What do you want from Layonara?

[Lareth]

I'd like to see a little more in the game for Rogues.  Now I may be wrong in this, so feel free to correct me, but it seems to me that rogues have the odds decidedly against them here, and most folks seem to look on them as little more than underpowered fighters (not saying thats how it is necessarily, just the feeling I got).  From my limited playing of a character who is a rogue, I thought of a few things that might be nice to see for our light fingered friends.

1.  Small XP awards for picking locks and disabling traps (I've found that traps can sometimes give xp awards, but it didn't seem consistent for all).  Also perhaps XP awards for setting traps as well, though that might be very problematic and open to abuse, so maybe only give it out if the trap is triggered.

2.  As fighters now have named weapons which can give an XP bonus on a kill, could we have something similar for rogues where they get a little extra xp hit if they take someone / something down with a sneak attack?

3.  More "stuff" for us to steal/lift/purloin/pilfer or otherwise lay our greasy little paws on.  That said I'm 100% behind the do not steal from other PCs idea as having played on a server where this was allowed, saw it used to grief other folks far too often, and I'm sure the DM team has a lot better things to do with their time rather than play the PP police.

4.  Somewhere for rogues to gather, perhaps in Vehl, which might not be accessible to other pc classes.  Maybe give them a pawn shop there and some shops catering to rogue related items (but nothing above what's offered in the other stores - so like +1 lockpicks, and lesser traps, which I've never seen anyone sell as crafted goods yet).  The pawn shop makes sense to me, as professional thieves would almost certainly have better access to places to dispose of their loot than other classes.

Anyways, just my 2 pennies for you.

~Lareth~

[lonnarin]

• Rather than having overall max gold limits for pawners, pawners should simply have a maximum transaction value for anything they buy. Say: 50 gold for small market shops, 100 gold for large city shops.   Not only would this eliminate the problem of some people crafting enchanted gems to make 10,000 gold in one quick sale (and rendering the shop uselessn for everyone else), it is actually realistic in the way pawn shops really work.

take your 500-dollar XBox 360 to any pawnshop today, you're lucky to get 50 bucks.  Very realistic.  Pawnshops aren't there to make you rich, they're there to get rich off of YOU.  The poor sod who's hawking the family heirlooms to pay the electric bill on time!  The Pawnshops want to SELL items more than they want to buy them.  Once X amount of gems, lumber, eggs, or swords are sold to them, that's it.  They're not stupid.  they won't bankrupt themselves overstocking on things they have no demand or market for.  Gold limit is fine, but ITEM limit, now thats just divine!

I totally agree with the CNR requests you made as well.  Just over 3 dozen eggs for 2500 gold, the kind of gold that a peasant farmer DREAMS about coming into?  No way.  Eggs are 88 cents a dozn at Wal-Mart.  1.29 at Publix.  A dollar gets you a tiny cheeseburger at McDonalds, OR an egg-McMuffin!  This isn't just a current economy issue, this is a "any fool can buy a ouple chickens and make their own eggs for a fraction of the box price" issue.  This is why eggs are so cheap today.  Because all you need is scraps and grain to feed a flock of chickens to make you a gazillion eggs a year.  Saying adventurers need 2500 gold for 35 eggs is like saying a teenager needs to pawn his CAR to egg a house.  In reality, he needs less than 5 bucks.  less than 1 hour of labor at minimum wage.  According to our economy, one sly farmer would have charged 250 per box of eggs, and afforded the taking over of Hempstead by now!

Crafting should be *time consuming rather than gold consuming*.  LEARNING should be the hump, not the bank acount.  If somebody's dirt poor and they want to whittle wood for a year or two, well then, you have a 0-level commoner who can whittle yew by a year or two.  The source of the CNR shouldn't dictate the magicness of an item, but rather the mages pumping the magic into it.  The ironness or mithralness of a sword or the oakness or the yewness of a bow shouldn't be the sole factor of an item's magi, but the runemasters and spellswords who pump their time and skill into it.  Enchanters enchanters enchanters!  The wood, ore, eggs, and everything else should be easily bought.  That's a big problem with this game engine.  We have mages who can't scribe because they can't chop wood.  Meanwhile there are hundreds of NPC lumberjacks who have less than 100 true to their name.  Make an open *market* for CNR.  Let CNR gatherers pawn their gatherings for mere coppers and a communal inventory of good available be made available.  Make crafting take play-time.  Play time is more valuable than gathered gold; at least to the player!  Especially once we pay to play.  X amount of dollars for x amount of play time which is paid for by x amount of RL dollars, that play time suddenly has real market value to the player/crafter/gatherer!  if the supplies run low, offer a premium on those goods.  If the goods are plentiful, then they are worth far less.  A supply and demand system for CNR.  If somebody plays a mage who can't afford the lumber for making scrolls, maybe they could make a lumberjack as well to flood the market and lower the price for the other.  A fair exchange for fair labor, on both ends.  The lowbie characters get their gear paid for, and the higher level characters don't need to hack off an arm or a leg to pay for them, just time and effort.

