...people playing neutrals terribly?

Now, I haven't played anything over level 11 since I deleted my lich, so my grasp on current happenings is probably close to feeble. However, I've always despised the way that people play their gnomes and svirfs in this game...even wood-elves to a lesser extent.

How about closing neutrality as an alignment choice unless the player sends in a role concept (consisting of at least one role entry explaining the character's motives) and gets it approved by the staff? Perhaps allow neutrals to be rolled up as usual, but they'd have to gain "approval" at level 10, in addition to picking a sphere and writing a description. I'm not one to generally propose a restriction like this...but let's take a glance at what the outcome might be:


A)Greater frequency of both good and evil characters, which would lead to more heated cabal situations and make fence-sitting far less common. This equals more war, and MORE BLOOD!!!

B)Neutrals would be far more rare (and the neutral mindset, at least to me, seems like it should be a damned rare thing anyways), and the RP bar for those characters would be held to a higher standard.

C)Cabal leaders, during tense times, might actually call upon the archetypal "wise old gnome" to mediate in their politics. Imagine if we had something like that when Onirakoth was stirring #### up with the Fortress? We could have had some sagely gnome being paid to work out a truce, while at the same time we'd have Onirakoth secretly hiring assassins to kill him off and blame it on the Maran! Intrigue!

D)No more evil characters that are immune to wrath!

E)No more good characters that are immune to Scions!

F)Waaaay less of a problem for paladins and other goodies who try to roleplay non-violence on anything that isn't evil. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to waste someone with Iramath but couldn't act on it without violating RP (this doesn't count for those who were helping evils rank and got waxed in the crossfire).


I know people will scream about this being a negative change (if it ever happened), but I wouldn't post on it if I didn't think it might really up the playing field. Anyone else feelin' me?

I hate watching fortress lackies.

Or the gnome/svirf/clouds who run around with ap's and necros in the early ranks (up to 30) killing everything in sight for no reason. People who obviously chose those races for the pk aspect, and are most likely perma-ing.

Yes, I hate those.

But, I do think your idea would be too draconian. There is enough problem that some people have with empowerment, and the Imms are busy, so that any sort of Imm-approval on a per-character basis would be completely unworkable.


I could, however, be convinced that a re-balancing of the races to make these neutral races less the obvious choice of power gamers could be the way to go.

Because, lets face it. 25 str with perma fly and giant resist? 25 wis with all those extra trains? inh stoneskin and the ability to reduce so you can't be bashed? All three of these neutral races have inherent perks that make them often the choice of powergamers who want to group up and tear #### up, but don't want to have to deal with the downsides of choosing a race that has to be evil/good.

(fire giants aren't any stronger, and don't fly and are stupider, if I am just going for the power game, why choose fire, even if I will be only acting evil?, Storm giants are weaker, and don't fly, why would I choose storm if I am just going to power game, even if I will be only acting good? )

Ironically enough, while I tend to somewhat agree with you and Graham, given the choice of giant races, cloud would be my last pick. Its got horrible, horrible weaknesses.

>(fire giants aren't any stronger, and don't fly and are
>stupider, if I am just going for the power game, why choose
>fire, even if I will be only acting evil?

Fire giants have better con than clouds, and their vuln is possible to cover. They are also resistant to fire.

>Storm giants are
>weaker, and don't fly, why would I choose storm if I am just
>going to power game, even if I will be only acting good? )

Storms have no vulns and are smarter than clouds. They have water breathing, are immune to water attacks and resistant to lightning. As a storm giant, you are not vuln to divine, mental and disease, like cloud giants are.

Feel free to play a cloud giant. If you do, you'll notice the holes your combo has. I admit that I thought of clouds pretty much like your post describes them. Then I played one and found out that clouds have quite nasty vulns.

You howl in pain as blood flows through the pores of your skin.
Your burning, weeping sores DISMEMBERS you!

You writhe in agony from the plague.
Your sickness MUTILATES you!

Clouds don't wait out the plague. They die to it or have it healed. The shaman mob(You could kill Mulstint with your little finger) that caused this plague(the latter mutilate) also blinded my cloud, and lo, he was a goner.

If PBF had a breakdown of race I'm pretty sure about 60% of my shaman's pks were cloud giants. The most common phrase I associated with them was 'free gear'.

>...people playing neutrals terribly?

If we think people aren't playing them correctly, why don't we clarify what neutral means to CF then? I lay odds people are playing neutrals as they see fit, which may or may not tie in with your opinion.

