would skip forward 10 minutes and say "The casting is done". But because it takes 10 minutes, you can't just do that in the middle of combat. In NWN, you can. The rules are bent for the sake of it being a video game. Stuff is removed, stuff is added. So I don't see it being that much of a leap to just say mechanical NWN death is a knock out, and Raise Dead is basically a "Get up!" spell.

If there's a real RP death, then I think the DM should make you have to have 10 minutes available to cast Resurrection, or 1 minute to cast Raise Dead. If it is just someone getting knocked out, then it would make sense you could easily get them up in combat.            

Well there was, but then we cast raise dead on the horse.

One thing I despise about punishing death more/making it cost more/etc. aside from the argument about bugs/lag/OOC factors leading to your doom:

Punishing death more means, somewhat ironically, punishing the people who don't powerbuild and/or who just aren't good at NWN combat more. And while CD is a little heavy on the build optimization due to somewhat challenging dungeon design, there are still plenty of "RP build" characters out there, or at least flavorful ones. These are typically the people/characters that'll die first in a dungeon group, and have a harder time soloing.

Even for someone like me, who plays "optimized flavorful builds", this poses a problem--for example, my character Erynelleth. I would never use two-bladed sword on a WM if the server punished death harder, as it is insanely more efficient to save a feat, grab a 1h martial equivalent like short sword, sword and board when there's risk and dual wield when focusing on DPS is safe. Sticking with her style as an IC choice/flavor option sometimes means more dying and more risk, as a nature of horribly balanced 3e/NWN mechanics, and I don't know if I would do it if death were punished harder.

Regarding the TP stones, I think these are primarily useful as an OOC/time saver factor and would leave them alone. Some dungeons have an end of dungeon exit that works and some don't, some are really awkward to run through backwards again, and not to mention it just saves time where people could be getting back to Arabel and RPing after a dungeon instead of spending another 5-20 minutes focused on clicking around a dead dungeon. It also helps for those late night excursions where you go to the middle of nowhere with a friend, particularly if said friend is a mage and teleports you, then you RP until you're exhausted and wake up the next day in the middle of nowhere.

And personally, it's saved my ass from being OOCly stuck/bugged numerous times lately.

While I understand and agree with cutting down on the free travel options a bit, the TP stone only brings you back to the server's RP center and lets people get to their RP faster, or saves them from bad OOC situations. I'd say leave it alone and focus on other options.

I totally agree with this.

+2 yeah in the end, having a easier way back to the central gathering area of the server is fine with me. RP it as you spend time walking sure, and arrive back at Arabel, or whatever, but... yeah just seems a pointless change that also assumes characters are all rich, not all are, even high level ones. Caine was perpetually poor, needing loans from his 'Sister in law' to pay for Rae's spending habits

+3 on the "leave it as it is" opinion.