Crafting in this system is instant.  You toss the items on the table and its done.  But what if you could only chip and polish maybe a dozen gems per every RL 24 hours?  What if scribing a spell scroll took as much time as some poor kid doing advanced calculus homework with 5 pages, 30 problems?  The time consuming aspect of crafting today is pumping money into it.  But what if time and effort were pumped instead?  Then LABOR and SKILL would be valued far above base omponents.  As the voice of Leanard Nimoy poses to me every time I play Civ 4 and learn mechanization, the whole is worth *more* than the sum of its parts.

Some ideas for time consumption... Alchemy should take 12-24 hours to complete its fermentations.  You could set up a certain amount of potions to sit on that alchemy bench, but hey, the first one isn't finished for a set amount of time after ou mixed it and set it down to complete.  Scribing a single spell should take 4 hours.  Forgeing a weapon should take 4 hours.  Smelting should take 30 minutes.  Now we don't want to have players sitting there that long at the onsole.  That gets boring!  But maybe it could fator in their down-time when they're logged off.  If a player could mine 40 platinum and take 20 hours to smelt it, they could start the smelting process, and not do anything else with that character for like 10-20 hours.  They need to schedule their downtime as much as they schedule their play time!  I think that would both effectivel botleneck the powercrafters, and reward those with not enough play time at their disposal, and even out the crafting levels per each player.  And it has people adventuring more with their free time that they get to play, but rafting while they're at work, spending time with their families or at their RL jobs.  It kind of gives you something to shoot for when you're working all day, to know that when you come back and log in, that you have 20 potions or 40 ingots waiting for you when you do.  That puts butts in the seats, so to speak, makes people feel productive during what used to be down-time.  Down-time could be craft time!

I feel that a system such as this would greatly benefit many of the rogues and mages who just can't grind for gold like fighters can.  it would have low level, frustrated players eagerly working to build up a bank acount, make the adventurers much like the NPC workers at some level.  And it would reward people who kept with the program and kept their nose to the grindstone, supplying the rest with the items they need.  You could then sparse multiple gameplay styles to filling an acount.  Instead of the "I can mine and carry anything, I just made it, you can't" disparity we sort of have with this Bioware system.

This is probably totally unrealizable in the Bioware inarnation of Layo, but by the MMORPG version, it could be done.  WoW does it somewhat with its shops and its open auction halls.  I could play an intro character who couldn't fight well, look around for ore, bundle it up and auction it, and then afford that nice little sword I needed to help me in the area I hunt in.  Open market economy, that's the ticket to solving CNR stagnation!  An open database of goods calculated in value by supply and demand.

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

@Lonn:  That's what I am expecting the crafting in the MMO to be like, but with NWN, how do you make that work?  THAT'S the problem...

And reinventing a crafting system at this late stage isn't going to happen unless someone decides to do it ALL by themselves

EDIT:  WHOOPS!  Forgot which thread this was!  >.<  Just ignore me...

[lonnarin]

@Lonn:  That's what I am expecting the crafting in the MMO to be like, but with NWN, how do you make that work?  THAT'S the problem...

And reinventing a crafting system at this late stage isn't going to happen unless someone decides to do it ALL by themselves

EDIT:  WHOOPS!  Forgot which thread this was!  >.<  Just ignore me...

No worries!  I edit like 20x a minute anyhow, lol.  Yeah, it'd be tough for this incarnation, but the next one, that's the ticket!  Once we can rebuild the whole bop-she-bang from the ground up, then we can take what we learned here and make it better.  I have high hopes for the team in that regard.  What they've done with both this archaic (ancient even) game engine and the D&D system amazes me.  With a clean slate... we could make something exponentially more incredible.

[lonnarin]

I'd like to see a little more in the game for Rogues.  Now I may be wrong in this, so feel free to correct me, but it seems to me that rogues have the odds decidedly against them here, and most folks seem to look on them as little more than underpowered fighters (not saying thats how it is necessarily, just the feeling I got).  From my limited playing of a character who is a rogue, I thought of a few things that might be nice to see for our light fingered friends.

1.  Small XP awards for picking locks and disabling traps (I've found that traps can sometimes give xp awards, but it didn't seem consistent for all).  Also perhaps XP awards for setting traps as well, though that might be very problematic and open to abuse, so maybe only give it out if the trap is triggered.

