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

I've been listening to a lot of the Freakonomics podcast lately, and as always it got me to thinking. One of the things that fascinates me is the way in which policies can have unintended outcomes, or how sometimes by implementing a policy or rule that doesn't seem to make sense on the surface we can get a desired outcome.

Which brings me to RCRs and the xp penalty.

What is the intended purpose of having, not just an xp penalty for an RCR, but one that escalates with level?

Obvously the point of any penalty is to discourage a behavior. So I guess perhaps a better way to ask the question might be:

Why is an RCR viewed as a behavior that is discouraged? If we see that it has enough value that offering it is worthwhile, what is the purpose of adding the penalty to doing so?

XP does not come at the expense of another user's experience. It does represent the one resource a person has a finite amount of - time. The higher the level, the harder xp is to come by. And yet with the current RCR mechanism, the xp penalty for RCRing increases at a disporportionate level.

I don't believe the DM team here to be capricious or careless. Indeed I continue to be impressed with both the improvements on the server AND the transparency of the DM team. So, I'm hoping perhaps a little light could be shed on this.

Is there a perceived problem in offering free RCRs? Do we expect or have we seen a negative impact on the server? Curious if this is something someone is willing to talk about!

I'll answer this by simply saying that the major, current use of the RCR mechanic as a general character rebuilder is in fact a perversion of its original purpose, albeit a perfectly allowed one.

RCR = Retired Character Rebuild.

The feature was added as a form of boon for players who had spent a long time roleplaying a character in the game world and decided to conclude that character's story. RCR existed as a means of giving those players the nod of approval for their investment in the server by letting them begin afresh at a level higher than 1, although never a full transferral of XP (ie, a new level 30).

It was never intended to be a complete character rebuilder. It can be used for that purpose as that has, and never should be, banned on BGTSCC, but I see it as a subsidiary function to supply a degree of convenience to players who make mistakes (and ease the burden on the DM team to fix them) with their character rebuilding.

The RCR mechanic was recently changed to be easier on new players who made mistakes in their characters and can thus be used for complete rebuilds (0% xp penalty) until level 10. From that point a character incurs a cumulative 5% xp penalty per level to a maximum of 50% at level 20+. This is perfectly fair and keeps the mechanic with its original, and somewhat modified, goals in hand. Back in the good ol' days it used to be 50% xp penalty irregardless of level, so in fact what we have now is a significant improvement on what it used to be.

I for one do not approve of 100% rebuilds unless major mechanics changes justify them (eg. the recent changes made to Evasion & Expose Weakness). I like continuity in my RP which is only spoiled by a 100% RCR mechanic that lets someone be a 30 sorcerer one day, and then a 30 bard the next, and a level 30 fighter the next, with little to no explanation. No thanks.

Ironically I missed the 17 page thread in General about RCRs. I *think* my questions are perhaps a little more specific and might have a different flavor of discussion as a result but if the DM staff wants to nuke this thread I understand

Actually the name was a carryover, but since the introduction of the RCR NPC in the nexus, it has always been allowed to fix builds:

viewtopic.php?f=72&t=21272&p=272889&hilit=rcr#p272889

Subject: Releveling of a character.

Valefort wrote:Which leads me to a question, there's a use of the RCR bot that might be considered abusive. Let's say i'm not satified with my character : John Smith who is lvl 30, I RCR it to recreate John Smith at lvl 20, same face, same history.

Would that be allowed ?

Subject: Releveling of a character.

Charraj wrote:It's allowed.

This is approximately a week after it went live in the Nexus. I have some PMs where I had pitched the idea as well (that explain intent), but won't post PMs in public forums.

Either way, when the pitch was made the intention was to relieve DMs of the manual rebuilds that they were doing, for either use.

But yeah, lets lock this one and continue in the other thread. It could use a reminder to stay on topic, anyway.