Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

No. Here, DM is always right. There is even custom loading screen tip about that.

Incarnate wrote: Why would one willingly end ones character's story just to become a lich?

Because it makes an awesome story.

Becoming a lich is not easy, and it is pretty much "end goal" of the character. Once you've achieved it, you've "won", it is time to put up "the end" screen, and watch the credits roll.

"And he/she continued to exist ever after as an undead".

What's hard to understand here?

Continuing to exist as a lich PC, however, is quite pointless. You'll be unavoidably overwhelmed and destroyed.

A character has a goal. Once the goal is achieved, it is the time to end the journey. All journeys must end at some point.

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Look. You're new, and it looks like you're trying to change bgtscc to make it more compatible with your preferences. This is a great recipe for getting frustrated. I'd recommend to accept the server as is. If you wanna play a lich as a PC, then there's sigil. Though population of sigil seems to be in decline...

Incarnate wrote:You know as they say: "The customer is always right" - that its true all the time,

The issue here is ... you're not a customer. Even if you were, there would be other people whose opinion would need to be taken into account.

DMs and Developers do it for fun, and they are not really obliged to cater to somebody's interests.

For the better or worse, developer team has final say in everything. It is also worth keeping in mind that the server deviates from original FR lore due to events that happened on this server specifically.

For suggestions, there is suggestion forum. You could try posting ideas there.

NegInfinity wrote:

Incarnate wrote: Why would one willingly end ones character's story just to become a lich?

Because it makes an awesome story.

...and?

NegInfinity wrote:Becoming a lich is not easy, and it is pretty much "end goal" of the character. Once you've achieved it, you've "won", it is time to put up "the end" screen, and watch the credits roll.

"And he/she continued to exist ever after as an undead".

What's hard to understand here?

A character has a goal. Once the goal is achieved, it is the time to end the journey. All journeys must end at some point.

Who's saying its easy? The end goal? I disagree with that, on the contrary it would be there it all would begin, because this is where it all would begin to become exciting.

NegInfinity wrote:Look. You're new, and it looks like you're trying to change bgtscc to make it more compatible with your preferences. This is a great recipe for getting frustrated. I'd recommend to accept the server as is. If you wanna play a lich as a PC, then there's sigil. Though population of sigil seems to be in decline...

Being new isn't a bad thing you know and me being relatively new doesn't mean I can't have a good perception on things or that my insights are not good.
I am not trying to change it to make it more compatible with my preferences but I'm sharing my thoughts on how this could be good thing for the server.
Also, if one just accepts things as they are, then new ideas will never get explored and get a chance to be implemented. Being new also means that a fresh take on things can be achieved.

NegInfinity wrote:

Incarnate wrote:You know as they say: "The customer is always right" - thats not true all the time,

The issue here is ... you're not a customer. Even if you were, there would be other people whose opinion would need to be taken into account.

DMs and Developers do it for fun, and they are not really obliged to cater to somebody's interests.

I know I'm not a customer and that wasn't meant in a litteral sense, which I actually tried to get a accros, it was the jest of it - the point was with that its really the player's opionion of things that matters.

NegInfinity wrote:For the better or worse, developer team has final say in everything. It is also worth keeping in mind that the server deviates from original FR lore due to events that happened on this server specifically.

I know they have, and I'm not arguing with that, however I do think that what I'm saying here matters a great deal, FR specific or not.

NegInfinity wrote:For suggestions, there is suggestion forum. You could try posting ideas there.

I'm using that part of the forum already - this wasn't a suggestion to begin with.

Incarnate wrote: Being new isn't a bad thing you know and me being relatively new

and you being relatively new means that you lack perspective on how things work on the server. Getting to know how things work takes a month or two.

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Incarnate wrote:

NegInfinity wrote:

Incarnate wrote: Why would one willingly end ones character's story just to become a lich?

Because it makes an awesome story.

...and?

And having an awesome story is the reason for playing. It is like finishing a book. This is the moment where you can look back at your character's journy and say "wow. That was amazing". Massive amount of fun.

If you don't udnerstand that, I can't help you.

NegInfinity wrote:

Incarnate wrote:As the subject - Somehow I reckon one would not be able to on this server as it would have some real issues. According to the nwn2 wiki, it seems its actually possible, the question is if its actually possible on this server, and if so what does it actually require?

Yes.

It requires getting DMs involved, and I believe at least one person was able to do that.

Keep in mind that upon successful or unsuccessful you'll have to give up your character.

Incarnate wrote:Why would anyone work at becoming such if not being able to play the power they've become?

It makes an awesome ending to character's story.

If you want to play an ACTUAL lich, Sigil is better choice. (I think it isn't completely dead yet)

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Even if you were allowed to be a lich on bgtscc, your life would be very short - you'd very quickly run into level 30 cleric with true seeing and 80 spot who would obliterate your character. Undead cannot be raised, once they're destroyed, they're gone.

