AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

Get rid of 100% victories. Every choice and every act has consequences, both positive and negative. Many of those beyond our control.

What happened to the rising anti-mage sentiment in Cordor after the Arcanum slaughterkilled half the population? Too inconvenient for plot?

It was as much Magi who answered the call to stand against Reyes.

Tuomas and Ulrik were two prominent magi who stood against the Arcanum. I get your point though.

Of course, those two are dirty Kohl-nobles. Cordorians couldn't care about them or what they did! Burn all the wizards! :twisted:

Elorathall wrote:

Get rid of 100% victories. Every choice and every act has consequences, both positive and negative. Many of those beyond our control.

What happened to the rising anti-mage sentiment in Cordor after the Arcanum slaughterkilled half the population? Too inconvenient for plot?

Man, this is a really shallow, ignorant view of the Arcanum plot if this was your takeaway. Just saying.

What I'd change... I'd change it to Greyhawk.

Oerth is such a much better setting with cooler gods and lore an history and it gets no love in NWN whatsoever (sighs).

That said, ever since FR came out I've loathed it for a number of reasons. The foremost being that the entire setting is basically just one guy drawing a large map and then throwing darts at it while fingering random pages in an atlas and changing the names. Just a bunch of geo-gibberish where you've a silly amount of cultures with giant gaps abutting each other without sense. It doesn't flow or feel natural because it's kitchen-sinked by T$R to make money milling out 15 FR sourcebooks a month (which is what ended up killing them) because angsty teenagers all wanted to be Driz'zt and Marty Stu (I mean Elminster) in the '90s.

The second reason I've hated the setting was Ed Greenwood. The man cannot write, but he sure can steal. Because of his compulsive kitchen-sinking he'd see something in another setting, steal it for his and promptly ignore all the lore written about it. Remember drow? No, not those drow, the original drow who were actually scary and not "feminism gone bad" that lived in the Vault on Oerth? Remember when genasi were the rarest of humanoid races? So rare each one considered themselves a unique being and hated each other instead of becoming a bloody cartoon rejects from Battle Beasts? Now apparently genies f*** anything that moves (even though they still somehow find mortals repugnant and taking an ins is taboo). I could go on and on...

Other than that, Amia is pretty fine to me. I'd like to see a lvl 40 cap (no real difference from lvl 30 to 40 other than crippling some builds which are not worthwhile to cripple). Taking it to level 20 is the fast-track to "haha, now we have 5 players maximum." No thanks.

Oh my God yes. Cut out the auction forum. Fuck people who complain about off time zones. The only times I have available to play are when there are less than 10 people on the server and I'm okay with it. The auction forum is basically the same system as level grinding is. It's pseudo-RP but mostly OOC bullshit.

I'd make everyone realize that there are different play styles and that Amia is great at being open for scheeming political leaders, deep emo drama, fun light-hearted farting gnomes, WoW-style mechanics enjoyers, people getting a kick out of playing merchants in a world with no need for money, talented poets, ...

But besides this dream, here is one more idea:
Make it possible for players to leave stuff permanently somewhere:
1) Setup job items and even fancier requested PLCs.
2) Use an area effect widget burning a DC to freeze them in place beyond reset, permanently. (Until someone unfreezes them with more DCs, I guess.)
(Or somehow recycle the house interior system.)

I think this would be geat for fleshing out some areas, even dungeons, in an organic, player-driven way.

If DMs don't like someome's additions (or if someone abuses the system), that person will eventually run out of DCs ...

If too many placeables are a problen, set conservative limits per area on the number of PLCs possible there. Players can then work within the limit. (We all know it's an old game.)

This would also let others experience the work going into an area, which is otherwise often hidden in forum threads or dependent on being online as the same player.

Also, the burden on designers would be so much less, I hope. Or at least better spent on making the world more flexible with scripting or cool new open areas, items, ...

Regards
Ts

Add a player-to-player dream coin economy.

The server tracks every stupid item handed around, but we cannot trust players to reward each other with rewards giving out to them for good playstyle in the first place? (And DCs ultimately are worth nothing without DM approval of requests anyway.)

Ts

I think the reason for that would be it'd eventually create a OOC economy. Something that'd go like this. "Hey man, I'll give you 5 DC's for those Epic Gloves of Spellcraft."
_______________________________________________________________________________________

Keeping on topic though, I'd change how sorcerers handle PnP spells. Since sorcerers are natural spellcasters and don't learn their spells by traditional means, they often fall short in regards to wizards in this regard - who can just clear an empty spellslot and roleplay "Oh, this empty slot is being represented as blah blah"

A fair correction to this would be spell focuses under DM supervision. The higher the spell focus the character has of that specific PnP spell, the more likely he is to know that specific spell. It'd create a much needed balance for these spell casters in a workable way.

Oh, I'd totally change the way spellcasting works, because it has absolute no synergy across classes (unlike skills and fighting abilities). Actually, I'd change to a classless RPG, thinking about it ... But that might upset some DnD fans. ;)

DerkDerkistan wrote:

Oh my God yes. Cut out the auction forum. Fuck people who complain about off time zones. The only times I have available to play are when there are less than 10 people on the server and I'm okay with it. The auction forum is basically the same system as level grinding is. It's pseudo-RP but mostly OOC bullshit.

If it was that great you'd still be a regular player

also you would basically have to ban IC auction notices, which is a nonsensical notion in totality. Removing the subforum would do nothing about player forum behaviour, literally all it would do would be removing the subforum partition. But I guess if we're talking about magical changes, fair enough!

