L4W Charter, Draft 2

[Erekose13]

I'm with Dunamin and Garyh, no level loss for retirement death-related or otherwise.

 

[elecgraystone]

I'll add my two cents in. I'm going to go with no level lose for retirement unless there is some kind of abuse of the system. As long as people aren't changing characters once a month or something silly like that, I don't see the need.

Personally, my 2nd characters will wait until FRPG is allowed.

 

[ukingsken]

I think elecgraystone has hit on an idea. Maybe the level penalty should loom as a "possible" penalty to dissuade people from retiring them just because. Maybe leave it up to a judge to decide whether it warrants a penalty or not? Although we'd still have to decide how much of one.

I'm still in favor of setting benchmark levels where people could recreate new characters, thus rewarding extended play and discouraging abuse of the retirement/character remake privilege.

 

[garyh]

I think elecgraystone has hit on an idea. Maybe the level penalty should loom as a "possible" penalty to dissuade people from retiring them just because. Maybe leave it up to a judge to decide whether it warrants a penalty or not? Although we'd still have to decide how much of one.

I can't speak for the other judges, but as for myself, I don't want any part in subjectively deciding how to penalize players. WAY too many ways for that to get ugly.

 

[elecgraystone]

I can't speak for the other judges, but as for myself, I don't want any part in subjectively deciding how to penalize players. WAY too many ways for that to get ugly.

Agreed. I'd rather see the first retirement free. After the first one, if you retire another character before X amount of time you get a penalty and the X time resets. That way if someone is really unhappy, they don't feel the need to keep playing that character but the penalty should keep people from testing out a bunch of characters.

 

[Dunamin]

I can't speak for the other judges, but as for myself, I don't want any part in subjectively deciding how to penalize players. WAY too many ways for that to get ugly.

Ditto!

 

[covaithe]

Likewise. As a judge, if I see someone retire a character and then submit a character that's very close to the one they retired but with better weapons, say, I'd probably have a chat with them by email before approving, pointing out that this isn't really what the retirement mechanism is for, and wouldn't they really rather try something else? If they did it again, I could see going so far as to refuse to approve the character, but I don't think I'd ever be happy selectively applying a mechanical penalty by fiat.

Perhaps if there were a paragraph something like,

This rule is intended to give players a way of gracefully escaping from characters they are tired of, or that aren't as much fun as they had hoped, or who have accomplished their character goals. It is not a license to continually optimize the same character, get out of permanent conditions for free, or choose better items for the same character. Players who abuse the retirement rule may find themselves warned by the judges, or their replacement characters denied approval.

Thoughts?

I still feel like there should be a level penalty, even if it's just one level.
My only real concern about the retirement thing is that it provides an opportunity for players to switch to the Flavor of the Month class. If we see a lot of 2nd level retirements when the swordmage class gets approved, or a lot of, say, 6th level retirements when barbarians are approved, it will annoy me. One reason that I've not been worried about power creep in new WotC publications was the belief that older characters would still be more powerful because they would be higher level. If there's no level penalty for retirement, that safeguard is gone.

 

[Atanatotatos]

I have to say that while I'd like to say there's no need for penalties (I'm for as much freedom is possible, if it wasn't clear), I agree with covaithe's concerns.

 

[JoeNotCharles]

I think a time limit makes more sense than a level penalty (ie. no more than one retirement in time period X). It attacks the concern about people skipping from character to character directly and feels less like an arbitrary punishment.

I'd also say that if you're retiring a character (except on death of your previous character) you can't post with the new one until it's fully approved. That stops people from assuming their retirement will be accepted.

 

[Atanatotatos]

Uhm...also, I guess having more than one character in the same adventure should be prohibited?