Core change to LEW

[Bront]

I think I have an idea of a core change in LEW that I think will ultimately be a good thing.

1) Remove the 3 character limit. Instead, players after 3 characters may only have 1 active 1st level character.

2) Due to the change in the above issue, Players with the Leadership Feat may recruit another player to play their henchman, and their Henchman follows all normal LEW rules except for XP advancement, which follows the core SRD (I don't think we've made any changes to that) version of XP advancement.


Why:
There is nothing stoping players from opening a second account to play more people anyway, and realy, the 3 characters is an artificial limit. Many players play less than 3 anyway. This also gets rid of one of the main objections to the Leadership feat, which is bypassing the 3 character rule.

Edit:
Batted around ideas.
- No increase
- Expending GM credits one time to get an extra character slot (1 per # of current characters seems to be current thought, 3 GMCs for the 4th character, etc)
- Flat increase (Seems to be not approved)

[Creamsteak]

I'm not sure what "core SRD version of XP advancement" is.

[Bront]

For leadership, it's a level ratio. If I'm 9th level, and my companion is 7th level, my companion earns 7/9 of my XP earnings. It's mildly annoying, since it means your companion can never catch up XP, though it does limit XP draining for Craft XP from a companion.

[Bront]

Ok, apparently LEW is instead they earn XP normal for their level outside of other players. Reading it now, it's worded rather poorly, so we might have to reword it.

[Manzanita]

I believe the three-PC rule was originally instituted for the sake of fairness. We were concerned there wouldn't be enough DMs to go around if some people had large stables of characters. Keeping it to three was a way to help newer players find games.

I don't believe circumstances have changed since then.

I do understand why some players would want a 4th PC. Sometimes a particurly juicy 1st level adventure will start & we wish we could get in. Or some DMing ideas I have involve starting with a party of 1st level PCs, who were, say, all members of the Monemvasia militia.

This may be a bit whacky, but what if we allowed additional PCs over 3 for a certain number of DM credits. That way, we would reward DMing with more PCs. That has a certain goes-around comes-around ring to it.

[Rystil Arden]

Perhaps a number of credits equal to your current number of PCs? So then 3 credits for a 4th, 4 more for a 5th, and so on. This allows the quite-reasonable 4th character for a not-too-insane cost while still limiting the creation of 15 new PCs for a set cost each (anyone who can afford to create 15 new PCs using my scheme deserves the ability to play 18 PCs--they have to pay 150 credits, which is like GMing an adventure with us for over a decade)

[Bront]

Originally Posted by Manzanita

I believe the three-PC rule was originally instituted for the sake of fairness. We were concerned there wouldn't be enough DMs to go around if some people had large stables of characters. Keeping it to three was a way to help newer players find games.

I don't believe circumstances have changed since then.

I do understand why some players would want a 4th PC. Sometimes a particurly juicy 1st level adventure will start & we wish we could get in. Or some DMing ideas I have involve starting with a party of 1st level PCs, who were, say, all members of the Monemvasia militia.

This may be a bit whacky, but what if we allowed additional PCs over 3 for a certain number of DM credits. That way, we would reward DMing with more PCs. That has a certain goes-around comes-around ring to it.

I disagree at this point. Often, the ones who have multiple characters are the ones more encouraged to run a game or two, as well as write new material for LEW. Many people would choose not to run an extra, but I know a few who would love to. However, my idea of limiting it to 1 L1 character at a time beyond 3 (And I mean 1 L1 active total, regardless of it being in or out of an adventure) should keep that in check, and we can even add that players with 3 or less character get first dibs on adventures if they want it, so that regular players with more characters can't squeeze out other players.

I don't mind the DM Credit idea though. It encourages people to run games, but I might suggest adding something to the DM credits then. When a player writes a new rule, feat, class, or location that gets approved, that they should get a DM credit as well. This encourages players who aren't good or into DMing but good at writing fluff or world expanding material a reward, and allow them to earn the right to get an extra character as well.

