I have a couple different suggestions/ideas on this. After some further thought, this could be a great opportunity to produce some changes that I've long thought were in order (namely, pandects are weird and offputting in some ways).
- Pandects felt very polarized and tiered from a minmaxer's viewpoint, and don't provide an early benefit for helping build/theorize out of the gate, or doing much for new players
-- The best ones offered such a critical benefit that their value was immense, objectively as well as relative to mid/lower tier pandects
-- Certain oddball class/build/subrace combo builds weren't in a position to leverage much use of even the best or middling ones, leaving a disconnected sense of flow between builds that "needed" (to pull off build) a given pandect vs build that "got a solid benefit but didn't mind lacking" vs build that pandect was just
more or less rather fluffy (or at best had a measurable impact only in combination with the proper gear/skill choice within a given specific build/buildtype itself)
-- Due to the ubiquity on the one hand, and the %based rarity on the other hand, (being always-dropping setloot from a shallow&easily farmable hell layer) an awkward role was created
---- Unlike caster epic tomes (essentially having a street value of zero/handout donation tier, easily attainable, no % concern, dropping on what is quite literally the first steppingstone of any toon's endgame career cycle), tanks can't really assume to benefit from pandects that provide enabler feats until late in lifetime at best (or reinc at worst)
---- Those that provide feat trees that are improved further down the line (such as in PLs) on the other hand don't feel any impact from missing one early in their careers.
---- Nonetheless, with 55 being the req to even "do min and have a chance at winning a pandect from a lootsplit in the first place", pandects always fell into a zone of something that a new player wasn't likely to get much out of until already well on their way to reincarnating the toon
-- In the case of saving a precious feat (be it pre-epic, epic, or LL), a pandect was extremely good; in the case of allowing a mage to not rely on shieldprof-granting gear, a pandect was extremely good
- Despite aforementioned farmability of Min, % table made pandects a real crapshoot, and as was mentioned above, the immediate concern for expanding the pool is dilution
-- One potential solution for expanding the pool and attempting to make up for dilution could be to have more than one pandect drop at a time?
-- if the table ~doubles in size, having a 2nd book spawn should technically even out. However...
---- This would be an upsetting proposal, at best, since from Tia gear and DB weaps, to artifacts, to TAs and ely plates, we know the rng always feels to come up short, and having 2 pandects drop with a pool of 20 would surely still result in a worse perception of farm success vs 1 out of 11.
---- 3/20 might seem at first glance to be weighted too much on the other side, but honestly, I would go with having 3 books drop if the pool is doubled. Overall, I think this would be a pretty decent way of expanding the pandect list without diluting overmuch.
-- Of course, I'd actually rather take the entire thing a step further and use this as a chance to restructure more of the "book" system as a whole ->
- Epic spell tomes are one of the most venerable and stable aspects of the game, as is the sissy run itself
-- Nonetheless, Arcane Archives exists now, and didn't 20 years ago; imo, this would be an ideal place for spell tomes to drop; keep the same scheme as now (every book spawns in the same spot, every run)
-- Unlike tanks, casters in need of epic tomes are far more able to both solo/lowman runs, as well as call runs and/or provide the momentum to get the ball rolling; in other words, it shouldn't be difficult for any caster to initiate a run to get a tome, even assuming they can't trade/take from bank (but looking @ the LCD here)
-- Being basically the first run a toon does after immo (other than leeching or maybe some old-school Maze exploration), Sissy would provide a spectacular place for a tank to get a "pre-hells" / weaker version of a Pandect; I'd essentially put 8 new lowbie pandects in place of the spell tomes in sissy. These would count as a separately-tracked permanent achievement from Pandects (aka can read both).
- What would all this do?
-- Provide the opportunity to clean up the existing pandect pool, by shifting the low-tier pandects to the easy/beginner/poor/newbie accessible zone
-- Provide a more comparable "cool" factor for tanks, to what casters get from spell tomes (I don't really agree that +stats in LLs is equitable to ESFs--just as a derailable aside, from a post I forgot to submit yesterday @funky
)
-- Provide the opportunity for the Min Pandect pool to accommodate new top-tier suggested pandects without dilution