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

Hoihe wrote: Let me paraphrase good old Maecius:

"It is not the place of anyone, including DMs, to decide the fate of a character."

No. I also see this as poor roleplaying attitude. It also quite similar to god moding and roleplaying an immortal character.

You throw character into the world, and both good and bad things can happen to him or her. And you enjoy all of it.

If you want consequence-free sandbox, you're playing a wrong game. Try, I don't know Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley instead.

It is already nigh impossible to get people assassinated, making it worse is really not the right move.

Hoihe wrote: I am pretty sure I don't want to take any risk of encountering another DM who decides a natural 20 on a strength roll equates torn muscles that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING can regenerate.

The thing about torn muscles has been explained to you before. Lesser restoration only removes magical and extraordinary effects, and tearing your sinew because of overexerting yourself is neither of those. Use regenerate instead. It is a game, and this is how it abstracts damage dealt to character.

Hoihe wrote: After talks with Maecius said injury was duly ignored after a recovery period to re-acclimatize to the fixed muscles.

In 2014, certain someone broke PVP rules that created a major messup that involved at least 12 people, resulted a retcon, which wiped out a MAJOR "once in a lifetime" kind of event that happened to my character and shut down very interesting RP possibility and multiple possible connections. This thing also silently fell through with no proper response to it. Reason unknown, but DMs are people and sometimes nothing happens in response to your requests.

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Based on your recent responses, it really feels like you're playing a game that does not match your expectations. You want a consequences-free sandbox where no bad event beyond your control ever happen. BGTSCC is not it. At least it is not supposed to be that.

There should be situations where your character permadie because DM says so. IN those situations when you disagree with the decision you raise it up to HDM and the rest of the DM team. If t hey still say you're dead, you comply.

But removing consequences is a bad idea. "No consequences whatsoever" pretty much only suitable to some ERP wish fullfilment server. This is not what I started playing BGTSCC for.

NegInfinity wrote:

Hoihe wrote: Let me paraphrase good old Maecius:

"It is not the place of anyone, including DMs, to decide the fate of a character."

No. I also see this as poor roleplaying attitude. It also quite similar to god moding and roleplaying an immortal character.

You throw character into the world, and both good and bad things can happen to him or her. And you enjoy all of it.

If you want consequence-free sandbox, you're playing a wrong game. Try, I don't know Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley instead.

It is already nigh impossible to get people assassinated, making it worse is really not the right move.

Hoihe wrote: I am pretty sure I don't want to take any risk of encountering another DM who decides a natural 20 on a strength roll equates torn muscles that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING can regenerate.

The thing about torn muscles has been explained to you before. Lesser restoration only removes magical and extraordinary effects, and tearing your sinew because of overexerting yourself is neither of those. Use regenerate instead. It is a game, and this is how it abstracts damage dealt to character.

Hoihe wrote: After talks with Maecius said injury was duly ignored after a recovery period to re-acclimatize to the fixed muscles.

In 2014, certain someone broke PVP rules that created a major messup that involved at least 12 people, resulted a retcon, which wiped out a MAJOR "once in a lifetime" kind of event that happened to my character and shut down very interesting RP possibility and multiple possible connections. This thing also silently fell through with no proper response to it. Reason unknown, but DMs are people and sometimes nothing happens in response to your requests.

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Based on your recent responses, it really feels like you're playing a game that does not match your expectations. You want a consequences-free sandbox where no bad event beyond your control ever happen. BGTSCC is not it. At least it is not supposed to be that.

There should be situations where your character permadie because DM says so. IN those situations when you disagree with the decision you raise it up to HDM and the rest of the DM team. If t hey still say you're dead, you comply.

But removing consequences is a bad idea. "No consequences whatsoever" pretty much only suitable to some ERP wish fullfilment server. This is not what I started playing BGTSCC for.

A DM is merely a player with more toys who is supposed to serve players. There is no "because DM says so" unless it is an NPC reacting, or when they act as administrators to deal with rule violations.

As a fun fact. your PC literally means "Player character." NPC literally means its opposite. Until a player willingly gives over their PC to the world as retirement, DMs at most can provide them with challenges to overcome or fail, and then overcome the consequences.


Also re: muscles - http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Crippling_Strike

Hoihe wrote:A DM is merely a player with more toys who is supposed to serve players.

