Stones of Rebirth

[cathedralmaster]

I was wondering if maybe something could be done to limit stones of rebirth somewhat, since quite frankly, to me at least, it seems to be getting out of hand.

To understand why, I'm going to use the example of Delf. Delf doesn't go to the hells without 18 or 20 of the things on her, and when they don't seem to be enough she just farms more. Baldy does the same. Now come on. What's the point in limbo or any non-immortial area if people are just going to stock so many that they're basically immortal anyway? What's the worth of eternal return or possum's farce when you can just stock up on a trillion stones?

The same can be seen in pillars - you kill someone who doesn't have stones and they're out of the game for 2 or 3 minutes. You get a stone for killing them. Now look at Z. He might as well be invincible. You kill him and he just laughs at you. How is that fair?

So I would like to propose that stones be set like gems server wide - you can't carry more than one and if you pick up a second, it's destroyed. Make the non-immortals non-immortal again.

[Balduvard]

I agree, though I have not gone out of my way to get rebirth stones for a few months now...I replaced that space in my inventory with scrolls, as I was hardly ever using the stones (though as an AA who gets no Resurrection epics and in the times before the Bard epics, they were good insurance to have, particularly when playing solo). Your idea is good, but it needs more elaboration and articulation--if someone does not want to conform to this, there are means around it (they will just be harder to use in that fashion).

Honestly the only time a stone should be necessary is when no one is available to resurrect you. My suggestion then would be to only consume a stone if you are not in a party and are not relatively close to any PCs that could rez you. This suggestion could ultimately break the stones for all purposes except soloing, but one has to ask what the purpose of the stones was to begin with in order to arrive at a clear comparison.

[Delfestra Ruinvorn]

Yup. I use rebirth stones on my *cleric* because I don't have crit immunity, and don't have eternal return, and have to stand inside fumes and clouds, right next to machines, or in touch range of the tears in order to deal with them. With demi penalties. And I rest so often when doing so for implosions, that I can't expect to have the benefit of shunt/possum's farce even if I *don't* get killed.

They are a tool that helps me cope with crit hits, just like my 6 epic wardings, pyramid energy, empowered aid, and divine power. Or the shunt from the druid. Or the possum's farce from the bard. Or my own Aegis. They're all available tools.

After all, my 922 hps can be one-shot critted quite easily, and for certain areas I can't just sit around in GS healing people. I *have* to be in close melee range of certain monsters to be combat effective, and it involves doing something that only I can do. Can't send in the tanks and let them take the crits.

Tools are meant to be used. Also, they have downsides.
1) They count towards the item caps, so you can only carry so many, and sacrifice other gear to do it. I carry zero pearls, zero neg potions, and maaaybe 20-40 res scrolls, if that many.

2) They don't cancel monster aggro on you. Monsters just keep banging away. Death often does.

3) Its still possible to get immunity bugged while using them. And unlike regular death, stone of rebirth flashes DO NOT clear immunity bugs.

4) Farming's tedious and boring. I hate doing it.

5) They run out. Skills and powers that do the same thing don't, at least until your rest ring does.

Though, I do agree there could be a limit to how *many* one can carry. They're crutches, after all. They're not class skills, like eternal return, guardian angel, or contingency - and they're also not party boosts, like Possum's Farce - all of which, I must point out, do the same thing.

I'd personally prefer to have eternal return, but I didn't have the feats. Its better to rely on one's own powers than items anyway.

I do NOT think they should only work when you're alone. Why? It encourages soloing. And thats not the point of the server.

The big place where I think that changes need to be made for Rebirth Stones - is PILLARS. In guild events. Stones are UTTERLY LAME. Why? Because not only do you not get to incapacitate them until a teammate comes by to res them - but, YOU DO NOT GET PK POINTS. You kill someone and don't get credit. Now that PK points are part of the scoring, that is a PROBLEM. Why? 'cause fighting someone with stones, you risk 'giving' someone else points if you lose, but you won't be 'rewarded' with anything. At all.

All risk, no reward. And the person with the stones? All reward, no risk. They can fight you and lose and lose and lose until they win, and they get points. And you get nothing.

