Zodiac 64
To separate noobs and others you would need zones that only let you in if you are at a certain rank, like in priston tale.
or intellectual barriers can be applied to certain zones or abilities.
One of the things that oldschool rolepalyers might remember is the restriction of Paladin. In first edition, the Paladin was one of the most powerful classes ever created. In 3rd edition, it would have a CR modifier of lke +11. The abilities, in summery, included 90% immunity to entire schools of magic and psionics, 100% immunity to several effects including possession and fear, enormous resistances to most everything else, higher attack ratios than fighters, the ability to function into the negatives, healing powers, summoning powers, and with a few supplements, the ability to raise the dead. By 22nd level you could invoke wishes and negate artifact special effects with a holy avenger, and wield power on any plane of existence. A lance in your hands could easily slay a dragon in 1 hit, and you might be riding anything ranging from a pegasus to a silver dragon.
you had the Charisma of kings and the leadership abilities of a military general, and the authority of both a God and a Noble.
ok, so you had this uber character class, so why didn't everyone play them?
because they had both direct and indirect restrictions in place. The restrictions and codes of ethics, along with being De facto leader of party, and being able to properly negotiate politics, strategy, and clerical magic meant that most Game Masters in their right minds wouldn't let most people near the class.
The alignment restrictions were so high that a wide variety of things would prevent a party from forming. If someone used poison they were defaulted to evil and if the Paladin adventured with evil they lost their powers. So they would have to leave the party on the alignment shift of poison use or kill the party member.
this is just one example of one restriction of one class.
Anti Paladins were harder to play than paladins, they weren't as powerful but they were allowed to use poisons and the dark side of their spells to dubious ends. Anti Paladins and 'Paladins had an indestructable force that braught them together and required them to battle.
- point is, you dont get to play these every day, and if you play them wrong, you lose them.
Kensai of the first edition were horridly powerful, in many ways, moreso than paladins, with Damage output/round similar to nuclear weapons, a 13th level Kensai had something like a 90% chance of slaying a God, in round 1. I've seen damage outputs actually surpass that of entire Pantheons, but ive also seen how difficult it is to play them.
The mechanics alone to generate the damage can take a solid hour to clarify, and involve differential calculus. The honor code is so strict you are more likely to see characters commit suicide than get past level 5, and in order to level, you had to hunt down and defeat someone of equal or higher level of the same class (this stopped making sense at the particularly high levels, but is vaguely similar to Afro Samurai).
The psionicist, being saved for last, is a class so tweaky that it became notorious at conventions and in RPGA almost entirely banned. The cheif problems of the class were
1. to the ordinary observer of average intellect, it sucked
2. to the ordinary dungeon master, it was a game breaker
3. to the average player, it was too complex to understand
4. in the hands of an experienced player, it was unmatched in gaming.
Psionicists were, bar none, the most powerful things in gaming history - their power was only held in check by the whim of the GM. We are talking about a class too powerful for free form. Only the game mechanics bind them, and those are mutable.
Of ocurse, out of 27 players, you might get 2 that can function with a psionicist, and 1 that can get any value of playing them. The chief mechanic in operation that makes them too powerful:
psionicsts offensive powers are easily overcome, and infact, weaker than that of a Bard, but they are compared to the wizard (the ones that can turn mice into dragons and counteract god curses with wishes) in overall power.
Well, the wizard's offensive power is exponentially higher than the bard, and psionicists dont wield weapons worth a damn, so where is this "overall power" coming from?
Defense.
The purpose of the DM is very often "kill the players, if they surive, they gain exp". Plotlines are sometimes added, but more often than not, its a hackfest.
Only problem is: Psionicists are ******** invulnerable. No, really! They have a power to counteract every single offensive ability in the game, including ones the GM just happens to "make up" on the spot. "immune to psionics" abilities have no effect whatsoever on psionics that target the psionicist or inanimate objects, and it goes down hill from there...
psionicists, also, unlike everyone else, are allowed to level in the middle of an adventure, and keep leveling, and since DMs give out EXP to survivors only, and Psionicsts cant die, it creates a viscious loop where forced or elective retirement is the only sane thing to do. (the alternative is to kill them early before they get too powerful.. gee, where have i heard that line before..?).
the point might not be obvious, but i listed three classes, with increasing power and specialization, and each required more and more skill to play and advance, while in the hands of the average person, it would fail entirely.
thus i suggest some of the more tweaky abilities to have quest-like requirements or skill sets otherwise unlikely with "noobs".
there are three divisions we normally ue in a person,
mental
spiritual
physical
right? spiritual can be substituted for the philosophical, but the basic notions are tests.
A physical test might be endurance (in order to accomplsih this task you would have to probably stay logged in actively killing for 12+ hours) or manual dexterity/timing (like fishing/cars) and so on.
With a mental test, you can do things that require a lot of risky math (like a stock market system where pattern recognition helps), a simon says "memory" deal, spelling or memorization of lines, and so on.
philosophical/spiritual quests might search for deeper meaning in the quests, and requre a person to make moral decisions in the plot line, like choosing between greater power and the greater good, test loyalty, exact poverty limitations, or require you to understand the fundamental principle of Plato's cave.
higher level specialties would require higher difficulty quests, and patterns (such as performing several quests of a similar nature for a particularly effective ability).
