Trunx wrote:
I think it's absurd to act as if these appraise characters were providing some sort of great service to the community at huge personal cost, as opposed to just making easy, passive, free money by stocking their shop with items bought from NPCs ten feet away. You're not a martyr or Mother Teresa, you were in it to make a profit, and as such don't deserve "the community's respect" for your selfless OOC sacrifice, or any kind of special consideration because you were so "nice."
Trunx, you are making some VAST assumptions. Yes, players were shafted. Their builds (which were not against the rules) were actually less optimal. Why don't we go ahead and remove AC bonus from tumble? People skill dump far into their builds on a 3 level splash. ("I couldn't tumble yesterday. I became a master in just 5 minutes!") But you get to keep the ability to tumble away from attacks of opportunity. That prevents you from having to get a feat (or 3) and wear medium armor or less. That's a fair compromise, right?
Simply saying that they weren't genuinely trying to help the community because they weren't doing it for free is ignorance. The entire dwarven community was breathed to life by a merchant faction doing merchanty things (including selling items at a discount, and making a small profit so they could afford to RP more without constantly circle grinding like mindless zombies). But no. They only did it for the profit. The rest of their work (which was paid for by merchanting) had NOTHING to do with helping players or creating RP. How could it!? The community (much the way some believe dwarves are born) just sprung up from the ground!
If you don't like the change, tough luck. Delevel to the point where you decided to take these things, and start over. Your character goes from being a master of their craft to a total novice, just to compensate for a change to "create more RP". Without even opening the door to help characters explain why something they could do yesterday can't be done today. "Why don't you stock essences anymore?" "Because we...umm..yeah! You get it, right!?" "How about portal lenses?" "That's umm...you see. When a momma portal and a daddy portal love eachother very much...The portals here are going celibate." "Riiiight."
A change to deliberately negatively impact a mechanic to keep them from doing something that isn't against the rules can very much be seen as an attack. There is no precedence in the rules to discourage it in the beginning. But now you're the devil because you might have done it, or used the mechanic in some other way that it was intended to work.
This makes me think of a witch trial. "Have you any proof?" "She turned me into a neut! I got be'er" "She has got a wart." "BURN 'ER!" "A WITCH!"