Power Level Reform

[Darth Woodrack]

I was asking if it was to overpowered, not if it could be a space marine. He doesn't work for anyone.

[+Ark1002]

I plan on using Araha a lot more, but yes, so am I.

[Darth Woodrack]

Just saying this: The current power level limits are okay, but they need to be enforced more. On paper it works, but in practice it doesn't. We do need to make sure that people aren't way to overpowered when they start, but we also need to make sure that they don't become gods. Hellbent is the perfect example of going to far. It was, 'oh I can do double chromium, nice', to 'oh a lightweaver, that's not to much' to, 'a cognitive shadow that can possess bodies, and keeps all former investiture, okay' to finally, 'let's make him an elantrian with an infinite stream of division surge, and immune to essence spike, on top of everything else!' 

What I'm saying is, we don't need to lower power limits, we need to make sure that character don't develop into gods. After the character is made, it is kind of that you can do whatever the heck you want, and nobody will challenge you. If someone is making an incredibly overpowered character, their weaknesses need to increase with it. Another thing that Hellbent shows us how not to do. Not only did he remove his initial weakness, of being physically weak without stormlight, it wasn't replaced! So know we have an incredibly powerful godlike entity, with no weakness. This is exactly what we should not be allowing.

[kenod]

I have thought up a number of proposals in order to try and put a limit to the power of characters. Note that these will mostly be soft limits, not hard limits. This is because its difficult to create a solid set of rules for this, and any set of hard caps will either create situations where people find a way around them, or where a great concept or plan isn't possible because of the rules.
(proposals are named weirdly to be easily recognizable. They're also spoilered because of length)

Law of Power Plausibility:

Spoiler

If a character is created, their powerset needs to be evaluated based on whether or not it is plausible for the character to have them. This doesn't mean that the powers are justified by the backstory, it means that it doesn't require beating astronomical odds to get those powers. It also means that acquiring those powers makes sense according to the rules of the cosmere.

Examples:

• A character grows up on Roshar, but snaps and becomes an Allomancer. This is alright, as long as the parents were worldhoppers from Scandrial. They also gain Feruchemical powers and are twinborn. This is stretching the realm of plausibility, the changes of a twinborn being born on Roshar from Scandrian parents is extremely low, perhaps just have them be from Scandrial instead. They also get radiant powers. This is so unlikely that a character like this shouldn't exist.
• Someone with a hemalurgic spike goes to Roshar and bonds a spren. This shouldn't happen. Almost all spren would be too revolted to bond with a person who has a hemalurgic spike, given that this almost requires them to have broken the first oath in an enormous way.
• Someone from off-world goes to Sel and acquires AonDor. This shouldn't happen. Being from the region in question is basically a requirement for AonDor. An off-worlder wouldn't be able to do this.

Addendum:
If the actual power of the combination is low, permission can be granted with community approval. This includes things like lower tier compounding types (copper, tin, bronze), weirder powers that are hard to evaluate (Mace's medium awareness) or powers that are powerful, but are played in an interesting way, or with interesting limits (certain epics, iron/zinc/brass compounders). While this might (again) give us characters with implausible powers, it would make sure that they're interesting to the rest of us.

Law of Community Approval:

Spoiler

Sometimes people may want to go against one of the agreements. This is understandable. It is possible you have a great character concept, or that you want to make a character for a specific role. There might also be something you want to do, but that requires community approval in order to be allowed. This specific proposal is for details on how to request this approval.

Time requirements:
After the discussion is started, a wait of at least 3 days (time can be changed) is needed to make sure that everybody has seen the request and has been able to comment on it. This is necessary because some of us live in different timezones, and not everyone of us is able to come online everyday.

Request location:
This needs to be in the chat thread, or if character related, in the character thread. This ensures that not only will everybody be able to see it, it'll also be visible to other people who want to join, and are thus not yet part of the pm. The other reason the pm shouldn't be used for this is that a lot of people also use the pm as a general chat, which makes it easy for people to miss the request. Large requests can have their own thread if necessary.

Law of Power Increase:

Spoiler

Anything that increases the strength of a character will require community approval before being allowed. This is not only your own character, but also actions that increase the strength of other characters.

Examples of power increase:

• Gaining additional investure/powers
• Gaining access artifacts, special weapons or tools. Normal weapons (swords, bows, mistborn era 2 guns, etc.) are allowed without community approval. Shardblades, soulcasters and sci-fi tech is not allowed without community approval.

Law of Consequences:

Spoiler

The actions and morality of your character should have consequences on what powers they can get, and the other way around, the powers your character has should influence their morality and actions.

