Post by Geckilian on Aug 30, 2016 18:09:03 GMT -7
Heya folks,
As some of you may have heard, we'll be introducing Season 2 of DragonsGate on the 18th of September. A number of balance changes have been discussed throughout August. Here's the current changes with reasoning as to why they're being enacted -
Downtime is being replaced with a narrative system.
The current downtime system is essentially mostly a spreadsheet system to maximise investment and thus free gold in the long run. This creates a clear disparity between those who invested early and those who haven't paid much attention to the system, or those who haven't done so mechanically efficiently. Building a flavourful estate and businesses was all well and good, but spamming gardens made significantly more gold in the long run, adding up to potentially thousands of extra gold a week. Changing to a narrative system removes this disparity - characters can still have houses, estates, businesses and so forth based on their level and stature. If you can explain it then great! It encourages more roleplay on the forums and more interaction between characters as the downtime assets are descriptive, rather than simply stats. It also means there's no need to spam gardens. Not only this, but as there is no associated cost there is more freedom for DM's to interact with a character's downtime assets without financially ruining a character, leading to more potential for character development without disadvantaging a character compared to another. To avoid odd situations such as a level 1 adventurer stating their own several castles and fiefdoms, any downtime assets a player would like will need to be discussed with both myself and Xemadus so we can maintain a fair and representative scaling of worth, fame and common sense.
Player crafting and associated traits, feats and spells are being removed, as are traits, spells or feats that increase starting gold.
As with the above point, people who invested in crafting feats were able to gain significant amounts of 'free' gold crafting items for other players and naturally saved a lot of gold making items for themselves. Though it can be argued that feats are a very important resource, it's also true that many feats can simply be bought via magic items. As such crafters were able to significantly increase their wealth compared to non-crafters, thus making their characters comparatively much more powerful. This has led to sessions being balanced to financial gods, leaving those without similar wealth trailing in the dust. As such removing this helps to balance characters to one another once again, and keeps a character with the relevant amount of wealth by level.
Path of War is removed.
As decided by the poll we ran, Path of war is no longer available in DragonsGate. A lot of feedback came from GMs who had issues running for Path of War characters and more so than running for fullcasters and the full discussion can of course be seen in the thread. All characters are entitled to a rebuild for Season 2 and this will naturally be a necessity for characters with Path of War material. We understand that there is still concern about the disparity between martials and casters. Standardizing wealth, crafting, downtime and stats, detailed further down, should help narrow the gap. We will of course continue to monitor feedback from characters and DMs from future sessions and players are welcome to utilise the Rule Suggestions area of the forum for any changes they feel would have a good place at DragonsGate.
Various non-magic item stat bonuses are also being removed.
This includes bonuses such as the Profane bonuses from a Succubus and Lilitu and discussions are still ongoing concerning polymorph bonuses and age categories - both of which are also likely to be removed. Nearly free profane stat bonuses go above and beyond the cost effectiveness of normal magic items and were the easiest to acquire for casters, boosting casting stats even higher. Discussions about age categories are currently along the inclination that they obviously advantage casters even more which isn't needed, and the drawbacks are avoided entirely via magic or magic items. Martials get significantly less benefit from age categories. Polymorph bonuses tend to advantage martials more but would need to be paid for, whereas casters can effectively cast them for free to have them indefinitely, shoring up balancing weaknesses. If you feel strongly about either age categories or polymorph bonuses, feel free to post below.
Templates are getting toned down.
To further the miscellaneous stat reduction from above, templates will be condensed to the following - the augmented type which is purely aesthetic and their Special Ability. Furthermore, templates are now free to help maintain wealth by level. Any character of level 12 or above may select one. If you feel that none of the current templates fit, please feel free to contact myself or Xemadus with your idea for a new template. With the removal of most mechanical benefits from templates this makes them considerably faster to balance.
Rebuilds will be free - and monthly.
With the removal of the mechanical downtime system comes the removal of retraining. We're aware that players can want their characters to change, either through wanting to try something new, character development or reasoning that they've built their character badly. As such, characters are allowed to rebuild as long as it has been at least a month since their last rebuild. This allows a greater freedom of character design and avoids players feeling trapped in bad choices. However we also know this can be abused - Tim the completely fighter is not going to suddenly become Tim the wizard. Rebuilds will need to be justified and, if possible, have background provided to both myself and Xemadus. We're not going to be draconian about denying and approving such rebuilds, but consistency of the character's personality and approach is always appreciated.
