A Land Far Away

Hello,

this is a public service announcement from your Staff Head of Standards .

Due to the recent events, many may have been wondering about the technical facts behind this discussion. They are not the basis of the dispute that was contentious, and focussing on these numbers does not serve to solve the case - regardless, I am using the opportunity to freshen up everyone's understanding of how stat edits are handled in ALFA.

Positive edits to a characters ability scores used to be illegal in ALFA, on the basis that Standards work inclusively - everything you can find a pricing condition for is allowed. If as a DM you are unsure about the availability of something, you can post a query on our handy Helpdesk forum - fellow DMs, staff or a member of the S&T will gladly offer their assistance.

As we were aware that stat edits had happened prior, we started a discussion in Octobre 07, and in the end resolved to create a pricing condition for them, 1:1 taken from PnP. The respective PnP features are Tomes and Manuals, each allowing boosts to a single ability from +1 to +5, priced at 27,500 gp per point. Our motivation in offering them was to give DMs the flexibility to toy with this tool should they see so fitting, as well as belatedly being able to handle player characters that were subject to them.

Of course, this kind of reward cannot be gained lightly. A player character should have to be at least level 12 to gain +1 to a single ability - or else he would be in violation of the maximum single-award cap. Furthemore, for a level 12 character, this reward would constitute, on average, the whole of all wealth rewards for 11555 experience - or simpler but, he would be questing almost all the way from level 12 to 13 without gaining any significant other wealth apart from this stat boost. I think this helps understand why many people are upset with the magnitude of what came up in the investigation.

Now, back on topic. While this pricing seems high, these boosts are arguably worth it - you cannot dispel, counter, disjunct them, and they also stack completely with buff and item boosts - therefore, they can be quite powerful, but as DMs in general have shown restraint and good judgment throughout ALFA, noone considered it to become a problem - and in fact, it wasn't, the only problem that arose was this legacy, back from a time when the application of standards was perhaps not as universally understood.

Another problem, apart from the single wealth rewards, of course is presented by the overal wealth guidelines. Most PCs would feel the pinch in having less equipment and expensive consumables available, as such an edit can bite severely into one's overall wealth. For example, having +9 abilities like in this case means 247500 gp of value - immediately putting a character as high as level 12 above his warning cut-off and into the condition for mandatory ooc wealth reduction.

Now, all things considered, I think it is clear what was aimed to do, and I think well achieved, with the pricing conditions for this kind of reward. It is something that can only be applied in moderation and special cases, and in these cases, it constitutes a noticable trade-off in other available means of character development through wealth rewards. However, it can be undoubtedly the special great something to tie up a long and meaningful storyline or plot arc .

For procedure, this kind of reward needs to be documented in the respective player-advancement thread, as quite rightfully, it's hard for DMs to check for this kind of stuff - and noone expects them to waste their time hunting for the possibility of this. I am quite proud of the fact that we imply trustworthiness of players, and that something different only gets assumed if there is a reason to believe so - which would explain why this slipped detection for so long, and why it may appear important to make sure players are held to the standard of trust DMs are led to expect.
We also toyed around with the possibility of a no-drop stat-boosting item, but let that slip as it seemed too clumsy in the end.

Now, I hope this was informative to you and helps you to understand a bit about the problem at hand, and takes away room for speculation of how grave, or not grave, the discrepancy here was.

Cheers,

Positive edits to a characters ability scores used to be illegal in ALFA, on the basis that Standards work inclusively - everything you can find a pricing condition for is allowed. If as a DM you are unsure about the availability of something, you can post a query on our handy Helpdesk forum - fellow DMs, staff or a member of the S&T will gladly offer their assistance.

Can you provide us with the documentation on this?

Specifically addressing when it was determined that standards were 'inclusive' and that anything not covered was thus 'banned'.

My recollection, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that it was not a commonly accepted fact that the Standards worked inclusively and this actually caused the Standards Team to make an official statement in that regard.

Further, it is assumed that there were many 'legacy' awards that may not have fit with the current standards. Of course, their illegality made replacing them as they were found an imperative, but it did not cause us to go hunting for these discrepancies, nor was it cause to persecute folks who might have granted or received such awards.

Or perhaps clarify the actual time period you are speaking of, prior to when they most recently were legalized and a pricing scheme was applied.

I only ask for this clarification because your statement implies that throughout ALFA's ENTIRE existance, this was the case, and therefore stat edits given at any time prior to October 2007 were given illegally.

Hello Jayde,

here is the documentation you seek:

http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... hp?t=36876

This thread is only available to DMs and Standards Team members, however it doesn't include much more information than I summed up here.

You are correct that technically, permanent positive stat edits were illegal prior to this decision - however, this does not merit any case for punishment or bringing charges against anyone due to the pragmatical restrictions and implications and the fact that no preceding DM Administration really thought about the question. I don't think anyone ever intended to be more papal than the pope .

So to say, all prior applications became legal with that decision, but if you were at a point in time before it, you'd be in a gray zone, and would have to adhere to the inclusiveness principle of standards. Which is, again, why when in doubt, we have a helpdesk - never hurts to ask, if there was simply an oversight in creating a condition, it can get amended. Our community always is a work in progress.

How about just banning (permanent) stat enhancements in the future and using ability bonus items instead. Seems like they're not worth the effort.

Burt wrote:How about just banning (permanent) stat enhancements in the future and using ability bonus items instead.

That's a bit of a "blunt axe" approach. Having such increases show up when querying a PC's wealth with the DM wand would suffice I think. Or report them the same way we do a PrC or characters levelling into the 10+ range.