TheCortroy wrote:

Keeping on topic though, I'd change how sorcerers handle PnP spells. Since sorcerers are natural spellcasters and don't learn their spells by traditional means, they often fall short in regards to wizards in this regard - who can just clear an empty spellslot and roleplay "Oh, this empty slot is being represented as blah blah"

A fair correction to this would be spell focuses under DM supervision. The higher the spell focus the character has of that specific PnP spell, the more likely he is to know that specific spell. It'd create a much needed balance for these spell casters in a workable way.

+1. Although I'm not quite sure all DMs enforce this because I've seen many PnP spells cast without the placeholder. I stumbled across this issue myself and I have to agree on this. The sad thing is you're only going to use this PnP spell/ placeholder for RP situations which occur once in every few (months?) or even once in your characters life time, so the sacrifice of losing one precious spell which you can use all the time, doesn't outweigh the reward by a mile. This just leaves a subtle message to say that sorcerers are only useful as 'battlecasters' and useless in everything else RP-wise during events. Whereas everything PnP, rp-opportunity related is at your disposal for a cleric/druid/wizard. I agree with the fair correction mentioned! (I know I may be bias because I play a sorc

)

I too, am in in favor of sorcerers getting the ability to choose from something that might fall under their epic spell focus, in terms of PnP ability. I think this kind of thing is already possible, but alas, a DM ruling on it would be splendid I agree.

Last edited by Commie on Mon, Jan 18 2016, 0:05 AM, edited 1 time in total.

Saw another nwn server gave sorc spell school specialists an option to only be able to cast out of that one school, but had infinite casts from it, ex an evoker would have infinite fireballs. I'd be for that, in pvp you arn't likely to be able to cast all your existing level 9 spells before killing/being killed and in pve you don't have enough casts to nuke down more then a few packs.

I'd also make blackguard a base class so BG's would be at least 'as good' at fighting good as pallys are at evil if they go that hard into it.

A couple of things I'd do

bring back the funk
- we want the funk
- give us the funk
- we need the fuck
- gotta have that funk
tear the roof of the sucka
- we gotta tear the roof off the mutha sucka

Bring back hin tossing.

Although I suppose if we're making wishlists...

*Vastly overhaul spells so that nearly every spell gets a benefit from Spell Focus, making specialized caster really good what what they do.
*Fix summons (this one's not TOO much of a pipe dream)
*Fix/individualize monsters creating less "spam" and more "interesting encounters" - especially revisitin older areas to inject 'new freshness' into places that have been the same for, in some cases, over a decade.
*More specifically - change up the +5 bosses, maybe keep 'em on a rotation to keep it fresh, change it up. Talkin' like 3 different kings of Fire King, one's a fighter, ones a barbarian, one's a cleric. 3 kinds of snowbeast, one's the one we got now, one's a massive yeti, one's a giant icewurm or something.
*Turn Paladin into any alignment - If you'r G you beat E, if you're C you beat L, and ivce versa - if you're a corner align you pick one, you don't get both.
*In accordance with above, turn Blackguard into a fiendish warlocky-martial gish class to differentiate it from Paladin - less divine, not so much arcane, more Eldritch.
*Bards any alignment
*Barbarians any alignment
*Sorcerors able to school specialize like wizards, and gaining free casts of spells from that school - I actually really like Arelith's True Flame, but think it should be doable for any school.
*RDD becoming more unique than a ball-of-numbers class. Spell likes based on your dragon type, natural weapons, etc.
*All this wonderful Shadowdancer lore becoming mechanically reflected in the class, so make it more than just HIPS and Epic Dodge.
*Rangers 3.5ized and can pick between Archery and TWF styles - turn Dual Wield into true TWF feats
*I'd bring back custom scripting, but I fully understand why it's dead.
*Various other things mechanically I won't mention for fear of starting riots over my opinions...

Much off my stuff is mechanics based- I'm weird and really enjoy the hack and slash and the game part of what we play here in NWN and always have, so much of my wishes are based around fixing what I feel are discrepancies there.

TORMAK FOR KING

Create a massive new dungeon that starts at about lvl 2 and you finish near if not at epic lvl.
It would be themed like a 'don-jon' / 1,000 tales. Truly a hero's journey. A place where hero's are forged.

Make Mounts Viable

Create all of the mainland [At least some Key areas]

Add a pet shop

TormakSaber wrote:

Although I suppose if we're making wishlists...

*Vastly overhaul spells so that nearly every spell gets a benefit from Spell Focus, making specialized caster really good what what they do.
*Fix summons (this one's not TOO much of a pipe dream)
*Fix/individualize monsters creating less "spam" and more "interesting encounters" - especially revisitin older areas to inject 'new freshness' into places that have been the same for, in some cases, over a decade.
*More specifically - change up the +5 bosses, maybe keep 'em on a rotation to keep it fresh, change it up. Talkin' like 3 different kings of Fire King, one's a fighter, ones a barbarian, one's a cleric. 3 kinds of snowbeast, one's the one we got now, one's a massive yeti, one's a giant icewurm or something.
*Turn Paladin into any alignment - If you'r G you beat E, if you're C you beat L, and ivce versa - if you're a corner align you pick one, you don't get both.
*In accordance with above, turn Blackguard into a fiendish warlocky-martial gish class to differentiate it from Paladin - less divine, not so much arcane, more Eldritch.
*Bards any alignment
*Barbarians any alignment
*Sorcerors able to school specialize like wizards, and gaining free casts of spells from that school - I actually really like Arelith's True Flame, but think it should be doable for any school.
*RDD becoming more unique than a ball-of-numbers class. Spell likes based on your dragon type, natural weapons, etc.
*All this wonderful Shadowdancer lore becoming mechanically reflected in the class, so make it more than just HIPS and Epic Dodge.
*Rangers 3.5ized and can pick between Archery and TWF styles - turn Dual Wield into true TWF feats
*I'd bring back custom scripting, but I fully understand why it's dead.
*Various other things mechanically I won't mention for fear of starting riots over my opinions...