>...people playing neutrals terribly?
>
>Now, I haven't played anything over level 11 since I deleted
>my lich, so my grasp on current happenings is probably close
>to feeble. However, I've always despised the way that people
>play their gnomes and svirfs in this game...even wood-elves to
>a lesser extent.
>
>How about closing neutrality as an alignment choice unless the
>player sends in a role concept (consisting of at least one
>role entry explaining the character's motives) and gets it
>approved by the staff? Perhaps allow neutrals to be rolled up
>as usual, but they'd have to gain "approval" at level 10, in
>addition to picking a sphere and writing a description. I'm
>not one to generally propose a restriction like this...but
>let's take a glance at what the outcome might be:
>
>
>A)Greater frequency of both good and evil characters, which
>would lead to more heated cabal situations and make
>fence-sitting far less common. This equals more war, and MORE
>BLOOD!!!

I don't like fence sitting either.

>B)Neutrals would be far more rare (and the neutral mindset, at
>least to me, seems like it should be a damned rare thing
>anyways), and the RP bar for those characters would be held to
>a higher standard.

Fewer neutrals would be the result of your changes yes. But why should the RP bar be higher for neutrals? Why not equal across the board for goods and evils too? You want to make playing a neutral like playing an empowerment char.

>C)Cabal leaders, during tense times, might actually call upon
>the archetypal "wise old gnome" to mediate in their politics.
>Imagine if we had something like that when Onirakoth was
>stirring #### up with the Fortress? We could have had some
>sagely gnome being paid to work out a truce, while at the same
>time we'd have Onirakoth secretly hiring assassins to kill him
>off and blame it on the Maran! Intrigue!

You neither need to be a race with high WIS or neutral to be good at intrigue. That is a measure of player skill. A smart, veteran player with an orc is far more cunning than a guy playing a "wise old gnome" that happens to be their second character.

>D)No more evil characters that are immune to wrath!

Neutrals aren't evil. Attacking a goodie does not constitute and evil act. Repeatedly attacking a goodie does not constitute an evil act. What if my gnome is sphere combat? I want to fight, damn it. Test my skills against people. Excuse me if I don't shed any tears when your paladin fights someone he can't spam "co wrath" on. Paladins, like all classes, have good and bad PK match-ups. It sounds like you're saying that you want this bad PK match-up covered up.

>E)No more good characters that are immune to Scions!

I've killed plenty of neutral characters with my Scions. I'm sure you have, too. How are they immune?

>F)Waaaay less of a problem for paladins and other goodies who
>try to roleplay non-violence on anything that isn't evil. I
>can't tell you how many times I wanted to waste someone with
>Iramath but couldn't act on it without violating RP (this
>doesn't count for those who were helping evils rank and got
>waxed in the crossfire).

Yeah, and I wanted to kill every non-mage asshole that attacked my rager repeatedly, but I couldn't do that. We set our own RP restrictions. Play by them. Don't force others to conform to your role.

>I know people will scream about this being a negative change
>(if it ever happened), but I wouldn't post on it if I didn't
>think it might really up the playing field. Anyone else
>feelin' me?

I wholly disagree.

Ummm No.

I think people shouldn't be made to prove anything. Doing as you suggest also bring side problems: Evils that aren't that evil, and goods that act evil occasionally, just to avoid the subscription with neutrality. I don't see any reason why neutrality should be rare, even if some people don't grasp how to RP their alignment. Neutral alignment is the one I'm most comfortable playing with, and I don't want to explain why my character should be allowed if the evil and good char don't have to do so. World isn't black and white. Why should CF be forced towards black and white?

Hola, and thanks for tossing in your opinions. Let me try to argue my point a bit.

I think people shouldn't be made to prove anything.

Your real-life philosophy doesn't hold up in CF, where people are actually forced to declare an alignment, an ethos, and even a general "guiding light" (spheres) for a character. Take a moment to really consider what it means to be "neutral"...I want to break it down using the helpfiles within CF:


Orderly Neutral: Also believes in a strong, well-organized government, whether
it is a tyranny or democracy. Organization and regimentation
bring benefits that outweigh any moral questions raised by
their actions.


Take, for example, the Spartans of ancient Greece. They stood 300-strong against the 250,000+ army of Xerces (or however the hell you spell his name), and beat those Persian bastards back so severely that even though every last Spartan fell, their enemy's spirit was broken. How does that effect us? That single, decisive battle changed the course of the entire western world. If the Persians had been victorious and conquered Greece, everything would be different now. So...does that mean the Spartans were good and noble? Maybe if you're uneducated you might think so...the truth is that they lived in a society which epitomizes "orderly neutral" - they were brutal as all hell to each other and to their slave population. In fact, to embrace their ways would be practically evil...yet we have to thank them for our modern world and the freedoms we now enjoy (which they utterly squelched in their day). It wasn't about morality...it was about ruling with an iron fist. How common can such a thing really be amongst common people? Soldiers could play this archetype well enough, but even they have their limits.