Examples

• Someone in the DA (or possibly GB) isn't likely to be a Radiant, since their actions will clash with the oaths of most spren (some spren might still be okay with it though)
• A hemalurgist can't be a good person. At best, they can be a neutral pragmatist or operating on a case a blue and orange morality, at worst they are full on homicidal maniacs. You're someone who kills people to steal their soul and then staples it onto yourself. aside from the sanity slippage having spikes in general would give you, just getting that spike would have required you to cross a lot of lines and go very far down the slippery slope.
• A pacifist won't be going around attacking people or being an amazing fighter, and probably wouldn't be in the GB or the DA, because the purposes of the guilds would be at odds with their principles.

Law of Proportional Weaknesses:

Spoiler

The stronger a character is, the bigger their weakness should be, and the worse the effect it has on them. Any character should have at least one way of bringing them down for good, and this method should be realistic for the other characters to be able to use.

Law of Inverse Power Morality Correlation (the Mraize Addendum):

Spoiler

Characters that are far too powerful can be allowed by community approval, but in this case they'll function as plot devices, not as general characters. They'll form threats to the alleyverse and function as villains. For a good example, look at Mraize's characters. While they've been op by both era 1 and 2 standards, they're still considered great characters because they weren't meant as a character that was just rp'd with like other characters, but instead as a threat, a driving force behind the story. These characters are great to have for creating plot lines

Notes:

• Creating on of these characters will require community approval. You'll also need to give at least a basic outline of their plan, and your idea for what's going to happen.
• These can't be good (as in morality) characters. They need to drive conflict. If they use their powers to solve conflict they instead make the story less interesting.
• When they are defeated, if they're not killed, you should get community approval before reintroducing them with a new plot line.
• These characters should still have weaknesses, ways for the other characters to defeat them. They shouldn't be able to be soloed, but they should be able to be defeated if the other characters work together. You're a villain, but your plan (generally), shouldn't work. Don't make one of these characters and expect to win in the end.
• As a villain, it isn't your powers that are supposed to be interesting, it's your personality, motivations, backstory, plans. Focus on this when making one of these characters.

 

[Archer]

First off, wow. All the upvotes! 

Here's some of the things I have reservations about (but on a whole, I think these are well-written).

Quote

LOPI: Anything that increases the strength of a character will require community approval before being allowed. This is not only your own character, but also actions that increase the strength of other characters.

While this is one way of ending power creep, I feel it could be too limiting. However, I don't have a better suggestion. I will note however that one problem we have is people increase their power, and the weaknesses they set out in their bio become out of date/insufficient. Perhaps encourage people to update their bios whenever they get new powers, thus providing the community an opportunity to reject it, while also reminding them to update their weaknesses?

Quote

LoIPMC: These can't be good (as in morality) characters. They need to drive conflict. If they use their powers to solve conflict they instead make the story less interesting.

This one could be limiting as well. Generally it would work, but it prevents us from having characters who believe they're doing good, but are really doing wrong. Or if we all want to become villains and have a storyline related to that, it could be problematic. 

[Lord Meeker]

Thanks @Ookla the Foxed!

[Darth Woodrack]

I would like to coin the term Hellbent Syndrome. Yes, Ark is fine with this, I have asked him. It is the position where someone's character starts reasonable, but then continues to become more extreme and just continues becoming more powerful, until nobody can stop them, except Voidus. It happens when new members, or old members, do not fully understand power limits, and/or they propose it and nobody tells them that it is to powerful. This is what I personally feel should not be allowed.

I agree with most of what Fox said, but I don't agree with the part about shardblades and Sci Fi tech being subject to community approval. That means that if you have a new character, who is a radiant, you need to ask the entire community if you can have a character. The same thing for Sci-Fi tech. If your a space marine, chances are your going to have a hellgun. If your a pilot from SKyward, your probably going to have a ship.

Side thing, if you have a powerful character, they shouldn't be very skilled. I mean, having a skilled character is probably harder than having a bad fighter, but strong, character because, speaking from experience, it is really hard to fight with a combat skilled fighter, because you have to actually think up skilled responses. So, you can have a fairly physically powerful character, but they wouldn't be good fighters.

So, I get why everybody being able to go anywhere is annoying, but that doesn't mean that we have to get rid of it. We could limit it, but not make it unallowed. That just blocks a whole sphere of powers, and abilities, and practically, how are you going to stop elantrians from teleporting?