Much off my stuff is mechanics based- I'm weird and really enjoy the hack and slash and the game part of what we play here in NWN and always have, so much of my wishes are based around fixing what I feel are discrepancies there.

I want to buy you a beer. Many beers.......

Elorathall wrote:

Get rid of 100% victories. Every choice and every act has consequences, both positive and negative. Many of those beyond our control.

What happened to the rising anti-mage sentiment in Cordor after the Arcanum slaughterkilled half the population? Too inconvenient for plot?

Never has been 100% victories. Though, understand the underlying view, some plots could be predicted to see what happens.

What would I change. Possibly the Arcanuum plot in its entirety, no offense to those who enjoyed it, it simply was not my cup of tea. And feel it killed Amia for in many aspects. Then again, not all can be pleased with plots.

Winya election system to better follow who are active players and disable sudden appearance of random elfs to vote.

Had more constant DMing for Winya.

Return more to the olden days of Amia. When it felt magical and had a lot going on. Good times.

Change Tormak from Leaving in first place. Change Yossarin to return, shame I missed their events most of time, heard so many good things.

Liz wrote:

TORMAK FOR KING

TormakSaber wrote:

Although I suppose if we're making wishlists...

*Vastly overhaul spells so that nearly every spell gets a benefit from Spell Focus, making specialized caster really good what what they do.
*Fix summons (this one's not TOO much of a pipe dream)
*Fix/individualize monsters creating less "spam" and more "interesting encounters" - especially revisitin older areas to inject 'new freshness' into places that have been the same for, in some cases, over a decade.
*More specifically - change up the +5 bosses, maybe keep 'em on a rotation to keep it fresh, change it up. Talkin' like 3 different kings of Fire King, one's a fighter, ones a barbarian, one's a cleric. 3 kinds of snowbeast, one's the one we got now, one's a massive yeti, one's a giant icewurm or something.
*Turn Paladin into any alignment - If you'r G you beat E, if you're C you beat L, and ivce versa - if you're a corner align you pick one, you don't get both.
*In accordance with above, turn Blackguard into a fiendish warlocky-martial gish class to differentiate it from Paladin - less divine, not so much arcane, more Eldritch.
*Bards any alignment
*Barbarians any alignment
*Sorcerors able to school specialize like wizards, and gaining free casts of spells from that school - I actually really like Arelith's True Flame, but think it should be doable for any school.
*RDD becoming more unique than a ball-of-numbers class. Spell likes based on your dragon type, natural weapons, etc.
*All this wonderful Shadowdancer lore becoming mechanically reflected in the class, so make it more than just HIPS and Epic Dodge.
*Rangers 3.5ized and can pick between Archery and TWF styles - turn Dual Wield into true TWF feats
*I'd bring back custom scripting, but I fully understand why it's dead.
*Various other things mechanically I won't mention for fear of starting riots over my opinions...

Much off my stuff is mechanics based- I'm weird and really enjoy the hack and slash and the game part of what we play here in NWN and always have, so much of my wishes are based around fixing what I feel are discrepancies there.

+1000

TormakSaber wrote:

Although I suppose if we're making wishlists...

*Vastly overhaul spells so that nearly every spell gets a benefit from Spell Focus, making specialized caster really good what what they do.
*Fix summons (this one's not TOO much of a pipe dream)
*Fix/individualize monsters creating less "spam" and more "interesting encounters" - especially revisitin older areas to inject 'new freshness' into places that have been the same for, in some cases, over a decade.
*More specifically - change up the +5 bosses, maybe keep 'em on a rotation to keep it fresh, change it up. Talkin' like 3 different kings of Fire King, one's a fighter, ones a barbarian, one's a cleric. 3 kinds of snowbeast, one's the one we got now, one's a massive yeti, one's a giant icewurm or something.
*Turn Paladin into any alignment - If you'r G you beat E, if you're C you beat L, and ivce versa - if you're a corner align you pick one, you don't get both.
*In accordance with above, turn Blackguard into a fiendish warlocky-martial gish class to differentiate it from Paladin - less divine, not so much arcane, more Eldritch.
*Bards any alignment
*Barbarians any alignment
*Sorcerors able to school specialize like wizards, and gaining free casts of spells from that school - I actually really like Arelith's True Flame, but think it should be doable for any school.
*RDD becoming more unique than a ball-of-numbers class. Spell likes based on your dragon type, natural weapons, etc.
*All this wonderful Shadowdancer lore becoming mechanically reflected in the class, so make it more than just HIPS and Epic Dodge.
*Rangers 3.5ized and can pick between Archery and TWF styles - turn Dual Wield into true TWF feats
*I'd bring back custom scripting, but I fully understand why it's dead.
*Various other things mechanically I won't mention for fear of starting riots over my opinions...

Much off my stuff is mechanics based- I'm weird and really enjoy the hack and slash and the game part of what we play here in NWN and always have, so much of my wishes are based around fixing what I feel are discrepancies there.

Do all of this.

edit; Does your pally suggestion mean you could be a LE pally and smite good? So good paladins would have to live in fear of being great-smitten by their enemies? If so 1000x this idea because man does it suck to be on the other side of the great-smite pally fence when it comes to blows.