True Neutral: Almost impossible to find such people as the majority of people
make judgments. It is their duty to see that all of the forces
(evil, good, law, and chaos) remain in balance. Alliances with
such people are odd, as they tend to switch sides as one side
brings the other to the point of destruction.


I don't know about you, but I see a sentence that says "almost impossible to find such people". These folks could be masterminds or psychos...always seeming to be pulled by strings that few can see, and whose motives would seem utterly alien to the majority. Hannibal Lechter, anyone?


Chaotic Neutral: There is no order to anything, even their own actions.
Good and Evil are irrelevant when making a decision. They
are almost totally unreliable, except for the fact that you
can rely on them being like this. The true coin-flipper, they
rely on fate and chance to lead them.


Ok, have you ever walked down the streets of San Francisco and been harrassed by one of those hippy burn-outs who calls you names as he asks you for money, and then walks himself into a wall? Those guys could be in this catergory. Maybe some eccentric artsy type could fit in here too. Any way you cut it, I don't think any of these could be all that common.

We're talking CF, not the real world. Yes the game forces us to pick and RP these murky philosophical issues, but that doesn't mean you're bound to a specific way of interpreting them. I find Neutral to be a very good learning alignment/ethos. Even in the beginner guide it says to pick Neutral/Neutral. Aside from that, I have a slightly different take on Neutral/Neutral than what's in the help files.

While I think the current definition is an interesting one, it's also impossible to play unless you're a long-time veteran. I see N/N as being almost ambivalent, caring for neither side, making alliances whith whomever they feel like at that particular moment. They'll follow the laws if it's in line with their current plan/ideal/mood, and they'll cause upheaval with equal ease. They could be loners, party animals or all out nuts. There's a freedom with N/N that's hard to truly define, and IMO the stated definition doesn't help but I don't think it was really meant to. Balancing Good and Evil is interesting, but I don't think the balance shifts fast enough to make that truly plausable, might as well just pick the underdog side if you want to balance it out. I doubt N/N would truly care that much unless they were also sphere Balance, but then again sphere Balance might apply more to their lives than the battle between Good and Evil. Sphere War could be a good one for that also. There's several posibilities for and against. All in all probably the most complex combinations of ethos/alignment.

Orderly/Neutral. Not too hard. They want a system in place that could include both Good and Evil, exclude them or simply ignore them all together. I'd take the current legal setup in CF as O/N, it's largely blind to your alignment (otherwise there wouldn't be A-Ps and Necros, or Paladins, running around the protected cities) and comes down on anyone who breaks a law.

Chaotic/Neutral. I like your old hippie analogy, these guys are probably more anti-establishment than anything. Willing to kill for it but not go for all-out murder like a C/E would, probably likely to be with a group of the same thinking of any alignment.

Long-winded way of saying I disagree with your proposal. I see no reason to restrict the Neutral alignment. While your suggestion is well thought out and presented I don't think it's a good solution. I think you're saying the underlying problem is terrible RP, if so then we need to fix RP. I do agree there's too much Neutral-serial-killing going on, some people see Neutral as a good path to follow to PK loads, not have to think of a good reason for it and not have to watch your back as a Baddie. Making Neutral a permission-only path isn't going to solve bad RP, it's just going to cripple the game and possibly detract n00bz. Stop letting people in with real-world names, crack down on the shmucks who won't try to RP well or at all. Punish the mass murdering Neutrals, killing for the sake of killing is NOT Neutral, that's Evil. Killing someone for that nice axe or comfy looking boots sure, but not for your PK stats. Go play Evil and slaughter the world. You're also heaping loads of work on the Imms, and I honestly can't see anyone being game for reading through countless bad proposals to find a gem for a Neutral character. It's something that has to be felt out in-game by people. For every bad Neutral there's one bad Good and Evil role out there, there may be fewer Goodies, but I think the ratio of good/bad RP is probably about the same, though I think the tendancy of most Neutrals is to lean heavily towards Evil.

I was very skeptical reading it at first, but Mek's always had good points so I up and read through the whole thing and actually, it makes sense. I really like the approval thing at rank 10 especially, kind of like empowerment almost. Though I've no idea how we'd RP that at all, if we even had to. But it would definitely up the playing field, I 100% support this idea.