Buff the power of DM loot
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Honestly, I agree with this. The loot guideline restrictions I don't think value things correctly and don't have enough wiggle room for DMs.
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@man-in-the-mist "Let the ruling classes tremble at a L O O T revolution. The players have nothing to lose but their crafted gear. They have a world to win."
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It's honestly a philosophy standpoint and a contention point between certain DMs the current 'guidelines' as they are right now are a compromise worked by the DM team after hours of discussion and ranting and borderline insulting of one another.
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DM loot should be rare. We don't want accusations of favoritism floating about because one player gets showered in DM loot and another doesn't.
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DM Loot shouldn't invalidate crafting- which is something @Echo has worked hours, days, weeks, and months on to balance and have it, if not work perfectly, as best as possible. If a new character logs onto the server, catches a DM event, and gets loot- compared to an unlucky crafter who literally spent /months/ in game involving others to get the ingredients for that top tier piece of gear, and only to learn it wasn't better... well, I'd be salty as well.
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Different DMs have different strengths and sometimes, that +2 dagger of will with 2/day of identify doesn't quite measure up to that ring of the Iron Mind which gives +3 will and 2/day clarity. These loot pieces came from two different dms for an event of roughly the same difficulty- and obviously, the player might view the first DM as a hardass stingy piece of shit and the other dm is just cooler.
So I understand the frustration of players, but I also get where the admin team is coming from- we don't suddenly want dm loot inflation to compete for player popularity contests, or slip our friends OP gear from an event they ran as justification 'they earned it on my event.'
Sure, you can punish the bad actors, but in my experience as a DM, it literally turns into a game of whack-a-mole and it annoys both players, dms, and the storyteller in question.
So yea, DM loot is kinda a sensitive subject even if I often outright ignore the 'guidelines' in favor of cool.
Puffy's bumbling Scum-goblin minion.
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@spiffymeister I don't think this is in regard to one-off loot, which should obviously not be all that powerful. I think people are more concerned with dm loot from longterm plots that have been a long time in the works, then getting a crafted sword handed out because the guidelines have worse loot.
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@sharkinajar said in Buff the power of DM loot:
@spiffymeister I don't think this is in regard to one-off loot, which should obviously not be all that powerful. I think people are more concerned with dm loot from longterm plots that have been a long time in the works, then getting a crafted sword handed out because the guidelines have worse loot.
that's precisely the problem.
Sometimes the one-off loot is just better than the long term plot rewards that other dms give. Which leads certain Dms to think 'you're giving to powerful a reward' or players think 'this dm is a stingy piece of shit.'
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I like how DM loot is right now. Every piece I've been given so far has been wonderfully flavorful, and fun to use.
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@theoneandonly said in Buff the power of DM loot:
I like how DM loot is right now. Every piece I've been given so far has been wonderfully flavorful, and fun to use.
That's working as intended.
As Spiffy said, there are guidelines that we all agreed to as a compromise. As was also mentioned, cool thematic stuff that means something to a character who has been driving a plot is the sweet spot we are aiming for. It's harder than you think to get it right and things are constantly being tweaked.
Retired
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@arcanigans said in Buff the power of DM loot:
Agreed. 100%
Add to this idea, that DM loot can be made more enticing by giving them scripted properties that do something cool. My favorite PC had a sword that when activated gave them an incredibly cool visual effect and a simple emote.
It was also d6 lightning damage, yes, and it was super thematic to the character, but I remember most fondly the journey to get there and the cool thing it did.
This is also because Spiffy can be as incredible a storyteller as he can a troll, and was very gracious with his time.
You can make this simpler for DM's, too, by creating a library of scripted effects and attaching those properties to the item(s) in question. So not every single piece has to be one off, but can be give one of a wide array of 'unique spells'.
We had this but it somehow went missing?
I know I often recycle scripts.
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@spiffymeister said in Buff the power of DM loot:
- DM loot should be rare. We don't want accusations of favoritism floating about because one player gets showered in DM loot and another doesn't.
I think this is the problem. If it is really rare and DM loot only given to a select few, I can't see how you can avoid accusations of favouritism.
My view is really that DM loot should be a lot more common, but it should really be creative stuff that lets players use to drive story-telling.
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@prof-misclick I really like how you took an entire thread of people criticizing how inflexible and unfun your system is and, instead of addressing the things people are talking about (namely, how your system doesn't work and leads to unsatisfying results,) took the one post that said that they like the loot they got and unironically used it to say "See it's fine we're doing it right after all!" It might be the funniest post of the year. Honestly, bravo.
