Done with the monster NPC RP guide lines, no one follows them.

[UilliamNebel]

For the sixth time, a monster NPC race, Drow comes into Guldorand Fortress City, buffed to the gils, openly being a Drow, walking past guards. Causes a fight, from their meta gained advantage as they are ready to go while everyone else caught unready in a situation RP wise that would never happen.

I am done with it. I am just gonna ignore monster races on the surface.

As far as I am concerned a round of DMs killing the Cs on site near settlement guards is needed to drive it home how immersion effecting this is. But, doubt will happen with how often this is going on.

[Azensor]

npc is non player character
pc is player character

[perseid]

Is being pre-warded considered meta now? If anything I'd find it more immersion breaking if they didn't feel like they needed to be fully warded outside the UD while purposefully being visibly drow.

[Aradin]

Take screenshots and include them in a report to DMs if players are breaking the monstrous race/Underdark race rules.

To quote the wiki directly:
"Prancing about too close to a city full of people who hate you is suicidal, and the DMs will be happy to prove that point.

From DM Watchtower:
"Oh, and it doesn't matter if you're invisible or disguised - a monster who was raised in the Underdark, a place where surfacers are both feared and reviled, would not take the risk of entering a settlement full of folks who want him dead, regardless of the protections he's put up for himself. Unless both your Intelligence and Wisdom score rate below 4 or 5, your character would know better."

This requires a bit of suspension of disbelief from part of the players. It may be common to ask "why my level 30 ranger with 100 of stealth cannot just prance around Cordor? I can practically solo most epic bosses alone, a city doesn't scare me", and you would be right. However, this falls to the nature of server health, and is up to the players to perpetuate a feeling of unease and justify to themselves, and other characters, why they would not, and maybe could not just walk into Cordor and murder all the PCs and NPCs there."

If you see players breaking this rule, then screenshot, report, and go on about your day. This isn't your problem to solve, it's up to the DMs.
https://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Playing_any_UD_race

[UilliamNebel]

Is being pre-warded considered meta now? If anything I'd find it more immersion breaking if they didn't feel like they needed to be fully warded outside the UD while purposefully being visibly drow.

Yes, it is meta, meta to an extreme that no amount of polemics and sophistry will cover for.

Walking in, openly Drow, past guards, attacking a PC in front of guards, as they walked past said guards with magically flaming sword and other magical effects ready to go. Thats meta, by the way, yeah it is meta, need to hear it one more time, completely meta. Was using the lack of A.I. and set up in the area to gain an advantage over others.

Also, yeah no, they should of instead of 'being smart' with buffs and such, maybe read the guidelines for playing that race and respecting setting with their surface activity.

[perseid]

Is being pre-warded considered meta now? If anything I'd find it more immersion breaking if they didn't feel like they needed to be fully warded outside the UD while purposefully being visibly drow.

Yes, it is meta, meta to an extreme that no amount of polemics and sophistry will cover for.

Walking in, openly Drow, past guards, attacking a PC in front of guards, as they walked past said guards with magically flaming sword and other magical effects ready to go. Thats meta, by the way, yeah it is meta, need to hear it one more time, completely meta. Was using the lack of A.I. and set up in the area to gain an advantage over others.

Also, yeah no, they should of instead of 'being smart' with buffs and such, maybe read the guidelines for playing that race and respecting setting with their surface activity.

I mean I'm not arguing the drow in a settlement part. As Aradin noted there's already plenty to make the staff's viewpoints on that clear. I was confused by your wording was all since it sounded like being buffed in general was considered meta.

[riffraff]

This seems to be happening a lot just lately, or at least, on my timezone. I went the longest time without ever seeing a PC Underdark race in the flesh (bar one Orog who was raiding at night) and just recently I've seen a hobgoblin (in disguise, mind you) and a Drow around Guldorand and a Kobold in Mayfields (in Stealth until I confronted them). I thought about querying the Drow interaction only because I was amazed to see the "Amnish Boat Pilot" is happy to ferry Drow, apparently, which seemed bizarre mechanically.

I assume the reason NPCs don't hostile against PC monster/UD races either because of engine faction limitations or because it's feared there'll just be streams of dead NPCs everywhere? Personally really takes me out of it seeing the NPCs not even run away. But if hostiling them isn't an option, could their services at least not be accessible to an undisguised monster/UD race?

Speaking of, I gotta ask about this part, though:

From DM Watchtower:
"Oh, and it doesn't matter if you're invisible or disguised - a monster who was raised in the Underdark, a place where surfacers are both feared and reviled, would not take the risk of entering a settlement full of folks who want him dead, regardless of the protections he's put up for himself. Unless both your Intelligence and Wisdom score rate below 4 or 5, your character would know better."

Knowing being caught is a death sentence vs "would not take the risk" and "your character would know better" seems a bit much to me. Being invisible or disguised doesn't mean you're safe, but if you're uncovered you're basically dead. I don't see what's wrong with that. If that is the assumption - shouldn't ever do it even invisible/disguised - I have serious questions about all sorts of RP that I'm very confident happens both sides of the UD/Surface divide.

