Permadeath, XP, and you

[Steve]

To address the point made by Steve, "losing" doesn't necessarily have to equal "permadeath".

I absolutely agree, and it is a good point to make. Actually, "losing" because you failed a DC against an NPC, or losing a battle against Supreme Evil because your PC had to retreat from knowing it was either that or Death (you know, that which our Characters should be concerned with!), or failing to "capture the flag" before a PC antagonist does...all these "losses" contribute to a greater story than just "Oops, stepped on that trap and...DEAD!"

I'll just say it again: it is hard to do much more than "fake it," as Tekill points out, when you have this Server mostly populated by Level 30 demi-gods that simply never get hurt (which includes level loss, negative effects, etc etc etc etc etc etc.).

If we as a community are truly playing together, in this Forgotten Realms environment under the same mechanics, than it only makes sense we play by the same Rules, or limitations, or challenges, or however you want to say it.

[DaloLorn]

I think Ravenloft has the right idea. That ancient crusty old server has the highest population out of them all -including both BGTSCC servers combined.

It's not without its flaws, though. For instance, I've taken to joking that if Nastya visited Ravenloft, he'd think BG's staff were paragons of virtue.

1) I do think we level way too fast.

... Yes and no. Though, amusingly, I do like the idea of taking the general idea behind Ravenloft's XP limiter to curtail powerleveling. (Maybe not the exact values, even if I knew a Ravenloft dev to 'borrow' them from, but the notion of diminishing returns on excessive grinding is definitely one I approve of.)

2) power creep on magic items is getting a bit out of whack, but I do not think it is too crazy yet.

I'm not going to comment, I don't know a good answer to this.

3) If we die in game - and are raised we should not be like "ow that hurt- okay lets go kill more stuff!"
We should be down for the count until reset, or at least heavily penalized until reset.

That's basically how it goes on Ravenloft, cultural differences aside. You do take a few penalties until your next rest cycle, but the application of those penalties is... spotty, in my experience.

4) Delete all Raise dead scrolls - and increase the cost to raise the dead.

TBH, Ravenloft's death system is one of those things I honestly think it would be good to port to BG in its entirety (with possible tweaks, as with the XP cap). However, putting aside the fact that you're being harsher about it than Ravenloft, basically everything in your post is stuff that requires widespread approval from the team, beyond just a stray tinkerer here and there.

[renshouj]

Regarding Raise Dead scrolls, I will say, might be cool to remove them from the pool and making them craft-only (or at least heavily lowering chances), and making them cost a material component to cast or scribe. By extent, upping the cost of rezz in temples. These are ways to make death not as trivial, and imo the only real flaw is that level 30s are still unaffected, since you lose nothing by rezzing at 30 from myrkul

[EasternCheesE]

@Tekill
You are not the one who thinks about it. Believe it or not, but most ideas people come up with were already discussed in this community a year or 7 years ago. Our biggest problem is not lack of great ideas, but lack of people who are skilled enough and free enough to implement those ideas. We need devs, QC, DMs, creative writers, builders. Don't get me wrong, but we have over 600 threads in QC forums about various ideas, there is just not enough people to bring those ideas into life. As usual, if you know you can help server with dev/qc/DM/creative writing/building, we are always ready to check your application.

[Tekill]

@Tekill
As usual, if you know you can help server with dev/qc/DM/creative writing/building, we are always ready to check your application.

I would only get in the way, having no skils that would be help in seeing the 600+ ideas come to light.

But that is a lot of ideas!
It makes me feel kind of good to know so many people have an interest in the server to suggest so many ideas over the years. I find it very constructive albeit overwhelming, I imagine.

If you do not mind, can I ask you a question EasternCheesE?
Does our forum bickering give you any sort help or perspective in what the community is looking for in terms of custom changes to the game?
Do we in any way shape or form, help prioritize these 600+ ideas?

[EasternCheesE]

@Tekill
As usual, if you know you can help server with dev/qc/DM/creative writing/building, we are always ready to check your application.

I would only get in the way, having no skils that would be help in seeing the 600+ ideas come to light.

But that is a lot of ideas!
It makes me feel kind of good to know so many people have an interest in the server to suggest so many ideas over the years. I find it very constructive albeit overwhelming, I imagine.

If you do not mind, can I ask you a question EasternCheesE?
Does our forum bickering give you any sort help or perspective in what the community is looking for in terms of custom changes to the game?
Do we in any way shape or form, help prioritize these 600+ ideas?

Sure, it does. But keep in mind that there is way more forum discussions and suggestions than our time/spirit to check or participate since we still want to actually do Dev/QC work. I surely try to keep up with all bug reports that are posted, but suggestions thread is the place i only read from time to time.
Also, being honest, in most cases, suggestions don't look well-thought off or giving really weighted info, so, in order to implement the idea, we have to analyze and rework it from scratch to see pros/cons, possible applications and so on. And some are just hard to implement technically while looking simple from outside, eg that "show CL when casting spells". It felt like an easy thing to do and then it turned out i need to rewrite our magic system almost from scratch to actually make it reliable (and i still plan to do it cause showing CL did already help to identify a dozen of bugs).

Well, creative writing doesn't require any hard skills aside from proficiency with english and desire. Quest writing doesn't require deep lore knowledge as well.
If you are interested what kind of quests and their objectives we are capable to implement (as technical limitations still exist), you can ask us and i will make a study of what i (which means anyone more skilled than me totally can do it) can theoretically implement.
As a small hint, i looked at legends questing plugin and while it's not easy to integrate it into our server, here are the questing goals it lists and i'm pretty sure we can actually implement such quests even without special questing plugin:


QC job does also only require understanding of game mechanics (doesn't even require super knowledge of it in fact) and being a fair/trustworthy person. Say, i'm definitely not a building pro myself, not even medium, i suck at it at most times.

Map building requires some skill, but it's not really hard to learn. Say, from the moment i first opened toolset to the moment i mostly finished Formian hive and Forlorn ruins areas, it was about 1-2 months. Could be like 2-3 weeks if i knew how to work with toolset, but it wasn't that horrible experience. I also wasn't a dev when i started, so i didn't have any access to look how it's done in existing areas. Sadly, due to my RL stuff, releasing map was super delayed, it was mostly finished in like last september.

Dev deffo requires hard skills and since Devs work with things we want to keep non-disclosed in many cases (and given impact devs can make on server), Dev applications are checked thoroughly.

As of DM team, it's better to ask them, i myself am not familiar with their processes.