Philosophy of Power-Leveling

[Kinal]

Scenario:

You want to get better at a non-combat spell, Polymorph, as a wizard. You've just reached a high enough skill level that the spell lasts a long time. You decide to memorize several iterations of the spell, casting it repeatedly, only to revert and cast it again.

IC Explanation: You're constantly casting this spell in an effort to perfect your incantations, and unlock the greater arcane mysteries of this spell, allowing you to expand your transmutation knowledge.

OOC Explanation: You're trying to get better at it so you're no longer confined to being a tiger.

Code abuse?

[Grenwyn]

Practicing a spell over and over to improve at it is ICly plausible, as far as I can see. That's, what, 50% of Naruto episodes?

[Aysa]

I don't see anything wrong with that. If you're trying to prolong your existence as a Tiger... you'd need to cast it repeatedly. I would try to incorporate some IC actions with your existence as a tiger. Wander the forest side as a tiger? Find a Calim princess, have her name you Rajah, and let her fall in love with a street ra-... er... wait, that sounds familiar.

[Harroghty]

Speaking as someone whose PC trains a lot, I think that there is a distinction between IC practice and OOC practice, swords or spells. If you're just mindlessly doing the same coded actions over and over again without some kind of RP element tossed into it then I think you're probably wrong - maybe not breaking a rule, but probably wrong.

It is plausible in character to imagine that an expert warrior or wizard would practice. After all, practice is what separates the experts from the professionals. Still, it is not plausible in character to imagine that your character is a robot who spams identical actions ad nauseum. I realize I'm making a narrow distinction, but I think it is an important one.

[Talos]

It comes down to the in-character logic of the repetition. It makes sense to sling the same spells, or to swing a sword for practice. If you are doing a bizarre combination of repeated actions because it offers an odd advantage, this starts to warrant scrutiny.

[Areia]

Related to Harroghty's mention of robots, here's another point I think warrants raising, though most of us will find it as a statement of the obvious. (It is not directed at any one person or group of persons in particular).

Be careful when you're grinding both not to stop paying attention and not to become so engrossed in the XP/skill gains that other things around your PC become less important.

I've run into a lot of incidents where I come across a PC in the midst of grinding, and it just keeps on a-going, despite multiple attempts on my part to interact with it, and I'm sure plenty of us have experienced the same. At end, it's an RP game, so RP.

In short, do whatever you like that's fun and doesn't break the rules, but when it starts hurting other people's experience of the game, it becomes not okay.