Experience for random-monster hunters

[Brimsar the Wanderer]

Now, as most of you know, I enjoy the game as it is, and am against 99% of all these "new" proposals for rules changes, however, I agree with the removing combat xp.

This will do several things, mainly of which will cease the farming for xp. True it solves nothing on loot farming, but that is easier to take a look at IMO.

It will also allow DMs to grant XP for the entire adventure without having to consider xp garnished from combat kills. As well as taking out the players desire to kill vs sneak to get the extra xp.

Take your standard "scouting" static for example.

As is, it is better for a warrior class (or high level) to go in "scout" the area, and kill the monsters, thus getting static xp and combat xp.

Without combat xp, the warrior who battles his way thru them to "scout", the sneak who sneaks in to "scout" and the caster, who fights, uses invisility, or sanctuary spells to get in and "scout" are all on an even par.

By doing this... I htink we eliminate the need to find something for every class to do exclusivly to earn xp statically (like trap disarming for rogues).

No combat XP, and let PCs use their abilites to do thier thing.

[HEEGZ]

Bleh. I completely disagree.

[Blenderhead]

Yay for removing combat XP

I think it's a good idea, but I'm not entirely certain yet. Maybe our current system is better.

[fade]

Odd, fighting high Xp monsters have never been 'low risk' for me.

[Twisted Ascension]

Damn you people for being silly enough to make me annoyed enough to respond to this thread.

Heres a solution. Why don't we create an entire new class.. lets make Commoner playable. That way you hosers that want to play mushshroom gathering farmer blacksmiths can play to your hearts content. The class would never level, because.. really what need would there be for such a thing. But we can keep psuedo stats for you. You spend a month in real life gathering mushrooms for a a few hours a day and we will give you a +1 to your "Detect Fungus" rating. Progress! Maybe when the Mushroom Wizard from Southern Amn leads his nasty cabal to steal all the blue shrroms from your village, the people will rally around you.

Or better yet, why don't we all take a collective deep breath and kindly remove heads from our asses. Repeat after me. Alfa is built to recreate Faerun. A world based on the game d&d. Alfa used the systems and rules approprioate to the seting. If you don't like those setting and systems, go play a game that has systems you are more in favor of. I hear activision is coming out with Mushroom: The Gathering in 07, so good news.

These ideas are absurd. They are silly. They only serve to overcomplicate a project that has its hands full with actual logistical problems. They are a waste of time.

For the record, all this ranting about "OMG My PC is not a combat PC and is forever pwned in alfa" is just ridiculous. There are no "Non Combat" characters. There are only playes who prefer to avoid combat, or are poor at combat. Every class in the game is designed to have some combat functionality. If you choose to make a concept that wholly avoids combat, more power to you. I have absolutely no problem with it. I fail to see how its some indictment of the project that all roads are not made golden for you to advance, however. The entire game setting revolves around combat. There's a reason that WotC never offered farmer as a Prestige Class.

Alfa is a roleplay oriented game world. It is not, however, the Sims. I dearly hope that it doesn't want to be Sims. Because if wanted to play the bloody SIMS, I'd play that. Maybe you should consider the same option.

Lets just relax and enjoy alfa for what it is. Getting so anal about every little detail and every little failing of the game itself, not the project, only serves to leech the fun right out of things. Enough already.

[Mayhem]

Actually, TA, all the points about this idea that you react so vehemently against have been answered.

***

Looking at this from a different direction.

All you DMs - on the server you DM right now, for every 1000 XP a character has, how much of that can come from unsupervised spawn-slaying before you start getting antsy about farming?

Alternatively - how much unsupervised spawn-slaying XP can a PC on your server earn in a week before you start thinking about checking the logs to see where it has all come from?

And all you players - what proportion of XP do you think you have gained from unsupervised spawn-killing?

(Mine is probably between 2 and 3 thousand XP for a character almost at L9 - and I have been playing almost entirely on a server with functioing Diminishing Return scripts)

[edited originally before TA's response]

[Twisted Ascension]

[offensive]

[yavanion]

And in DnD crafting skills and feats do exist

[Stormseeker]

Yep but it cost xp to craft magical items, and i dont recall you getting xp for crafting mundane do you? Now maybe your pnp dm gave you xp for spending his game time (and the rest of the players) waiting while you "weave" your basket. Now in my 20+ years of pnp rping crafting has never lasted longer than a min or two...in any session i dmed or played.

Now in all honesty about 30% of xp by lvl 3 came from non dm monsters. After that it starts dropping off farely quickly.
lol as someone who shoots every once in a while i can tell you setting up in a stand and firing at non moving targets does improve your ability to hit them faster and gain in accuracy.

[yavanion]

What im saying is a crafting system do activate and create oportunitis... Shroom picking might sound silly... but finding the rare herbs for the local herbalist, getting ore for the smith... making several swords on comission for the garrision, this is just some few examples of little semi quests that can be done through DM run little statics, and sice the Dm only needs to activate it, players can do it when there is no DM on the server... It can be a expedition just to get the needed items for crafting...

If you or others dont like these extra possibilities for adventure or actuall resons to adventure, then dont do it... but dont you think we who do want this in the world of ALFA should have the possibility ?

[AlmightyTDawg]

If you or others dont like these extra possibilities for adventure or actuall resons to adventure, then dont do it... but dont you think we who do want this in the world of ALFA should have the possibility ?

