First of all, I applaud those that make this rather challenging step! I have longed for some truly heart-pounding action along this vein.

Having had some good experience with this in other games, I find this style of play to be very exciting and rewarding. For those who may not take the plunge, I offer only this. Once you start a hardcore (in other games we called it PERMADEATH) character and get past the thought of losing them to a death, you will eventually enjoy writing your own epitaph illustrating the circumstances of your spectacular (or maybe not so...) death.

While I see some players have taken upon themselves to lay out some ground rules for this, and I will not attempt to sway the consensus that has been reached, but offer some ideas that may not have been considered.

Policing. I cannot stress enough to NOT let this fall on any one person to monitor, or it will certainly NOT be fun for THEM. This should be a community watch effort, whereas everybody who is participating is watching each other. Whats more, I would also stress that soloing be heavily discouraged, as there would be no way to police that from afar. Instead perhaps, have dedicated Hardcore groups that only can hunt together and with no others.

One rule I haven't seen come to light (but I might have missed it in this thread) is the level of creature difficulty. As a member of a hardcore/permadeath group it was required to run any instance at the highest difficulty and only quests with levels equal to or greater than the characters entering it. This might be a little difficult to translate to GSIV since we don't exactly have "quests" and "instances" but I see the Adventurer's Guild as something very similar. Perhaps the main thrust to challenge here could be using that venue to setup a group's own "quest" using the highest creature level difficulty. Additionally, the characters traveling together must be within 2 levels of each other. So a 3rd level character can hunt and travel with a level 5, but if so there cannot be a level 2 character in the group.

A couple of things in general when relating the use of other characters abilities/spells and whatnot for the benefit of the group. It was allowed for the members of the group to make use of each other spells, but they could only be for those that actually travel and hunt together, so no having a wizard parked at a table to spell others and stay there. Healers were allowed and EXPECTED to help others in their group. Clerics were allowed to raise the dead (and thus saving the character from a permanent death), but only in the field or where the body laid. No leaving the instance, or whisking the body away to a safe place! Field raise and healing should be allowed in these cases. What shouldn't be allowed is bringing a cleric, or a healer that was NOT at the scene of death. So if you do not have such in your party, you cannot make use of their abilities.

The group size should be limited so as not to create a "death-ball." My suggestion there would be 4-5 characters at most in any one party. A true challenge would be a have teams of 2-3 working together exclusively. So it should be important to create groups that work well with each other.

Lastly, I hope this becomes a more permanent fixture of the GSIV community and grows into a whole new way of experiencing the game. Go forth and live or die by the sword! Please share your stories of narrow escapes, harrowing deaths and sad endings.

~Contemplar~

>Go forth and live or die by the sword!

by the runestaff!

"a hardcore party that only hunts Reim together." -- AllenM20

Heh. That'll be short trip: no-one can bless each other's weapons... :)

>>>by the runestaff!

+100

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GameMaster Necios
Subs team
Champion of subject/verb agreement
Honorary BADNAME committee chair

Annanasi says, "The symbol of the Arkati Necios is a cuddly teddy bear on a field of pink."