DM is called "Dungeon Master" for a reason. It is not your personal butler, but someone who keeps the world alive, and provides the story for all players to participate in. Nobody is supposed to "serve" you're supposed to cooperate. Accepting that your character can die as a result of doing something stupid is part of cooperation.

Hoihe wrote: DMs at most can provide them with challenges to overcome or fail, and then overcome the consequences.

No. There are things a player can't overcome. IF they landed in that situation due to the actiosn they performed, the character should die for real.

Hoihe wrote: Also re: muscles - http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Crippling_Strike

Crippling strike is marked as EX ability and thus lesser restoration works on it.
Trying to lift a big boulder and ripping your muscles is not an ex ability. Therefore lesser restoration does not work on it.

Technically, lesser restoration shouldn't work on crippling strike either:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/restorationLesser.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/rogue.htm

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Anyway.

Read this story:
https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/1720 ... playing-dd

And don't be that halfling.

NegInfinity wrote:

Hoihe wrote:A DM is merely a player with more toys who is supposed to serve players.

DM is called "Dungeon Master" for a reason. It is not your personal butler, but someone who keeps the world alive, and provides the story for all players to participate in. Nobody is supposed to "serve" you're supposed to cooperate. Accepting that your character can die as a result of doing something stupid is part of cooperation.

Hoihe wrote: DMs at most can provide them with challenges to overcome or fail, and then overcome the consequences.

No. There are things a player can't overcome. IF they landed in that situation due to the actiosn they performed, the character should die for real.

Hoihe wrote: Also re: muscles - http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Crippling_Strike

Crippling strike is marked as EX ability and thus lesser restoration works on it.
Trying to lift a big boulder and ripping your muscles is not an ex ability. Therefore lesser restoration does not work on it.

Technically, lesser restoration shouldn't work on crippling strike either:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/restorationLesser.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/rogue.htm

---

Anyway.

Read this story:
https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/1720 ... playing-dd

And don't be that halfling.

That link is referring to a pen and paper game. In a pen and paper game indeed it is the DM's job to keep the world alive.

This is not pen and paper. This is a persistent world roleplaying game with ever changing DM team composition and players. The players' responsibility is to make the world alive, not the DMs. The DMs are just here to ensure the world reacts according to lore and mediating NPC responses.


When I was DM Seren, 90% of the time my players died was because I musjudged their builds and it was not their fault. What's the fun in a TPK? So, when a TPK happened from AI + misjudgement, I had all my players roll 1d100 and the person with the highest roll retained just enough conciousness to act and find a way to save the day. I once had a blood magus blood walk out from such a situation and bring back a small army.

When I was DM seren, players wanted to do something and it was stupid? It affected the outcome of the event/campaign. It hurts much more when that NPC they're trying to save gets kidnapped and becomes very difficult to track than being removed from the thing. It's also much more fun for both DM and player to react to a failure.




Oh and fun fact re: elves and not wanting to leave Arvandor. Read Sehanine's Dogma.

...but point remains that your request is the result of a particularly strong bias with no mechanical support or need behind it

there is already issues with the rp and easy of access of raise dead and resurrection, ignoring everything bias with your suggestion there is just no reason to add true resurrection

Hoihe wrote: This is not pen and paper. This is a persistent world roleplaying game with ever changing DM team composition and players. The players' responsibility is to make the world alive, not the DMs. The DMs are just here to ensure the world reacts according to lore and mediating NPC responses.

NPC responses include getting the player permakilled.

And I disagree with how you present the DM role.

There are threads related to campaigns. Those are not for show.
Campaigns are run by DM and not players. Although players can participate in them and can attempt to change their course of action. Even in this settings DMs are the ones who run the plots.

NegInfinity wrote:

Hoihe wrote: This is not pen and paper. This is a persistent world roleplaying game with ever changing DM team composition and players. The players' responsibility is to make the world alive, not the DMs. The DMs are just here to ensure the world reacts according to lore and mediating NPC responses.

NPC responses include getting the player permakilled.

And I disagree with how you present the DM role.

There are threads related to campaigns. Those are not for show.
Campaigns are run by DM and not players. Although players can participate in them and can attempt to change their course of action. Even in this settings DMs are the ones who run the plots.

Since strawmanning is allowed here..

You are arguing that it is alright if DMs railroad the events for their own pleasure, since they are the ultimate authority?