**totally agree there!  No more "let the dwarf spring it" but more, "stand back dwarf, let me train my skills and learn..."

2.  As fighters now have named weapons which can give an XP bonus on a kill, could we have something similar for rogues where they get a little extra xp hit if they take someone / something down with a sneak attack?

*** like every time they hit an opponent flatfooted!  Gives the rogues incentive to go on assassination missions.  Maybe every first time they use the poison on their blades! (and HIT with it!)

3.  More "stuff" for us to steal/lift/purloin/pilfer or otherwise lay our greasy little paws on.  That said I'm 100% behind the do not steal from other PCs idea as having played on a server where this was allowed, saw it used to grief other folks far too often, and I'm sure the DM team has a lot better things to do with their time rather than play the PP police.

***monster stealing XP!  If you want to play a rogue who sneaks up on a group of monsters, robs them dry and runs off, so be it!  Xp for that too.  Rogues shouldn't see a band of bandits and think, "how can I KILL them for XP/gold" but rather, "how can I use my skills to take their stuff and run off with it and become a better thief?"  Unless they're a sociopath or have a vendetta, the focus should be on the coinpurse, not on the blood geysers.  Make the stealing XP comparable to maybe 1/4 or 1/8 of the killing xp, but based on CR of the target.  That way we can have rogues stealing from tougher marks for more xp, and epic rogues wont abuse the system by farming xp from uber low lvl marks that they always sneak/pick effortlessly.

4.  Somewhere for rogues to gather, perhaps in Vehl, which might not be accessible to other pc classes.  Maybe give them a pawn shop there and some shops catering to rogue related items (but nothing above what's offered in the other stores - so like +1 lockpicks, and lesser traps, which I've never seen anyone sell as crafted goods yet).  The pawn shop makes sense to me, as professional thieves would almost certainly have better access to places to dispose of their loot than other classes.

***we need a more accessable "thieves guild" that's for certain.  With NPCs that deal out thieves quests, Assassination quests, subterfuge quests, etc.

Anyways, just my 2 pennies for you.
~Lareth~

  ***well spent!  I like your points.  I'm not debating them, just commenting on their awesomeness and echoing my desire for them.

[lonnarin]

Oh yeah, and on social skills.  I'd like to see SILENT social skill checks vs. automated opposed check which are silent to all unless they are passed, and THEN they are available to see by the opposition, and not at all by the bluffer.  No more of "character x says statement Y and he is bluffing, do you see his bluff?"  but more of, "character X is bluffing, and IF your automated opposed check wins, you can see that he is bluffing.  If not, you just don't know!"  As it is now with this system, the bluffer actively informs the mark that he is bluffing, which can lead to metagaming that they know.  And if the bluffer bluffs and the mark knows, the bluffer knows that he knows, *squint squint*  And that can lead to even more metagaming.  I want to eliminate that factor of OOC knowledge altogether.

Sort of a double-blind if you will!  Then you have situations where a lying liar knows that he is lying, but perhaps the one he is lying to doesn't know.  And if he DOES know you are lying, you just don't know!  Right now we only can do this with a DM present with all silent checks sending tells and relaying such information.  Keep that up.  As for the next incarnation, let's make it the staple of the game mechanics.

[lonnarin]

Above all, as far as CNR and crafting goes, I think it would be ideal if mages had more of a role in MAGIC items.  Bjorn can go out there and mine copper, bronze, Iron and Platinum without breaking a sweat.  Adamantium or Cobalt with a good group.  Mithral... hooo, I wish, but the metal should be more available.  But when he crafts it, it should only be masterwork with the POTENTIAL to become a sweet magic item.  Dwarven miners shoulnd't make magic items out their butts, but rather make the pre-req CNR FOR magic items.  Then when we meet those lower level mages, we should be like "hey! ye know MAGIC?! *mind boggles* you could ENCHANT for me!  Help me make gold!  Come with me lad, I want to partner up with ye and ye kin help me git richer, and I'll make ye rich fer it!"  That brings some of the mystique back to the mages, their awesome power.  It makes magicians highly sought after.  Magic items should need MAGIC to create.  Not just lion bags, strength scores, pickaxe swinging or fighter levels.  By increasing the need for mages, we help bring them a job as a labor force, and gold to win from that effort.

So in short, I'd like to see, multi-class crafting!

That right there increases even the most devout solo powergamer's desire for finding groups!  Sure you're awesome, but you can be MORE awesome with the right number of social connections.  Social connectivity should be the focus of an RP environment.  Don't make any person see another's CR and dismiss them, everybody should be useful.  Maybe High powered mages see the low level fighter and think "hmmm, if I help this person, We could get rich crafting magic items.  Instead of grinding xp, I'll help this new fighter."  Tweak the game mechanics and crafting mechanics to reach the social dynamics that we desire.