[Wik]

Originally Posted by Bront

I don't mind the DM Credit idea though. It encourages people to run games, but I might suggest adding something to the DM credits then. When a player writes a new rule, feat, class, or location that gets approved, that they should get a DM credit as well. This encourages players who aren't good or into DMing but good at writing fluff or world expanding material a reward, and allow them to earn the right to get an extra character as well.

That, to me, is a great idea.

As for the beyond 4 characters rule, well - as Bront said, nothing stops someone from just opening up another account.

By charging DM credits, while also rewarding credits for "non-DM" activities such as feat-writing or world building, we can really build upon LEW. And I'm all aces with that.

[Rystil Arden]

I disagree with Bront and Wik.

Okay, I only disagree sort of--there should absolutely, positively, definitely be ZERO GM credit reward for writing a new rule, feat, or class (the majority of Bron't proposal). This is a terrible idea. It encourages unnecessary rules bloat, as players strive to invent useless crunch to get rewards (remember, GM credits can also be used for XP--do you want me to gain a level because I invented 20 worthless rules just for the credits?). But the last thing Bront mentioned, locations, is worthwhile to consider rewarding--or in a broader sense: fluff.

On the other hand, we need to have an extremely wary eye and reining hand on rewarding the fluff as well or you lose the living world aspect--in almost all cases, it is easier for a GM to ignore our world and invent their own detached location, rather than read up on everything and correctly use an established location. By giving the lazy GM extra credit for inventing a location, we may be rewarding the wrong thing as well as decentralising everything and keeping it less connected.

[Wik]

Good point.

Really, though, I like the idea of encouraging Players to participate, in any way necessary. Why not differentiate between GM credits, and Player Credits?

Invent a feat? You get PC Credits, which you can use to bypass the 3 PC limit, and maybe do some other fun things within the rules. I dunno, just spitballing here.

[Bront]

Perhaps a better way to do this would be to add this cavat.

When voting for a new feat, class, god, fluff, etc, judges can opt to include a vote of a GM credit. So feats, classes, fluff, or anything else that judges feel deserve a credit could get them. It takes 3 votes for a credit to get one.

Removes any retroactiveness (It'd be a pain to vote retroactively on it), and allows judges to reward creative players who come up with something that truely adds to LEW, but not reward a simple rule fluff or added extra. it also encourages new things to be fluff focused as well as rules focused.

I'm not fixated on this particular part of my proposal, I'm more interested in getting the # of characters expanded, and possibly using that to remove some of the problems people had with the leadership feat.

[Wik]

Yeah, the leadership feat idea is kind of novel. I'd love to play someone's henchman - a tie to another PC is something I'd like to see (I'm trying to set it up so that Galwynn remains in a static "adventuring party").

[orsal]

Originally Posted by Manzanita

I believe the three-PC rule was originally instituted for the sake of fairness. We were concerned there wouldn't be enough DMs to go around if some people had large stables of characters. Keeping it to three was a way to help newer players find games.

I don't believe circumstances have changed since then.

I do understand why some players would want a 4th PC. Sometimes a particurly juicy 1st level adventure will start & we wish we could get in. Or some DMing ideas I have involve starting with a party of 1st level PCs, who were, say, all members of the Monemvasia militia.

This may be a bit whacky, but what if we allowed additional PCs over 3 for a certain number of DM credits. That way, we would reward DMing with more PCs. That has a certain goes-around comes-around ring to it.

Great idea! It establishes the connection between DMing as a service and having extra PCs as a reward; as long as the DM-to-PC ratio is out of balance on the PC side (as it very much is right now), that makes a lot of sense. And, as one who was never entirely happy with DM credits as a way to benefit a PC, I like metagame rewards better.