Hoihe wrote:Since strawmanning is allowed here..

You are arguing that it is alright if DMs railroad the events for their own pleasure, since they are the ultimate authority?

Standard defense against strawmaning is to set the opponent on fire. FYI.

The way I see it, you're for some incomprehensible reason are trying to make BG a "consequence free safe world" and this change will simply ruin the server for everybody. Because when there's no risk, there's no point in doing literally anything in the world.

The other thing is that I find the episode with torn muscles you keep mentioning fun, and would roll along with it. It is a very clever interpretation of natural 20 rule.

NegInfinity wrote:

Hoihe wrote:Since strawmanning is allowed here..

You are arguing that it is alright if DMs railroad the events for their own pleasure, since they are the ultimate authority?

Standard defense against strawmaning is to set the opponent on fire. FYI.

The way I see it, you're for some incomprehensible reason are trying to make BG a "consequence free safe world" and this change will simply ruin the server for everybody. Because when there's no risk, there's no point in doing literally anything in the world.

The other thing is that I find the episode with torn muscles you keep mentioning fun, and would roll along with it. It is a very clever interpretation of natural 20 rule.

Point A:

Why do you need OOC risk? If you want OOC risk, play EVE. You even get to risk your literal money.

Point B:

Permanent death is purely an OOC risk.

ICly, your character doesn't know they won't remain dead barring level 30 clerics of Myrkul/Sehanine/Jergal/Lendys/Death gods with max lore(religion) who have perfect understanding of the after life.

Thus, you IC act according to fear of death. To do anything otherwise is to metagame OOC mechanics, which is breaking a server rule.

Thus, asking for permanent death is to ask to punish players, not for IC consequences. To claim otherwise is to be disingenuous. Before trying to refute this, read previous threads and bask in the glory of people calling for permadeath to prevent OOC abuse.

Point C:

Just because you OOCly know you won't lose your means of enjoying a game and be forced to stop playing doesn't mean there is no risk/consequence.

It's called campaigns reacting, NPCs reacting/dying, being kicked out of guilds, losing friends etc. There is a ton of consequences. You just have to view things from your character's perspective, rather than from a (meta)gamer's perspective.

If your PC dies in a campaign and cannot be raised in the field, that means your team is at a severe disadvantage and may even end up failing the mission. Even if they leave the body and just cut off a digit from your PC's hand to cast Resurrection on, they still have -1 people.

(Also yes: you can literally cut off someone's finger digit after death and you can stop caring about carrying the body to safety.)

Hoihe wrote: Why do you need OOC risk? If you want OOC risk, play EVE. You even get to risk your literal money.

Because it is a RP server, and chance of dying for real is an IC risk and not an OOC one.

Hoihe wrote: ICly, your character doesn't know they won't

This information will seep through and will impact roleplay of the character. Greatly. Disregard of death is already quite bad.

Hoihe wrote: Thus, asking for permanent death is to ask to punish players, not for IC consequences.

Permadeath does not punish players. Players are punished by getting themselves banned from the server.

I see asking to avoid any possibility of permadeath as an attempt to request official permission to godmod the server and roll ultimate immortal snowflake.

If somebody wants to spend their career sniffing flowers, fine, and it is unlikely they'll run into situation where they'll die for real, however, there needs to be an incentive to behave properly and it should be present at all times where somebody starts pushing boundaries.

Otherwise nothing will be there to prevent people from behaving in absolutely idiotic and reckless fashion.

Hoihe wrote: It's called campaigns reacting, NPCs reacting/dying, being kicked out of guilds, losing friends etc. There is a ton of consequences. You just have to view things from your character's perspective,

Thanks for calling me a metagamer.

As I said before - as long as a character remains alive, they'll be able to recover from anything you listed here, and rise again as a phoenix. Seen this happen many times.

None of this matters in the long term. People come and go. Guilds come and go. The character will lay low for 2 or 4 weeks, and after that none of this will be relevant. NPCs? Well, you can't maintain any relationship with them, and an evil character might just laugh at their demise. On related not I do not remember ever seeing an npc getting killed on this server.

Hoihe wrote: If your PC dies in a campaign and cannot be raised in the field, that means

That means "tough luck. Should've planned better".

This litarlly sounds like fear of losing or fear letting your team down. Those "inconveniences", however are part of the price you pay for participating in the world. Plan ahead and be more careful if you want to avoid them.