The repercussions of Death.
The current proposal is that characters who die in session can, within reason, be revived in session by allies, friendly temples and so on. The character in question gets no rewards from a session in which they die. No exp, gold, influence or items, though of course occurrences, connections and roleplay are always maintained. We understand that this causes death to look like it has no long term ramifications. In a sense this is true - you lose nothing but time played in a session from dying and if you had fun that's hardly a waste. What this does do however is slow progression. If you die multiple times, your common allies, who presumably are not dying as much as you, will move on in levels and leave you behind. You will need to forge new alliances and friendships and your adventuring party will change. This also gives you ample time to try different approaches and if need be rebuild should multiple deaths be due to a playstyle or build choice for the character. However bear in mind that death is a psychological trauma. It is worth exploring how your character would feel and react to having died once, twice or even more. Would they become inured to death, reckless in their approach? paranoid, afraid of risk at every turn? Consider each death an outlet for character development and roleplay and even a setback can hold value.
A new starting area.
Rook is by now a cynical and blighted place. Full of mistrust for adventurers and used to almost cataclysmic problems such as multiple zombie plagues and explosions, this city is not the most welcoming place. With the advent of Season 2 a new continent will be explored and not just with a single starting town, but rather a network of villages and hamlets in a diverse landmass to give characters yet more freedom in their backstories. This area is currently being fleshed out by out Worldbuilding team and details will be going up on the wiki nearer the time. Current characters of approximately level 8 and below are welcome to remake thmselves as from the new area, or can also travel there when the time comes. Higher level characters rebuilt along the Season 2 guidelines detailed above can also journey to the new area (some quicker than most no doubt) but will of course be encouraged not to visit ruination upon the place before newer characters 'catch up'.
Session Reports are returning.
Currently session reports only track start time, end time and rewards. This is clearly not exciting, and generally not useful in the slightest for people who wanted to know what happened. Though word of mouth concerning sessions is a great thing, we will be returning to the days of yore where sessions are written up concerning what happened. If you go to the session reports section of the forum and check some of the oldest, you will see what we mean. Though it will be perfectly acceptable to have brevity from the DMs, players are encouraged to write up parts of the session they enjoyed and to provide feedback in the session report threads - they're not just for the DMs! Furthermore players who write particularly riveting accounts from either a character's perspective or that of a player may find themselves with another Influence to help them on their adventures.
Session exp is standardized.
Regardless of the session range you play in, characters will receive the relevant character level rewards. A level 3 playing in a 3-4 single length session will receive CL 3 rewards. Though some may see this is downplaying the effort that goes in to 'playing up', one major problem with playing up was the loss in wealth. When characters could play sessions at CL+2 rewards they essentially got double exp for comparatively little increase in session gold. This naturally led to imbalances between characters and some fell behind on the curve for character wealth. This change ensures that characters do not fall behind and brings back relevancy for the character advancement table where it states how many games to level. Though this means advancement is more predictable, it also means that in terms of wealth and exp, everyone is on an even playing field.
Influence is an important currency.
Currently Influence is largely used for returning from character deaths. However with the new remarkably cheaper death system, this frees players to use Influence for it's other intended use without feeling like they need a reserve - consumables. With wealth standardized, consumables represent a method of falling behind once again - spending gold on a wand means lost gold when the wand is used up. However Influence allows a player to purchase consumables without using gold. Since Influence is not a static reward and can vary between sessions, this means the use for wands, potions and so on is far less of a waste. DMs are encouraged to reward additional Influence for spectacular moments in game, good roleplay, good contribution to a session and so on. I will be writing up a more in dept reward guide for the DM section of the forum and as players always feel free to discuss fun moments in the game with them afterwards concerning your own, or more crucially another player's, character. This may jog their memory for Influence!
So, what should we do with our existing characters?
