PC Dragons

[Valo65]

Simply because you don't spend as long reaching higher levels as others does not mean you are not offering just as many quality stories and good RP to the server as anyone else.

I simply agree with tying the dragon's racial powers to age rather than level due to the realism factor. (Yes, this is a game with magic and does not require real-world realism, but every fantasy has its own style of realism and what makes sense for the setting. In this case, dragons gain power based on age and not based on how many orcs they've eaten.)

[yellowcateyes]

Tying dragon abilities to character age is a nifty idea from a thematic standpoint. I'd actually tie it to playtime - if someone goes inactive or plays other characters, they shouldn't return months (or years) later to a powerhouse of a character.

From a different standpoint, though, having a character that gets better with age can be problematic. The gift system, rolling a character, etc. are all mechanics that encourage players to give up old or stagnant characters in exchange for a promising fresh start. This keeps things lively, rather than having the same old faces occupy power structures for years on end.

A character that grows better with time will only encourage people to forever hang onto that character, even if that character's story or role should have ended a long time ago. If someone's waited however many months or years needed to get an extremely powerful ancient dragon, how likely is that person going to roll the character for a new one?

[The Man of the Moon]

Tying dragon abilities to character age is a nifty idea from a thematic standpoint. I'd actually tie it to playtime - if someone goes inactive or plays other characters, they shouldn't return months (or years) later to a powerhouse of a character.

From a different standpoint, though, having a character that gets better with age can be problematic. The gift system, rolling a character, etc. are all mechanics that encourage players to give up old or stagnant characters in exchange for a promising fresh start. This keeps things lively, rather than having the same old faces occupy power structures for years on end.

A character that grows better with time will only encourage people to forever hang onto that character, even if that character's story or role should have ended a long time ago. If someone's waited however many months or years needed to get an extremely powerful ancient dragon, how likely is that person going to roll the character for a new one?

adult, mature adult, old, very old, ancient, wyrm, or great wyrm

To obtain a dragon used to be great wyrm, you would need 50 real years of wait before start playing him (acquiring +500 years to the authorized age of beginning ... which, a sacrifice looks like to me the sufficiently big thing as to be tolerable and adminisble.

I don't find that a relevant issue at all. By the time that player could become to manage a demigodling creature, he will be close to pass away in real life!

[yellowcateyes]

The issue isn't that the "sacrifice" (waiting) isn't proportional to the reward. The issue is that having a character that gets better with age only encourages players to keep that character forever, beyond the shelf life of its story. Other mechanics encourage the opposite - for players to give up characters when they grow stale so they can start new characters and keep things lively.

(Though I don't think the devs really ought to spend their time putting together something that takes 50 IRL years to come to fruition. Think of the lag on the bug-reporting cycle!)

[The Man of the Moon]

The issue isn't that the "sacrifice" (waiting) isn't proportional to the reward. The issue is that having a character that gets better with age only encourages players to keep that character forever, beyond the shelf life of its story. Other mechanics encourage the opposite - for players to give up characters when they grow stale so they can start new characters and keep things lively.

(Though I don't think the devs really ought to spend their time putting together something that takes 50 IRL years to come to fruition. Think of the lag on the bug-reporting cycle!)

We are talking about:

1. Something extremelly rare (not many characters will have sucess on a 5% roll)

2. The own chance to have a dragon encourages to delette many others characters, so it's a mechanic itself to delette instead to keep characters.

3. If by a 5% roll you can get a dragon, then it is not so umbalanced that you got chance to grow him through the age (but I could count only on that rating the played days to count towards the dragon age)

4. The choice to delette or not an old character is something entirely open to the own players allways that they followed the few good rules.

5. A dragon is counted among the most aged races... makes sense that dragon players were the only survivors of the early years after X years passed.

6. This is legit if the people wanted to keep theyr 5% rolled characters through the real aeons... They burnt many others to get that special one, why not allow them to keep it for ages and ages?

ALl this is what makes from Arelith something special...

Also, I could like to know how many characters were burnt in the atemp to get a sucess on a 5% roll... Theorically One or less from every other 19 sacrificed... ten from two hundred epic characters sacrificed... LMAO

I see what you are talking about, but I see less disadvantages than advantages in that... and anyway a minor thing.

Chers mate, even then, this is just my opinion and there is no reason why I should be right

[Winter83]

Old dragons on Arelith? Yer kidding. Every second PC claims to be a dragon hunter

[The Rambling Midget]

Arelithian Dragons are like Cylons. You never really kill them for good, you just force them to experience a horribly painful death, and then they come back even more angry than before.

[Valo65]

Having extremely powerful and extremely rare dragon PC's seems preferable to me on a server whose villains are almost exclusively PC's.

There's nothing I would have liked more when I was playing a Paladin of Bahamut than for there to be some level 30 red dragon great wyrm PC. I wouldn't care that he was so overpowered, I would've liked it even more.

Likewise, I might've stuck with my Tiamatian a while ago if I had some good aligned dragons to work against, or an evil one to serve.

You can bet if I ever got a 5% roll though I'd be playing a Black Dragon.

[DirtyDeity]

I don't think any character should have power based on how long it's being played. Dragons already have ginormous ECL, that makes them level very slowly, and reflects a more or less 'reasonable' aging progress. You can't expect someone to play a character for two RL years to unlock some bonus to stats or abilities.

[The Man of the Moon]

Anyway... I could attach to the KISS technique

(Keep It Simple Idiot)

makes them requiring aging to get strongers will only result in a less playability of them, because they would require well too much real time to get "levels/draconic seasons) while other players will upgrade way faster than them, being allowed to hunt all our player dragons till the extinction.

so in regards of the KISS system, it is infinitively better don't touch them.

(oh, they have a +4 ECL... eeeeck!)

[Preacher]

one big issue of an actual dragon being a PC is that they could NOT just wander around the server. quite boring having to wait till other players come to you.

[The Man of the Moon]

one big issue of an actual dragon being a PC is that they could NOT just wander around the server. quite boring having to wait till other players come to you.

PC dragons can polimorph on at least one minor race to be camouflaged in the world.
So they not only ARE allowed to wander around the server, they do.


So that allows them unfinite posibilities to play, have RP and go:

- protect others
- protecting a settlement/race (as Imperium, as Darnoth...)
- frustrate evil plans along the time
- keep the natural balance that could be broken cause the races...
- Just learn and research about the feelings and motivations from the lesser races...cause you was so curious...
- develop evil plans and plots, working to build them and make them grow in a slow slow basis, so at the end all your small threads could make a super strong evil complot!
- Keeps the trace of the seens and hidden history
- play with the weak races...

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