Niphty, that''s a little misguided. If you simply say "This is as high as you go!" everyone will hit that level. Here''s a coupla crazy landfish solutions.

1. NO LEVELING. The easiest way to destroy number crunching, don''t reward it. Make sure you make the rest of the game VERY interesting.

2. ATTRITION. Creates an "effective" ceiling to what can actually be achieved, hence never stating "that''s it, go home now."

3. CHARACTER BALANCE. Since leveling''s out the window, the fighter''s no longer the coolest thing to be! If you can make sure everything is balanced, you will encourage a SMALL number of hack/slash players, which is good.


The thing is, in order to eliminate powermaxing, you have to STOP ENCOURAGING IT! Now, I may have said this before, but a hit-point based, murder-based experience system where you get money and power form perforing one action over and over is going to encourage powermaxing. You can''t design a system with any of these traits and not expect it. Don''t even try!

Some of you may have the courage to implement a different kind of system, but most people are so scared or ignorant that anything past a murder-based system is silly! Ohh, I just though of a good thread-starter! Later.

"The unexamined life is not worth living."
-Socrates

Its a me, Mari... I mean Blackstream,

Anyways, I have two ideas. One, use the Ogre Battle system. Basically it works like this. If you level up too fast, your character becomes evil(lower alignment), and the people hate you. And the ending of the game depended on things like how much the people liked you. When a character of yours killed someone with higher alignment, they lost alignment, and when they killed someone with lower alignment, they gained alignment. With modifiers for the characters that are killed for having a higher or lower level of course.

The second solution is to do stats like Utima. You can''t max out all your stats because as you work on some stats, other neglected stats will go down. Then the only trick is to balance out your stats so that the powermaxers don''t just max those stats out and forget about the rest.

Simply put, the two ways to stop powermaxing is to either make it undesireable for the player, or impossible for the player.

See you all later



-Blackstream

"See you later, I'm going to go grab a few Bytes. I'm so thirsty, I could drink a whole data stream."

I agree with Landfish.

LEVELS are evils.
Character classes are too restrictive.
I don''t know any good RPG (someone that actually play a role) that like the class system and the everything is in your character creation thing.

Most true ROLE players prefer to build their character by enhancing their skills and not falling into archetypes.
They are magic users but not wizard, some are proficient swords user, some swords master know one or two magic trick, nothing wonderfull but rather usefull to his work/life.

In pen&paper games, we move from AD&D to more innovative and interesting systems (that can be abused for powergamers) in which your character as no more class and change through all his life, going best @ some things while staying on its knowledge on other areas.

The new RPG don''t want to be called RPG any more but prefer to referred as ''Interactive storytelling''.
The action is no more essential, but it''s the character tha now is the master piece of the game.
I''ve always (ok not in my earlier games) play that way, and almost all my players like it.

When they saw classic AD&D games, they are amazed how its ROLL playing rather than ROLE playing.
No character build up, just STATS enhancements.

Xp don''t exists anymore, instead they are character points and earned when facing a challenge/strong opposition and finding an efficient way of solving it /getting out of trouble.
Their is no reward killing people.
You''re rewarded only when you surpass yourself...

Isn''t that what the heroes are ?
People surpassing their weackness ?

All IMO.

-* So many things to do, so few time to spend *-

There''s one other way to avoid PowerMaxing.
Making it impossible to know if you really are the "best" at anything. You know you are alright, because most of the time it works well for you. But then you run into this thing that doesn''t even seem slightly annoyed at your pathetic attempts to poke it with your sword, and you start wondering. Is my sword bad? Is this thing immune to physical attacks? Do I just SUCK?

If there''s no indication of how close to "maximum" you are, you never really know how "good" you are. Like the hobby chess player, that beats everyone in his village, and then goes to a tournament to be thrashed utterly by the first semi-professional player he meets.

"Skill" is all very relative. What if you keep winning all your sword battles ''cause you have a VERY strong character. Basically, you''re using that sword as a club, but it''s worked fine so far. And then you meet this really tiny, weeny-looking swashbuckler. You think "I''ll turn that guy into daisy fertiliser in a second", but then none of your attacks get THROUGH to him ''cause he keeps on parrying.

It''s not a clear thought, I know, but I think the best way would be if it''s never really clear how good you are. You have your strengths/weaknesses, and you know which they are, but not by how much they differ from "average" or "maximum"


Give me one more medicated peaceful moment..
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
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MadKeithV it sounds to me like not displaying the players stats.

Or using a system in which you have X/unknown max.

Sounds interesting to me, even since I use % in my game systems.



-* So many things to do, so few time to spend *-

I think the way to go about preventing this sort of thing would be to select the kind of things that should gain the player rewards. And which things remove them from him.

This is based upon Blackstream''s thoughts.

Suppose we have a Mr. I. N. Joykillen, new to the town. Some rumour that he is here to stop the evil goblins (shock!) from overrunning the village, by destroying their evil leader (shock again!), is passing among the townsfolk. Joykillen, after a brief chat with the locals, decides to enter the dungeons (oh the pain) and slaughter all the goblins in his path to the leader.
And this Joykillen does. As expected, his battle experience rockets upwards as he cuts down, kills and generally annihilates all the little green creatures in his path.
But his respect for life drops. He now sees no problem in messing with the blacksmith, maybe threatening him for a new weapon. These new options open to Joykillen. And he uses them. He likes them. As a direct consequence of such, he loses more and more respect for his kinsmen. And his kinsmen start fearing him.

What happens now? Does the town plot an assault on Joykillen? A strategic ambush, perhaps? Maybe they summon a mystic mage, one who Joykillen has no chance of competing with?

Let me take this down a different road. He can threaten the blacksmith. The blacksmith knows it. The blacksmith starts feeling uncomfortable around him. He tells the rest of the townfolk. They start losing respect for Joykillen... and, likewise, plot to make him feel less at home. Does the local healer now refuse Joykillen treatment? Does the tavern owner not tell him gossip? How can such a ruthless killer be welcomed into such a warm and loving society?
Perhaps he is exiled, never able to perform heroic deeds again?

The RPG is an untapped resource. I want to see this change.

The_Minister
1C3-D3M0N Interactive