Existing characters will need to be rebuilt along the lines of the Season 2 guidelines as detailed above. This does mean going through magic items and repurchasing them at 100% cost. To find out how much gold you should have for your level, get the wbl for your current level, and work out the percentage of exp you have towards the next level and apply that to the wealth by level value difference towards the next level. For example, a level 6 with 35,000 exp is 56.66% towards level 7 (8500/15000 difference). Applying that to the difference between level 6 and level 7 wbl of 7,500gp and adding level 6 wbl (16,000gp) results in 20,250gp to spend. Lists of magic items purchases with associated costs should be PM'd to myself, along with any changes to your character. It is important to note that you do NOT need to keep the same character - you can effectively reroll in to a completely new character maintaining character exp and appropriate gold. This is a new season and thus players are welcome to a fresh start, in terms of characters and personalities. Please bear in mind future rebuilds of the character would need to maintain the personality and so forth.
One aspect of character creation currently being discussed is the capping of base stats between 8 and 18 after racial modifiers. This brings in casters somewhat, who are more able to boost a single score, and gives people a degree of freedom to make balanced stat builds without feeling forced to boost stats as high as they can for their primary - making multiple ability dependant classes more viable. The current inclination is not to impose the cap and allow players to use the current system. You would be able to boost a score, but doing so would lead to naturally lower scores elsewhere. This seems a reasonable trade off, but gives more temptation to maximize what you can. We're aware min-maxing is going to happen regardless, but it should be noted that as the wiki states, min should be felt as much as the max... If the stat cap does go through in the end, characters who have base stats at 7 or 19+ would need to rejiggle their stats. We apologize in advance if that happens and becomes annoying.
Overall then quite a few changes! The overall design intent is basically to give newer players a chance at getting in to DragonsGate without being completely disadvantaged in terms of character power compared to 'The Old Guard' in ways other than character level. System mastery helps, but is now a learning process that can be implemented via the rebuilds. Roleplay is encouraged via a narrative downtime system and interaction with session reports. Death, and repeated deaths, will no longer financially cripple a character in to non-usefulness and dissuade people from playing. I'm sure there may be other things I'm missing and if so by all means happily ask questions here and I will endeavor to answer. For all of you looking forward to Season 2 and the changes therein, I bid you welcome to the upcoming age of DragonsGate, and thank you for taking part with us!
Gamingly,
The Leadership Council
As some of you may have heard, we'll be introducing Season 2 of DragonsGate on the 18th of September. A number of balance changes have been discussed throughout August. Here's the current changes with reasoning as to why they're being enacted -
Downtime is being replaced with a narrative system.
The current downtime system is essentially mostly a spreadsheet system to maximise investment and thus free gold in the long run. This creates a clear disparity between those who invested early and those who haven't paid much attention to the system, or those who haven't done so mechanically efficiently. Building a flavourful estate and businesses was all well and good, but spamming gardens made significantly more gold in the long run, adding up to potentially thousands of extra gold a week. Changing to a narrative system removes this disparity - characters can still have houses, estates, businesses and so forth based on their level and stature. If you can explain it then great! It encourages more roleplay on the forums and more interaction between characters as the downtime assets are descriptive, rather than simply stats. It also means there's no need to spam gardens. Not only this, but as there is no associated cost there is more freedom for DM's to interact with a character's downtime assets without financially ruining a character, leading to more potential for character development without disadvantaging a character compared to another. To avoid odd situations such as a level 1 adventurer stating their own several castles and fiefdoms, any downtime assets a player would like will need to be discussed with both myself and Xemadus so we can maintain a fair and representative scaling of worth, fame and common sense.
Player crafting and associated traits, feats and spells are being removed, as are traits, spells or feats that increase starting gold.
As with the above point, people who invested in crafting feats were able to gain significant amounts of 'free' gold crafting items for other players and naturally saved a lot of gold making items for themselves. Though it can be argued that feats are a very important resource, it's also true that many feats can simply be bought via magic items. As such crafters were able to significantly increase their wealth compared to non-crafters, thus making their characters comparatively much more powerful. This has led to sessions being balanced to financial gods, leaving those without similar wealth trailing in the dust. As such removing this helps to balance characters to one another once again, and keeps a character with the relevant amount of wealth by level.
Path of War is removed.