[Frelinder]

I haven't been playing for over a year now but I like this place alot and have spend thousands of hours in this world.

What to do to make this world not dying... instead get in fresh new blood and a fun place for adventures and RP?

Make it easier for newbies to start playing here. Maybe many of the rules should instead be guidlines. After time the new player will learn more about the world and all the rulez..

Make it easier to submitt a new character.

Make a "new" Hlint there all the players can chill out, meet up, RP and have as starting point for adventuring. This means It should be easy for all Lvls to get to other places in the world from this point. Like having a port to alot of different places on both servers and an harbour. This would defently do so that the servers don't feels so empty when you log on.. easier to meet new friends and so forth..

Do this server just wan't to have players that can devote tremendous amount of time into this game or should it be fun and giving for everyone? including them that can maybe play for 2-6 hours/week? I think PnP are on to something here. A small amount of XP based on time.

More small NPC quests like the ones you can do when you are low lvl. Saving a prisioner, Killing a thief that roams the forest, Deliver a package to a king and so on.. This is great things for the new players and it shouldn't stop there. Why not make new and harder ones also for higher lvl players?

I like Layo alot because of the RP and when you play in it you are IC and not OOC like in other Hack n slash worlds. But If you have a job, a family and also a RL you don't get that many hours/week to play and when you play you might wanna have some action and go out and killing stuff. Its most fun in an party and this not exclude RP but doing both works fine. This community have a tendence to point fingers at the Hack and slashers and say thats bad, wrong and ugly. Why as long you stay In character, RP along the way, inerract whith other players? There must be room for those who don't can, or wan't to attend quests, make a mark in the world or sit on a bench and talk about plots.. - co-existens. Otherwise the a lot of players especially new players will just feel this is an exclusive club where they are not welcomed in. Instead of letting them having fun and after a while the ones that wanna be more involved will do that because they wan't to.. not because they are being forced.

One funny thing. Its ugly to hack and slash to gain XP so you can advance fast in lvls. But its not ugly to Craft all day long to advance fast in the crafting XP ladder? Why is that? Realy? An hack and slasher in a party RP more then a crafter that collects CNR and hanging in crafthalls all day.. Although I like doing both of these things so nothing bad against all the crafters out there

I have attendet alot of Quests but many of them I feel that I haven't contributed that much. Several reasons for this. I type very slow! English is not my mother language so often I don't understand things. However in some quests I have been very active and one of my funniest Layo moments is from a quest =)

So my conclusion would be. Yes I wan't to have the living breathing world. But for that sake does that means that I can't be a champion and go out and kill giants whithout someone point fingers?

/ Boon Loom - the balled killing machine/ Kilkenny - the crafting Xenite

[SteveMaurer]

@Steve sorry to be so blunt-headed but, is there a request in there? Are you asking for more unique ways to build up unique PCs? I like the idea of taking some base class levels and then rebuilding later on a successful CDQ.

 
 First, no worries on being blunt. I have very thick skin.
 
 Now to explain. It is a general approach that I am encouraging the Layonaran team to continue to persue. I am especially pleased that Honora seems to be having a chance with her character to try a CDQ in that general direction, which shows the care that the team shows.
 
 I think what Dorg is asking for more than just simple suggestions in this thread. After all, Layo already has a whole group dedicated to those, so that would be redundant. I see it more as a request for higher level themes - what works, and what doesn't - which is why I've organized my suggestions around in that direction.
 
 Which brings me to two more general suggestions, and examples of what I mean.
 
 Add Mechanical Compensation For Non-combat Religions
 

• Instead of worship consisting entirely of limits, consider adding special benefits for the non-combat classes. I'd love to see Aeridin/Az'atta clerics have the equivalent of "Mass Calming" directed at "monsters" for instance, using persuasion instead of Animal Empathy. The cleric of peace walks among the kobolds and goblins, their aura so powerful, that anger and discontent washes away from them.
• For Az'atta clerics, who are forbidden armor, and practice unarmed defense, giving them some non-droppable token with a Monk AC bonus as a feat would bring the religion more in line with Ed's vision.

Consider Recognizing, and Having Plots involved with, moral ambiguity
 
 This might be more of a suggestion for the MMO, but presently Layonara betrays a deep connection to AD&D's weltgestalt, with all the problems that entails. The "good" races, being cute (hobbits), winsomely gruff (dwarves), proloterian (human), beautiful (elves), and of course, lily white, travel into the lands of the "evil" primitive, ugly, non-white races, to extract raw materials for their imperialistic economies. The "evil" races have a problem with the "good"/white races tresspassing on their lands, so battles ensue in which the "good"/white races use superior (magical) technology to massacre the "evil" races down to the very last individual, loot their bodies of all things of value they used to own, and bring them back to their native lands, where they build palaces with the profits. This is "good" because as the Crusader (paladins) say, all the "evil" races need to do is worship the "good" Crusader gods, abandoning their own culture and being subserviant to the paladins and the state religion of the "good" gods, and there wouldn't have to be all that unpleasant little blood all over the place.
 
