Curious As To Rationale

[Coral]

personally i think that there should be less class and race options per faction. where is the challenge in making good builds if you get access to everything? RK is the most restricted as far as race and we are still competitive... at least when we aren't outnumbered 3:1. wouldn't it be more interesting to be part of a strictly elf faction? or one that is human with maybe a few halflings and such? and why not make SL completely evil.

[disastro]

Meanwhile the main issue I have with factions is that there's such a huge number of pigs in the world, and yet there's relatively little bacon in the BLT sandwiches in the world - hence all of the pigs in the world that aren't currently in BLTs are pointless.
Oh wait, that's a non-sequitir that didn't make sense...

yeah dunno why anybody would post a thought about factions and their build restrictions in a thread about factions and their build restrictions. not to mention including a suggestion for relaxing the build restrictions without affecting the balance decisions that led to them in the first place.

back to reading comprehension 101 for you!

[Binkyuk]

You didn't say anything about relaxing build restrictions, you said that there were too many factions for the number of concurrent players, and therefore this means there are less build possibilities.
Back to logic 101 for you.

The other part of your post (about merging faction bonuses) was on-topic (though not for the reasons you said), but i don't see the relevance to the bit i was lampooning...

[disastro]

You didn't say anything about relaxing build restrictions,

it would be more interesting if relic bonuses/guild halls could span allied factions. so you still get the munchkin-governing effect of factions but you can branch out into allied factions without having to give up all your guild/friends/etc built up over time in your "home" faction.

allowing allied factions to share in bonuses and guilds allows the same set of "faction-loyal" players to access more build options without leaving the house. thus a "relaxing" of the build restrictions by allowing you to access allied faction buld trees from the comfort of your own couch.

[Binkyuk]

The other part of your post (about merging faction bonuses) was on-topic (though not for the reasons you said), but i don't see the relevance to the bit i was lampooning...

You seem to be confused about what i'm criticising. Only one part of your post was silly.

Maybe this is what I get for using analogies. lemme try again:

the main issue i have with factions is that on reflections at least there seem to be too many factions given the active playerbase. 7 factions across... 10-12 concurrent users == lots and lots of dead factions (and thus dead build possibilities).

That's nonsense, the number of concurrent players has no bearing on the build possibilities that are available.

[disastro]

point taken, reading back I see I was not clear enough on where that piece came from:

since we have so few concurrent players we'd be better off with fewer factions, and if we had fewer factions each faction would theoretically have more build options. which would lead to fewer of these "why isn't x allowed in y" questions.

I'm coming at the question from the other side, so to speak. the second half of my post was about preserving munchkin control in such a situation.

[Findor]

Well, the reason I posed the question in the first place is because I thought to make a Barbarian toon in MA for a particular reason unrelated to speed or DR and found I could not. Sometimes things are done in NWN mods (read: not just NS4) that seem illogical. I'm not saying that excluding Barbarians from MA necessarily falls into this category, but I won't know without hearing the actual rationale. Even if it did turn out to be less-than-rational, this is no knock on the developers; they've done a superb job overall and are (through no fault of their own) fallible human beings like the rest of us. I personally can attest to how challenging it is to create something from nothing, as is doen in software development. Revisions are required all the time because, despite the best planning, you didn't consider something or didn't know all of the requirements.

BTW, I still think the +4 bonus to Hide and Move Silently skills on the Dark Tower shield should be changed to something else.

[LinuxPup]

I noticed that Dark Tower shield stats seemed kind of odd too... maybe +14 to hide/ms to make up for the -10... giving a net +4 to hide/ms... or perhaps just make the shield small or large.