As decided by the poll we ran, Path of war is no longer available in DragonsGate. A lot of feedback came from GMs who had issues running for Path of War characters and more so than running for fullcasters and the full discussion can of course be seen in the thread. All characters are entitled to a rebuild for Season 2 and this will naturally be a necessity for characters with Path of War material. We understand that there is still concern about the disparity between martials and casters. Standardizing wealth, crafting, downtime and stats, detailed further down, should help narrow the gap. We will of course continue to monitor feedback from characters and DMs from future sessions and players are welcome to utilise the Rule Suggestions area of the forum for any changes they feel would have a good place at DragonsGate.
Various non-magic item stat bonuses are also being removed.
This includes bonuses such as the Profane bonuses from a Succubus and Lilitu and discussions are still ongoing concerning polymorph bonuses and age categories - both of which are also likely to be removed. Nearly free profane stat bonuses go above and beyond the cost effectiveness of normal magic items and were the easiest to acquire for casters, boosting casting stats even higher. Discussions about age categories are currently along the inclination that they obviously advantage casters even more which isn't needed, and the drawbacks are avoided entirely via magic or magic items. Martials get significantly less benefit from age categories. Polymorph bonuses tend to advantage martials more but would need to be paid for, whereas casters can effectively cast them for free to have them indefinitely, shoring up balancing weaknesses. If you feel strongly about either age categories or polymorph bonuses, feel free to post below.
Templates are getting toned down.
To further the miscellaneous stat reduction from above, templates will be condensed to the following - the augmented type which is purely aesthetic and their Special Ability. Furthermore, templates are now free to help maintain wealth by level. Any character of level 12 or above may select one. If you feel that none of the current templates fit, please feel free to contact myself or Xemadus with your idea for a new template. With the removal of most mechanical benefits from templates this makes them considerably faster to balance.
Rebuilds will be free - and monthly.
With the removal of the mechanical downtime system comes the removal of retraining. We're aware that players can want their characters to change, either through wanting to try something new, character development or reasoning that they've built their character badly. As such, characters are allowed to rebuild as long as it has been at least a month since their last rebuild. This allows a greater freedom of character design and avoids players feeling trapped in bad choices. However we also know this can be abused - Tim the completely fighter is not going to suddenly become Tim the wizard. Rebuilds will need to be justified and, if possible, have background provided to both myself and Xemadus. We're not going to be draconian about denying and approving such rebuilds, but consistency of the character's personality and approach is always appreciated.
The repercussions of Death.
The current proposal is that characters who die in session can, within reason, be revived in session by allies, friendly temples and so on. The character in question gets no rewards from a session in which they die. No exp, gold, influence or items, though of course occurrences, connections and roleplay are always maintained. We understand that this causes death to look like it has no long term ramifications. In a sense this is true - you lose nothing but time played in a session from dying and if you had fun that's hardly a waste. What this does do however is slow progression. If you die multiple times, your common allies, who presumably are not dying as much as you, will move on in levels and leave you behind. You will need to forge new alliances and friendships and your adventuring party will change. This also gives you ample time to try different approaches and if need be rebuild should multiple deaths be due to a playstyle or build choice for the character. However bear in mind that death is a psychological trauma. It is worth exploring how your character would feel and react to having died once, twice or even more. Would they become inured to death, reckless in their approach? paranoid, afraid of risk at every turn? Consider each death an outlet for character development and roleplay and even a setback can hold value.
A new starting area.
Rook is by now a cynical and blighted place. Full of mistrust for adventurers and used to almost cataclysmic problems such as multiple zombie plagues and explosions, this city is not the most welcoming place. With the advent of Season 2 a new continent will be explored and not just with a single starting town, but rather a network of villages and hamlets in a diverse landmass to give characters yet more freedom in their backstories. This area is currently being fleshed out by out Worldbuilding team and details will be going up on the wiki nearer the time. Current characters of approximately level 8 and below are welcome to remake thmselves as from the new area, or can also travel there when the time comes. Higher level characters rebuilt along the Season 2 guidelines detailed above can also journey to the new area (some quicker than most no doubt) but will of course be encouraged not to visit ruination upon the place before newer characters 'catch up'.
Session Reports are returning.
