EXP from Questing

[Voxaroth]

The suggestion: Allow teachers a means to grant 250,000 experience as a reward for completing a quest, similar to the way Train works.

The why: Casual players who don't have as much time to invest in the game as they'd like don't want to spend what limited time they have collapsing NPC's all alone. A means to gain experience at larger quantities while roleplaying should exist for the sake of increasing player interaction. On top of that, it would still require a greater TOTAL time to gain orbits than it would a person who could invest the time into hunting NPCs, ensuring that those who actually had the time to invest in the game are still going to progress faster, as they should.

The technical: Because of the way gaining orbits works, a person doesn't retain overflow experience when reaching a new orbit. As such, it would take 9 of these quests for each sphere, all the way up until sixth sphere. At that point, it would take 18 quests to max, 36 for seventh sphere, 360 for eighth sphere, etc.

The teacher management: Teachers would task for it like any art: weighted to the sphere of the seeking player. Prior to granting the art, teachers would be required to use Judgement on the student to ensure they are indeed the correct sphere for the quest, and then would reward as such.

The benefits:
-More interaction
-Casual, time constricted players can be more impactful
-Teachers with lower train are more useful
-Tapers off drastically above fifth sphere, ensuring progression through upper spheres is still extremely diffucult (as it should be).

[Sidious]

+1

Should be monitored closely at first

[Pickman]

Man I'd love the hell out of that. I love the RP aspects of this game, but the combat system/hit detection bites and I'm just not good at it. A different means to gain XP would be the bees knees.

[Starfall]

We already have Bequeath, which no one uses because it costs the evoker double whatever they want to give and is a net loss. I'm even fine with the cost of a power token still, just that by making it cost the evoker double, it makes it worthless for its intended purpose. I do like that bequeath doesn't require a task at least. But I'd like to see a more useful form of it that can still be used on the fly rather than through the formal structure of the task/report.

I seem to remember testing this in beta and finding out there's a cap on even GM granting of XP that gets wonky with signed int wraparound above a certain number.

That said, I don't know how I feel about XP tasks in PC hands. I think just dropping the XP cost to Bequeath but keeping the power token requirement would work well, that way it's just whatever you're willing to blow a power token to give someone 1-10k for.

[Noidea]

Didn't it use to be possible at some point to use Bequeath to grant another player XP for something they'd done, then send an RP report and have the GMs reimburse you the XP if they agreed that what the recipient had done was worth it? Or am I thinking of something else?

[Voxaroth]

Bequeath isn't a good option as a replacement for what I'm suggesting. 1-10k EXP isn't going to solve the problem of players with less playtime being able to gain experience in a timely enough manner that doesn't force them to be playing by themselves hunting.

250,000 xp for completing a quest that takes a chunk of time and requires interaction is plenty fair, and still will take longer than it took a person with lots of time to collapse 250 agos. Honestly, any amount less than this won't be worth the time investment either, and players (like me) who have no time simply won't bother gaining XP. Which unfortunately means that for a player like me who wants to progress but doesn't want to dedicate what little time they have in game to playing alone, I'll probably eventually get tired of being "stuck" where I am and use my gaming time elsewhere.

[Koi-Alastar]

Without any comment on whether I or anyone else likes or dislikes the idea...what are you thinking would be a task that requires more time than 250 agos? Even for someone with lots of time to play, that is a solid 5-6h in my experience.

[Voxaroth]

Quests, in general, tend to take a few hours to complete. On top of that, you then have to wait for the teacher to dream again and take the time to report it. In general, I'd say the turn around is about 24-48 hours between quests.

As far as difficulty, it would be like questing now, increasing depending upon the sphere. Someone looking to gain an orbit at third sphere wouldn't be tasked to do as much as a player at sixth sphere, for example.

For someone who would gain the full 250,000 xp, I could see a quest that asked them to do something revolving around the current roleplay issues going on in the game, involving other players and contributing to them in some way (not needing RP support of course, but just furthering the discussion/depth/spread of information about the subject. Basically, if I were going to quest for 250,000 xp, I'd expect to be doing a quest on par with a quest to plat my Abjure to 50.

[Sidas]

This would need to balance with house rewards, though. The mission board XP is one of the major benefits of joining a house.

[Gerroz]

Easy solution: only house teachers May quest xp. That rule should in my opinion be added to a lot more things, to give power to the houses. Master Teacher comes to mind

[Tary]

Easy solution: only house teachers May quest xp. That rule should in my opinion be added to a lot more things, to give power to the houses. Master Teacher comes to mind

This.