Solvaras wrote:

TormakSaber wrote:

Although I suppose if we're making wishlists...

*Vastly overhaul spells so that nearly every spell gets a benefit from Spell Focus, making specialized caster really good what what they do.
*Fix summons (this one's not TOO much of a pipe dream)
*Fix/individualize monsters creating less "spam" and more "interesting encounters" - especially revisitin older areas to inject 'new freshness' into places that have been the same for, in some cases, over a decade.
*More specifically - change up the +5 bosses, maybe keep 'em on a rotation to keep it fresh, change it up. Talkin' like 3 different kings of Fire King, one's a fighter, ones a barbarian, one's a cleric. 3 kinds of snowbeast, one's the one we got now, one's a massive yeti, one's a giant icewurm or something.
*Turn Paladin into any alignment - If you'r G you beat E, if you're C you beat L, and ivce versa - if you're a corner align you pick one, you don't get both.
*In accordance with above, turn Blackguard into a fiendish warlocky-martial gish class to differentiate it from Paladin - less divine, not so much arcane, more Eldritch.
*Bards any alignment
*Barbarians any alignment
*Sorcerors able to school specialize like wizards, and gaining free casts of spells from that school - I actually really like Arelith's True Flame, but think it should be doable for any school.
*RDD becoming more unique than a ball-of-numbers class. Spell likes based on your dragon type, natural weapons, etc.
*All this wonderful Shadowdancer lore becoming mechanically reflected in the class, so make it more than just HIPS and Epic Dodge.
*Rangers 3.5ized and can pick between Archery and TWF styles - turn Dual Wield into true TWF feats
*I'd bring back custom scripting, but I fully understand why it's dead.
*Various other things mechanically I won't mention for fear of starting riots over my opinions...

Much off my stuff is mechanics based- I'm weird and really enjoy the hack and slash and the game part of what we play here in NWN and always have, so much of my wishes are based around fixing what I feel are discrepancies there.

I want to buy you a beer. Many beers.......

I'd buy the person who scripted this all the beers

I'd lock the level cap at 20.

I would limit "hunting" exp to the total amount required to get to level 5, effectively restricting the self leveling via hack and slash.

I would limit "quest" exp to the total amount required to get from level 5 to 10, effectively restricting the self leveling via quest hack and slash.

I would reduce the exp for killing banal minions to about 1/5 the current value, yes the journey is the goal, not the destination and stagnation.

Paladin would be considered a prestige class with all normal prerequisites but with the added caveat of being level 2 in another class before being "called" to become a paladin

Prestige classes would all require DM approval, valid lore and IC reasons and DM oversight for the first 3 months of active play, with the DM's having an option to retract the class or extend the oversight depending on individual circumstances.

Know powerbuilds outlawed outright and the mindset and munchkin culture that spawned them ridiculed and derided at every opportunity whilst giving the offending munchkin links to pvp nwn servers to go be with their own low kind.

DM monitoring of builds that turn up and seem to be overpowered and/or an OOC mechanical abuse in order to get a pvp advantage without a shred of IC justification for the village baker suddenly being "Neo" for the purpose of adding any such builds to the ban list and the player concerned being talked to see if he/she requires a link as per above.

Death tax part I, every single "death" caused by the server via monsters will cause a cumulative -2 ability penalty to all abilities, which is accumulated when raised with a scroll. This penalty decays over a longish RL time period or by visiting an NPC cleric in a temple and paying a hefty fee based on character level that scales steeply upwards.
This penalty can be avoided altogether by being raised by a player cleric using a direct cast raise dead or resurrect spell (i.e. from their spell list not a scroll or item)

Death tax part II, every single "death" caused by a player in pvp will cause an immediate -6 penalty to all abilities which is cumulative with further pvp/pve death taxes. This penalty assumes a scroll is used, if the caster is using a direct cast spell then the penalty is still -6 but the recovery time is halved.

Death tax part III, every critical hit scored against a player by either monsters or players will inflict a random "wound" which will impose one instance from a list of events such as -1 Attack, or -1 Will Save, etc. Each critical will add a new instance and they stack with existing ones. These do not decay overtime and must be healed via an NPC cleric in a temple, or a player healer using appropriate consumables and rolling a successful DC skill check, the action takes several rounds based on the skill roll, even if the roll is unsuccessful.

Death tax part IV, once the server records a given amount of accumulated penalties from death of either kind then the player will be notified of impending permadeath. After which a given amount of further penalties will invoke permadeath without further ado.
Note that this means that death taxes from NPCing can be avoided entirely with the help of a player cleric, but pvp death taxes cannot be avoided

Kelemvor must have his due.

Disable party chat, it will help focus people on the supposed reason we are all here, role play. Keep in character unless urgent RL need requires a break in immersion.

That is the main things that come to mind for me, felt good to say them even though its all a pipe deam.

VitalTouch wrote:

I'd lock the level cap at 20.

I didn't get a chance to read the rest of you post but I LOVE level 20 servers.

bobofwestoregonusa wrote:

VitalTouch wrote:

I'd lock the level cap at 20.

I didn't get a chance to read the rest of you post but I LOVE level 20 servers.

Read the Death taxes, you might like them. Not that such things will ever happen in Amia even if they are even possible.

Make forum posts a currency. You get one post for every hour you spend IG.

Lol NC you are not serious are you? Or do you mean just IC ones?

Dead serious. People that spew commentary should have to participate in the game.

NinjaClarinet wrote:

Dead serious. People that spew commentary should have to participate in the game.