[Trouvere]

Originally Posted by Wik

Yeah, the leadership feat idea is kind of novel. I'd love to play someone's henchman - a tie to another PC is something I'd like to see (I'm trying to set it up so that Galwynn remains in a static "adventuring party").

Well, Keldar already introduces Galwynn as "my manservant", or "a farmer who followed us on the road for protection." I'm just not sure he wants to waste a precious feat on him.

Anyway. I'm not sure what to make of this new use for DM credits. I'd like to think it would encourage newcomers to run games, but I fear it would just further reward the usual suspects who run games anyway, and risk shutting LEW off into a private club.

Edit: that sounded more negative than I intended. I just mean I'd prefer to see another 30 characters run by 30 people than another 30 run by 10.

Edit 2: I pulled those numbers off the top of my head, but they're not far wrong. Looking down the list of active characters, I see 21 players who have reached the 3 character limit, and 7 or 8 of those are names I recognise as regular DMs.

[Manzanita]

I'm with RA that giving DM credits for successful proposals is a bad idea. I suppose Bront's suggestion that it would happen only if three judges voted for it is acceptable. I think we are short on administrative help, and perhaps our world would benefit from rewarding it.

I like the idea of a PC being another's henchman.

[Patlin]

It seems to me that if you're playing three characters, you ought to be DMing, too. It just feels... balanced.

I'm inclined to agree with Manzanita that there were sufficient reasons to limit to 3 PCs and that those reasons (even though they predated my involvement here) are still good. While I understand that those willing to do so can 'cheat' by creating another account and play another three characters, I think most people would understand and respect the rule enough not to do that.

Finally, a diversity of players is good to have. If it's just a few of us playing in several games at once, we're open to major disruptions when someone becomes unavailable. I know my posting rate dropped this week due to a cold I still haven't gotten rid of, and the games I DM haven't moved much this week. Wouldn't that be even more irritating if a player who turned up missing was in all of your games, and stalled everything? I think it would.

I vote NO to changing the three character limit.

[Rae ArdGaoth]

I like Manzanita's idea, about using DM credits to play a 4th PC. It seems to me that, for the reasons Patlin stated, a player with more than three characters might unintentionally overcommit. Also, the DM to PC ratio would be better in proportion with this plan. Would it be a "pay once" kind of thing? Or a "pay per level" deal? Or perhaps a "You must keep at least this many DM credits per level in reserve" scheme. That way, you can play another character, but you don't have to actually lose DM credits over it. So if you want, you can retire a character and spend those credits on one of your remaining ones.

Players playing henchmen is a fine idea as well, though I don't think that PC henchmen should get any special benefits from being played by another player (not that anybody's suggested this). There might not even need to be a limit to how many henchmen a player can play.

Giving DM credits for proposals would lead to bad things, I'm pretty sure. I'd qualify that, but it seems that's the consensus, so I won't bother.

[Boddynock]

Hmm, I would have thought that this community is stable enough now (as opposed to when LEW was first set up ) to be able to deal with players fielding more than three characters. I do think, however, that there ought to be some requirement for running more than three.

I like Manzanita's idea of 'purchasing' an extra character with DM credits, and I like RA's modification to equate number of credits required with number of pre-existing characters. Let's not get too complicated, though - a single payment of credits when the character is approved should be fine. (Certainly not at each level. )

I don't think that we'd necessarily be severely disenfranchising players by taking this line. In fact, I think it's quite appropriate to express a hope that people who are really enjoying playing on the boards might give something back by DMing the odd game (and let's face it - we're only talking about 3 months as a DM to scrape together the points for a 4th character).

I'm not taken with the idea of offering credits for a successful proposal - the "rules bloat" which could result if we did so is definitely something to avoid.

I'd like a bit more clarity on just how we'd go forward with this before I vote on it.

[Boddynock]

Anybody have any further ideas on this?

[Solange]

I'm in favor of allowing more than 3. I'd have stayed here instead of entering Living Eberron if they did.