See, I'm willing to run with this rather than the "non-combat characters should have equal XP gain as combat characters." (emphasis added).

The dominant portion of the level system is combat related, so a well-designed system would explicitly not be equal, but would favor combat-related characters. The use of "party XP" that doesn't explicitly check who was responsible for what helps bridge the gap even with combat-lite characters. The addition of RP XP scripts adds a permanent "quasi-static" for simple RP alone. The move to a dynamic population-modeled mob base will cut down on the "infinite spawner" problem. This is a sufficient counterbalance. Will non-combat characters advance more slowly than someone beating mobs for the same DM attention? Sure. But that's a feature, not a bug.

A really sexy builder would add little pieces and features that are unique to specific character types, skills, and abilities. But that's a design choice, not something which need necessarily be forced on ALFA to establish a parity that was never meant to exist in the first place. Servers that do that will have a one-up on those that don't - but understand that is programming/testing/manpower intensive and it's not a choice every builder will make. Static combat, outside of AI considerations, can be marginally on par with a DM-created slaughterfest. Static "skill" or conversation-based statics can't even come close to matching the interactivity of a similar DM-inspired challenge.

So it is what it is. Those things are "nice to have" but there's no chance ALFA's going to move to "equality" in XP gain.

[Khazar Stoneblood]

Odd, fighting high Xp monsters have never been 'low risk' for me.

A lot depends on your level. Killing deer was basically risk free on TFN for a while if you had a bow (haven't been there in forever). For a level 1-3 PC you got a fair amount of xp considering the risk (10XP? 5XP?). And there were LOTS of deer on the server. A PC could spend an hour and make about 500XP or so I imagine.

Many of the wolves on various servers were pretty easy kills for a lvl 1 combat PC who had decent armor. YOu'd only get hit on a 20. Most of these were 10-35 XP a piece for levels 1-3. And there were always lots around.

While these won't help a high level PC, low level PC's can reach the middle levels VERY quickly through static combat only with fairly low risk for a prudent player.

For me, getting to level 3 with a combat PC was a relatively quick acomplishment. Getting to level 3 with a PC who didn't have a 18 - 20 AC was slow and frustrating because combat WAS incredibly risky.

[fade]

I'd consider killing mudane mobs like that for hours on end blatent farming, and dimrets should rape you pretty quick, or a watchful DM. Getting 500 xp 5-30xp at a time is insane, and how people pull that off I have no idea. Personally whenever I get bored, I go after the hardest mob that the character knows of on the server. Some of them, depending on the server, would net you perhaps 300xp, with an extremely high risk of death. IE you lag, you die, you mess up, you die, the guy crits you, you die.

Farming mobs(which what you seem to be talking about) hardly interests me, and by definition is supposed to be a low risk, decent reward, utterly incomprehensibly boring activity. Plus most cases of that net you a nice 24 Hour ban unless a DM fails to notice it.

[White Warlock]

Just to address some of the comments:

Khazar, what you're talking about is repeatable spawns, which the developers of ALFA2 are trying very hard not to include. Also, as i'm sure you know, what you're referring to is known as farming and abusing the game engine's limitations (in RL, kill one deer, the rest run away), both of which are illegal in ALFA.

Yavanion, I do agree that inclusion of the crafting system is a necessary 'option,' but as others have indicated, it requires technical manpower, which ALFA sorely lacks. We have a few shining stars, but they're presently fixated on tackling the hurdles of mere 'basic' play. Accessorizing is not high on their list of 'todos.' But, as to your comment about how crafting should provide XP, i do not agree. D&D leveling is entirely combat-oriented, and XP is the means to level-up. If your intent is to increase your crafting skill, then let's focus on that alone.

What you may be able to present to a DM, or to the administration as a whole, is a reasonable argument for why a character should obtain a 'bonus' to their crafting skill... due to their many ingame roleplay hours of being a crafter (witnessed and experienced by more than one DM). This could be granted with a non-droppable item that adds pluses to crafting skill.

As to the potential for creating crafting-based quests, absolutely. Crafting opens up many player AND dm avenues, of this there is no doubt. But, as has been reasonably argued, such things 'scripted' require technical manpower... which we don't presently have.

Mayhem, I think your argument has already thoroughly exhausted all reasoned debate. Combat XP is here to stay. If you want alternative means of obtaining XP, then i suggest you present 'viable' ways it can be done without detracting from your agenda by fighting a hopeless venture.

I too would like to see 'alternatives' to obtaining XP; ones that allow for greater emphasis on 'conflict-resolution,' 'conflict-avoidance' skills that are important secondary skills to 'some' class-types. But, as long as you battle combat xp windmills, claiming them to be dragons of disproportionate advancement, nobody will take your input seriously.

Respectfully,
Roy

[Mayhem]

Combat XP is here to stay. If you want alternative means of obtaining XP, then i suggest you present 'viable' ways it can be done without detracting from your agenda by fighting a hopeless venture.

My apologies, I had forgotten you were in charge of all things ALFA.

****

Interestingly, one of the anti-arguments that keep surfacing is "nobody can get much XP that way". But if that is the case (relying heavily on builders employing teh dim-ret script or DM rigourously chasing policign for farmers), who is going to miss it?

There isn't even a consensus amongst the nay-sayers. A least one is saying hunting spawns regularly is exploiting, wheras another is pointing out that it can be justified in character (its my sworn mission to rid the land of orcs).

The definition of "farming" is clearly subjective, with even experienced DMs not agreeing.