Quality of shitposts increases slightly.

I, on the other hand, like that idea. Maybe not literally, but the point he makes is valid.

Death tax - witnessed it, it is horrible, annoying, made people leave server.
Otherwise... almost agreeing to idea of some IG time to forum time :lol:

Amia's pretty good as it is.

But.. here are some idea's:

- made the basic equipment better looking (instead of the vanilla outfits).
- made the rat quest boss a little easier.
- move the 'Crypt of the Burning Dead' further to the north. (Its very hard!)
- add some more items without properties (like boots, amulets) to the clothes shop (so you can enchant them).
- made the Gelugon summon a little weaker.
- made the Lich in the Electric Castle a little easier.

Nalkanar wrote:

Death tax - witnessed it, it is horrible, annoying, made people leave server.
Otherwise... almost agreeing to idea of some IG time to forum time :lol:

This server is in desperate need of some actual tangible consequences to pvp which has the multi bonus of allowing ooc powerbuilding abusers to be counter trolled until their toon be dead, spicing up regular npcing, and giving meaning to the life (and death) of heroes and villains in rp arcs and rp combat.

But I am curious about your "horrible" experience so could you please expand on your comment with some depth and context about your experiences and how they may relate to Amia.

Frankly as things stand its absurd that powerbuilding is such a ~thing~ on a roleplay server, its absurd that people can band together to fight evil and 30 seconds after a 6 month quest to vanquish that evil its back up and in the Dale making snide remarks again. Same of course to be said for evil fighting good, 30 seconds after being corrupted and tainted and sarcasmed to death, that Paladin is back in the Dale being aloof and making snide comments too.

If you want to revive the server to get back to the days of regularly having 40-60 people on pretty much around the clock then I would suggest that resolving the absurdities around the complete lack of death and Kelemvor being nothing more than an ancient myth that parents tell their children.

Child - Mum whose Kelemvor?

Mother - Kelemvor was somebody we used to know, but Amia put him out of business, now hes sleeping rough and eating out of the bins again.

Strikeclone: I've been playing on this "hardcore" RP server. It had many different system how to discourage people who were not only sitting in city and playing Sims, but who were also trying to explore the world and enjoy some good fights. I am not sure if you want to make PvP mean more, when people here can't obviously even stand idea of having evil guys around.

However my ideas to VitalTouch's "death taxes":

Death Tax part IV - automatic permadeath after certain amount of PvP deaths = totally against
I will start with this one, since it's kinda different and I don't know that much about Amia in this sense, but it is the biggest problem I would say. I don't know how evil ends on Amia. It sounds that players mostly give up after being harrassed OOC a lot about what they're doing. Do their characters get permadeath from being caught and executed? If so, can evil do the same thing to good guys? And if evil is not permaexecuted consider this...
Usually players of "evil" tend to have system-wise better character. That usually means that one evil character will take down several good character before ever being caught. Unless evil gets permadeath from being executed (or something similar), he will do so many kills in PvP that he might get permas to many good character, some of them may be playing here for years. What will that cause? Even the good guys who so far don't cry over evil guys being evil may join crybabies who don't like evil, which will lead to new idea about getting evil guys permadeaths easier.
I witnessed this on this one server. All the good guys annoyed main DM long enough about evil guys, till most of the evil guys got this "Tax" that their next PvP death is permanent, no matter the circumstance as long as that character was cause to at least 3 permadeath. No good guy ever got the same, even though some of them made more than 10 evil characters permadeath, since evil guys after this either left annoyed, or never started crying about that.
And the presented idea was for PvP deaths to be unavoidable. Even though characters can be just knocked out, or ressed immediately by cleric, which if done in timely fashion is I think good reason for ignoring death.
Might have confused "permadeath", "permadead" and other.. but english is not my native language and I think we all understand what I meant by it.

Death Tax, part I. = not really for it, it is annoying, but could be
Yeah, sure, seems reasonable. Though cummulative, from scroll, and lasting "a longish RL time period. I've lived through that. It annoys as hell when your character by some random mistake dies in dungeon. Forgets this, or that, gets stuck in something, gets lagged. And after that you get long lasting penalty, which you either have to suffer through or go back to town, to find cleric, to get healed. And I dont think that every town here has cleric in it.
My personal expierence was getting no penalty or penalty of -10 AB and saves as well as -2 to strength and dexterity and minor spell failure (around 20%) for period of 1 to 10 hours depending on the manner of ressurection. If ressed by cleric - no penalty, if ressed by scroll - penalty lasting around one hour. If ressed in temple in the city - something around 5 hours. If forced to ressed by going through "underworld" - about 10 to 12 hours.
It is playable, but you basically either have to go around and heal yourself, or you have to suffer through it, which is highly annoying for casters especially (taking down ability scores = spell slots vanish = you have fill them again + most penalties tend to expire and start again on check ups which can mess up sorcerers and bards by my experience). If you wanna make it more tough go for tougher dungeons, rather then for punishing players for not being good enough or for having bad luck.

Death tax part III = if redone to have different penalty and distributed with less chance, it could be nice
This one I've enjoyed as well. Vital never said how long these should last, I sort of expect that also "longish RL period", since they seem to be more severe (no decaying, only PC cleric or in town, maybe some consumable which takes long time to apply + DC roll). I've also experienced this one. It is sort of reasonable, however if I should count how many times I can get critted in one fight, I would get my stats stomped into the ground.
What I've experienced and what was more interesting was, that this "crippling" was done by disabling some part. However it was never done for each crit and it had other non cumulative implications like "if you get hit to hand, you can't use it = no weapon or shield, depending on your "luck"). It is interesting idea, but as with anything in NWN that is left to random chance, it gets annoying when you get critted by something small and annoying along the way and it ruins your way towards your epic well planned journey. However why is it death tax if it's not connected to death?