[Koi-Alastar]

9.5/10 teachers already are in Houses. This is a fairly moot point.

Actually, I would guess more than 90% of all characters are in a House, not just Teachers. There are very very few FreeSpirits other than newlies or those who play rarely.

[Starfall]

Yeah, house members already have the mission boards. But Bequeath is nice (absurd cost aside) because it doesn't have the limitation of the mission board in that it can be used to reward anybody.

[Dina]

Dina is a freespirit teacher! It would be nice if Dina had Bequeath since she can sphere. I do know in Lyra even Kailee had Bequeath due to being an apprentice and the art Quest. I don't believe that the game should really force you to join a house though. I think any sphere teacher should have the art Bequeath period.

[Miriel]

Dina is a freespirit teacher! It would be nice if Dina had Bequeath since she can sphere. I do know in Lyra even Kailee had Bequeath due to being an apprentice and the art Quest. I don't believe that the game should really force you to join a house though. I think any sphere teacher should have the art Bequeath period.

Bequeath was always a house art which required house-made power tokens to work. It was granted to house members on whatever terms the house set. It had no connection with train, sphere or any other art. When you left a house, you lost all house arts, including Bequeath.

In Lyra, there was always a fairly large Freespirit community and it was possible for a member of that community to make arrangements with one or more houses to be tasked to acquire Bequeath and provided with PTs in exchange for essences or other services. The art was never given freely to Freespirits regardless of any other arts or qualifications they had.

I don't know how it worked in SOT, nor how the current GMs want to handle it, but that's how it worked in Lyra.

[Dina]

Yes but to get Bequeath you need to be in a house and rank. I know everyone wants perks being in a house...however it hinders Dina not being able to help her students after a sphere. Houses have mission boards...give teachers or just sphere teachers Bequeath.

[Sidas]

Yes but to get Bequeath you need to be in a house and rank. I know everyone wants perks being in a house...however it hinders Dina not being able to help her students after a sphere. Houses have mission boards...give teachers or just sphere teachers Bequeath.

Well. Dina chose to not be in a house.

[Noidea]

Which is better? Letting Freespirits have Bequeath... or Dina joining a House again?

[Dina]

Exactly!!!! Houses suck....just sayin! "I am your ruler...you will obey me!" I rather obey my middle finger stickin up at you!

[Sidious]

That is the roleplay, yep.

[Kage]

Yes but to get Bequeath you need to be in a house and rank. I know everyone wants perks being in a house...however it hinders Dina not being able to help her students after a sphere. Houses have mission boards...give teachers or just sphere teachers Bequeath.

Agreed on not having Bequeath be limited to houses only. There are enough immediate free benefits to being in a house without making Bequeath exclusive.

Also raising the amount you can bequeath and perhaps lowering the extra xp cost a bit may make it a viable option to address the OP's idea of having a real alternative to hunting for XP.

Not sure about the 250k as a minimum stipulation - that sounds like a lot to me. Especially with the original idea of there being no cost to the teacher - I think we would hit a bunch of unfair usage scenarios, many of which wouldn't even be intentional. My vote would be stick with bequeath to keep it from getting out of control, but make it something like 1.5 x the amount bequeathed for cost so that it's actually used.

[Sidas]

Anyone can probably learn Bequeath if they get a task from a Guardian with it, I assume.

[Voxaroth]

How does this thread keep getting stuck on bequeath?

Enough with bequeath. It's intention is completely different than what I'm suggesting. I'm cool with discussing it in another thread, but it's just muddying the water in this one.

I don't want exp gain to be a gift. It needs to be questable for a decently large amount. Too little exp gain means no one will do it, which defeats the point.

[Noidea]

In my case, because of lack of clue about how Train works. Yes, if Train is directly (i.e. in the code, not just in the rules) tied to a Quest having been given, then I think an art that does the same with XP would be excellent. GMs can and do do that already, both directly (as when you sometimes get a chunk of XP for taking part in an RP) and as Elder Teachers, and it's good - roleplaying is the aim of the game in UL, that should be what you're rewarded and advanced for first and foremost! So it would be great if that was able to happen more often than the GMs have time to do.

[Sidious]

The barriers for abuse are already built into the game.

It would take 10 such quests to max any sphere, and we already have teaching rules that would have to be followed for this as well.

Some folks don't want to hunt, and I don't blame them.

However, would this take away from essences as a story driver? do we care (doesn't seem we do), would prime strength suffer? and do we care if it does?