[+Ark1002]

1 hour ago, Ookla the Foxed said:

I have thought up a number of proposals in order to try and put a limit to the power of characters. Note that these will mostly be soft limits, not hard limits. This is because its difficult to create a solid set of rules for this, and any set of hard caps will either create situations where people find a way around them, or where a great concept or plan isn't possible because of the rules.
(proposals are named weirdly to be easily recognizable. They're also spoilered because of length)

Law of Power Plausibility:

  Reveal hidden contents

If a character is created, their powerset needs to be evaluated based on whether or not it is plausible for the character to have them. This doesn't mean that the powers are justified by the backstory, it means that it doesn't require beating astronomical odds to get those powers. It also means that acquiring those powers makes sense according to the rules of the cosmere.

Examples:

• A character grows up on Roshar, but snaps and becomes an Allomancer. This is alright, as long as the parents were worldhoppers from Scandrial. They also gain Feruchemical powers and are twinborn. This is stretching the realm of plausibility, the changes of a twinborn being born on Roshar from Scandrian parents is extremely low, perhaps just have them be from Scandrial instead. They also get radiant powers. This is so unlikely that a character like this shouldn't exist.
• Someone with a hemalurgic spike goes to Roshar and bonds a spren. This shouldn't happen. Almost all spren would be too revolted to bond with a person who has a hemalurgic spike, given that this almost requires them to have broken the first oath in an enormous way.
• Someone from off-world goes to Sel and acquires AonDor. This shouldn't happen. Being from the region in question is basically a requirement for AonDor. An off-worlder wouldn't be able to do this.

Addendum:
If the actual power of the combination is low, permission can be granted with community approval. This includes things like lower tier compounding types (copper, tin, bronze), weirder powers that are hard to evaluate (Mace's medium awareness) or powers that are powerful, but are played in an interesting way, or with interesting limits (certain epics, iron/zinc/brass compounders). While this might (again) give us characters with implausible powers, it would make sure that they're interesting to the rest of us.

Law of Community Approval:

  Reveal hidden contents

Sometimes people may want to go against one of the agreements. This is understandable. It is possible you have a great character concept, or that you want to make a character for a specific role. There might also be something you want to do, but that requires community approval in order to be allowed. This specific proposal is for details on how to request this approval.

Time requirements:
After the discussion is started, a wait of at least 3 days (time can be changed) is needed to make sure that everybody has seen the request and has been able to comment on it. This is necessary because some of us live in different timezones, and not everyone of us is able to come online everyday.

Request location:
This needs to be in the chat thread, or if character related, in the character thread. This ensures that not only will everybody be able to see it, it'll also be visible to other people who want to join, and are thus not yet part of the pm. The other reason the pm shouldn't be used for this is that a lot of people also use the pm as a general chat, which makes it easy for people to miss the request. Large requests can have their own thread if necessary.

Law of Power Increase:

  Reveal hidden contents

Anything that increases the strength of a character will require community approval before being allowed. This is not only your own character, but also actions that increase the strength of other characters.

Examples of power increase:

• Gaining additional investure/powers
• Gaining access artifacts, special weapons or tools. Normal weapons (swords, bows, mistborn era 2 guns, etc.) are allowed without community approval. Shardblades, soulcasters and sci-fi tech is not allowed without community approval.

Law of Consequences:

  Reveal hidden contents

The actions and morality of your character should have consequences on what powers they can get, and the other way around, the powers your character has should influence their morality and actions.

Examples

• Someone in the DA (or possibly GB) isn't likely to be a Radiant, since their actions will clash with the oaths of most spren (some spren might still be okay with it though)
• A hemalurgist can't be a good person. At best, they can be a neutral pragmatist or operating on a case a blue and orange morality, at worst they are full on homicidal maniacs. You're someone who kills people to steal their soul and then staples it onto yourself. aside from the sanity slippage having spikes in general would give you, just getting that spike would have required you to cross a lot of lines and go very far down the slippery slope.
• A pacifist won't be going around attacking people or being an amazing fighter, and probably wouldn't be in the GB or the DA, because the purposes of the guilds would be at odds with their principles.

Law of Proportional Weaknesses:

  Reveal hidden contents

The stronger a character is, the bigger their weakness should be, and the worse the effect it has on them. Any character should have at least one way of bringing them down for good, and this method should be realistic for the other characters to be able to use.