 In Layonara, you even have the Raven and Angel's guilds standing in for the East Asia Trading Company, to make it an almost perfect representation of 19th century imperialism. Except that real imperialism was occasionally not quite as awful.
 
 Now please understand, this critique of AD&D goes back almost to its very beginning. Moving away from Dave Arneson's Catholic viewpoints was one of the first things that secondary worldbuilders did. Tekumel, for instance, is set in a fantasy south-east asian setting. Glorantha's main conflict is a stand in for the Lunar(Roman)/Orlanthi(Germanic Tribes) stuggle from the first to fourth centuries. But to me the objectionable part isn't the overwhelming religious, cultural, tribal, and racial bigotry that many AD&D worlds possess, as that is an extremely realistic part of medieval societies - and hell, being a fantasy Conquistador is fun! Instead, it's the notion that one side can be given the moniker of "good" and the other one "evil".
 
 To that end, I'd like to see the following kinds of things thrown in the world:
 

• Critical resources (wood), not guarded by "dark" rangers, but "good" ones, who will not attack unless some trigger is stepped on. Maybe accoompanied by a sign: "See the pretty Mahogany from a distance please. There's not much of it left. Get too close, and we'll be forced to kill you".
• Have wars break out between "good" or "neutral" city states. Port Hempstead vs Fort Vehl. Which side are you on?
• Move away from the idea that Panadins/"Godly Champions" are "Lawful Good". Hell, actual so-called "Lawful Good" knights templar were't actually perticularly lawful, or at all good.
• Drop the monster "alignment restrictions", at least on the Good/Evil axis. I'll accept that some non-human races have non-human though processes, enough to make them inherently "chaotic" or "lawful", but if a human can be evil, why can't an orc be good?
• For the MMO, drop the "Good v. Evil" axis completely.
• Write up on the Religion descriptions of the expectations that gods have of their worshipers meeting worshipers of enemy or unfriendly gods. Don't speak? Don't bargain? Kill on sight or flee? People can't RP it if they don't know what they're supposed to do.
• At the same time, divine relation shouldn't be quite so perfect, or else worshipers of thief gods are going to have a very hard time. Maybe an "godly-alignment blank" spell that lasts 24 hours given to clerics of gods of trickery?
• Perhaps some of the static quests should be made with evil PCs in mind. How come you can walk all over Mistone and find people willing to pay for other people's heads, and yet not find a single job like that in "evil" Arnax?

[willhoff]

I would like to see the number of soul strands a character can loose before perming raised from 10 to 20.  This will do two things:

1) You still keep the perma death system in place which discourages characters running around killing things with no consequences and gives a real life feel to the game;

2) It will promote characters to go on more quests and explore new areas, it will get characters who are close to permadeath more involved in the game, and will revitalize the server and the fun factor.

Right now I think there is a tendency for alot of players to run thier characters in known areas so that they can level and get stronger so they wont be permed, instead of adventuring and taking on new challenges like we all should be doing.  

I think the number 10 is too low compared to the thousands of hours and hundreds of battles that we put our characters through.

Otherwise not much to comment on.  Layonara is by far the best server out there.  I really enjoy the mix of a facinating and challenging world to explore, great GM's who are truly involved and who run quests all the time and give impromptu's, awesome player base with great rp.

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

I'd like to see some NPC enemies that can cast see invisibility if a player gets TOO close to them. Maybe limit it to one NPC per group, but, just a thought. Why aren't enemy mages running around with Truesight cast 24/7 like EVERY mage I run into IG?
 
 And maybe some more NPCs that have working ears? Or maybe "sneak undoing traps" in places like Bandit camps or castles. Why wouldn't these places have things that can foil our "ninja" types (SDs, Rogues, Rangers)? The Japanese used to rig all sorts of things into their castles to foil ninja, even something as simple as pebbles on the floor. And of course some sort of minor reward for navigating these traps, but perhaps much like PoI flags, once you find the disarming switch the first time, you don't get any more XP, to kill any potential abuse.
 
 AND you'd have to pass some HARD DC to even disarm the trap, based on of course the Skill, keeping this sort of reward to those who should be able to recieve it.

