Poll - What is your opinion on exotic races?

[trylobyte]

I'm pretty sure it was done to make them 'work for it' and reduce the number of winged PCs hanging around, both for aesthetic and balance reasons (At-will Flight makes dungeon design annoying).  Reasons I agree with and find perfectly understandable, mind you...

...of course, then everyone started playing avariel, half-dragons, and other races that get wings at level 1, which made the whole point moot anyway, and most people have access to Fly spells or potions or a dozen uses of Dimension Door, even if they don't have wings.

[Vincent07]

To quote myself for those who missed it:

Oct 1, 2014 18:43:49 GMT -5 Vincent07 said:

ALL parts of the xp system take your ECL into account, this includes xp gained from kills, the autofaery, DM rewards, scripted quest rewards, the soft RP cap at level 8, the ascension cap at level 20 and the hard cap at level 30.  
The merchant store tiers and custom ILR code also takes ECL into account.  
Really, the only thing that does not, is encounter spawns, as the default NWN encounter setup has no way of knowing you have an ECL.  Were I inclined to re-do all of our spawns with a custom system like NESS, perhaps that could change, but as I do not generally put in scaled encounters, this isn't really an issue anyway.
Loot ignores your level too, just to clarify that. The possible contents are based upon variables I set on the container, not upon who opens it.

So, an ECL 4 PC would hit that first soft cap at level 4. (4 +  4 ECL = 8 )
They then hit ascension cap at 16, and the final hard stop at 26.

Also, to add to my above quote:  Level requirements for feats are based off of your Hit-die (class levels).  This is a .2da line entry and can not take your ECL into account.

[Edge]

Oct 3, 2014 15:36:25 GMT -5 trylobyte said:

I'm pretty sure it was done to make them 'work for it' and reduce the number of winged PCs hanging around, both for aesthetic and balance reasons (At-will Flight makes dungeon design annoying).  Reasons I agree with and find perfectly understandable, mind you...

...of course, then everyone started playing avariel, half-dragons, and other races that get wings at level 1, which made the whole point moot anyway, and most people have access to Fly spells or potions or a dozen uses of Dimension Door, even if they don't have wings.

Or even Alter Self, which can be accessed very early and can grant flight.

I actually always liked that about CD though - that there were dungeons that took flight/DD/etc. into account. Places like that one Semberholme dungeon where there's a couple of chests that have to be flown/DD'd to if you want them, or that one central part of the dwarven crypt.

[The Red Mage]

Oct 3, 2014 16:32:15 GMT -5 Vincent07 said:

To quote myself for those who missed it:

Oct 1, 2014 18:43:49 GMT -5 Vincent07 said:

ALL parts of the xp system take your ECL into account, this includes xp gained from kills, the autofaery, DM rewards, scripted quest rewards, the soft RP cap at level 8, the ascension cap at level 20 and the hard cap at level 30.  
The merchant store tiers and custom ILR code also takes ECL into account.  
Really, the only thing that does not, is encounter spawns, as the default NWN encounter setup has no way of knowing you have an ECL.  Were I inclined to re-do all of our spawns with a custom system like NESS, perhaps that could change, but as I do not generally put in scaled encounters, this isn't really an issue anyway.
Loot ignores your level too, just to clarify that. The possible contents are based upon variables I set on the container, not upon who opens it.

So, an ECL 4 PC would hit that first soft cap at level 4. (4 +  4 ECL = 8 )
They then hit ascension cap at 16, and the final hard stop at 26.

Also, to add to my above quote:  Level requirements for feats are based off of your Hit-die (class levels).  This is a .2da line entry and can not take your ECL into account.

They don't and never have hit the soft cap before vanilla races. They now hit it at level 8 since the last previous change. None of my ECLs have hit cap before any of my other characters, and I'm certain newer ECLs haven't hit cap sooner(because some of them have out leveled a toon I've gotten full EXP on everyday if you count their ECL).

[Vincent07]

Then that is a bug and will be fixed shortly.

[Fire Wraith]

Oct 3, 2014 15:25:34 GMT -5 trylobyte said:

Oct 2, 2014 23:55:03 GMT -5 Fire Wraith said:

I've never wanted people to fixate on the levels, because if anything they're a distraction from the real focus, which is characters and stories. I feel very strongly that trying to boost your levels without any sort of concomitant character development is cheating yourself (and those around you to a degree) of the full experience and enjoyment of the game.

So why do I need to be level 12 before my aasimar has a chance to get wings (back) when they can get them by level 3 in the core books?  I'm kinda required to focus on level, in this case.  

Because some people want to short circuit the character development that's supposed to accompany these sorts of things, and thus we impose a brake on that.

[trylobyte]

Oct 3, 2014 22:47:59 GMT -5 Fire Wraith said:

Oct 3, 2014 15:25:34 GMT -5 trylobyte said:

So why do I need to be level 12 before my aasimar has a chance to get wings (back) when they can get them by level 3 in the core books?  I'm kinda required to focus on level, in this case.  