Law of Inverse Power Morality Correlation (the Mraize Addendum):

  Reveal hidden contents

Characters that are far too powerful can be allowed by community approval, but in this case they'll function as plot devices, not as general characters. They'll form threats to the alleyverse and function as villains. For a good example, look at Mraize's characters. While they've been op by both era 1 and 2 standards, they're still considered great characters because they weren't meant as a character that was just rp'd with like other characters, but instead as a threat, a driving force behind the story. These characters are great to have for creating plot lines

Notes:

• Creating on of these characters will require community approval. You'll also need to give at least a basic outline of their plan, and your idea for what's going to happen.
• These can't be good (as in morality) characters. They need to drive conflict. If they use their powers to solve conflict they instead make the story less interesting.
• When they are defeated, if they're not killed, you should get community approval before reintroducing them with a new plot line.
• These characters should still have weaknesses, ways for the other characters to defeat them. They shouldn't be able to be soloed, but they should be able to be defeated if the other characters work together. You're a villain, but your plan (generally), shouldn't work. Don't make one of these characters and expect to win in the end.
• As a villain, it isn't your powers that are supposed to be interesting, it's your personality, motivations, backstory, plans. Focus on this when making one of these characters.

 

I agree with all but the law of power increase. I don't like the idea of having to ask the group to bond a spren, get a shardblade, etc. Also, in cases were someone wills away objects, that shouldn't have to be approved by the group. And also, in the case of the GBs, we have untis that good people could be in. Ambrosia is a loyal Ghostblood, but a pacifist and the only of my characters that is an overall good person.

[MacThorstenson]

20 hours ago, Darth Woodrack said:

 So, I get why everybody being able to go anywhere is annoying, but that doesn't mean that we have to get rid of it. We could limit it, but not make it unallowed. That just blocks a whole sphere of powers, and abilities, and practically, how are you going to stop elantrians from teleporting?

My only issue is that tia cards have no basis in canon. There is no evidence that someone could make an aon program to teleport them from anywhere to anywhere.  There are ways for it to be done, but they wouldn’t just involve tia cards. You would need some sort of gps system for it to work. 

Secondly, it is either heavily implied or outright stated that non elantrians can't use Aons. I can’t see a way for people to use tia cards if they aren’t elantrians. 

Edited December 11, 2018 by Ookla the [REDACTED]

[Voidus]

Yeah some characters being able to teleport isn't an issue, but when basically every character has a Tia card that leads to everywhere that is convenient it starts stretching implausibility. I'd be proposing something similar with steel compounding, not that it be banned, just restricted.

 

[Darth Woodrack]

When I made Walker, I was actually just making a character that I thought would be good, and I thought, until today, that he was the only steel compounder. I just think that someone with teleportation isn't a problem.

[Archer]

The drawback (in the books) of using AonTia is that it's very risky. If you're off by a few feet you could end up in a wall or in midair. This restriction is never considered by RPers (myself included). I would be fine with doing away with Tia cards to be more realistic. I'm still open to allowing teleportation epics, those people from AoN, people like the Phone Company guy, and Elantrians who do their homework to do it, but restricting ordinary people from doing it without a good explanation. It's a reasonable limit. 

The question then becomes of timing. People want to get from thread to thread quickly. But I think if we don't legislate a solution, the RPers will quickly figure something out. The way I'd do it would be to set up platforms on different worlds and start a business teleporting people to different planets. It wouldn't be as precise as we allow now, and mean people have to spend time travelling more than they do now, but it would prevent people from being stranded on planets (until they learn how to use the resident Shard's perpendicularity. )

[old man moomba]

Possibly Tia cards that work only once would be a good idea.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Dr. Dapper

[Karnatheon]

I agree with Ookla the Fox. I like all of their proposals, and I think it is a pretty good way to work toward balancing power level. The discussion of Shardblades, I don't consider Shardblades to be the same as Spren. Obviously Shardblades used to be Spren, but they aren't now. There are only so many Shardblades out there, so needing approval before just having one seems fine to me. If people think Shardblades are fine to have then when asked for approval from a player they should be just as willing to allow that person to have it as they would be to not wanting the restriction to exist in the first place. Radiants wouldn't fall under the "I need approval for a Shardblade", because their Spren is the Shardblade, it isn't an item. Teleportation is too common, and too convenient of a get-out-of-jail-free card. Yes people with certain powers can do it, but everyone without those powers shouldn't be able to. It's not a very common ability in Cosmere, why should it be here. I agree with the idea of something like teleportation stations set up in prominent cities or planets for worldhopping. That allows people to get around without using it as their primary mode of transportation.

I think at the very least, Fox's suggestions are the closest we've come to a unified thing during this whole discussion. 

