The Balance of Power

[mrm3ntalist]

Just because they are open doesn't mean they are conducisve to a evil-aligned character or in keeping with their goals.

For example, the near-sacking of Baldur's Gate, I'm sure there were MANY a evil character that would have like to see that come about but from reading nearly the whole 1351 campaign, it just wasn't going to happen (For Meta reasons I understand but...)

What an evil character can do, is not just to destroy Baldurs Gate... If that is all an evil character can think of, then i feel sorry for him. However, I know that it is not the case with established players of evil characters. They used this opportunity ( The attack on BG from a powerfull undead army ) to learn secrets about magic and artifacts, make alliances, intervene in politics and why not, try to sabotage the efforts for saving and restoring the city.

In short during that plot, if your evil character tried to destroy BG instead of learning the secrets of the powerful teleports the General used, gain more information about the Netheresse, try to learn about the artifacts the undead were seeking and acquiring them, etc, then you just missed opportunities. Simple as that.

My point is that; HERE gear is king, no ifs ands or buts, so it is definitely something has to be in the discussion and I do that it is getting hammered out because better to talk about it and ruffle a few feathers both ways than let it fester and there be no progress.

I dont know how long you have been playing here, but gear has nothing to do with evil/good players. I can name you some well know players that had a hoard of epic items and played evil characters.

There is an issue with access to epic gear but that has nothing to do with Evil/Good. Its global issue. Mixing those together, wont reach anywhere...

[Evilar]

I can name you some well know players that had a hoard of epic items and played evil characters.

There is an issue with access to epic gear but that has nothing to do with Evil/Good. Its global issue. Mixing those together, wont reach anywhere...

Well I don't have play long to be able to read.

GEAR is a major reason for the Imbalance of Power or did you not read what Akroma666 said?

As it has been put so well elsewhere:

"Words are wind..."

Or go to a battlefield with a squirt gun, expect your ______________ to get blasted!

[mrm3ntalist]

I can name you some well know players that had a hoard of epic items and played evil characters.

There is an issue with access to epic gear but that has nothing to do with Evil/Good. Its global issue. Mixing those together, wont reach anywhere...

Well I don't have play long to be able to read.

GEAR is a major reason for the Imbalance of Power or did you not read what Akroma666 said?

As it has been put so well elsewhere:

"Words are wind..."

Or go to a battlefield with a squirt gun, expect your ______________ to get blasted!

I know what akroma said, i know his views from when he was on the QC, I know what he recently pmed to the QC team.

Noone is saying that there isnt an issue with the access to Epic gear. This was discussed at lengths at rpevious threads. However, the thing Akroma and you are trying to do, link Evil characters with limited access to epic gear is false. It is limited for everyone. Unless you know many good characters with a +4EB +3vamp regen bastard sword...

[NegInfinity]

GEAR is

... Evil characters do not have easier time getting gear.

The whole thing sounds like an attempt to blame someone else for your own troubles.

"I can't find mithral fullplate! This dude has different alignment then me? He MUST have easier time getting gear because of it!!".

Another issue is that Akroma said that he isn't playing right now.

I'll be honest.. I quit a while back and am just Noe getting geared back up for rp..

Meaning that he may be expressin opinion from the past.

[Blackman D]

gear is an issue but probably not in the way people are assuming it is

i play mostly evil or neutral toons, ive had 1 good toon who was my ML who was originally neutral bc she was a DG before it was changed, i kept her a long while after but ultimately retired her bc i cant stand playing goodies but she for as much trouble as she got into (there were times were i would literally login on her and instantly find rp or someone running after her for help, bc she was well known rp wise) she has never gotten any type of epic gear, loot or DM

she had a LOT of +heal gear, some in rare slots, but thats about it and after epic skill focus heal was added her base heal was an 83, she never got epic gear but not as if she really needed it either

for my neutral toons, hands down the one that got the most gear was my hin, not even really grandfathered stuff tho she does have 1 and thats it, but just rare +3/+4 stuff thats really nice for sneaks, tho half of it came from requests when DMs were still taking them as long as it was for your toon and something you were gonna use, which means you kinda have to had known about it which a lot of people dont realize what gear is there for there toons, especially sneaks

my evil ones honestly dont get a lot (compared to my hin), but they are usually casters and dont need much

my old main miranda got like two items, however again with having to know whats there, she was a sorc and got a mithril chain shirt one time and a mithril shield the other, you may not think those are epic but the mithril shirt was not the same as the drops, OC crafted shirts give -10 ASF which takes it down to 0 and heavy shields which do not drop at all are 0 ASF by default, so she basically got +6 AC with 0 ASF, which is obviously useful for her and the DMs at the time were totally confused bc they thought it was a bit of a waste since i asked for plain items

