The only other non-arbitrary levels are level 0 and/or level 1. That's my main point. People are complaining about the discrimination in a system that is built from discrimination.

It doesn't make sense to fix/balance the "outliers" by imposing grind when the barrier against level 100 is in fact, grind.

Er. I meant karma blessings too. Sigh.

When you are looking at balancing here, though, the level itself is largely irrelevant. You get more health/mana/ego/endurance/willpower as you level up, yes. What affects the combat balance isn't simply being level 100 - it's the bonuses arbitrarily conferred at level 100. You could give the +stats/divine fire/zap, so on and so forth, at level 50, and then level 50 would be the level that is being contested. Instead of thinking of balancing it by level, you have to balance stuff by what stats can be considered 'normal', and how much stuff changes as you deviate from this.

Sigh. It's spilling over. Let's keep off where to balance, at demigod or not.

It's not up for debate.

My point was more that the level is entirely arbitrary; being level 100 is irrelevant, it's everything else that comes with demigod status. The debate is still whether or not to balance around demigod, I was just slightly annoyed by the 'level x should be better than level y' argument.

If diminishing returns are in place for int/str/cha/dex, then, to a degree, the stat bonuses from Demigod are already taken care of; the only problems I see being really debated are divinefire, which can be looked at as part of demigod, and the scaling of warrior wounding with strength. As for the latter, there are two factors: whether or not the formula for wounding needs to be adjusted, and how big of an affect demigod +str and the str from changing sizes has on wounding. I am of the opinion that warrior wounding should be plenty effective at 'normal' levels of str, which according to posts in this thread/the other thread, they aren't; demigods should have an advantage, sure, but diminishing returns would have a soft limit on how much more effective.

I am bad at being concise, it seems.

Diminishing returns are most definitely in place; I believe the bonus for most stats peaks at around 19 then softcaps (ie gains from then on are fairly negligible) at about 21, although it varies from stat to stat. Each point up to 19 is worth more than the one before; each point after is worth much much less than the one before. Demigod just makes hitting that cap easier than having to maintain it without the +2 (and, for warriors, size). This applies to all classes, however warriors, monks and bards are just the most reliant upon stats (others being more dependant on things that don't change much and not at all with stats, such as affliction speed).

What would people think of Sparks being permanent additions but once you have run out of sparks you move onto Eventrus temporary abilities.

This would give you the core powers that defined your demigod but at the same time gave you some sinks and ability to take on powers suited to some situation that has arisen. Though demigods are obviously unstable and so are unable to maintain these powers.

Extended perhaps Vernals could have twice as many sparks with Ex-Vernals being between Demigods and Vernals? so Demigod is 10, Vernal is 20 and Ex-Vernal is 15. Or even letting Ex-Vernals keep the full amount of sparks.

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Also I think the thing about raising your pools was along the lines of the seals having branching paths, you could invest essence into a seal and it would grant you an ability. In that system you would probably give true ascendants full investment in their seal.

I actually like it better tbh because it gives a nice reason for why you get these powers. "I bound myself to the seal of nature and so I have these powers related to it."


Another point to remember with either system is that players will very likely change their minds. If, i ever get demigod and, my sparks are invested in things that help mages but I decide to go monk I would need to give up abilities and reinvest elsewhere.

Whether we do slots (I dislike the name 'sparks') or do upkeep or costs or some combination is immaterial if we don't have a list of ideas of things demigods/ascendants would want to spend essence on. Keep the ideas coming!

BTW, what's people's opinions on cults? Let's bring that into the discussion as well. What are the benefits, if anything? If there's little benefit, should we just scrap the cult idea? Or can we build on it? If so, how?

- I imagine a few self buffs for the different influence types.

- This one might be too much, but maybe lvl 1 resistances to damage types, or just some DMP of some sort.

- If approving a lot of custom messages is too much, maybe a set of different things to choose from for stuff enter/exit, ascending, whatever unique things demi-gods do.

- Some people were asking for access to a second trade skill, sans the trans ability.

- I miss the old tesseract to aetherbubbles, maybe that could be purchased for a very large essence cost.

- I think somebody has once suggested an ability to destroy items, like they were put in a nexus.

- I thought it would be neat to be able to form something out of essence, that doesn't really have any purpose besides being neat, but I couldn't really think of any actual thing to form.

Yes, we've been talking about that. Maybe like 3 choices per domoth or something like that.



Essence pies!

Seriously, building on the DMP idea, maybe you can create a halo-type object that demigods or others can wear that gives a slight DMP bonus (like 5 for demigods, 10 for ascendants). The halos would disappear quickly (maybe last six game days), only one could be worn at any time, and they couldn't be stored. Maybe you could choose among halos, horns or a couple of other things.

Offhand I think they're a little lackluster in what they can do mechanically, but they definitely have a lot of RP potential. Up to the cult to make use of that.

I thought it would be cool if cults could have their own shrines, maybe just one they build somewhere in the gods realm or something, or ones that are mechanically the same as other Shrines, but just depicts the Ascendant.

Others, as in you could give it out to other people? Because I'd love to be able to slap some antlers on folks.

Yup, that's what I mean!

Things like flight, burrow, other abilities perhaps that can be attained in other ways anyway.

Or abilities that mirror stuff that can be done with enchants, but with a demi-flare in the spam. Gust, geyser, etc.

I think there is a lot of potential for cults, I'm still trying to flesh out how I want mine to go but I think it can definitely enhance the game if they are used well

Flight and burrow might be a bit much, since they're available through 300-400 credit artifacts. The later though, those might be neat, though might hurt the market for enchanters. =p

I think they need building, they could be turned into a group of people empowered to benefit the org and potentially allow more people a slight part in the vernal experience.

Possible extras could be things like...
Cult member powers
Cult items
Cult rituals (an initiating command that waits for specific actions resulting in x at completion)

Something that is sticking in my head is a cult of Hallifax where the members take sheets of crystal and use them to perform adjustments on the generators. Each cult member must stay at their generator until the Ascendant can complete their adjustments on the primary generator if they don't their work would fail due to the inherent complexities of the generators.

Though mainly I feel that cults should be about the orgs. Maybe each ascended coult get a set of randomly(divinely) assigned rituals from a pool that each org has



Could they last longer if they aren't used as much, kind of like nature torcs except rather than mana they would only protect you so long before they shatter. Just would mean the cost would be more relative to use for casual players.

I do not, personally, foresee cults being divorced from orders.

What about involving cults and godrealms somehow?

Myeah I know

Only if the involvement benefitted the city in some way. The main issue I have with it is that the org dumps all of this power into a vernal which is a reward for what you've done for the org and then you get this cool ability that can only be used through a god.

Perhaps a ritual performed in the god realms that created an idol of the god, with a separate cult member being an anchor on prime where the idol is transferred conferring a god specific benefit to the org?