On the favored Souls admin debate

[dergon darkhelm]

Just saw this in the Admin area and sinceI can't post there ......I'll do it here.


here is the crux of FI's idea:

The concern is that Favored Soul, as an individual with a rather more 'direct connection' with their deity, will create difficult situations for all involved.

From perceptions that the PC is a mini-chosen, to how to handle favored souls who may not 'want' to be favored souls, to the issue of favored souls 'falling' from grace, etc, the class requires consideration on an RP level.

However, instead of finding a creativity limiting 'answer', I suggest that the Favored Soul class be made into an Exceptional circumstances type character, requiring HDM approval before play on the server.

This allows players to create their own story with their own interpretation of what it might mean to be a Favored Soul. Meanwhile HDMs will be able to control inappropriate interpretations as well as the raw volume of Favored Souls on an individual server.

This issue has been on the table long enough, I am interested in hearing if this is a suitable solution to the problem of Favored Souls' place in ALFA's Faerun.

I personally think that as a community we need to be either in or out. I don't have a strong opinion either way (and even if I did it wouldn't matter). I do however, have a strong idea about moving decision making more toward a "confederation" where each HDM makes his/her own call.

Once again I say that it is all right to have "House Rules", but ALFA is the House.

Make the call for the whole community and let all abide by it.

[dergon darkhelm]

ps ---I meant this to be a civil and positive debate ....... friendly community discussion

[JaydeMoon]

This is not a decision for the community as a whole?

Explain?

[dergon darkhelm]

I can't explain ........all I saw was that it was in the admin area and when I hit "post reply" I got the "you don't have the Kung FU to post here" reply ......so I posted in Discussion instead.

[danielmn]

I GOTS THA KUNG FU!!!!!!!

[paazin]

Well, ALFA does need solid internal consistency despite any minor variations on the each of its servers. As we've seen before, a good number of headaches occur when it's one HDM versus another.

And dergon, I think Jayde meant something along the lines of 'Why do you think this is something that shouldn't be decided ALFA wide, rather differently depending on the server?'

[JaydeMoon]

Think we're miscommunicating. I get that you want the community to weigh in on it...

I read that you thought the suggestion was somehow making it unavailable to the community and putting whether or not we allowed favored souls into the hands of individual DMs.

That's where i'm lost.

[dergon darkhelm]

I guess I'm still confused too

I have no problem in general with the concept of ALFA as a representative democracy. Whether people want to approach this or other issues as "ballot initiatives" that go to the community as a whole or as "legislation" that is introduced, debated, and passed or rejected by elected officials is a broader topic.

I just wanted to put this the community and let (rational and calm) voices be heard on the subject.

Who knows .......maybe we'll even come up with some good ideas while we shoot the breeze!

[JaydeMoon]

Ah, i see what you are getting at!

Let me put a little background on this for you, then:

The issue of the suitability for Favored Soul's inclusion into ALFA as a class came up far before ALFA went live with TSM.

The Standards Team, under the purview of Rusty, determined that it was not ready for inclusion into ALFA at the time ALFA went live with TSM.

There was a promise date that the issues surrounding Favored Soul would be hammered out in about a week.

There was some debate about the class in the Standards Forum, but eventually it stalled.

What has now happened is that the issue has been taken from the decision making process belonging to a single Admin (the DMA), and by extension his constituency (the DMs and, to some degree, Heads of Staff), to putting it before ALL of the Admin and thus more closely to the community as a whole.

So the move to post it there as a poll for the admin was a move made to put the decision out there for the community (by representative) and to hurry along a stagnant decision making process.

What do we want? Favored Souls (and Warlocks)! When do we want em?

NOW!

[danielmn]

AND A BOATLOAD OF KUNG FOOS!!!!!!!

[Kest]

I don't see how roleplaying one of these should be considered any more special or difficult than a
paladin/bard/cleric/druid, but whatever lets you folks sleep at night.

[JaydeMoon]

Bards are Arcane casters... but on your point:

Those classes all work proactively and spend years becoming those things. they work hard to prove themselves worthy of the divine attention that they receive.

Favored Souls just get it. Tymora likes you, POOF! You're a Favored Soul.

Second, even moreso than rare races like plane-touched, Favored Souls are even rarer.

Some deities may not even HAVE Favored Souls. Others have up to a handful, in all the realms, at any given time.

It's gonna be a stretch on my immersion if we have two Favored Souls of Helm in one place.

Meanwhile, anyone can strive for and become a paladin/cleric/druid. Just gotta have the right mindset.

So, yes, there are RP considerations that apply to Favored Soul that just do't apply to the others. Whether that warrants special circumstances is your personal opinion I suppose, but saying that they aren't any different is not supported by the facts.

[Runestaff]

Some deities may not even HAVE Favored Souls. Others have up to a handful, in all the realms, at any given time.

It's gonna be a stretch on my immersion if we have two Favored Souls of Helm in one place.

Depending on the deity, this could be quite appropriate. Perhaps the deity grants his/her favor to multiple people so that they can compete against each other, either to see who is most worthy of that attention, or to mutually improve themselves through struggle.

Alternatively, a chaotic or evil deity could have multiple favored souls to further the spreading of strife/tyranny/disorder/etc.

The point is that it should not be so difficult to imagine plausible IC reasons for having multiple FS of a particular deity that we should overly regulate the class. Such fears of too many PCs of class/race/gender X have been cited ad nauseum every time something new is suggested for addition (prestige classes, planetouched, whatever). Such fears have largely proved unrealized and unworthy of the drama they have spawned.

[JaydeMoon]

Some deities may not even HAVE Favored Souls. Others have up to a handful, in all the realms, at any given time.

It's gonna be a stretch on my immersion if we have two Favored Souls of Helm in one place.

Depending on the deity, this could be quite appropriate. Perhaps the deity grants his/her favor to multiple people so that they can compete against each other, either to see who is most worthy of that attention, or to mutually improve themselves through struggle.

Alternatively, a chaotic or evil deity could have multiple favored souls to further the spreading of strife/tyranny/disorder/etc.

The point is that it should not be so difficult to imagine plausible IC reasons for having multiple FS of a particular deity that we should overly regulate the class. Such fears of too many PCs of class/race/gender X have been cited ad nauseum every time something new is suggested for addition (prestige classes, planetouched, whatever). Such fears have largely proved unrealized and unworthy of the drama they have spawned.

You are absolutely right. However, one might reasonably suggest that whether such is plausible would be up to the DMs who are, after all, running those Deities and their organizations?

I mean Five favored souls of Bane might be plausible in Zhentil Keep, but two in Silverymoon might not, so much.

In this case it's not even a fear of 'too many', but whether a DM wants to deal with a favored soul of ANY particular deity within their server.

And again, those are opinions, neither right nor wrong. Overall we should go with what makes the community as a whole feel better about the whole thing.

[Misty]

A suggestion:

The courteous thing, it seems, would be to PM the HDM on which server the FS character would be started. The PM would include both requesting permission and submitting a small bio. While this may strike some as encouraging the Fiefdom Mentality, it also addresses the practical aspect of SOMEONE being required to coordinate any sort of DMing for said PC. HDM serves that role.



This leads to two possible outcomes:

HDM accepts and posts in the Extraordinary PC section (level 10+, PrCs, etc) of DM forums: PC X is playing a Favored Soul of Deity Y. No more info is really needed at the beginning. Favored Soul or not, PC may still die before lvl 3, and no amount of saying 'but my deity objects' will reverse it.

Or DM rejects with polite reason why. 'no DM support for concept' or whathaveyou.