Thats a wacked risk/reward ratio that needs fixing.

[FunkySwerve]

For Pillars, we will probably give extra points for killing someone using them, as we are considering doing for Greater boots (other option is making them wear out after so many uses). For more general play, I'm undecided. The party that recently beat Asmo was burning them faster than heals, and playing like crap as a result. I watched an unbuffed mage 'tanking' Asmo for about a minute until his stones ran out. When most of them had run out of stones, they started doing a much better job coordinating, and started making progress in defeting him. We'll probably limit them to 1, possibly more, or maybe make them not placeable in containers, or some other fix. They definitely need some thought, though.
Funky

[Enrith]

I would like to suggest to limit the set drops for rebirth stones making it harder to farm them or possibly add them to random loot and removing the set drops.
With random loot you can still get alot of them, but it will take you longer time and more dedication than just running to a fixed spot and pick them up.

For Pillars I think the extra point for killing one using rebirth stones is a good idea.


Enrith

[chainlink]

I'd guess the original purpose of the stones was to protect fragile non-immortals especially fror quests such as Lolth and the Immo run, after all at the time they were created there were no LL areas where immortals were vulnerable.

[gruntgruntson]

What about making the stones stackable (Can you limit stacks to other than 10?) and limiting toons to one stack? This will limit how many any one toon can carry, while also freeing up some inventory space.
This will also have a side-effect of making them non-bankable.

[borges]

funkyswerve said:

The party that recently beat Asmo was burning them faster than heals, and playing like crap as a result.

Parties who play like crap don't make it through that fight, stones or no stones.

I watched an unbuffed mage 'tanking' Asmo for about a minute until his stones ran out.

This is not playing like crap. This is brilliant, outside the box thinking. If our mage were not so adept at crafting unusual solutions to difficult problems, we wouldn't have made it to Asmo in the first place. You know full well why we couldn't call in the BBOD to reprise its popular role as sacrificial lamb.

I understand that the point of the stones is not to enable this type of behavior. But to suggest that using stones in this manner constitutes sub-standard play is closed-minded.

[tyranlthixis]

All the times we've done the hells I've never taken a single rebirth stone....and stones never played a role in any of the groups strategies (including the group that burned through the beefed up nessus in 4 hours flat). I don't think its a matter of "thinking outside the box". Its a matter that rebirth stones were never intended to be used in such large numbers and in the manner they were.....the very definition of exploiting.

How about making the stones much like the gems in the pillars game. You can only hold one at a time. That would reinforce the value of things like guardian angel and possums farce, and limit people reliance on these sort of things. Ultimately, you don't need them.

Tyran

[Ironfang]

As was mentioned earlier regarding 'aggro' I don't find them particularly useful in most situations because if something is wailing on you and killing you, likely you are just going to see the stones dissapear one after the other. It doesn't give you any time to change tactics etc. When you die the mobs break off and hopefully get picked up or killed by another party member, giving you that second to rebuff etc.

I was always under the impression that each death would start a new fugue timer so I was actually afraid of the stones until recently.

P.S.
4 Hours start to finish for Nessus? I am humbly impressed. Is the party makeup for that run already posted somewhere? This was before 'Hardcore' right?

[Delfestra Ruinvorn]

...I agree, that you don't NEED them. And also that they encourage sloppy play at times.

But, don't tell me that having a bunch in one's inventory is "exploiting".

They're a tool. If you don't like how the tool functions, or how it CAN be used...change the function.

The DM staff prefers to script around exploits, rather than forbid something. Thats in the server rules/information. The stones have been there for as long as I can remember. I just find them more *useful* now that crits and demi penalties are both things I need to cope with at the same time. Are they necessary? Of course not. Are they probably supposed to be a neat bonus for low-level non-immortals? Probably. Of all the places I know they can be found, only one is in an immortal area, and only that once per reset. The non-immo area spots actually respawn.