This isn't a single player game, so asking for infintie possibility to "reload" isn't right, because it affects other players as well.

NegInfinity wrote:

Hoihe wrote: Why do you need OOC risk? If you want OOC risk, play EVE. You even get to risk your literal money.

Because it is a RP server, and chance of dying for real is an IC risk and not an OOC one.

Hoihe wrote: ICly, your character doesn't know they won't

This information will seep through and will impact roleplay of the character. Greatly. Disregard of death is already quite bad.

Hoihe wrote: Thus, asking for permanent death is to ask to punish players, not for IC consequences.

Permadeath does not punish players. Players are punished by getting themselves banned from the server.

I see asking to avoid any possibility of permadeath as an attempt to request official permission to godmod the server and roll ultimate immortal snowflake.

If somebody wants to spend their career sniffing flowers, fine, and it is unlikely they'll run into situation where they'll die for real, however, there needs to be an incentive to behave properly and it should be present at all times where somebody starts pushing boundaries.

Otherwise nothing will be there to prevent people from behaving in absolutely idiotic and reckless fashion.

Hoihe wrote: It's called campaigns reacting, NPCs reacting/dying, being kicked out of guilds, losing friends etc. There is a ton of consequences. You just have to view things from your character's perspective,

Thanks for calling me a metagamer.

As I said before - as long as a character remains alive, they'll be able to recover from anything you listed here, and rise again as a phoenix. Seen this happen many times.

None of this matters in the long term. People come and go. Guilds come and go. The character will lay low for 2 or 4 weeks, and after that none of this will be relevant. NPCs? Well, you can't maintain any relationship with them, and an evil character might just laugh at their demise. On related not I do not remember ever seeing an npc getting killed on this server.

Hoihe wrote: If your PC dies in a campaign and cannot be raised in the field, that means

That means "tough luck. Should've planned better".

This litarlly sounds like fear of losing or fear letting your team down. Those "inconveniences", however are part of the price you pay for participating in the world. Plan ahead and be more careful if you want to avoid them.

This isn't a single player game, so asking for infintie possibility to "reload" isn't right, because it affects other players as well.

On flipside, in a single player game death is as close to permadeath as you can get. Your failure has no consequences in the game world. You just start over. Same for a character dying. You don't need to ICly deal with things.

And no problems on calling you metagamer after you called me an ERPer earlier. I wonder who will wind up as the one eyed person in the end in the land of the blind however.

To allow knowledge that death is not permanent OOCly seep into IC is metagaming OOC information.

And you, like others, are entrenched in wanting to punish the player. You cannot punish someone dead, thus it has to be the player, not the character.

There litterally is no such thing as permadeath IC'ly in a HIGH FANTASY HIGH MAGIC SETTING such as Forgotten Realms. Its always possible to bring someone back - its fantasy and it this particular case, its high magic fantasy.

Firstly, because everyone can be brought back to life, either through magic, divine intervention or some other way,
Secondly, it doesn't matter how someone died or how many saw one die, because they could still be brought back to life through magic or divine intervention, so no matter how many times IC'ly someone died, they can be brought back to life just as many times.

Permadeath in a HIGH FANTASY HIGH MAGIC SETTING is an OOC PENALTY nothing else, or a choice.
Even the notion of permastrike is completely ludicrous when considering ANYONE can be raised or resurrected. If a deity intervenes, then its an OOC penalty that the DM's is enforcing both OOC'ly and IC'ly.

Its not metagaming knowing that you can be brought back to life if the character knows that its magically possible due to having knowledge about it, like it being local, regional, religion, arcana or even common knowledge. Of course it would depend on how common and widespread it is to be brought back from the dead via magic.

Its always possible to bring someone back - its fantasy and it this particular case, its high magic fantasy.

As someone who initially supported the idea of True Resurrection in-game, no - this is not true, and is the wrong reason to include the spell.

In order for a resurrection to happen, the soul must be able AND willing to return. Certain circumstances can make the 'able' part not true - the soul being trapped in the Hells if they made a bad pact, or being sent to the Wall of the Faithless, or what-have-you. Yes, it's possible to go back and embark on a magnificent quest to free someone's soul from the Abyss or the Hells or what-have-you... but it's not always possible to save someone's soul from these situations. Sometimes, you arrive too late, and the soul is already gone forever. No take-backsies.