Death tax part II = different idea
Getting penalties for lost PvP? That could work. However I don't see logic in this. While injuries from getting crit hit are made permanent without help, these should fade? If you want to make PvP to hurt, I would go with ideas that I experienced - differentiate between death and knocking out. With knocking out - temporal penalties or none penalties (basically what is now done by PvP tool). With deaths I would go with "permanent" penalties, that can be only healed with skilled cleric - one world where I played had this special extra cleric spell, only castable by clerics, no scroll casting allowed, which would heal these crippling wounds. It was given as 6th level spell, here it could be 9th (there it took at least a year of playing to get to lvl 20). Or of course being treated by town cleric. Both versions would require multiple healing over the course of several days. This way PvP dead would have consequence for further PvP plot.
I can see and talk about this idea, I can offer it for discussion, but I am only slightly for it cause it seems that PvP here is meaningless. I personally dislike this types of automatic system penalties and I would prefer for players to have good RP judgement to act accordingly to situation - if paladin gets stomped by evil guy, he should spend few RL days getting back into shape, before running out again to hunt evil like nothing happened.

Most of VitalTouch's ideas are based on "let's make it automatic, get load of DM to play BigBrothers (which will annoy DMs and players), let's be hard on people who do play actual adventurers and not just Medieval-like Sims. Also banning "powerbuilds" is impossible. Everytime you ban build or make it less good and put penalties on build/class, another one rises to the occation and it will become the new powerbuild. I think only way to go around it is to actually teach players or offer them good builds, that fit their RP, so there is less difference between players.

EDIT:
Generally... I don't think that reviving of server is done by putting more penalties into game. I think it is done by getting fair share of fun and motivation across all players. Get more DM from various time-zones so everyone can get DCs, customize their stuff, have some DM plots and have much more fun. Give evil guys some sort of haven, so they can start player based plots and yet have chance to be more than stomping material for majority of players. Stuff like that.
Sure if PvP conflicts happen there should be consequences for all involved. People who die will get share of permadeaths on both sides, or maybe long lasting penalties, that can be undone just through various plots that DM can superwise (just as some request here, where players train to get monkey grip or shadowjump... let them work for it).

Forced perma is nonsense.

However, an idea I'm digging for since I started playing here is loot drop on death and taking serious injury on death. As it stands now, death is, unfortunately, totally meaningless, which is a huge con.

Ideas I've tossed around with a few others were:

1, Loot drop on death - random loot drops from your inventory on death, together with some gold. No one is saying that you'll drop your epic / DC requested stuff.
2, Injury on death (Or VitalTouch's Death tax I. and II., which seems really good to me) - random stat / skill reduction on death. Let's say you've died, and upon raising you've noticed your legs / arms / ribs are broken. It takes time to heal the wounds. There's roll on death on which part of your body is injured - for example, head injury means reduction of int., broken legs of dex. and so on. The point is having a consequences for dying. How severe the penalty and how long the healing takes is a question for the staff.
3, Damaged equipment - upon death your equipment takes damage. So you have to visit a smith / tanner or such to repair your equipment. Quite frankly, I'd love to see this idea implemented server-wide and not just as a death penalty, as it would increase the value of gold (which is close to none in higher levels right now).

Considering the times I've died to bugs (invisible, untargetable bosses, anyone?), and just how easy it is to die to a single bad roll in the lower levels, I'm not sure I agree that death needs "more consequences".

Bring back my friends who quit.

Make amia fun again and help with a bigger plot that allows groups inter activity.

Transparency gets brought up a lot in these sorts of discussions, but I want to focus on a specific kind. This is our...dozenth such thread in the past sixth month? A little more, a little less? What I'd like is a visible checklist of our requests or suggestions that the DMs have at least perused, and a one-word addendum to each one: Yes, No, Pondering.

We all have ideas. Clearly. But it's demoralizing to not know whether or not anyone on the staff has actually taken notice of any of them. They're HERE, and they're plentiful, but what happens after?

For the record I have the same problem with the 'Pale Master/Druid/Others FAQ' threads we had, which concluded...well, it sort of didn't. I asked 48 questions in total and 6 were answered, in ONE thread, by a PLAYER. I'm not alone in this. 5/6 of those threads died last April with the assurance that the queries in question were being vetted. Well...what's their status?

Speaking of lore, let's talk Lore. I'm one of those people who thinks you should have to take a 50-question test in order to play a divine class, and I feel fairly confident in saying that if you chose to walk up to a random cleric or paladin, with a few exceptions, and asked them to represent their character's actual working knowledge of their divine code, you'd get uncomfortable silence and a d20+0 sum.

We need to clarify whether a character's ranks in lore MATTER or whether it's just assumed that they generally know what the player does. If it's the latter...loremonkeys like me just became pretty overpowered in a roleplaying sense. If it's the former, let's give a mechanical bonus for putting those ranks into Lore instead of Tumble. A modest XP bonus, perhaps.

I have more. We all have more. But are they going anywhere? I'd like to know.

I'd very much like to see more new staff who's sole job is to be client side. We have tons of dms moderating and developing and administrating, but I'd like to see more people client side in game. We have a large population in amia, and I don't think the client number of staff in game can handle the load.