I was the person who was able to turn a character into a Lich here. I think BlackMansDeath also did it once. I am not aware of anyone else though. This was also YEARS ago, like 7 or so. And both characters became DM controlled NPC's after the change. Technically, my character who did this is still out there (somewhere?) and was an almost pure sorcerer and it required many months of RP geared toward this goal to do it. It's worth noting that my character also became the enemy of basically everyone and was practically KoS even before he completed the transformation. A player also has to be willing to sacrifice an epic-leveled character to do this.

NegInfinity wrote: and you being relatively new means that you lack perspective on how things work on the server. Getting to know how things work takes a month or two.

I can tell you definitely aren't open this sort of thing. Just because I'm new on the server doesn't mean I lack perspective on how things work on the server, when its in relation to something that in my opinion should be possible and be handled differently than it currently is.

NegInfinity wrote:And having an awesome story is the reason for playing. It is like finishing a book. This is the moment where you can look back at your character's journy and say "wow. That was amazing". Massive amount of fun.

If you don't udnerstand that, I can't help you.

ONE part of it is to be able to look back at the journey and get nostalgic, HOWEVER you're not ONLY playing to create the story to be able to look back at it, you're also playing to have fun while you're experiencing the story being created while you play it - I don't agree with it ending there just because a character becomes undead or becomes something else, there can be plenty of things for the characters story in question.

You still didn't answer my question why one would want to end the characters story, when the character still has much to achieve or do with his/her story despite it have become a lich, vampire, demon, devil, etc. In my opinion there is just as much for such a character to go through, its different - much like rp'ing a good character versus rp'ing an evil character, because you're experiencing from a different perspective of things. If there were other characters to rp with and conspire with, then it would also make a lot of sense to play on the true evil side, rather than just being evil in alignment.

Rask wrote: I was the person who was able to turn a character into a Lich here. I think BlackMansDeath also did it once. I am not aware of anyone else though. This was also YEARS ago, like 7 or so. And both characters became DM controlled NPC's after the change. Technically, my character who did this is still out there (somewhere?) and was an almost pure sorcerer and it required many months of RP geared toward this goal to do it. It's worth noting that my character also became the enemy of basically everyone and was practically KoS even before he completed the transformation. A player also has to be willing to sacrifice an epic-leveled character to do this.

Personally I don't really see why one would willingly give up a character that have been invested so much time and effort into, just to be able to say - "I was able to turn my character into a lich" and not get to experience that part of the character's story playing that character. I would not go such lengths to do, it would quite frankly be a waste of my time if I didn't get to play what I had worked so hard to achieve. I also believe that there is much more to playing such a character, just like there is much more to playing an evil character that going around stupid-evil-like.

We've considered "template races" multiple times over the years. The ones we get asked about the most are definitely vampires, werewolves, and liches.

In the end, the consensus has always been that it wouldn't be good for the server in terms of game balance and fairness to allow PCs to play them.

As a middle ground, we've made it possible to work towards retiring into a racial template, as has been explained by several people already. The idea here is that it's a motivating goal for the character, and thereby can still color their roleplay; but ultimately, once the goal is achieved, the character is taken out of the live play environment.

While I can understand why it would be fun to play something like this, these are extremely powerful creatures, and the game's story environment is not really set up to challenge them from a PC perspective. Because there are mechanical contests between other player characters from time to time (most notably in the form of PVP or Character Vs. Character combat), granting one player character significant mechanical advantages over other other player characters creates an uneven playing field.

My advice would be to aim to become a DM if you'd like to roleplay from the perspective of monster races and templates like this one!

Sigil has it right with their enforced ECL & XP caps, though. That is, your max character level is 30-ECL. A drow will never exceed 28. A human with a lich template will never exceed 27. A drow with a lich template will never exceed 25. The loss of epic feats, CL and other factors are significant balancing considerations in Sigil's particular environment. It would be nice if such were the same here!

I'm just picturing a disguised lich sitting around the FAI campfire ... how long after implementation would it take for this to happen?

Play a Pale Master and aim for undeath. The other player not mentioned was Aelcar's pc Valshar. That dude was a creepy character, even scarier in NPC undeath. I love that he is now a quest giver. He earned a permanent legacy on this PW - that's why people would retire players and be happy - to achieve an end goal, which is what lichdom is.

Tsidkenu wrote:Sigil has it right with their enforced ECL & XP caps, though. That is, your max character level is 30-ECL. A drow will never exceed 28. A human with a lich template will never exceed 27. A drow with a lich template will never exceed 25. The loss of epic feats, CL and other factors are significant balancing considerations in Sigil's particular environment. It would be nice if such were the same here!

I actually disagree with that. Sigil's scheme result in powerful races being severely cripppled and less powerful, because capping level progression severely limit your saves and caster levels. For example, one of the most powerful things on sigil will be a human or a kobold caster. Meanwhile something like Iron Golem is incredibly fragile and keels over if sneezed at. Mostly because the golem has ECL +10, but said extra ECL does not result in extra HD. So, you'll be fighting epic level monsters at level 12, with something like 100 hitpoints, and there are severe hole in golem's defence.