Currently session reports only track start time, end time and rewards. This is clearly not exciting, and generally not useful in the slightest for people who wanted to know what happened. Though word of mouth concerning sessions is a great thing, we will be returning to the days of yore where sessions are written up concerning what happened. If you go to the session reports section of the forum and check some of the oldest, you will see what we mean. Though it will be perfectly acceptable to have brevity from the DMs, players are encouraged to write up parts of the session they enjoyed and to provide feedback in the session report threads - they're not just for the DMs! Furthermore players who write particularly riveting accounts from either a character's perspective or that of a player may find themselves with another Influence to help them on their adventures.
Session exp is standardized.
Regardless of the session range you play in, characters will receive the relevant character level rewards. A level 3 playing in a 3-4 single length session will receive CL 3 rewards. Though some may see this is downplaying the effort that goes in to 'playing up', one major problem with playing up was the loss in wealth. When characters could play sessions at CL+2 rewards they essentially got double exp for comparatively little increase in session gold. This naturally led to imbalances between characters and some fell behind on the curve for character wealth. This change ensures that characters do not fall behind and brings back relevancy for the character advancement table where it states how many games to level. Though this means advancement is more predictable, it also means that in terms of wealth and exp, everyone is on an even playing field.
Influence is an important currency.
Currently Influence is largely used for returning from character deaths. However with the new remarkably cheaper death system, this frees players to use Influence for it's other intended use without feeling like they need a reserve - consumables. With wealth standardized, consumables represent a method of falling behind once again - spending gold on a wand means lost gold when the wand is used up. However Influence allows a player to purchase consumables without using gold. Since Influence is not a static reward and can vary between sessions, this means the use for wands, potions and so on is far less of a waste. DMs are encouraged to reward additional Influence for spectacular moments in game, good roleplay, good contribution to a session and so on. I will be writing up a more in dept reward guide for the DM section of the forum and as players always feel free to discuss fun moments in the game with them afterwards concerning your own, or more crucially another player's, character. This may jog their memory for Influence!
So, what should we do with our existing characters?
Existing characters will need to be rebuilt along the lines of the Season 2 guidelines as detailed above. This does mean going through magic items and repurchasing them at 100% cost. To find out how much gold you should have for your level, get the wbl for your current level, and work out the percentage of exp you have towards the next level and apply that to the wealth by level value difference towards the next level. For example, a level 6 with 35,000 exp is 56.66% towards level 7 (8500/15000 difference). Applying that to the difference between level 6 and level 7 wbl of 7,500gp and adding level 6 wbl (16,000gp) results in 20,250gp to spend. Lists of magic items purchases with associated costs should be PM'd to myself, along with any changes to your character. It is important to note that you do NOT need to keep the same character - you can effectively reroll in to a completely new character maintaining character exp and appropriate gold. This is a new season and thus players are welcome to a fresh start, in terms of characters and personalities. Please bear in mind future rebuilds of the character would need to maintain the personality and so forth.
One aspect of character creation currently being discussed is the capping of base stats between 8 and 18 after racial modifiers. This brings in casters somewhat, who are more able to boost a single score, and gives people a degree of freedom to make balanced stat builds without feeling forced to boost stats as high as they can for their primary - making multiple ability dependant classes more viable. The current inclination is not to impose the cap and allow players to use the current system. You would be able to boost a score, but doing so would lead to naturally lower scores elsewhere. This seems a reasonable trade off, but gives more temptation to maximize what you can. We're aware min-maxing is going to happen regardless, but it should be noted that as the wiki states, min should be felt as much as the max... If the stat cap does go through in the end, characters who have base stats at 7 or 19+ would need to rejiggle their stats. We apologize in advance if that happens and becomes annoying.
Overall then quite a few changes! The overall design intent is basically to give newer players a chance at getting in to DragonsGate without being completely disadvantaged in terms of character power compared to 'The Old Guard' in ways other than character level. System mastery helps, but is now a learning process that can be implemented via the rebuilds. Roleplay is encouraged via a narrative downtime system and interaction with session reports. Death, and repeated deaths, will no longer financially cripple a character in to non-usefulness and dissuade people from playing. I'm sure there may be other things I'm missing and if so by all means happily ask questions here and I will endeavor to answer. For all of you looking forward to Season 2 and the changes therein, I bid you welcome to the upcoming age of DragonsGate, and thank you for taking part with us!
Gamingly,
The Leadership Council