[willhoff]

One Idea for fighter friendly type areas would be an island that you sail to that is completely no magic.  Maybe off of Krashin and snow type terrain or a tropical Isle were you have to ride wild horses to get from place to place.  The isle would be inhabited by progressively harder creatures as you explore.  They would do physical damage and maybe other types of non magical effects like ability drain, poison, disease but no death magic or stun attacks.  Maybe also have some good ore on the Isle too so you have a goal to reach.  Also could have some traps in there for the Rogue types as well in some areas.

just some thoughts...it might be too hard to create that:)

[Nehetsrev]

Area progression idea for a 'dungeon' trek that requires a well rounded group.
 
 First areas are wilderness areas containing creatures with Truesight and high Spot & Listen, as animals should realisticly have better senses than most PC races.  Some of the animals should be 'charmable' by druids/rangers with sufficient Animal Empathy and offer some benefit that might come in useful in a later area.  
 
 These type of areas might allow the option for characters to bash their way through, but should make the party even happier they brought along a druid or ranger to circumvent something in the line of progression either immediately or later on.  Higher XP than can otherwise be gained might be awarded the party if they find the 'nature-friendly' way through and avoid the bash-fest means of progressing.
 
 (one specific idea might be an alter that requires a live White Stag to stand on it in order to open the magical barrier into the ancient dungeon itself, a character with high enough Lore or Spellcraft might discover this need by examining runes at the doorway/altar itself)
 
 
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 Second set of areas might be filled with sentient enemy races or sentry golems that are resistant to magic, again with Truesight and high Spot & Listen.  These should give the warrior types something to overcome and feel useful doing so, and ought to require more than just a bash on through style of play, but also be designed to require using thoughtful tactics, like using choke-points, or allowing archers to reach high-ground to pin-down enemies.  Buff-stripping no-magic zones might have their place here too.
 
 
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 Third set is deeper within, where rogues get a chance to shine by defeating mechanical defenses using Open Lock and Disable Trap, or even Set Trap and Pickpocket skills.  Make Spot, Search, Hide and Move Silently useful skills here too, allowing and perhaps requiring one to scout ahead to reach key points for dissabling a mechanical obstacle.  Higher XP than otherwise attainable should again be rewarded to the party for overcoming the area's obstacles the roguish way.
 
 (A trap-room that the party must be able to sneak out of to reach the shut-off switch before a timer reaches zero and deadly gas fills the area could add some dramatic tension.  Or maybe the gas induces a level-drain effect, or slowness or something, allowing the group to progress through without the rogues, but at a disadvantage against the foes they might face in the area.)
 
 
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 Fourth sets of areas should allow the Clerics and Paladins to shine as the party faces undead, constructs, or outsider guardians that might be turnable, perhaps even obstacles that are more easilly overcome by followers of a certain diety.  Maybe an obstacle can be switched off if a cleric, paladin, or champion of a given diety steps into range and is sensed.  We have filled diety fields, why not use them for reasons other than determining what domains characters have access to for divine spells?  Again, give higher XP awards if members of a certain faith are pressent to overcome the obstacles in a manner suitable for their faith.
 
 
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 Fifth sets of areas could be designed to require the pressence of Arcane casters, or alternatively, flip-flop fourth and fifth area types.  In any case, include some form of checks that require a randomly sellected arcane-only spell to be cast to defeat the final barrier between the party and the next area.  Provide an alternate, but harder and less rewarding route through to the next area for those parties who may not have brought an arcane caster.
 
 Alternatively, the order of the different area types might be scrambled around a bit, so long as all the basic class-types are required to defeat the challenges along the way to earn the best rewards.  Heck, maybe the final reward area could be set up in such a way that special items or more Trues/XP are rewarded to groups that defeat the obstacles in the ways that require the pressence of certain class types, thus a greater reward is given to the party that has it all, than to the party that doesn't.  Yet the party that doesn't should still get a reward of some sort for their efforts too.
 
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 Another not quite related idea here... and not sure if it could be done in NWN, but suppose a script could be designed to send a tell to a player after making a check against their Lore skill and their Class?  So, maybe a few areas might have flavor text that those with sufficient Lore knowledge and who are of a givien class can be mechanicly told as they pass through and then they can share the knowledge with others if they choose.
 
 Example:  A party with a rogue and a druid is moving through a patch of woods, the script rolls Spot checks, then Lore checks for each party member, if the results are high enough, it then checks each character's class, sending the rogue a tell that informs them that they see a red ribbon tied around a branch, indicating the trail to a hidden bandit camp.  While at the same time, the druid's succesful check gets a tell sent to them that indicates a rare plant or herb with curative properties is spotted, or the den of an ancient dire bear is nearby... you get the idea.  Meanwhile a mage might get a tell that informs them the area was the sight of some ancient wizard battle where such and such spell was first used to defeat so and so.  Players get a sort of automatic reward for investing in Lore and learn more about their world without requiring other players or DMs to tell them everything and the world in a way comes more to life for them, and the things their character knows are tailored to the type of character they are.  Heck you could even add a racial check in there too, so only Dwarven rangers might know or have a higher chance of knowing about a certain kind of mushroom growing in a region of caves, for instance.