The creators of this scheme meant well, however, neverwinter 2 leveling mechancis simply do not provide enough tools to implement this approach properly. For example, undead are supposed to have no constitution score. However, in neverwinter 2 constitution score determines your hp. That leads to fun situations.

Incarnate wrote: Just because I'm new on the server doesn't mean I lack perspective on how things work on the server, when its

I used to think this way. This approach doesn't work. Trying to "change the server for the greater good" simply will make you frustrated.

Incarnate wrote: You still didn't answer my question why one would want to end the characters story, when the character still has much to achieve or do with his/her story despite it have become a lich, vampire, demon, devil, etc.

Do you know, what happens when character reaches their goal? They start losing relevance and become a "ghost". Someone who pops up here and there from time to time, but basically has no connection to current events and can only remember past events. Meanwhile their friends stop playing one after another. This happens incredibly often, and such character for all practical purposes becomes an npc.

Basically, the reason why fairy tales end up with "happily ever after" is because "happily ever after" is not interesting.

So the best idea is to define the end goal for character and retire them upon reaching them. This way you'll get the most enjoyable kind of story. Continuing past that point will start overburdening the character with events and memories, etc, and in the end they'll become a shadow of former selves. It will be like hellraiser sequels.

That's why the best idea is to retire.

And as I said, on bgtscc, lich IS the end goal that results in retirement.

Incarnate wrote: Personally I don't really see why one would willingly give up a character that have been invested so much time and effort into, just to be able to say - "I was able to turn my character into a lich" and not get to experience that part of the character's story playing that character. I would not go such lengths to do, it would quite frankly be a waste of my time if I didn't get to play what I had worked so hard to achieve. I also believe that there is much more to playing such a character, just like there is much more to playing an evil character that going around stupid-evil-like.

The reason for giving up the character is to immortalize him/her/it at the height of its glory with its achievements still being fresh. Pushing the story past this point will turn the character into a "ghost", "npc", or a frustrated faerunian alcoholic trying to relive past "good times" at campfire, talking about people and events nobody remembers anymore.

You're mistaken when you think that continuing past goal will result in more fun. What usually happens is character losing relevance and devolving into some sort of mess that you'll eventually delete, frustrated.

Amount of investment doesn't matter. The purpose of playing is completing the story. Playing past ascending/descending of lichhood will be most likely incredibly unsatisfying and result in a fairly weak and sudden ending or a boring routine that will drag out day after day, forever.

Basically, get your character to level 30, and see for yourself.

Either way, Incarnate, you should simply contact DM team with your lich ideas and see how it goes from there.

This approach will be more likely to produce some positive result, compared to requesting lich subrace on forums.

Tsidkenu wrote:Sigil has it right with their enforced ECL & XP caps, though. That is, your max character level is 30-ECL. A drow will never exceed 28. A human with a lich template will never exceed 27. A drow with a lich template will never exceed 25. The loss of epic feats, CL and other factors are significant balancing considerations in Sigil's particular environment. It would be nice if such were the same here!

Allowing players to become something powerful like a Liches will cause that breach, that eventually led *one particular server* to add Dragons and other powerful creatures as playable races for PCs, most of which were done to favor particular players/builds.

We all know what happened: where is that server now?

CormyrElite wrote:

Tsidkenu wrote:Sigil has it right with their enforced ECL & XP caps, though. That is, your max character level is 30-ECL. A drow will never exceed 28. A human with a lich template will never exceed 27. A drow with a lich template will never exceed 25. The loss of epic feats, CL and other factors are significant balancing considerations in Sigil's particular environment. It would be nice if such were the same here!

Allowing players to become something powerful like a Liches will cause that breach, that eventually led *one particular server* to add Dragons and other powerful creatures as playable races for PCs, most of which were done to favor particular players/builds.

We all know what happened: where is that server now?

Sigil is alive, but it apparently lost good portion of the populace due to some other mismanagement issue - there was some policy change that hasn't been perceived well, and led to population decline. Interestingly, addition of the races is what originally brought the server back from the dead - it went back from 0..2 people online to 30..40... stayed this way for two years until policies were changed.

Dragons are something I definitely wouldn't want to have as a playable race. Due to nature of the race, they on occasion attract .... very strange people, with quite arrogant and toxic attitudes. At least that was my experience with them.

NegInfinity wrote: Sigil is alive, but it apparently lost good portion of the populace due to some other mismanagement issue - there was some policy change that hasn't been perceived well, and led to population decline. Interestingly, addition of the races is what originally brought the server back from the dead - it went back from 0..2 people online to 30..40... stayed this way for two years until policies were changed.

Dragons are something I definitely wouldn't want to have as a playable race. Due to nature of the race, they on occasion attract .... very strange people, with quite arrogant and toxic attitudes. At least that was my experience with them.

It's "life" looks more like a constant agony for a long time now.