A lot of the bitching about rewards within the last two years or so had several immortals saying they'd keep a closer watch on controlling imm rewards. I thought about it for awhile and I thought this would be an excellent way of officially standardizing rewards and making it much more clear to each player what kind of reward they got and why.

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tl;dr: I don't know how you guys are managing it now, but I've always thought rewards should be in three different categories or tiers. Low tier, for flashy stuff that doesn't really change much, mid tier for power boosts that are significant but not gamechanging, high tier for big rewards that can completely change the nature of the character.


Obviously there's going to be some overlap and some blurred lines, but I feel like there would be far less accusations of favoritism or cheating if rewards were standardized like this so imms had some guideline of what kind of power they were giving out, and their followers had some idea of how powerful their reward was relative to everyone else.

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Expanding on my thoughts below.

Lower tier rewards are minor class/cabal edges or weaker quest spells, like chain poison, or large sets of imm exp. They're tiny boosts to the character's abilities that are always helpful but by themselves aren't a huge boost in power. Stuff like the first paladin virtue and/or the

Mid tier rewards could be stuff like stronger quest spells, stronger pally virtues, weaker passive legacies, another greater enliven, questy familiars, powers ordinarily reserved for other cabal. Quest forms which overlap with current form abilities. Giving a quest form with fly to an air shifter, could make him a lot stronger but won't completely overpower him. Stuff like that. Mid tier rewards are big boosts in power, but not game-changers. (I remember a villager, Tontik, getting ignite, which I thought was cool, useful and strong without completely changing the nature of his build).

The highest tier of rewards would be stuff like stronger active legacies, greater conjurations, quest forms with new abilities (giving flying to an offense/defense shifter or an offense form to a water/defense shifter), extra orc adaptation skills, super quest spells like chain lightning, skills like executioner's grace, etcetera. You know; the game changer stuff.

Stuff like leadership promotions should be factored in, too. Fort leadership would be a low-tier power boost - you get a nice nodisarm weapon, but you can get better weapons outside of the Fort, so its not really a significant reward in power, just a reward of convenience. On the other hand, scion leadership is more of a high-tier boost - every single one of the already strong scion powers become potentially a lot stronger.

Some abilities would change naturally change tiers depending on the character in question. For example, virtues. A temperance and fortitude 2-virtued pally is probably going to be stronger than a pally with 3 less powerful virtues. A temperance and fortitude polearm pally is going to be a lot weaker than a defiance 2-hander pally with the same virtues. Thief points are another possible reward that sticks out to me, thief points on some thieves will be a weaker, low-tier boost, while thief points on others could potentially be a high-tier one. I think cases like those could be handled as they come up.

Higher tier rewards should only come with 300+ hours, standout RP, and strong presence and leadership. Mid-tier rewards could be part of the role contest and also given to characters which don't quite make the high tier, but deserve something nice for trying really hard and putting a lot of time, effort, and work in anyway - lower tier rewards could be awarded by whim, as a character does something awesome, and are more for flash or a pat on the back than anything else.

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I've always boggled that people thought Mochodin with imm exp and a cabal edge was overrewarded, for example, when there were multiple people walking around at the time with quest forms and greater conjurations and third legacies - stuff that's a thousand times more powerful than anything twist's thief got.

I think the big issue is not that people hate imms giving out lots of rewards, it's that they don't perceive the methodology being used for these rewards as one that's completely fair. This would make it easier for imms, even deadbeat ones, to be fair.

This might also be a useful vehicle for controlling cabal wars. For example, if Fort is super strong all the time and empire is super weak all the time, we could have Baer handing out frequent low-tier rewards while scaling back on the higher-tier ones, and have Enilith give more mid and high-tier ones to his underdogs.