[Xaltotun]

What I would like to see is (and purely my own views):

More gm involvement. It would be great to be crafting, chatting, role playing, killing monsters, whatever, and then for a gm to drop something in to involve me more. It need not take long, but I get a better sense of involvement when it happens. I get the same kick when I get xps from a gm for role playing -its says to me "we care".

More areas for lower to middle level characters to explore and fight through. It is TOUGH being low level and would help to see more for low to mid levels.

Areas changing more. The red goblin caves are the red goblin caves and they never change. Why not change the tunnels from time to time, put in an extra level some time, or even take one away, change the spawn triggers, and so on.

I have a sorcerer who finds it tough to kill monsters hand to hand. I see fighters destroying these same creatures with their weapons. Okay, accepted. I see monsters who are immune to magic (or as near as it gets) so a sorcerer is useless. Again, accepted. What I am desperate to see are areas or monsters where WEAPONS are ineffective and magic works. Now that would be a change.

More areas for low - to mid level characters - oh, I have done this one - you can tell I am keen on this point

[Kaail]

what Xaltotun said, more GM involvement. I LIKE RP XP! WoOoOo *coughs* ahem...

[Hellblazer]

What I would like to see is (and purely my own views):
 
 I have a sorcerer who finds it tough to kill monsters hand to hand. I see fighters destroying these same creatures with their weapons. Okay, accepted. I see monsters who are immune to magic (or as near as it gets) so a sorcerer is useless. Again, accepted. What I am desperate to see are areas or monsters where WEAPONS are ineffective and magic works. Now that would be a change.
 
 

 
 
 Not arguing the point, just making a small precision:
 
 Well there are a few. Depending on what metal you have, your weapon will be useless. Ie, if you bring a bronze weapon in the GF.. forget it, you won't get anything from it when you hit. Unless you had a magical enhancment (flame weapon, Fire enchantment level 3 or more) or GMW casted on it. I remember there was some monsters that their dr were through the roof, and no matter what you had you couldn't hurt them. Don't remember if they are still there, but they exist.
 
 I had to change Bow with Tyillaan in the GF, because it wasn't doing anythign at all beside the Negative energy dmg. now even with her new mahog (still can't use a yew) longbow with cams, and with mahog arrows. Well I still do very poorly, but at least I may do 10 dmg on the giants from time to time, which is much better than her 1 she used to do :p. On all the other foes though, she does hits to what her bow/cams/arrows/feathers/gmw tallies up to with ease. Giants.. ziltch, others wooot!. That's trained bows for you (no flames or enchantments), but eh, Archery is fun!

[Jilseponie Wyndon]

This is supposed to be an ideas thread HellBlazer for Layonara.  As stated before start new threads for other things.

[Deacon]

Alright, I have been following this topic for a while and I figured that I would put my share into the pot.  And even though I have not been playing here much, I feel like when i did play here I had one of the more memorable characters.  
 
 More recently I have stopped playing here as much not because I don't want to.  I DESPERATELY want to play here because of the systems that have been put in place and the deep Lore that has been built up over the years.  now, this will not be a suprise to many because of my signature and avatar but I play predominantly Dark Elves on Layonara.  My first, Caldiir is the memorable character that I was talking about and my second is one by the name of Quarral who happens to be one of the only Priests of Ca'duz on the server.  
 
 I have been around since the campaign against Blood and things weren't easy then, and with the release of the current campaign things got all that much harder to play a Dark Elf.  I would LOVE to see more effort put into getting people to play as Dark Elves or ANY evil or so called 'shady' characters.  Currently my Dark Elves have to hide behind hoods, cover themselves from head to toe, stick to the shadows which by all accounts is not how a Dark Elf should act.  True Dark Elves are evil to the core, without a shred of good anywhere within range of them.  It is impossible for them to coexist with people who live on the surface without trying to manipulate, coerce, or ruin anything they come into contact with.
 
 With the changes made with the release of version 3 (not bashing the release at all, it was a great release) things got a LOT harder to be a Dark Elf.  We can't go into town, Clerics and Paladins can use Divine Relation to rat us out, everyone from the smartest Wizard to the dumbest Orc realize that a character who is covered from head to toe is trying to hide something and with the limitations of the models from NWN anyone can tell that a slender male character is an elf so they put things together and realize that there is an elf standing in front of them with something to hide...hmm wonder what it could be?
 