[Eyeliner]

and a Kobold in Mayfields (in Stealth until I confronted them).

Underdarkers will be around Mayfields every now and then and I suspect it's because that's the default respawn if they died elsewhere on the Surface server and didn't set a smarter spawn point. They probably should spawn at Treadstone instead.

[perseid]

This seems to be happening a lot just lately, or at least, on my timezone. I went the longest time without ever seeing a PC Underdark race in the flesh (bar one Orog who was raiding at night) and just recently I've seen a hobgoblin (in disguise, mind you) and a Drow around Guldorand and a Kobold in Mayfields (in Stealth until I confronted them). I thought about querying the Drow interaction only because I was amazed to see the "Amnish Boat Pilot" is happy to ferry Drow, apparently, which seemed bizarre mechanically.

I assume the reason NPCs don't hostile against PC monster/UD races either because of engine faction limitations or because it's feared there'll just be streams of dead NPCs everywhere? Personally really takes me out of it seeing the NPCs not even run away. But if hostiling them isn't an option, could their services at least not be accessible to an undisguised monster/UD race?

Speaking of, I gotta ask about this part, though:

From DM Watchtower:
"Oh, and it doesn't matter if you're invisible or disguised - a monster who was raised in the Underdark, a place where surfacers are both feared and reviled, would not take the risk of entering a settlement full of folks who want him dead, regardless of the protections he's put up for himself. Unless both your Intelligence and Wisdom score rate below 4 or 5, your character would know better."

Knowing being caught is a death sentence vs "would not take the risk" and "your character would know better" seems a bit much to me. Being invisible or disguised doesn't mean you're safe, but if you're uncovered you're basically dead. I don't see what's wrong with that. If that is the assumption - shouldn't ever do it even invisible/disguised - I have serious questions about all sorts of RP that I'm very confident happens both sides of the UD/Surface divide.

I'm sort of curious about the Boat Pilot factor too considering that to my knowledge most such npcs will shun Outcasts. So if the Drow was disguised it's one thing since they might have beaten a disguise check of some kind. But if they were just outright respected by the npc then that seems like a bug in need of reporting.

[riffraff]

Underdarkers will be around Mayfields every now and then and I suspect it's because that's the default respawn if they died elsewhere on the Surface server and didn't set a smarter spawn point. They probably should spawn at Treadstone instead.

That's a fair point! Though this one was running around the village for ages, not just leaving. I know because my character was tailing them to see what they were up to (not like scouting the area around Mayfields, literally just on the Mayfields map). When they realised they'd been spotted, they ran off to hide around a corner, but still stayed in the village when I also hid and started following them. They didn't try to flee at all until by sheer coincidence someone my character knew came through the portal and confronted them. They still didn't want to leave before a lot of back and forth conversation happened.

I'm sort of curious about the Boat Pilot factor too considering that to my knowledge most such npcs will shun Outcasts. So if the Drow was disguised it's one thing since they might have beaten a disguise check of some kind. But if they were just outright respected by the npc then that seems like a bug in need of reporting.

Yeah, I honestly wasn't sure if it was a bug or not. But she wasn't disguised, it's why I followed her. I watched her successfully walk through Westcliff, use the elevator and talk to the Amnish Boat Pilot to pop into Guldorand docks unstealthed and undisguised.

If I had to guess, new players in both instances as their interactions showed some lack of understanding of Arelith mechanics as well as confusion at being told they should leave. It makes me wonder what there is in game that explains the UD/monster rules and if it's being missed or misinterpreted.

[The GrumpyCat]

For the sixth time, a monster NPC race, Drow comes into Guldorand Fortress City, buffed to the gils, openly being a Drow, walking past guards. Causes a fight, from their meta gained advantage as they are ready to go while everyone else caught unready in a situation RP wise that would never happen.

I am done with it. I am just gonna ignore monster races on the surface.

As far as I am concerned a round of DMs killing the Cs on site near settlement guards is needed to drive it home how immersion effecting this is. But, doubt will happen with how often this is going on.

Please send this in as a report? I see nothing in our inbox about it. If you don't tell us, we don't neccesarly know about it.

There's a few good mechanical points here... (especially about the respawn point for Uders. Putting that in Treadstone is a great idea! I'll see if I can get that done asap!)

Underdarkers should not be openly walking about in settlments(*), as aformentioned. Sneaking in whilst under heavy disguise? Perhaps. But openly walking in? No. If this is happening please, please report it.

Also - Underdarkers - please stop this. If we do keep getting reports of drow/monster races doing this, then we will look at reintroducing the Kill Script.

I'm now going to lock this as frankly this should have been a report, not a forum post.


(*) We're a bit more relaxed on 'near settlments' like Sibiyad, Crows Nest, ect. But even in those cases I don't want to see monsters openly hanging around for any leangth of time.