As we all know, the best way to get phat loot is bat your eyelashes at a DM, cross your fingers, then put in a faction application. All well and good. These second best way appears to be to find one of the people who can write a good application, beat their character’s teeth out and steal their faction loot.
But wait. Apparently this isn’t allowed! I am all for faction loot not making its way into general circulation, but I have several suggestions.
Firstly, some of the faction loot I have, has: "contact a DM when found" written on it. This is a good idea, and I would like to see it on all loot that is going to get taken away by some high lvl NPC, dissolved into mush, snatched by a low flying roc or whichever other deus ex machina comes their way. Since the reasons are mostly for game balance, not in-game logic, it would give people warning before they sell whatever helm they were wearing before they topped that faction member.
Secondly, I would like an explicit posting about this in the forums somewhere. I have played here a while, and I had no idea till a faction item disappeared in my inventory. It did come with a polite DM PM, but it was still a surprise.
Thirdly, and somewhat controversially, I would suggest that items that have an important secondary function be excluded from this rule. This is hard to say without spoilering, but here I go. There is a ring that belongs to *spoiler* faction, which tells the other little *spoilers* that something is amiss. Likewise for jewellery for the *spoilers, spoilers and associated spoilers*. There is a *spoiler* that *tele-spoilers* a *spoiler* safely back to *spoiler*. These items are just asking to be incorporated into plots and schemes. Rivals should be able to use these to make mayhem, just the same way that stealing faction keys is cool, so long as a DM knows, and you don’t loot their home base without a DM along.
There is two ways to do this. Firstly separate the nifty powers items from the secondary power. So an item that gives *spoiler* twice a day, and another item that gives the secondary use, like those listed above (*spoiler, spoiler or spoiler*). I can see this would annoy faction members, because then these extra items are filling up ring slots and so on. My second, considerably better idea, is tool-kit up a set of items that are the same as the faction gear, but without any of the naff one-a-day abilities or constant buffs, but still with the special function. That way if something as lame as "the items powers fade, co-incidentally the day after it changes hands" is used, the item can be replaced by the less powerful item that just does the secondary use. That way someone can carry one, without tilting the power balance of the game toward faction looters, but still gives the opportunity for fun and mayhem. Like using the *spoiler* to call for other *spoilers* to put in your cooking pot etc etc. This creates more opportunities for people who actually want to use the item for RP and general interactive (PvP or otherwise) purposes, but doesn’t overpower the psychopathic uniform-hunting assassin that I was going to app for.
Thanks for taking the time to read my typically bloated posting, I hope it was clear enough.
-Scrappa*spoiler*