Specialities

I think some people are viewing specialities too much as a bridge to treasures, and I don't think that's the way they should be. The effect for specialities are that they reduce the cost of one thing, while increasing the cost of everything else. Now, that's good in and of itself on it's own. Problem is when you start having items that require specialities.

Let's use the example of my Fire mage, Stjarnstill. I made Stjarny back when I was a newbie, when PWC actually did correspond with the character's stats, thus I made him 1/5/1, wanting him to be a strong fire mage, while also being smart. Now, as I was talking with someone about today, who wants to make a treasure that's speciality exclusive, any character with 5 in their stat has absolutely no use for a speciality. It ONLY drags their costs up while opening up maybe two treasures at most.

So should someone be punished for making a W5 character? My overall point is that there should always be SOME other method of getting the treasure. I also noticed we actually have been adding a lot of root treasures, such as Fire control and Dark affinity. Would it not make more sense to have the treasures listed with that as a prerequisite as opposed to the Specialities?

I disagree. I, too, have a 2/5/2 character who unofficially specializes in a specific kind of magic (Enchantments in her case). I didn't give her the Specialty during her creation and stupidly gave her a 5 in Wisdom, which is the only PWC that applies to Enchantments (barring high Courage, but those start at C4 so a specialty would do nothing for that). Still, I am considering giving her the Specialty because the higher cost for non-Enchantment treasures is a logical consequence of her in-character dedication to one kind of magic.

For Stjarnstill, a Specialty wouldn't be good because, as I recall you saying in the past, he also uses other kinds of magic and you're not willing to overpay for that. For characters like Luna and Laurel, who primarily use one kind of magic, a Specialty is great because it allows them to effectively become 3/5/4 and 3/5/3 respectively as long as I stay within the specialized field.

As for Specialty-specific treasures, I feel they're not so much punishing people who don't want to get a Specialty, but rewarding those who do dedicate themselves to one field by giving them that (treasure-wise tangible) edge that is, as far as I know, the non-meta IDEA behind the Specialty treasure.

I don't mean to go on a tangent but PWC isn't stats anymore? Then what is the point of having them? >->

To determine the price of treasures.

So I can create a hulking powerful human being that just so happens to be a magic user. Give him 5 wisdom and give him all sorts of magic. That seems balanced. :p

Please take that to the mods themselves or make an appropriate thread for this. Considering the lack of mod replies, apparently this subject (specialties, not PWC) has been dealt with as far as they're concerned.

No need to get feisty it is very much part of the discussion. Because the point of the thread is something needs to be restructured. What I was getting at is if there is no point for the PWC other than for the library maybe it would be better to think up a new system to get rid of an outdated one. Other than that I feel like the specialty thing could be fixed simply by treating the specialty for a W5 unit as W6(other words giving even cheaper prices.)

PC, as for your first point, I know me and Tsu (at least) have been wondering about that, especially since some treasures only raise those stats, and in the past characters have been rejected for their descriptions not matching their PWC. As for your second, that would mean going through and assigning another price to almost every treasure here, many having been added since the new treasure submission system.

Unless say... A C6 does something really good like halving the C5 price, really driving up the desire for specialities.

Great. Just was I was hoping would NOT happen. I have spoken to two different mods on two different occassions about this thread. Both said that with my post, I pretty much hit the nail on the head as far as the mod team's stance on this issue stands. Why this thread hasn't been locked yet I don't know, but the reason no mod has posted is at least partially because apparently I said all there was to be said.

Maybe if we stop flooding the treasure creation subforum and allow the mods some time and room to breathe, they can get to stuff like this instead. Just a thought.

1) BP, your post on Specialties was head-on.

2)

We know there are treasures that only raise P/W/C and treat it as stats. Those treasures are old, and they're on our list for when we remake the Library and fit it into the LoTII. That type of thing falls under the "outdated but we haven't got a chance to fix it yet." It's on our list, don't worry. :)

I know. I myself have asked authors to rework their P/W/C to match their descriptions. However, that was a long time ago, Raz, when P/W/C was a stat system. It isn't that way anymore, though, so what once was can't be applied to what now is or what might be.

3)

Frankly, that's less of an issue with HC's system and more of an issue with you making an OP Mary Sue. That's a personal writing problem, not a rule-changer, and may/may not be addressed at character creation, depending on the severity of the Mary Sue-itis. This isn't D&D, Premium Chaos, nor is it a video game. This is a roleplaying site that focuses around writing characters that feel real, that are more than just "ability y in place Q with stats 3, 5, and 1 using person L2 as a vessel."

4)

It's very rude of you to walk in after months of inactivity and tell us that we need to change our systems. Seriously, Premium Chaos, it's not at all very respectable.

5)

Well, the flooding of TC is mostly my fault, to be honest. We will probably be taking a month off from TC to really concentrate on the Library; we thought we could do both at the same time, but it's not really turning out that way.

Though is the idea of a proverbial "PWC6" at all reasonable? One that can't be obtained by creation, but only through specialties? Not only would this make it so that specialty requiring treasures are more acceptable, but also bringing people to want them more. Let's face it, 95 times out of 100, people make their characters hoping to either be REALLY balanced, or to have 5 in a stat. If you chose the latter, you end up getting hosed by the speciality system, as it's no longer useful to you. That's where the extra point comes in.