Nalkanar wrote:

I am not sure if you want to make PvP mean more, when people here can't obviously even stand idea of having evil guys around.

You couldn't be more wrong, what this server can't stand is the sort of maniacal, munchkin with his/her spreadsheet character using token rp to provoke a pvp fight with zero actual rp meaning in the full knowledge that their ooc pvp build will make the fight a forgone conclusion. Keeping in mind these builds also have zero IC justification and have been created to stomp in pvp rather than for any sort of rp relevance.

You will note I did not quantify evil or good characters there, there are and have been plenty of these kinds of players on Paladins over the years. Its often more noticeable in evil toons as the Paladins are often constrained by circumstances that the evil toon actively seek to ignore.

What is sorely lacking on this server is a single shred of actual consequence and change that comes about when actions have them. Currently dying has no consequences and the result is stagnation and population decline.

Nalkanar wrote:

If so, can evil do the same thing to good guys?

As I again did not quantify my idea with a good/evil context it should be obvious that alignment of the toon isn't relevant, only the fact that repeatedly being killed, wounded, having things lopped off is eventually going to have a Kelemvor based outcome, or at least it should.

Keep in mind the whole stupid idea of the victor dictating the outcome is a weak tea sop to the RP nature of the server, I would challenge anyone to rationally justify how you "knock someone out" with a hellball, or a devastating critical with a great ax.

Nalkanar wrote:

Usually players of "evil" tend to have system-wise better character.

Which is a massive problem in its own right which some of us are trying to get addressed (via brickwall headbanging ofc), powerbuilding should never have been allowed to take root here. There are servers that cater to that sort of number crunching minmaxing munchkin mindset, Amia should not have become one of them, sadly it has and it has made the rp pvp rules hopelessly inadequate in general and doubly so when trying to control dedicated pvpers whose sole goal is to Diablo 3 their way through the player base.

Nalkanar wrote:

And the presented idea was for PvP deaths to be unavoidable. Even though characters can be just knocked out, or ressed immediately by cleric, which if done in timely fashion is I think good reason for ignoring death.

Yes being killed repeatedly should have a negative consequence that should not be avoidable, death is kind of inconvenient that way. Maybe that is why there is a God detailed to the management of the entire dying process, but who is sadly unemployed on this server...

Nalkanar wrote:

Might have confused "permadeath", "permadead" and other.. but english is not my native language and I think we all understand what I meant by it.

Umm what?

Nalkanar wrote:

Death Tax, part I. = not really for it, it is annoying,

Yeah death is annoying, and it should be annoying in a tangible manner because you died. Have some consequences unless you prepared for battle properly and brought a medic (aka cleric)

Nalkanar wrote:

and lasting "a longish RL time period.

The obvious implication of my use of the term "longish" is that the specifics would be a matter of discussion and balance by those implementing it.

Nalkanar wrote:

It annoys as hell when your character by some random mistake dies in dungeon.

Are you suggesting that you should be able to screw up, die, but in effect "restart from a saved position" and have no consequences from that?

Nalkanar wrote:

And after that you get long lasting penalty, which you either have to suffer through or go back to town, to find cleric, to get healed. And I dont think that every town here has cleric in it.

There are plenty of npc clerics about and easy enough to add more if a server changed required it, but again if you die in battle and have not prepared for it then why should you not feel the sting of that, maybe next time you will have learned your lesson and either take a fight better suited to the characters capabilities and/or secure the services of a cleric. There are plenty of them around with nothing to do but commit random bandage assaults on strangers in cordor market.

Nalkanar wrote:

Death tax part III = if redone to have different penalty and distributed with less chance, it could be nice
This one I've enjoyed as well. Vital never said how long these should last, I sort of expect that also "longish RL period",

See my statement about obvious need to discuss and balance specifics by those implementing them, to be honest I do not see why you are trying to make a "thing" out of this as if the idea doesn't have merit because I haven't generated an arbitrary number for you, I'm proposing general ideas but certain aspects would obviously need the input of those charged with balance in the dev team

Nalkanar wrote:

However why is it death tax if it's not connected to death?

Because it's connected with the theme of lethal and mortal actions having a come back, but again you focus on the irrelevant minutia apparently to insinuate something?

Nalkanar wrote:

Death tax part II = different idea
Getting penalties for lost PvP? That could work. However I don't see logic in this. While injuries from getting crit hit are made permanent without help, these should fade? If you want to make PvP to hurt, I would go with ideas that I experienced - differentiate between death and knocking out. With knocking out - temporal penalties or none penalties (basically what is now done by PvP tool). With deaths I would go with "permanent" penalties, that can be only healed with skilled cleric - one world where I played had this special extra cleric spell, only castable by clerics, no scroll casting allowed, which would heal these crippling wounds. It was given as 6th level spell, here it could be 9th (there it took at least a year of playing to get to lvl 20). Or of course being treated by town cleric. Both versions would require multiple healing over the course of several days. This way PvP dead would have consequence for further PvP plot.

The problem is as I mentioned previously is this absurd concept of the victor mystically morphing a hellball to the face into "being knocked unconscious" and 101 other examples of a lethal fight being retroactively changed to gentlemanly fisty cuffs coupled with a bit of teabagging.

There is a function on the rest or pvp tool menu to set the type of combat, IC lethal pvp should result in lethal IC results, and they should be inconvenient and eventually they should be permanent. That way the server moves along, acquires a rich history around the famous/infamous dead and so on.

Nalkanar wrote:

I personally dislike this types of automatic system penalties and I would prefer for players to have good RP judgement to act accordingly to situation[/u] - if paladin gets stomped by evil guy, he should spend few RL days getting back into shape, before running out again to hunt evil like nothing happened.

