Just because I'm curious, if this mud supposed to be maintaining a balance between all of the various class and race combos then where do these immortals get go about giving their favorite RPer's unique weapons and skills? I think I saw a storm giant shifter with a high form, I've seen pouncing paladins, and giants using unique weapons striking obliterates on damage absorbing defense forms with sleek protections up. How are people supposed to compete with players that take hordes of four or more people to even make them pause and think about fleeing? I'm just curious how this fits into all the balance of the mud. Whatever happened to a last name and a unique title being just rewards, I could see extra edge points being feasable, maybe a tattoo that can do something nifty? Seems kind of unfair to the other cabals who don't have unfair powerhouses to even the odds, specially cabals and the like with infrequent or no overseeing patron or matron at all. What if everybody goes about playing superb RP does that mean a shiny new toy for all?

Thank you for the straight forwards answers, Appreciatated.

The first question I'd put to you is, what do you think balanced is? To give you part of our answer, some of the idea is that each class is, overall, about as good as the other classes; it's definitely not (for example) that all the classes have an equal chance of winning a 1 on 1 cage match with each other. So, for example, an invoker who picks the circumstances of the fight might have a good chance to send three other characters running. Does that mean the invoker is unbalanced or better than those three characters? We don't think so, because there's a bigger picture beyond what happens in one given fight that plays to one character's strengths and maybe not other characters' strengths.

Liches excepted, you're not going to see many if any powerhouses that need two characters to kill, much less that take four to even make pause as you're saying.

Most of the immortal-given rewards that you'll see really aren't that strong. A common reward for outstanding warriors, for example, is a third legacy, but it generally will be one that character probably would have not picked given the choice.

You also should consider that my/our favorite characters and the biggest magnets for rewards aren't the toughest characters in my religion or cabal, but rather the best characters in the game. It's something we do mostly with out administrator hats on, not with our running-a-religion hats on. Providing incentives to create cool, memorable characters that other people want to fight and interact with helps raise the quality of characters that everyone plays with, and that's a good thing for you even if you're not the person drawing some kind of perk this time.

In most cases, if you see a really tough character, most or all of the really toughness is available in the game for everyone, up for grabs. Someone's cracking people with a sword for oblits? I didn't give him that sword. Probably, it's out there in the game and he went and got it. You could, too.

While we try our best to maintain a balance amongst the various combos, we can only control the basics of it. How powerful a build can then become, is up to or dependent on the player.

As for rewards..regarding unique weapons - The best possible weapons anyone can get are all fair competition out there in the game. In fact, imm-given weapons/instruments/eq are usually not as desirable from a pk pov compared to something else a player may have in his inventory. It is more for rp purposes that chars even use them.

As for skills/spells/sups, we may hand out a really cool one but we certainly won't make an OP char (on his/her own) even more OP. We do take such things into consideration when rewarding. I did give an elf warrior cry of thunder for best RC entry, but eh, I think she was something like 12-100 :p

In regards to your last point, yeap! If everyone RPs superbly and we manage to catch it, hell yes we're gonna reward it. But to be realistic here..that will never happen, though we can certainly do our best to encourage such.

If you're not sure how to go about earning such rewards..there are a few ways to do so:
-Write a really good role and win the monthly RC
-Keep your rp top-notch 24/7
-Good pkers (in relation to their cabal enemies, etc) do get rewarded too
-Be really involved and useful to your cabal
-Participate in events and quests (yes, even Herald ones! :p)
-Follow a religion and make your deity fall in love with you
-Char longevity
-Probably more if anyone else wants to suggest.

Chances are, chars with really nice perks covered one or more of the above..it's not magic, everyone can get there.

Well what I'm really saying here I guess, is that we can only balance mechanics. How good something can then become, is up to you. :) Cheers!

>What if everybody goes about playing superb RP does that mean a
>shiny new toy for all?

Yes. You get rewarded for RPing well, not just sitting around or doing the bare minimum.

You want shiny powers for an edge over everyone else? RP really well, or kill people and RP well.

Edited because it came out as overly harsh sounding.

>I think I saw a storm giant shifter with a high form
If anything, I have to think that being a storm giant as a shifter would hurt more then help. It was all done for RP, as far as I know, and again...there was no real advantage to being a giant shifter.

>I've seen pouncing paladins
I believe that this is from a tattoo.

>and giants using unique weapons striking obliterates
Leader weapon and deathblow (a villager ability) perhaps?

>What if everybody goes about playing superb RP does that mean a
>shiny new toy for all?

Everyone is capable of the things mentioned above so if you consider them toys, the answer is yes.

I know this is somewhat brief, but I hope it clears up a few things for you.

Best!