 This brings me to my next point, which is the real reason for me making this post.  As a Dark Elf, in my on and off again 5 year relationship with this server, I believe that I have been to the Underdark one time and that was with a group and I realized one thing...the Underdark is a scary scary place.  Which is as it should be, but what I am getting at is that the Underdark should not be a mystery to someone who is FROM the Underdark.  I wish that Dark Elves got their own starting zone in an Underdark city, Olist Orbinn for example, that would have starting quests, dungeons and other things to help Dark Elves level up away from the prying eyes of surface dwellers.  In this city, allow the players to create the Dark Elf society.  Allow them to create their own player run Houses complete with an actual House (that can be purchased like a normal house but cost more since it would be maintained by a group of players), set up a Melee-magthere, Sorcere, and Arach-tinilith and allow the players to populate those academies with Archmages, Weapon Masters, and High Priests/Priestesses.
 
 Allow the characters who live and dwell in the Underdark to create their own storylines.  I think it would make for some amazing roleplaying opportunities for the Clergy of Ca'duz and the Clergy of Vierdri'ira to fight (literally and figuratively) for control of the city.  It would be great to have rival houses doing everything in their power to sieze control of the top seat to garner the most respect from everyone else.  This next one is a biggy, MAKE THE SURFACE AFRAID OF DARK ELVES AGAIN.  How?  Allow the Dark Elves the opportunity to organize and carry out raids on different surface towns.  This would encourage the Surface players to be more an alert and defend their towns against the raiding Dark Elves and encourage PVP.
 
 This all may sound very familiar to some of you who play on other servers, but its what I'd like to see done here.  However, I'm afraid that with things in NWN wrapping up, I can only hope for some of these ideas to be implemented into the MMO.

[Deacon]

This is something else that I thought of after I posted the above:

Remove the Level Requirement for new subbmissions of Evil aligned characters.

This is one of the reason why I kinda lost interest in playing my character Quarral.  Now, I hope this does not come off the wrong way and I am not disputing the decision or trying to get it changed.  When I originally created the concept for Quarral Mae'zynge it was concieved in conjunction with an old friend and player here, ZeroVega.  We had the intentions of making Mae'zynge an in game house that had lost its nobility status and both of us were planning on playing our characters as evil aligned Ca'duz Dark Elves.  When he fell off the map I went through with the development of my character and waited for months for the release of version 3 when the restrictions for evil characters would be changed.  

Then I realized that I didn't have a character who met the level requirements.  And try as I might, I could not find anyone that could get along with Caldiir long enough to keep him around, nor could I find a consistent group of characters who were evil or on the verge of being evil.  So unfortunately, even though I had played on the server for over two years at that point, I had to settle for a True Neutral alignment on my Priest of Ca'duz, which is fine because he is still only one step away from NE and I can RP him and CDQ him towards the evil alignment.  

However, I want to make a statement that I think mostly everyone here will agree with:

A character's level does not directly translate into a great roleplayer.  

That is not always the case, but sometimes it is.  What I suggest instead is a time period in which a person is judged upon their roleplaying.  For the sake of this post I will use 6 months as a time frame for a person to be on the server before they submit a character.  That doesn't mean that they created a character and then logged on once or twice a week for 6 months and then decides they want to roll an evil character.  That player must be active on the server, attend some DM run quests and contribute in some fashion to discussion on the forums.  This part of this plan is the only place in my opinion that can really be a snag because the issue of 'acceptable level of activity' is so subjective and people will have differing opinions on it.

For example, let's use Jane Fantasyname.  She has had a character on the server for a little over 6 months, and decides that she wants to roll a Priestess of Corath and wants to submit the character with a Neutral Evil alignment.  Her previous character is only level 9, but she has kept up with a character journal with regular posts every couple of days, and she tries to log on as often as she can to role play with others on the server.  She has even attended a few DM quests and gotten to know quite a few people on the server.  She reads all the information on Corath, develops a lengthy and detailed background for her Priestess and submits the character to the forums.  The Character Approval team sees it, and flags it for DM Team input since it is a character submission for NE.  The DM Team opens up a thread on their private forums about the submission for their input as to whether this player was active or not during the 6 month period that she has been playing on the server.  Once the DM's have reached their conclusion they alert the Character Approvers (who should be using this time to work out any other kinks in the character biography) sees the input from the DM team and approves or disapproves the character biography based on all that input.

Now, as I already said some of this is subjective and isn't PERFECT, but I really think that a system like this one could work better than the current system.  At least, I think, it would encourage more people to roll evil characters.

[Deacon]

After rereading the Alignment Rules on Evil, I noticed that it already has a time requirement of 9 months, but the level requirement is still there.  I still move that the level requirement be removed.