Because some people want to short circuit the character development that's supposed to accompany these sorts of things, and thus we impose a brake on that.

That, uh, kind've directly contradicts what you said the first time.

I've never wanted people to fixate on the levels, because if anything they're a distraction from the real focus, which is characters and stories.
So we're going to lock this piece of the character's story behind a level cap to 'make sure you have time to properly develop it.'  You don't get a choice in deciding when your character is ready for it.  If you're ready early you're forced to stall for what may be several levels, and stalling IC progress because of an OOC reason is almost never good roleplay.

 I feel very strongly that trying to boost your levels without any sort of concomitant character development is cheating yourself (and those around you to a degree) of the full experience and enjoyment of the game.
So let's make a case where it's required to hit a certain level to gain a new aspect to the character, and let's make that level requirement higher than every prestige class except Heirophant, encouraging people who really want that aspect to use every trick in the book from powergrinding to gaming the XP system to hit it as fast as possible so the aspect is there when they need it.


I'd like to comment that I don't have an issue with the level cap, I just have a problem with the fact that cap is behind a 15,000 DM XP wall, being at level 12 on an ECL +1 race.  Level 9 I would be fine with, since that's still a little later than most prestige classes but well reasonable.  I'd also like to point out that half-dragons, half-fiends, and half-celestials often don't have wings either, but on CD they almost always do.  If you want to cut back on wings on CD, this is a good starting point.

[Edge]

I'd also like to point out that half-dragons, half-fiends, and half-celestials often don't have wings either, but on CD they almost always do.  If you want to cut back on wings on CD, this is a good starting point.

Only partially correct. The half-dragon template normally only grants wings to Large creatures or larger; I believe the main reason that was amended on CD was to keep the template on-par with the Dragon Disciple class (or vice versa), which does grant wings regardless of the character's size.

Half-Fiend and Half-Celestial templates, however, always grant a Fly speed, and the necessary associated appendages.

[The Red Mage]

I was in a dungeon party not too long ago where 5 out of 7 characters had wings. I laughed IRL at all the wing stretching emotes, and thought the idea of it was funny, but in the end, I had a good time.

[dom101]

Oct 4, 2014 13:47:15 GMT -5 The Red Mage said:

I was in a dungeon party not too long ago where 5 out of 7 characters had wings. I laughed IRL at all the wing stretching emotes, and thought the idea of it was funny, but in the end, I had a good time.

I RUFFLE MY WINGS AT YOU SIR

[trylobyte]

Oct 3, 2014 17:14:50 GMT -5 The Red Mage said:

Oct 3, 2014 16:32:15 GMT -5 Vincent07 said:

To quote myself for those who missed it:


So, an ECL 4 PC would hit that first soft cap at level 4. (4 +  4 ECL = 8 )
They then hit ascension cap at 16, and the final hard stop at 26.

Also, to add to my above quote:  Level requirements for feats are based off of your Hit-die (class levels).  This is a .2da line entry and can not take your ECL into account.

They don't and never have hit the soft cap before vanilla races. They now hit it at level 8 since the last previous change. None of my ECLs have hit cap before any of my other characters, and I'm certain newer ECLs haven't hit cap sooner(because some of them have out leveled a toon I've gotten full EXP on everyday if you count their ECL).

I would just like to add that I think fixing this bug, as Vince said he'll do, will do more to reduce the number of ECL races than almost anything we could have proposed in this thread.

[Edge]

I don't think it'll drop that much, but that might simply be because of my own preferences as already discussed, and the fact that thinking such a fix was already in place - I wasn't aware that the soft cap hadn't been lowered, as it's been a while since I had a low-level character with an ECL - hasn't stopped me in the past. I imagine many other people who prefer exotic characters are the same way, though likely not all.

[Arya]

I would just like to see people quit worrying about what others play, and just focus on playing in the server, themselves...and finding ways to enjoy the server, at this point.  

Sincerely,
Arya

[Edge]

Amen to that.

[ClockworkMayhem]

Oct 4, 2014 12:30:45 GMT -5 Edge said:

Oct 4, 2014 17:01:28 GMT -4 Edge said:
I don't think it'll drop that much, but that might simply be because of my own preferences as already discussed, and the fact that thinking such a fix was already in place - I wasn't aware that the soft cap hadn't been lowered, as it's been a while since I had a low-level character with an ECL - hasn't stopped me in the past. I imagine many other people who prefer exotic characters are the same way, though likely not all.

THIS.

AND THIS.

Oct 4, 2014 17:02:07 GMT -4 Arya Kalarathri said:
I would just like to see people quit worrying about what others play, and just focus on playing in the server, themselves...and finding ways to enjoy the server, at this point.

Sincerely,
Arya