Removing Ascendants / Reiatsu Cost Change

I would like to preface this by saying that this is a collaborative effort between myself and Tova that has been thoroughly discussed in staff; this is a mash-up of stuff I've written on the spot and parts of Tova's staff post. I'm posting it because I happened to be the one online when we went live. This is more than a Mechanics thing.

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What are Ascendants?

This is a question that has kept coming up in every discussion I've seen about a character's options after prestige. It's not that they're poorly understood, but that everyone has their own understanding that they're certain is correct.

What I understood to be true was that they did not Transcend. They remained themselves, their old race, their old essential character. It was an additional small stepping stone after Prestige for people who had reached their Prestige cap and wished to continue growing their characters.

What this tells me is that players are reaching their caps too quickly, effectively wanting to Prestige again because they still have aspects of their characters to explore and stories to tell. They're hitting a wall they shouldn't be hitting because of how fast they've ascended the Reiatsu ladder and this, more than anything else, is the problem. To address this problem, we've decided on two major changes.

The first is the removal of Ascendents and Post-Prestige.

We have a number of reasons for this.

To start, Transcendentals should be powerful. Lower classes shouldn't be able to touch them. That's the whole point of them. At best, a top-tier Prestige player should be able to not die. That's if they stay on their toes.

Next, Broken Transcendentals need to exist as well. They happen when you approach Transcendence and fuck it up; more powerful then they were, but less powerful than Transcendentals themselves. Hatred and Nothing have done wonders with concept.

Since Ascendants were just Prestige but better, we're opening up that possibility for Prestige characters. The Reiatsu and Absolute Caps will be changing to allow Prestige characters to reach even farther. The changes are below.

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The Reiatsu Limit dictates how high a character may bring their total stats, not counting things such as buffs or release bonuses.

• Normal: 300
• Prestige: 400
• Broken Transcendental: 500

The Absolute Cap limits how high a character may bring a single stat, counting buffs, boosts, release bonuses or any other type of stat increase. The Absolute Cap is as follows:

• Normal (less than 200 Reiatsu): 150
• Normal (200+ Reiatsu): 200
• Prestige: 250
• Broken Transcendental: 300

Once a Prestige Character has 400 Reiatsu and 5,000 Base GP they may request an expansion of 10 to the Reiatsu and Absolute Cap as an alternative to a Milestone, up to five times in total.

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This means that a Prestige Character now has a greatly expanded potential, with an Absolute Cap to match Broken Transcendentals and a Reiatsu Limit only 50 points lower. For all of those people with characters stuck at 400 Reiatsu trying to figure out how to Post-Prestige, worry no longer.

But wait, there's more!

This isn't a problem exclusive to high-level characters. Rapid power growth affects our game at every level. It's never fun to be stuck anywhere, whether it's 300 Reiatsu or 400 Reiatsu, and with the increase in application quality we've had over the last year a lot of people will be hitting that limit sooner than they'd like.

We're already making a huge change, so we're also changing how that fast that power is gained, effectively immediately.

Below is the new Reiatsu scale.

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0 - 50 Reiatsu: Free. All characters start at 50 Reiatsu.
50 - 200 Reiatsu: 15 GP per 1 Reiatsu
200 - 250 Reiatsu: 30 GP per 1 Reiatsu
250 - 300 Reiatsu: 45 GP per 1 Reiatsu
300 - 400 Reiatsu: 60 GP per 1 Reiatsu
400 - 500 Reiatsu: 80 GP per 1 Reiatsu
500+ Reiatsu: 100 GP per 1 Reiatsu

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For your convenience:

100 Reiatsu costs 750 GP.
150 Reiatsu costs 1,500 GP.
200 Reiatsu costs 2,250 GP.
250 Reiatsu costs 3,750 GP.
300 Reiatsu costs 6,000 GP.
400 Reiatsu costs 12,000 GP.
500 Reiatsu costs 20,000 GP.
600 Reiatsu costs 30,000 GP.

What this means is that the higher echelons of power become harder to achieve. People stop flinging themselves up that ladder as fast as they have been. Every character, unless they have a significant amount of banked GP, becomes weaker. Everyone has more space to tell their stories without numbers pressuring them to get there faster.

It also means that Post-Prestige is no longer a thing. Instead, you may stay as Prestige and or try for Transcendence. Maybe you'll fail and become something Broken instead.

But remember, not every character is destined for Transcendence. Not every story ends in that much power. This way we're no longer shoehorning in a stage of evolution that honestly doesn't exist.

UPDATE: The old formula for Reiatsu pricing is contained in the spoiler below.

0-100 Reiatsu costs 5 GP per 1

101-150 Reiatsu costs 10 GP per 1

151-200 Reiatsu costs 15 GP per 1

201-250 Reiatsu costs 20 GP per 1

251-300 Reiatsu costs 25 GP per 1

301-400 Reiatsu costs 50 GP per 1

401-500 Reiatsu costs 75 GP per 1

501+ Reiatsu costs 100 GP per 1.