Should we lessen restrictions on the Underdark? [Poll]

[cosmic ray]

Yes, please!!!!!

Something almost exactly like this has been suggested for years now. It's great to finally see staff warm up to the idea. The Northern Region is basically lawless, so there is nothing, either OOC or IC, keeping this from happening.

As a player who prefers to play drow, I have been quite sad to see the Underdark so bereft of activity for such a long time. There have been about five or six of us logging in down there recently and that has seemed like a "flood" of activity compared to the usual emptiness.

[JIŘÍ]

Yesterday was late already. nothing else to add.

[Bobthehero]

It has the Black Abbey banite shrine and a ruined temple underneath,

The temple isn't ruined anymore. And because of that, it's now an area overseen an Imperceptor, rather high rank in the Banite hierarchy, that same Imperceptor who is also a high ranked Zhentarim, as such, attacking Soubar and threatening the Temple would, in theory, involve the Zhentarim (and the more militant members of the church of the Dark Three + Loviatar)

Also gives a much better reason for Banites and company to want to defender the area.

[thepaganking]

I think this is a great idea.

[Xorena]

I heard Drow don't get exp ticks for conversations on the surface. Is this going to remain the case with the expansion of areas they are allowed to be?

I personally prefer adventure over sitting around a campfire for hours, but to each their own.

[izzul]

78 forum user voted. i believe this might be a good idea if all these 78 people can login and increase population.
more activities can be done North or South.

[DaloLorn]

I heard Drow don't get exp ticks for conversations on the surface. Is this going to remain the case with the expansion of areas they are allowed to be?

I personally prefer adventure over sitting around a campfire for hours, but to each their own.

This is not true. They don't get to loot chests, and they don't get kill XP unless a surfacer lands the killing blow, but other than that...

78 forum user voted. i believe this might be a good idea if all these 78 people can login and increase population.
more activities can be done North or South.

Many of them probably do log in. Just not concurrently. (I haven't checked the usernames, so I can't be sure.)

[mrm3ntalist]

I also want to comment on this quote:

It may even encourage more people to make UD characters if they can get some more RP surface side.

I’m not commenting to skewer Paul, but if RP changes are made, how does this ACTUALLY benefit the UD, when players just spend their game hours ON THE SURFACE?!?

The UD and the UpD NEED DMs AND EVENTS, that last, the renew, that support Evil-minded role-play. If that can’t be generated first, to help make the UD and UD RP attractive to Players, then imho the UD should really be made into Epic Level dungeons for Surfacers, and make UD Races just NPCs for DMs to create campaigns.

Like myself, players linger with PCs in the UD/UpD with hope one day their will be something where the UD NPC world comes alive for us, because otherwise, we simply run out of things to do but circle grind lootz.

A change to the UD/UpD experience needs to come from the top now—players are down their, waiting for this. Please.

It already made me recreate 2 drow characters (PvP focused builds) that I have deleted. I am also trying to find the old "Tolerance is Treason" flyers. Fun times

About the PvP rules, if a drow is sneaking near my character, has weapons out etc, I just set it hostile. The same with the other side, if on my drow and come up to surfaces that seem to act hostile, click the red button again.

[JIŘÍ]

I would recommend to instill extrem penalties in day light.

It would be better than ruling it as dm if UD pc would be unable to fight in daylight.


And make it removable by daylight adaptation feat. You could even tie that feat to be a stating one or set x number of lvls to obtain it.

Or make the feat remove penalties slowly over lvls.

[cosmic ray]

I would recommend to instill extrem penalties in day light.

It would be better than ruling it as dm if UD pc would be unable to fight in daylight.


And make it removable by daylight adaptation feat. You could even tie that feat to be a stating one or set x number of lvls to obtain it.

Or make the feat remove penalties slowly over lvls.

Even more extreme than the ones we have now? You get - 4 penalty to saves,skills and AB,as well as blindness,both during the day AND AT NIGHT.

[JustAnotherGuy]

I did not vote yes or no, but rather will just put my thoughts here.

I am all for easy crossover for UD/surface, with no rules prohibiting either from going anywhere, other than IC rules (no masks in the FAI, etc). However, I am all for the KOS if you do crossover. To be sure, we'd have to define what KOS actually entails, but I think that the rules already do a good job of that. Essentially, "I think they might be a drow in disguise" is not a good enough reason to KOS.

In fact, the more that I think of it, it shouldn't be "KOS", but "KOI", or "Kill on Identifying".

I personally think that if a drow wants to hang around the FAI for gits and shiggles, they should be able to. No "good reason" required. But then again, if they are identified as drow, they are taking the risk of being killed.

[DaloLorn]

I would recommend to instill extrem penalties in day light.

It would be better than ruling it as dm if UD pc would be unable to fight in daylight.


And make it removable by daylight adaptation feat. You could even tie that feat to be a stating one or set x number of lvls to obtain it.

Or make the feat remove penalties slowly over lvls.

At the moment, drow suffer daylight penalties at night, and then sometimes maybe get used to them (I can't remember the whole process), and then suffer them again later. In that context, I don't think making the penalties any more severe is a good idea, especially considering the inverse (darkness penalties in the UD) can be much more easily countered by spells or even darkvision items. (Dae's currently making do with an Encircling Scale belt for darkvision. Drow don't have an equivalent for daylight adaptation, AFAIK.)

[EasternCheesE]

Honestly, from my view, the proposed thing (except for loot/xp) is an actual state of server. Drow do come to Soubar to have a chat with friends, they do sometimes travel with friends just for company and RP xp. And, they are rarely (never heard of it in fact) are assaulted without a single word.

This proposition kind of just accepts already existing thing rather than adding more loose things. People do already go to Soubar, they have various RP and deals and they fight/run away with others. Yeah, it doesn't happen super often, because Ruling is definitely unclear on such situations, but i's common enough for me to see it being a "the common way how it is now".

Moreover, if KoS rules don't mean OOC PvP assault, then UDers and Drow in particular, don't even need any special rule loosening on it. Going to other realm is meant to be dangerous and people should remember about it.
Yes, there will be PvP-mongers and OOC stalkers who wait ppl just 1 step outside of UD or Surface, but they've been here and they remain be this proposition given official status or not.

So, to me, nothing actually changes with this proposition being accepted or refused, unless DMs start enforcing domain-crossing rules from now, but that'd be a hell of totally unsatisfying work for them. Drow already go to surface to hang out with buddies (even though they can't have xp and loot) and vice versa.

[JIŘÍ]

That the penalties are bugged is I think outcome of state of server. If things were changed there would be a reason to fix these bugs. If possible.


If this thing is applied, I would hope that restriction on xp gain or loot is removed too. In both ways. So companions of either side that travel with them for whatever reason can actually benefit from it aside from role play.

[Terankar]

Why is it that any player, regardless of their faction, cannot receive xp in the opposite zone?

It makes no rational sense that a character in the world cannot loot, get xp doing the same thing in a different continent which UD versus surface kinda is.

It would be like a person from the East cannot get xp or loot in the West.

On topic, if this already how things work then perhaps the discussion is redundant and the neutral zones is merely a justification for it to happen more.

Unless it is totally insanity and outside any kind of lore that is currently in our timezone, how can anyone go against the opportunity for more diverse interaction between players and more so, actual interaction with another player? Is that not what role-playing is about?