Recent change to Dispute/Grievance/Request policy

[Dorganath]

Dear Layonara Community,

It is after lengthy thought and consideration that I am bringing an end to the clause in the Graceful Plea policy (found here) that deals with extensive character changes and/or elective rebuilds.

Since it is now removed from the policy, I am quoting the affected section here for clarity:

[SIZE=13]Players wishing to use a Graceful  Plea to affect more radical character changes, such as using a Graceful  Plea to redistribute a large number of skill points, attribute points  and feats over a number of levels, to remove a secondary class, or to  make changes to decisions that were made at more than one level up, may  submit their requests to the Character Submissions forum for  consideration. The Character Approvers will decide whether a restart or  rebuild is more appropriate and offer options. A Graceful Plea will only  be deducted if the option is deemed suitable by the player and  accepted.

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         [SIZE=13]The reasons for removing this option are primarily matters of practicality and intent. On the latter, Graceful Pleas were never meant for a player to custom-craft their character that evolved past the choices of previous levels and original concept. Imperfect as some choices may have been, it is likely (and in most cases factual) that the character has benefited from those choices at some point, and potentially for a long period of time. It's one thing to pick a feat or a stat point and realize later that it wasn't what you thought or made less sense than it seemed at the time, and yet another to effectively rewrite one's character and erase intended choices in the past in favor of different ones in the present. I'm personally a big fan of character evolution, but there are strongly divided opinions on whether or not character mechanics need to reflect the RP due to such evolution.

On the practical side, there is a significant investment in time with such requests, and one that drains away from a lot of people. Shunting such requests through the CA team has introduced a degree of subjectivity which has created an environment where precedent was difficult and where any meaningful criteria is difficult to impossible to establish. As well, there has been significant disagreement as to what qualifies as an "RP justification" for such changes. On a recent request, it took over 2-1/2 hours (probably closer to three), to research when choices were made, edit the character appropriately and then troubleshoot it when it didn't work.

[/SIZE][SIZE=13]So effective immediately, the option to use a Graceful Plea for extensive character changes and rebuilds will no longer be available.
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Players wishing to make multiple changes to their characters can still do so by spending one Graceful Plea to make changes to one character level, as outlined in the policy. Similar changes can still be made, but they will cost, and there will be a limit.  For example, if a player wants to change the feats and/or stats taken at level 6 and level 15, this will require the use of two Graceful Pleas, one per level, unless the feat at level 15 has the level 6 feat as a requirement.

Note that this does not include cases where there was a fundamental change in mechanics, a significant bug or other similar factor that is squarely on the shoulders of the Layonara Teams where something was broken, changed or is not working as intended. It also doesn't affect cases when character changes come about due to quest outcomes and other, similar GM-guided (and approved) circumstances.

Also, any requests currently in-progress and unfulfilled requests in the queue will still be handled.[/SIZE]
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If there are any questions or need for clarity regarding this change, please indicate below.
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