And sometimes the soul doesn't WANT to come back. Sometimes, despite however much you want to bring back the dead hero from the afterlife, she's still dead... because she has found the happiness of the afterlife and doesn't want to give it up. And this actually happens a lot; it's why high level clerics don't just wander through a battlefield after the fact and resurrect everyone in sight (even if they had a magical rod of resurrection): a fair number of the souls simply will stay where they are, because they're happy there.

And then, of course, there's divine intervention that CAN, in fact, block a resurrection. And yes, it's not unheard of.

But also remember that the characters on BGTSCC, while level 30 mechanically, are not epic-level heroes in lore. They're supposed to be equivalent to level 15, as I recall correctly. Still powerful? Yes. But actually, now that I've done my research, True Resurrection is a 9th level Cleric Spell.

If the purpose of True Resurrection in-game is purely a roleplay one, then True Resurrection actually SHOULDN'T be in game, now that I look at it - because the 30 levels our characters can have are purely mechanical. At level 15, the actual RP-level of our characters (assuming max level), only 8th level spells are available.

In other words, due to level limitations in the lore of the server when you consider the "actual" power level of the characters, True Resurrection is outside the scope of player abilities on BGTSCC.

Khazrak wrote:

Its always possible to bring someone back - its fantasy and it this particular case, its high magic fantasy.

As someone who initially supported the idea of True Resurrection in-game, no - this is not true, and is the wrong reason to include the spell.

In order for a resurrection to happen, the soul must be able AND willing to return. Certain circumstances can make the 'able' part not true - the soul being trapped in the Hells if they made a bad pact, or being sent to the Wall of the Faithless, or what-have-you. Yes, it's possible to go back and embark on a magnificent quest to free someone's soul from the Abyss or the Hells or what-have-you... but it's not always possible to save someone's soul from these situations. Sometimes, you arrive too late, and the soul is already gone forever. No take-backsies.

And sometimes the soul doesn't WANT to come back. Sometimes, despite however much you want to bring back the dead hero from the afterlife, she's still dead... because she has found the happiness of the afterlife and doesn't want to give it up. And this actually happens a lot; it's why high level clerics don't just wander through a battlefield after the fact and resurrect everyone in sight (even if they had a magical rod of resurrection): a fair number of the souls simply will stay where they are, because they're happy there.

And then, of course, there's divine intervention that CAN, in fact, block a resurrection. And yes, it's not unheard of.

But also remember that the characters on BGTSCC, while level 30 mechanically, are not epic-level heroes in lore. They're supposed to be equivalent to level 15, as I recall correctly. Still powerful? Yes. But actually, now that I've done my research, True Resurrection is a 9th level Cleric Spell.

If the purpose of True Resurrection in-game is purely a roleplay one, then True Resurrection actually SHOULDN'T be in game, now that I look at it - because the 30 levels our characters can have are purely mechanical. At level 15, the actual RP-level of our characters (assuming max level), only 8th level spells are available.

In other words, due to level limitations in the lore of the server when you consider the "actual" power level of the characters, True Resurrection is outside the scope of player abilities on BGTSCC.

Willing to return is purely on the player, as the PC is theirs to RP.

On the other side, we've had people infiltrate the 656th (or some other 600+th layer) of abyss to rescue a whole village-ful of souls. I wouldn't put it past them.

As for divine intervention - it goes both ways. Get a bigger bully to bully the bully.

Incarnate wrote:There litterally is no such thing as permadeath IC'ly in a HIGH FANTASY HIGH MAGIC SETTING such as Forgotten Realms. Its always possible to bring someone back - its fantasy and it this particular case, its high magic fantasy.

Yes there is and you should be aware of them. I can take your character, give it to fiends, have them extract soul essence, and use it in promotion ceremony. And your character will be gone forever.

Many outsider creatures die for real and cannot be brought back. The reason why mortals can be brought back to life at all is because their souls and bodies are separate. If the soul is gone, there's nothing to resurrect. Likewise if the soul is surrendered to some powerful entity (see: god), it won't be returning back either.

Nevermind that your character can be killed by aging them to death. Or that someone could simply kill anybody who ever knew the name of the creature.

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Either way, it is depressing to see people who refuse to accept even slightest possibility of negative consequences on a RP server. Is this what bgtscc has devolved into? What the hell.