Another grab bag of questions today. Again, big thanks to Daevryn for filling in the (sometimes quite large) gaps in my knowledge.

Vimal asks:

Old CF had a few things we all remember/enjoyed. One for me was the heart exploding when you killed 3x your level until like 25? I def. remember having the badass felar rager assassin I thought I was going to go crazy with and then boom, I miscounted my PK's and my heart exploded.

Well, new CF brought about distention. While I think it's cool to extend that level range, I get pretty ugh about losing the previous targets.

I haven't put in any time to actually see what PK's you can do without
distending and I've briefly read some theories ppl have put on over the years but I'm sure like other stuff they are off as proven even by your edge posts(which I'm gobbling up btw thanks).

So I guess that is my request question, how does distention work?

Answer: You're allowed a certain number of kills per level. This number does not change as you go up, it's the same number regardless of level. Breaking this number removes the "9 levels above you" cap for PK range, and also starts giving you virtual XP which is used to calculate your range. The more you go over the number of kills, the higher your virtual XP is.


Howard asks:
Does luck do anything other than helping with skills that involve landing lucky blows? Bit more specific question what does the lucky edge do for it.

Answer: The first part of this question has been answered a number of times, most recently here: http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=53284&mesg_id=53287&page=

The second part, though. The Lucky edge increases your luck by 2. I would personally never take this edge if my character wasn't going to rely fairly heavily on gambling.


Jem Andican asks:
Please explain how AP charges are calculated in regards to how many people are worth.

Answer: Kills make you worth more, deaths make you worth less, and there are a couple little bonuses here and there for things that are hard for A-Ps to deal with. But 95% of the time it just comes down to kills and deaths. One example (and I only actually know one, personally) of a little bonus type deal is being a paladin with a virtue (2 or 3 virtues increases your value accordingly).

Just a few clarifications where something might have gotten lost in translation between Twist and I, or I feel like there's some ambiguity that could be misinterpreted.

>So I guess that is my request question, how does distention
>work?

Having your full question in front of me here, one thing I'd toss in is that (if I remember correctly), for the levels where "heart exploding" was a factor, distention almost always kicks in at that point or later. (It might be marginally earlier for the something like levels 11-13, I forget the exact math.) In terms of being able to play a low level PKer it's overall much more generous, in that if you see you actually have distended all you have to do is gain a level to clear it. Gaining a level doesn't inherently clear all distention, but if you've JUST barely distended you're close enough that it will.

>Answer: You're allowed a certain number of kills per level.
>This number does not change as you go up, it's the same number
>regardless of level.

Actually, your allowance per level isn't a linear thing. It's a crazy Valg parabola kind of looking graph. So as you level higher and higher it's harder and harder to distend.

>The second part, though. The Lucky edge increases your luck by
>2. I would personally never take this edge if my character
>wasn't going to rely fairly heavily on gambling.

I mostly agree here; the other cases I would make for Lucky are:

1) If you use an attack that has a special 'lucky opportunities' kind of message and effect a LOT, I would probably pick it. Like you're an axe spec and pincer is your answer to almost everything? Not my first choice, not a must-have, but at that point where you've gotten all the edges you really really feel like you must have and you're casting about for whatever else might be helpful? It might be helpful.

2) Since luck is a small factor in saving throws, if for whatever reason you were really obsessed with trying to crank your saves as high as possible, it would be a decent pick.

Full disclosure, I don't remember ever picking it myself though I probably have at some point.

>>Answer: You're allowed a certain number of kills per level.
>>This number does not change as you go up, it's the same
>number
>>regardless of level.
>
>Actually, your allowance per level isn't a linear thing. It's
>a crazy Valg parabola kind of looking graph. So as you level
>higher and higher it's harder and harder to distend.


Aha, yeah see when you said non-linear, MY assumption was "it's always the same number". I should have gotten clarification from you.