A Land Far Away

Here is something that has always bugged me in ALFA. Despite being a RPing based community we constantly create unrealistically powerful NPCs which use items not allowed on PCs. The arguements for contenuing this practice usually trace back to a fear of AI exploitation, which saddens me.

I'd like to present a proposal that in ALFA II NPCs be more standardized and more realistically modled, namly in the sense that if and NPC carries an item it can and will drop that item, and that if an NPC isn't carrying something, it can't drop that item.

Some may proclaim that this will imbalance the wealth but I'd beg to differ especially if merchants too were more realistic. Not every weapons dealer is going to want to by your rusted broad sword, and not every map barkeep is going to want to by rum off of someone who walks into his bar. Seriously speaking when is the last time Triple A bought a map off of you? Merchants shouldn't buy back most items even those they specialize in selling. Pawn shops or auction houses would naturally be different but these should be few and far between in order to encourage the policy of "take what you need" when looting fallen NPCs/Monsters.

I just build my Npcs and monsters according to Canon or the Monster manuals.

Magonushi wrote:Here is something that has always bugged me in ALFA. Despite being a RPing based community we constantly create unrealistically powerful NPCs which use items not allowed on PCs. The arguements for contenuing this practice usually trace back to a fear of AI exploitation, which saddens me.

I'd like to present a proposal that in ALFA II NPCs be more standardized and more realistically modled, namly in the sense that if and NPC carries an item it can and will drop that item, and that if an NPC isn't carrying something, it can't drop that item.

Some may proclaim that this will imbalance the wealth but I'd beg to differ especially if merchants too were more realistic. Not every weapons dealer is going to want to by your rusted broad sword, and not every map barkeep is going to want to by rum off of someone who walks into his bar. Seriously speaking when is the last time Triple A bought a map off of you? Merchants shouldn't buy back most items even those they specialize in selling. Pawn shops or auction houses would naturally be different but these should be few and far between in order to encourage the policy of "take what you need" when looting fallen NPCs/Monsters.

What he said.

+1

Also, can we have it where an orc on one server is basically an orc on another? etc.

yup that's the idea of standardization.

Kinda silly to say that a "all" monsters be standardized(Orcs be the same on all servers and making them all similar period), is that realistic as an expectation...Maybe Im reading the statement wrong?

Right now Orcs on one server can be killed by an infant. While orcs on another server requires Divine Intervention.

And I agree with the op.

I agree...if the dm wants to have some special orcs then he can make them non static monsters...and drop them when he needs them.
*grumbles*its a old argument.

+1

Stormseeker wrote:I agree...if the dm wants to have some special orcs then he can make them non static monsters...and drop them when he needs them.
*grumbles*its a old argument.

Just wait until you see Southkrypt...

but I'd beg to differ especially if merchants too were more realistic. Not every weapons dealer is going to want to by your rusted broad sword, and not every map barkeep is going to want to by rum off of someone who walks into his bar. Seriously speaking when is the last time Triple A bought a map off of you? Merchants shouldn't buy back most items even those they specialize in selling. Pawn shops or auction houses would naturally be different but these should be few and far between in order to encourage the policy of "take what you need" when looting fallen NPCs/Monsters.

The way merchants are handled in nwn is horrible. Im still of the opinion that a clunky script would work better than the patch work that is a nwn merchant.

Hope they fix them ... if not id certainly be willing to try to help with figuring something out to make them more interactive and "realistic".

Shops in Skullport, when first I redid them, only rebought items if canon said they did, and they only rebought items that made sense for the store. Every merchant was unique. This is doable now, it should be standard with NWN2.

some examples.

these are all of course NWN1 models, but the scripts and system to achieve "standardised randomisation" (oohh..buzzword) are there, and cn be carried over to NWN2. All we need is a standard set of creatures for the palette, and hopefully some rules on CRs (ie on NC2 we have no creature over CR6 except named NPCs, except giants and monstrous types. And no static spawned creature over CR8)

Hopefully the base mod philosophy can take care of that. If DM's pluck their spawns from that mod, then this will all take care of itself. As far merchants, they should and likely will be much more canon related and standardized in alfa2... i think lessons learned will carry over if the builders/scripters and admins can agree on a basis for wealth to implement in that base mod. We are close now, I think, so putting in the little tweeks shouldn't be too difficult.

I agree with the op as well. Let's standardize it all, and leave the custom bits to the server/builders and their respective DM's.

//aer

I do think that on the base module building team, a group of creature developers should have a foot hold, their main job will be creating core creatures (orcs, goblins, skeletons), then with the base module you have the creatures set up already. A lot of dms can contribute with giving ideas such as fire rats, vampiric badgers and plague zombies these creatures can be tested then submitted then they will be combined together into a "creature pack" and then imported back into modules. The balacing of these creatures would be left to the team.

The great thing about standardising all these common creatures is when you change servers you dont get a nasty shock when you get killed by a squirrel