Perhaps give each class a skill/spell/song that kick ass at 51? unholy bless at 51, assassinate at 51, fiend at 51...maybe that would allow some to stop level sit!

Another (I think it was helpful) idea given by

Beerdude the Renegade of Funk!

I see all the current classes as being fairly well balanced when it comes to their levels and relative powers.

Assassins gaining assassinate at level 35 is pretty balanced in comparison to what other classes get in and around that level, as well. Some classes have a slow developing power curve... starting out slow and then gaining more power faster as they get to the later half of the levels (i.e. Mages)... Others gain a lot of power early on, but then learn less things as they progress throughout the levels... and others still gain a steady amount of power as they progress.

Level sitting has its advantages, but also has major disadvantages. It all depends on WHY you are level sitting. Are you an empowerment character, not wanting to progress any further before hearing from your God? Are you a human assassin at level 35, stalking and assassinating everyone within your range? Distention helps to counteract this in some way, though I believe too little of a degree from my experience... however I assume it was designed like that because some people, quite honestly, don't level sit on purpose. Sometimes they have a string of bad luck, mob deaths, and whatnot.

Generally I believe level-sitting to be a bad idea, but that's only because of my playing style. I don't find it desirable to sit at any one level for any period of time. I always feel that striving for Hero is in my best interest.

Most of the time people are truly missing out on a lot if they level sit. Most every class does get some cool ability that should be on a person's high list to attain up at 51, or at the very least the mid-high 40s... With the possible exceptions of Healers, Rangers, Shaman, Thieves and Trannies.

I think level sitting is perceived to be more of a problem than it really is.

But I do think it would be rather cool to give some
incentive to reaching 51. Not rearranging current skills,
but say, giving assassins something like "death kick of doom"
or whatever. If you did this with every class and worked on
balance, it would be fine.

The problem is choosing an ability for each class, considering
that the classes are fairly well-rounded as they are.

My idea of 51 - hero - is characters truly epic in scale.

This is why I loved the legacies. With some of these legacies,
you finally feel that "this is my own shtick. I'm a mighty warrior,
and I'm different from all the other mighty warriors. Tremble before
me!" I would move the legacies to 45 and 51 just to give a heroing incentive.

Anyway, maybe something similar to legacies for some of the other
classes would work. Assassins -do- get rising phoenix kick at 46, anyway.

Personally I don't have a problem with level sitting. If you want to fight a level sitter, don't level past them.

There is, however, already an incentive to hero (at least for me). At hero, everyone in your range is lower or equal level to you. This isn't the case sub-hero, particularly for high exp penalty races and classes.

I chose to respond here because I wanted to hit this one specific point, but I'm commenting on the whole thread to this point as much as anything further down.

>I would move the legacies to 45 and 51 just to give a
>heroing incentive.

On the other hand, what was the last time you can remember a warrior intentionally sitting at 44 or 48 to "exploit" their legacy? I sure can't think of any.

In my perfect world, there'd probably be some class-ability-based incentive for a character of any class to enter the hero range, i.e. 42+. After that, not being nine levels down from that invoker that keeps whipping you (or whatever) is really enough incentive to keep moving to make me happy.

In general I don't see level sitting as a problem, and I'm happy with the way distention has things set up. You can't sit and kill at a given level forever, but neither does the game have to be a mad race to hero every time. I love the fact that PK is a real limitation and hazard to levelling a character on CF, and characters that are not rushing to level tend to be a big part of that equation. If you remove the element of PK, ranking a character up seems horrifically boring to me, in most cases -- a few very interesting or dangerous areas being the exception. Levelling in the Emerald Forest, having to watch your back, knowing that at any time someone could come jump you at an inopportune time? Now that's interesting.

Just something I was throwing out.