Ability increases are a very nice thing to reward the "character that has everything" or the "character that doesn't want anything".

Allow me to clarify that when I spoke about not having the permanent ability boosts on no-drop items, I meant only that aspect - the permanent stat edits are not tied to the no-drop item. But, of course, additionally to the record in the respective PCs advancement thread, a no-drop item - without any abilities in itself - needs to be given to the character in question, with an explanation of the stat edit and the correct value property, so that the proper price shows up and gets counted against the PCs wealth. This is mostly so that other DMs quickly get to know if something like this happened and get a brief explanation of the circumstances, without having to put in extra work to dig around checking someone's statistics and history.

stat increases...

like tome of (ability) +1/+2~+5 (Inherant trait)?

i wasn't even aware that was even in the game...

and toss beer cans in the stew, when Millia was rezzed in shinning falls (gotta love spammed Knock-down from monsters i clearly should have ran from not knowing the full local situation at the time IC) i chose to take STAT damage. i was planning on retirement at the time prior to leaving california and the means of her demise and raising gave me the means to have a IC reason to retire. from a base 10, her STR was dropped to 7, her DEX dropped from 16 to 14. hey, not everybody gets lucky on a rez and keeps all thier fingers or in my requested case, phyiscal disability.

i do forget who i asked for the adjustments but i doubt i would get in trouble for that, especiially the IC reasons to justify it.

HOWEVER, if someone adjusts your stats up on the factor of +9...

....

Veilan wrote:This thread is only available to DMs and Standards Team members, however it doesn't include much more information than I summed up here.

Would it be possible to collect and update all the Standards information on the wiki, so we've got one definiate source (viewable by everyone)?

And just to really nit-pick, for no real importance of all, other than boredem, you mean Staff Head of Training, right Alara? Not Staff Head of Standards

The pricing stuff above only applies to IC stat raises.

When someone claims an "OOC accident about which they have amnesia which must have happened 90+ days ago... which also affected their sidekick", the pricing standards would be irrelevant. Just as the tooth fairy must have snuck into the vault and changed the relevant bics, a volunteer DM can use console commands to "trim" back down to the amounts that the players "remember" as being IC awards.

Anyhow, yeah. Standards are for intentional awards etc. Everything else is "bug fixing."

Brokenbone wrote:The pricing stuff above only applies to IC stat raises.

When someone claims an "OOC accident about which they have amnesia which must have happened 90+ days ago... which also affected their sidekick", the pricing standards would be irrelevant. Just as the tooth fairy must have snuck into the vault and changed the relevant bics, a volunteer DM can use console commands to "trim" back down to the amounts that the players "remember" as being IC awards.

Anyhow, yeah. Standards are for intentional awards etc. Everything else is "bug fixing."

Come now this is alfa - something like that would never happen, BB

Rotku wrote:

Veilan wrote:This thread is only available to DMs and Standards Team members, however it doesn't include much more information than I summed up here.

Would it be possible to collect and update all the Standards information on the wiki, so we've got one definiate source (viewable by everyone)?

Hello Rotku,

as you asked in public, I will reply in public. You hit a bit of a sore point there.

In fact, for the very goal of getting comprehensive documentation onto the Wiki, Rusty suggested to me to approach Jayde and add him to my team, to channel his energy and drive. I agreed, and added Jayde to the S&T roster last november, after privately talking with him, informing him this job would be his specific responsibility - helping compile a comprehensive documentation. He made valuable contributions to our training forums, and I highly appreciated his input to standards issues, as well as his insightful write-ups for handling alignment and other issues DMs may face.
However, his activity waned, and overall progress towards this documentation has been lackluster.

It was thus that about a month ago, Rusty approached me, and tasked me as his acting Head of Standards (the information in the thread you quoted is incorrect, I have informed kmj) to tackle this job myself. After some deliberation from me how to approach this and further discussion with Rusty, he agreed to my proposal of doing this in a two-punch approach: First, a quick to be released, clean-cut, no-frills NWN 2 word document - the beginnings of which can be found here - , and second, after covering the immediate need for this documentation as we rapidly approach live, a more detailed wiki documentation about the same, with added explanation and training commentary.

My apologies for not having finished the former yet, but I did only get a brief time so far, and there were Easter and a lot of other things on my plate.

Currently, I have put work on this documentation on hold, as only one of the three contestants has extended the courtesy of informing me of his plans for future staff roles in his DM Administration, and I furthermore do not know what changes to our standards any incoming new DMA might wish to impose.

Thank you,

Excellent. Thanks for the answer, Alara. Although that document you linked to is, of course, not viewable by us lesser citizens.

And just for the record, I am well aware that you are standards head, and have been de facto standards head for a year or so. My comment was a poor attempt at a jest

It is good to see work is been carried out on it though. Just ashame it has taken so long.

PensivesWetness wrote:stat increases...

and toss beer cans in the stew, when Millia was rezzed in shinning falls (gotta love spammed Knock-down from monsters i clearly should have ran from not knowing the full local situation at the time IC) i chose to take STAT damage. i was planning on retirement at the time prior to leaving california and the means of her demise and raising gave me the means to have a IC reason to retire. from a base 10, her STR was dropped to 7, her DEX dropped from 16 to 14. hey, not everybody gets lucky on a rez and keeps all thier fingers or in my requested case, phyiscal disability.

i do forget who i asked for the adjustments but i doubt i would get in trouble for that, especiially the IC reasons to justify it.

I think that was me who zapped Millia. I had to ask about it because I had no idea that you could alter stats in game, not sure if it was Rusty who I asked or not.