And Quill has 20 out of 42 topics in the Treasure creation thread. It's not only us...

Yeah, Quill said as much. As it stands a third of the submitted treasures from this month were his fault.

Only problem being that I made, as our current go-to example, Stjarnstill, when PWC were still defined as stats. I wanted him to be devious, a master planner, and an absolute genius. Anything less than W5 I would have been called out on. Now, as a Fire mage, he mostly specializes around fire, but I just never bothered getting a speciality because he's W5. So to him, it's worthless.

What I'm saying mainly regards treasures that REQUIRE specialties. Things like that are pretty much instantly forbidding anyone with a 5 in the stat from getting that treasure. This, as I view it, is a problem. I still haven't heard any opinions on maybe adding the figurative PWC6 gained from specialties. It doesn't even require you to go back through every treasure, maybe it's just three quarter price. Can I get some thoughts on that?

Electric Aura, Ice Aura, and Gale Aura are the only treasures that require a Specialty. If you want one of these treasures, then yes, you need to get the Specialty. If you want one of those treasures and you need the Specialty, then the Specialty is not worthless. Anyway, it sounds more like you're upset on a personal level about your character's P/W/C than about the current rules system.

My thought on P/W/C-6 is no.

I was not able to get to the computer the last day or so, but I will hopefully put this topic to rest here. Let me start by making a couple of general points.

1. Making PWC meta was essentially my idea, eventually backed by the rest of the staff. If you have questions concerning that, you're welcome to PM me, but what the other mods have said is the truth.

2. It's frustrating to have "But these other characters were denied because of..." brought up endlessly. I know this has been explained multiple times to multiple people beforehand. We are not a court system that is bound by the precedent of our ancestral decisions.

Okay, specialties.

Everything BP, Quill, and Willow have said are spot on. It exists as a way to differentiate your character to another degree. It should be considered as a niche treasure, and for the most part the abilities will be small time, outside of cost increases or reduction. As said before, it does a curious melding of meta and non-meta, as the Library of Treasures is meant to do. Based on meta-rupees and determined by a meta-stat, you may purchase something that affects the canon of your particular character. Specialty is the same concept, only it gives back a little bit into the loop.

I will take a moment to add another point of why Specialty functions in the favor of the LoT's and the RP's setup as a whole, however.

Much like investing in a specialty is a choice, investing into a 5 in a PWC attribute is also a choice, albeit a permanent and lasting one, but a choice nonetheless. Just as taking a specialty gives you a benefit, so does a PWC 5. Similarly, just as a specialty has drawbacks, so does dumping all your points into a single attribute. When people choose to stat-max, we want that to actually be a true choice and not a necessity. We want there to be other options simply besides, "Gee, well I guess I should just go for W5 because why not?"

Dealing with this isn't perfect, but you see it with things like most of our PWC 1 costs are double that of PWC 2, only then starting to scale moderately. This is to discourage you from (especially as a Newbie) simply dumping all your points into Wisdom without a second thought to consequence. It really would be locking you out of almost all the other treasures, presumably. In many ways, specialty fulfills a similar duty of distinction.

One of the downsides of having a fifth PWC point is that specialty becomes meaningless. In the same way that having a 1 in a stat makes those treasure virtually inaccessible, NOT having a specialty may make certain treasures inaccessible. There's a simple idea of opportunity cost at stake here. Real choices like this give the LoT diversity, it makes its decisions matter more, and it draws lines between certain types of characters. We like all of those things. For this reason, as far as I'm concerned, Specialty will remain as an option specifically aimed at those people who choose not to max stats.

In the past, PWC itself often restricted people from certain treasures, which, I should add, you were a large advocate of, Tsu. PWC, though, was (even when treated as non-meta) never really meant to be viewed as something of progression to the character, like they "leveled up" or anything like that. It was supposed to be permanent and, barring unusual circumstances like being promoted, was supposed to stay the same for the lifespan of the character. This meant stopping characters permanently for certain treasures, which wasn't something we could do.

The difference with Specialty, though, is that a character can, at any time, choose to specialize. This means that the only thing ever barring you from a bonus to an ability or a treasure altogether is just whether you think it's worth the expense or not. Some people will think so, others will not, and it will certainly apply better for some characters than others. This is simply the nature of the Library of Treasures.

One last thing remains, though, which is that we have, in fact, changed some rules since the time other people have made characters. Given different circumstances, people may have made different choices. To some extent, we can't meet every need and must simply say "Sorry, do the best you can" but for PWC specifically their may be grounds for talk. If you're interested in reworking a character's PWC, PM or contact me directly, and we can talk it over. By no means do I want that ever to be the norm or simply another option at your disposal, but I also understand the other side of it and am not against looking into solutions for that. However, that's a matter that doesn't really fit into the scope of this topic, and I'd prefer to keep it behind closed doors anyway.

That said, this thread is now locked. If you have further concerns you're welcome to contact me.