Just...don't tell me I'm exploiting by using a tool that the staff created. Y'all put it there. If it need to be changed, change it. But don't bash me for using what the game world provides. Thats like saying that stocking up on bazillions of res scrolls is an exploit, since they're readily available and you can have 100 of them with little effort. After all, ressing and healing is the domain of clerics, so parties should rely on clerics only...right?

Clearly...no one's interested in sticking to that line, even if that would make play more challenging, and res scrolls are not "necessary" to win either, if you've got a cleric in the party.

That said - There should be some limitation on rebirth stones. I suggested that to the powers that be myself privately, a short time ago. 'cause they ARE crutches, and infinite numbers of them does remove a certain amount of the risk - probably more than was intended, especially since crits came in to make things *harder*. Carrying 18 rebirth stones per run ('cause I'm too lazy to remove them for places I don't play cloud-tag) does give my cleric-self an element of...safety...thats probably more than intended, even with their ability to give a kind of wacky limited insurance against one-shot-death-crits from things my class HAS to be in melee range of as party of my PARTY JOB.

As to Pillars - Something absolutely has to be done there in regards to rebirth stones. I've stated above why, and I'm glad that plans are underway. But - please - leave the greater boots alone. Winning mine was the happiest day of my Pillars career. I don't want to see them degrade or vanish. And honestly, the times I get killed in Pillars have nothing to do with the type of boots I'm wearing. Its luck and circumsance, or skillful play on the part of my oponent. Of all the factors in fights I've been in, whether I had greater or lesser boots just wasn't an issue.

[FunkySwerve]

borges said:

funkyswerve said:

The party that recently beat Asmo was burning them faster than heals, and playing like crap as a result.

Parties who play like crap don't make it through that fight, stones or no stones.

Well, I didn't want to deflate you guys at the time, but the reason you made it through was a bug. Asmo's third form lacked the variable needed to enable wall breaking. Given the increased spawn rate in that form, I'm fairly certain you were heading for a wipe, absent that bug. That said, however, the play level improved substantially once the SoRs ran low. And there's no shame in wiping there, its SUPPOSED to be tough.

I watched an unbuffed mage 'tanking' Asmo for about a minute until his stones ran out.

This is not playing like crap. This is brilliant, outside the box thinking.

Actually, no, it was playing like crap. The party totally lacked any cohesion, or sense of strategy, at that point. Having a mage tanking is just poor strat, plain and simple, because his role as artillery/crowd control has been effectively destroyed, and he's reduced to nothing but soaking damage, a role he is extremely poorly suited for. Once the stones started to run low, strategy improved and you actually started to outpace Asmo's regen between bouts of summons (those weren't 'respawns', by the way). Your reliance on the stones actually hindered your play substantially, whether you were aware of it or not.

I understand that the point of the stones is not to enable this type of behavior. But to suggest that using stones in this manner constitutes sub-standard play is closed-minded.

No, it doesn't necessarily constitute sub-standard play, but then I never said that. It does enable it, and the effects were pretty clear.
Funky

[phalthallus]

I hate to argue this, but to say that we won because of a bug isn't necessarily fair or true (unless you are omniscient, which, while you may be close, isn't the case .

It would be fair to say the strategy we used came about because of a bug. Had Asmo busted thru the wall, we would have come up with an alternate ad hoc strategy. To suggest that we would have failed if it were working "right" is something nobody can claim to know. (I'm reminded of Napoleon Dynamite claiming to be watching "the worst video of all time", and his brother Kip replying "like anybody could even know that").

It's also easy to say that we started playing better when the stones began running out, because at the same time, there were fewer spawns. So yes, we looked more organized, but perhaps that's because we were fighting 10 spawns instead of 30.

[Master Jaxx]

Noone take this personally but hoarding up masses of Rebirth Stones is a huge form of cheese imo. 3 or so isn't so bad but 10 or 20+? Smelling pretty rancid, the cheese that is

I like what Enrith suggested in making them random drops, rather than static drops.

[stonewarrior]

I would have no problem with either doing away with them altogether, limiting their use (in Pillars or everywhere) or whatever changes are deemed appropriate. I have used them twice i the last few months (both on Nessus runs) in large part because my DD has not needed to use them.