Herein is the rub, any society moves at the pace of its slowest members, in this pvp context the server moves at the pace of its most munchkin, ooc ragey members who if they had "good rp judgement" would have not generated the circumstances for us to be having this discussion in the first place.

Nalkanar wrote:

Most of VitalTouch's ideas are based on "let's make it automatic,

Well who else is going to do it? Are you going to be on the server 24/7 ready to respond to an incident to implement the required stuff? Come on stop trying to insinuate raised eyebrow negativity on minutia.

Nalkanar wrote:

get load of DM to play BigBrothers

Again I say "umm what?"

Nalkanar wrote:

(which will annoy DMs and players)

How would you know?

Nalkanar wrote:

Also banning "powerbuilds" is impossible. Everytime you ban build or make it less good and put penalties on build/class, another one rises to the occation and it will become the new powerbuild.

Completely wrong here, this isn't Eve Online where nerfing the power of X simply makes Y the new top of the power charts.

Powerbuilds in the NWN system have mechanically broken advantages that have no mechanical counter other than a doppelganger enemy, many NWN RP servers outright ban certain combinations of classes/feats simply because they are known through years of experience to be broken and powerbuildy and ripe to be abused. Furthermore many of them also impose certain restrictions on regular builds to prevent certain abuses of the NWN system that did not correctly translate from pnp, minimum of 3 levels in a given class by level 20, and alterations that prevent skill dumping are two that spring to mind.

The tools are there to remove a huge stumbling block but apparently its everyones right to come to an RP server and make a character specifically designed in exel to kill other characters and to use this character by way of technically staying within the letter of the current rules by breaking every shred of the spirit of the rules, and to hell with how it negatively impacts on other players.

Amia is one of the few I know of that does not ban broken builds but actually has an entire forum section dedicated to powerbuilds and the token rp to "justify" them...work that shit out for an RP server....

Nalkanar wrote:

Generally... I don't think that reviving of server is done by putting more penalties into game.

They are not penalties in the sense of a parking fine, they are incentives and outcomes that give meaning to taking lethal actions.

When the necromancer comes mincing into the Dale waving his undead arm about in the full knowledge that he can rinse all ten of the RP builds currently lounging about there those players have a choice take the fight there and then and risk actual consequences they might not like or do they acquire information and allies in order to stack the odds in their favour?

When the shiney newly minted paladin is mincing along in the forest and stumbles upon a coven of people with lots of black make up doing bad things to a greased up sheep carcass does he/she issue a challenge and risk joining the sheep on the altar of self love with actual consequences, or does he/she go and form a posse to maximise the chances of the enemy paying those consequences?

If you ever played WoW and Eve Online, its like the pvp in WoW is banal and frustrating and mostly consists of spawn rushing secure in the knowledge you will respawn when you die. Whereas in Eve you sit there with the Adrenalin pumping because you actually have something at risk you have stuff on the line that you will lose if you screw up or take a fight that escalates past your ability to survive it, you will pick your fights with more and more care the more you lose until you figure out that some fights are worth the risk some are not.

In Amia all fights are worth the risk, because there is no risk, and I want that to change.

Nalkanar wrote:

I think it is done by getting fair share of fun and motivation across all players.

If we could convert buzz word filled one liners into players we would need one hundred Amia servers to manage the load and topic like this would never exist.

P.S. Just wanted to say I am not meaning to come of confrontational here or anything its 2am I just got back in from work and I made this post whilst I was defrosting lol.

VitalTouch wrote:

Amia is one of the few I know of that does not ban broken builds but actually has an entire forum section dedicated to powerbuilds and the token rp to "justify" them...work that shit out for an RP server....

Actually, it might be the only one because I've seen quite a few servers in my time and none ever had a thread dedicated to powerbuilding.

That said, I hate the "Teach a man..." idea since 2009 - and I do bitch about it all the time. Alas...

Indeed, I haven't seen powerbuild threads on other servers' forums.

And yet they still have powerbuilders.

serbiris wrote:

And yet they still have powerbuilders.

Not an excuse.

There are cheats to be used, but you'll not open a topic to learn people how to.
There are flaws to be abused in the game, but you'll not open a topic to learn people how to.

... and so on. Powerbuilding is on the very same level of importance on a RP server. Essencially, powerbuilding is "kind of" a mechanics abuse. RP servers mostly not allow that, or it's heavily frowned upon. Not to mention the fact that on the most RP servers PrCs are indeed locked unless the player shows sufficient lore / RP abilities. Which is okay in my book.

Let's save this topic for its original intent rather than devolving it into bickering about powerbuilders and other such players you dislike.

First of all, this thread is "If I could change Amia I'd..." - we are discussing what we would change, so there is no off topic.

Second, I'd like to say that I personaly do not hate on powerbuilders. They only do what you (staff) allow them to do. Enough said.

We allow them to utilize the classes of the game, which we have already altered and changed from their original NWN conception to 'ban' or otherwise debunk certain mechanically advantageous cheese moves.

Furthermore, following your logic, if us staff are just allowing people to build their own characters with the class overhauls we provided, then "power-building" is not exploiting the game. It's using what you're given to make something efficient in terms of PvE or PvP, should that be your main concern. Everyone has their own play style.

I never said it's exploiting. I said it's kind of a mechanics abuse.

That said, and I do not mean any offense at all, if you really think you've "altered and changed" the classes enough to avoid cheese and powerbuilding, then further conversation is pointless.

If I could change Amia I'd...

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