A lot of this problem stems from how bad the loot levels on the server are in general. This has, ostensibly, gotten better over the past year with the changes to crafting and the addition of pureclass stores. These solutions however require weeks or months of grinding in addition to whatever else you're doing ingame or a very specific class type. You're left in the lurch if you don't have access to a crafter who spent six weeks grinding out smithing or aren't a Pure Fighter/Monk/Whatever. And if you're playing a very niche class combo like I currently am you're just never going to get the support you need because in order to give me the things I need to function they would need to go around THE MATRIX and that would just be unacceptable.
This part just isn't fun for me. Getting DM loot should be fun. Giving DM loot should be fun (and by all accounts, of which I have many, it absolutely is not.) I play on this server because the stories that our Players and Storytellers are pumping out at a frankly remarkable pace are great uses of my limited time, which they also respect that I am choosing to spend here. But I also wish that the end or continuance of these plots wasn't spent trying to min-max the system in an attempt to give out loot that is both interesting from a flavor perspective and able to back up that flavor mechanically. It shouldn't take me months of my life to get good loot.
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Everything I would want to say about this, @HellzYeah just said much better than I could have.
I'll just say, this is the stingiest server in terms of loot I've ever played on in 18 years of playing NWN and NWN2 PWs. I've played Hardcore max 8 low magic servers that took weeks to hit level 8 that were more generous with loot. In the end this is a game we play for fun, getting loot in both video games and tabletop is fun and part of the experience.
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Gotta agree with both Hellz and Owl. This is a video game. Meant for fun. Let's treat it as such.
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This all being said, what are the admins thoughts on this? Besides one outlier, it seems storytellers and players alike want dm loot to be improved.
Any admin thoughts?
@Prof-Misclick -
The loot level is not me. It is not my system. So while I seem to be the person who gets associated with it that was not my decision in a vacuum nor was I even the one who first brought up it for Chapter One. Relative loot levels, consumbables and attempts to have a grittier low powered server were the brain child of Spiffy. Hate me for the non max HP, that was my idea.
Retired
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@prof-misclick said in Buff the power of DM loot:
The loot level is not me. It is not my system. So while I seem to be the person who gets associated with it that was not my decision in a vacuum nor was I even the one who first brought up it for Chapter One. Relative loot levels, consumbables and attempts to have a grittier low powered server were the brain child of Spiffy. Hate me for the non max HP, that was my idea.
So yea, it was my brain child for the current loot levels and I will own that.
That said, I am willing to put in the work to gently increase the strength of loot if the team decides to do so.
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Which we are open to discuss for the record.
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The current system is not that bad. it actually has some really nice features. Don't get the sudden aggro. Think prof's comments are sensible.
The prestige system could be tweaked with thematic stuff. If anything, it is a really nice feature, and not utilised enough, and should maybe be expanded to include multiclass builds. This was discussed a few days ago:
https://nodebb.cityofarabel.com/topic/56031/adjust-loot-prestige-value/26
if you are making DM loot with mechanics in mind, I am just not convinced by it. It just seems a desire for power creep. Problem was when it spilled over to PvP and you had PCs that were impossible to take down, which was a problem last chapter on more than one occasion. All plots then had to go through them.
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If I EVER give out renamed pieces of crafted gear and call it "DM loot", feel free to DM kill IRL.
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Again, the issue mostly is that the tight constraints put upon these 'tiers' that are put in place are made tighter by the limited range that the server suffers from as a whole. You have almost zero wiggle room between the floor you have set (mundane loot) and the ceiling (presumably +1, with a little extra) and this is where the struggle takes place.
To be clear- I don't think anyone's asking to move the ceiling all that much further up. But I think opening up to the prospect of giving out things like better +ab bonunses (These no longer break DR,) attribute bonuses, better 1/day spells, bonus feats, and other interesting options will likely help broaden the scope of what can be made available to players.
I am saying this as someone who absolutely has been on the receiving end of what I can only assume is some of the best loot that's ever been given out to a PC in the current version of the server. It wasn't worth the effort, especially since I never got to actually use it because the server died a week after I got it. This is the main problem, in my eyes. Because of how restricting the range is, the most interesting variations of loot are restricted to the completion of major plots and often by that time you are finding that your character is nearly complete, or that it is so much work that it deflates the usefulness of said loot.
Opening up the range to be more than a little more rewarding during the beginning and middle sections of a story I think lends itself better to how the game is normally played.
Magpie [17:05] I am begining to notice that people have my quotes within their signitures on the forums <_<
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@hellzyeah I will test if AB breaks DR or not.
Puffy's bumbling Scum-goblin minion.