[Nohadon]

5 hours ago, Ookla the [REDACTED] said:

Secondly, it is either heavily implied or outright stated that non elantrians can use Aons. I can’t see a way for people to use tia cards if they aren’t elantrians. 

Ok since I made them I should explain how they work. They were originally meant to be niche things used by Devaan in his deck but then caught on. They're double unsealed metal minds, when tapping them you get a brief surge of connection the Dor, essentially making you an elantrian for a second, then you have the ability to tap the Aon Tia that was already stored in the nicrocil part of the metal mind, the locations are pre-programmed, they can either be places relative to you or locations, here are some examples of ones Devaan has:

In his deck, a three of boots will teleport him 10 meters in front of him. A four, five and six of boots do the same in different directions. 

He also has two rings that function as eject buttons, one teleports him to the canton of combat, the other teleports him to the training ground. 

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Since I’m the guy who started tracking people and using Tia cards as I have, I’d like to note that, as an example, Tena’s tracking devices are keyed to some of her Tia cards. There’s a stormlight gemstone in the corner of the card that glows if the tracking device is located somewhere where teleporting to it would put Tena inside a wall. I think this is reasonable, since it requires a lot of work to accomplish, and money. Tena never really uses her tracking devices, though, and only has them on a few people.

[Darth Woodrack]

Well, for teleportation, I think that it is way to common, but again, when I made the teleportation disc, I didn't realize how common a power that was.

[Gancho Libre]

If we're gonna take away teleporting, we're gonna have to limit the PvP fights we have. When those happen, the losing user generally will want their character to survive. Teleportation is how that happens.

Alternately, we keep teleporting how it is, only we implement a type of technology that disrupts teleportation somehow? A device of some sort maybe? Then, whenever we do want to have a PvP fight, it's a spankin' lot more intense.

[MacThorstenson]

45 minutes ago, Ookla the Libre said:

we're gonna have to limit the PvP fights we have.

2 things, the first is that we probably won’t have to limit the number of fights, that will just either happen naturally, or people will find more ways to escape. 

Second, I think an idea was tossed around earlier to limit the number of PvP fights and turn it less away from the fighting scene to other things. 

Regardless, I think that if we don’t give people an easy way out, the fights will become a whole lot more intense. 

[BitBitio]

Quote

Law of Power Plausibility:

• Someone with a hemalurgic spike goes to Roshar and bonds a spren. This shouldn't happen. Almost all spren would be too revolted to bond with a person who has a hemalurgic spike, given that this almost requires them to have broken the first oath in an enormous way.

I partially disagree with this, based on conditionality. (yes, I know that isn't a word. Humor me.) 

Kane didn't give himself the spike. Part of his development is that he was basically a Hemalurgic experiment and the spike was forced into him by someone else.

[MacThorstenson]

5 minutes ago, Ookla said:

I partially disagree with this, based on conditionality. (yes, I know that isn't a word. Humor me.) 

Kane didn't give himself the spike. Part of his development is that he was basically a Hemalurgic experiment and the spike was forced into him by someone else.

If he didn't like it in there, why didn't he get it removed? Its no more harming to remove a hemalurgic spike than it is to remove a sword or dagger. Someone with stormlight healing could easily recover.

[Darth Woodrack]

Probably psychological damage. Also, if your a hemalurgist, but can't be a nice person, how do you explain Spook?

[BitBitio]

2 hours ago, Ookla the [REDACTED] said:

If he didn't like it in there, why didn't he get it removed? Its no more harming to remove a hemalurgic spike than it is to remove a sword or dagger. Someone with stormlight healing could easily recover.

You'll see why at the end of Era 3.

[MacThorstenson]

11 minutes ago, Darth Woodrack said:

Probably psychological damage. Also, if your a hemalurgist, but can't be a nice person, how do you explain Spook?

Spook was not a hemalurgist. A hemalurgist is someone who actively tries to spike others to get a power. Who studies hemalurgy and tries to make things with it. Kelsier, would be a hemalurgist, depending on what he did during the era gap.

Spook just doesn't meet that qualification. He used a spike to get in contact with kelsier. That's it as far as I know.

6 minutes ago, Ookla said:

You'll see why at the end of Era 3.

Ok.

[BitBitio]

Just now, Ookla the [REDACTED] said:

Spook was not a hemalurgist. A hemalurgist is someone who actively tries to spike others to get a power. Who studies hemalurgy and tries to make things with it. Kelsier, would be a hemalurgist, depending on what he did during the era gap.

Spook just doesn't meet that qualification. He used a spike to get in contact with kelsier. That's it as far as I know.

Ok.

Sorry, I actually meant end of Era 2.