only other evil toons i can think of that got items was beldroin recently got one for the last campaign were we aided in taking over the forest, custom gloves designed to fit her alchemy ability, and my ninja assassin got a rare katana and then later got the epic version of said katana (her main weapon are shurikens and darts but the katana is her melee backup) but again the katana fits the character

so i mean evil toons do get items but the issue with that is probably more related to how often events are run where evil toons want to be in them without having to put on false faces

all of mirandas events were her plotting or something guild related, she only joined goodie events if she was already in the middle of it, my assassins events were actually all pretty neutral and every time she was with a group of her friends, and the one with bel she was obviously on the evil side of the campaign

so items in general are just availability issues as pointed out, DM event wise neutrals and evils get items but how often are you actually able to get in an event in the first place?

[DM Dialectic]

The explanation of LE on easydamus is rather narrow and somewhat naive. It does fit some of the lawful evil characters, but not all of them.The alignment is very versatile and can encompass huge range of characters.

I agree with this. My point is that LE characters are not CE, nor do they have to be involved in grand plots, nor do they have to be promoting Evil (with a capital E). And again I iterate, what about the Neutral? There ought to be stuff about people simply wanting personal riches and power. Hell, not even all the Goodies should be after destroying Evil; some might think it's enough to promote Good, others might see a more narrow definition of their role, e.g. a Hin might simply look to keep Gullykin safe.

"What about neutral." There are tons of opportunities currently to go out and pursue "neutral" (on the evil and good axis) RP, many of which could involve a PC initiative to gain commercial wealth, power, and influence (not necessarily measured by in game mechanical gold) with no particular political goal in terms of "evil" or "good" aims. It may be true that opportunities for "neutral" and "chaotic" RP (on the chaotic and lawful axis) are more limited, but we are trying to rectify that best we can this year with some new DM initiatives. We really want all alignment styles of players to have fun adventuring and RPing here and we are going to strive the best we can to encourage that.

"Gear." As quite a few of you already know, the DM team does give out epic rewards for outstanding RP investments in the metaplot campaigns and plots throughout the metaplot year. This is of course done regardless of the alignment of the PCs involved. Heavily invest in 1352 metaplot RP (note that investing RP does not mean "winning" IC, in fact it could mean "losing" horribly IC) and a PC's chances of getting an epic DM reward go up quite a lot.

[Evilar]

In short during that plot, if your evil character tried to destroy BG instead of learning the secrets of the powerful teleports the General used, gain more information about the Netheresse, try to learn about the artifacts the undead were seeking and acquiring them, etc, then you just missed opportunities. Simple as that.

That's your opinion and not a fact!
Some people just like to watch the world burn.

[mrm3ntalist]

That's your opinion and not a fact!
Some people just like to watch the world burn.

Good luck

[NegInfinity]

Some people just like to watch the world burn.

Which is just your opinion.

Say, do you KNOW who Eliphas Valkarian was? Just checking. Your join date is 2016, and it is highly likely that you never heard of the whole thing.

[Zeland]

I think people are not understanding that evil pcs (from my experience) don't get as many dm events, witch dirctley corresponds with epic gear. It's not that good pcs somehow can randomly find more epics, it's just they get more opportunities to get them. (I am speaking from personal experience here so I may be wrong). Getting a group of evils together is a challenge because not all evils share the same end goal whatever that may be, personal power, loot, or the burning of the world, etc.. As for goodies most do share a common goal, therefore they can work together much easier and in bigger groups, and what pursues a dm to host an event? Usually a good number of people. (IMO)

[Blackman D]

also fairly true

not only do most evils not share the same goal but sometimes they straight up conflict with each other, and thats an issue you cant really get rid of

[Steve]

If you want, I can host a healthy debate on how evils can easily SHARE a common goal. Seriously.

Just because a character is evil, doesn't mean they have to be difficult!

But honestly, I'm starting to think that the Players of Evil Toons do not share the same goal, more so, than their PCs, and even more so than those Players that gravitate to good-only type alignments/Characters.

[Karond]

I think people are not understanding that evil pcs on't get as many dm events

Hrm, maybe, but I wouldn't say that if so it's because they're evil.

Picture this. A DM has asked a PC or some PCs what they want to do for an event. From my experience, a good adventurer might say something like "Let's hunt a lich or a vampire!" while the evil ones far too often say "I want to burn down Baldur's Gate".

Evil PCs tend to wish for things like that a lot. If it's not widespread devastation, it's invariably opposed to other players whereas good PCs almost always play exclusively versus the environment. It's an issue that evil PCs so often want something that screams "look at me, I'm totally badass!" while other PCs rarely go for things like that. Far too many evil PCs want to be recognized by the entire server for their evil brilliance that impacts on other players, and non-evil PCs often aren't interested in such things in their requests.

Given how difficult it is to get actual environmental change into the server rapidly, or indeed have the DM team come together to spread the word of the brilliance of the evil PC (if that's even worth their time), it's no wonder that players of evil PCs wishing for these kind of things pretty much never gets them.

They likely need to dial it down several notches. While PCs are "above average", you can't shake a stick anywhere without hitting an adventurer which makes PCs in my opinion rather mediocre. To me, we aren't heroes that the world caters too. On occassion, someone might pull off something heroic or noteworthy, but the memory will fade as realism sets in. Sooner or later PCs become "has beens", if they even get to that point IMO.

[Akroma666]

I want to clear up a few things:
1. I AM playing again.. For how long, will determine on how squashed I get and how ignored my attempt at events and thus...
2. My gear and events directly related to them are actually noticed.
3. Gear does play a major part of the unbalance, played Fenrir for not even a 1/4 the play time and already got an epic long sword from a DM event. Still searching going 3 years strong for that Epic Bloodletter... Or any epic bastard sword that doesn't have +2 positive for that matter. A true epic bastard sword. I submitted 3 a while back.. Notice they aren't in the table
4. QC is hopefully addressing my concerns with epic loot, its diversity, and its availability.
5. I make minor events and submit them to the staff. I noticed on a whole, the DMS ignore them. Although, I do currently have someone working with me. Let's hope we can make it work and start some chaos and/or evil events that evil PCs can join in on. Maybe then we can solve 1-3

[DM Ditto]

Some people just like to watch the world burn.

As a DM, while I would not deny a request to watch the world burn, there are a couple of elements involved in burning a world, as well as being able to spectate the world burning afterwards:

• Do you wish to burn everything on land, or will you also be burning everything in the ocean as well? You will get very different methods of execution depending on the answer to this question. While regular fire may work if you only wish to burn everything above sea level, you will need something that can burn in water if you wish to spread Kossuth's blessing to the deeps, and a method of transferring the burning agent underwater while minimizing the hazards involved with it.

• What will be the method of burning? Do you have a sufficient quantity of the burning agent? Related to the first point. The second point is important, no matter if you are setting the fires with a flint and rock or well-placed Orbs of Fire and Aganazzar's Scorchers. Even if you are Auto-Quickening every single fire spell that you are physically able to memorize, one person alone cannot burn an entire world - at least, not in time before other entities intervene.

• Do you have allies? Accomplices? Suppliers? What is your influence? As mentioned, one person alone cannot burn an entire world before others intervene. To successfully burn the world and to thwart people who would disrupt your omnipyrotechnical activities, you will need resources and allies. You will need others to aid you in your world-burning venture and to provide a distraction from the inevitable do-gooders. You will need suppliers to provide you with a ready source of the burning agents in the quantity required to burn an entire world, with maybe extra for insurance. You will need money, friendship, or something else of value to keep a steady influx of material and the loyalty of your accomplices for as long as needed. Finally, you will need to have some political influence to secure these allies and suppliers, and to keep the right ears bent your way so that, at the very worst, they can turn a blind eye to your misdeeds.

• What is your plan? The important part. Where will you and your allies start burning, and how? How do you plan to thwart interlopers that want to stop you, or put out the fires? How will you handle locations that are not easy to set alight, or to keep burning for a long enough period of time to appropriately witness? You will also need to find and secure a location to effectively spectate the orb of flame that was once Abeir-Toril, and that would require a little planning as well. After all, the request said you want to watch the world burn, and not being able to spectate the deed afterwards would technically count as a failure.

Despite the somewhat comedic nature of the request breakdown above, it does highlight a few of the reasons why requests of similar nature - and not necessarily just the evil-aligned ones - tend to fall through.

One cause of DMs turning down certain event requests is due to the request requiring intermediate steps that require their own requests to fulfill. In the world-burning example above, you would likely have to make event requests to secure allies and suppliers, to build political influence, to map out the necessary regions of the world that would make good burning spots, to find a place to safely watch once the world is burning properly, and so on. As an end goal, "to watch the world burn" is as fine as any other, but as an event request, DMs will either refuse the request, or have you fail at that goal at the outset, because there are too many intermediate steps between point A and point B to secure a chance of success in the venture.

If you break down every successful evil-aligned plotline, you may see a number of factors in common: Intelligence, preparation, ambition, patience, and most of all, attention to detail. Not everybody possesses these qualities and they alone do not guarantee success - for every successful plot resolved, there are many, many other plots that have failed in one way or another, sometimes of the player's fault, and sometimes not. I will say, though, that you are more likely to get results exercising those qualities than sending a request of "I want to set the FAI on fire/assassinate the Dukes!" and nothing else.

It may be true that evil-aligned PCs get less requests granted than neutral or good-aligned PCs, but that is as much a factor of correlation as causation.