Ni Karma

This is a roll bonus system, that is also nearly zero-sum. "Karma" can be thought of as "favor of the loot gods", where it skews loot towards those with the most favor. You get this favor by attending raids, and lose it when winning items. Specifically the term "DKP" is avoided because karma does not really act as currency. But for those that love the idea of DKP, they can hoard points and then it DOES act as currency... but items can become quite expensive in this case.

Design goals

Ni Karma (or NKS) was designed to solve the following issues well:

   * Loot received is generally proportional to time spend raiding
   * Points can be saved for better loot
   * Little to no inflation
   * Difficult to break/collude, without it being obvious
   * A small element of luck (some might see this as a disadvantage)
   * The possibility to exclude others with much lower scores (veterans advantage over newbies)
   * Items only get disenchanted if really nobody wants them
   * System can be scaled to include dungeons of different difficulty

Detailed description

Name

The system is officially called the Ni Karma System (or NKS), to distinguish it from DKP, zero-sum DKP, and other loot distribution systems. (Karma can be thought as "favor of the loot gods" as the more you have, the more it skews loot towards you. It should not be equated to currency or DKP.)

New members

New raiders start with 0 karma. Karma scores can never drop below zero. If a penalty or enforced expenditure (by the minimum cost rule below) would bring a score below 0, it is set to zero instead.

Earning Karma

The following is a list of possible ways to earn karma. This list should be understood as an example, each raid using this system is encouraged to tweak it any way they like.

• +5 karma for showing up for raid on-time.
• -5 karma for not showing up on-time
• +5 karma at the end of the run
• +5 karma for replacing a dropped out member
• +5 karma per boss kill or +5 karma per hour

It is possible for raid leaders to hand out bonuses to the entire raid, if a raid spends significant time to progress/learn how to defeat a new boss. Karma may also be individually granted to those filling in empty slots to help the raid succeed.

As with all "normal" DKP systems, guild leaders need to pay attention on how much karma enters the system. The 50 point rule below allows the exclusion of people from rolls. If too few points enter the system, veteran raiders will be at a disadvantage, if too many points are awarded, veterans gain too much of a lead. The leader should consider how many more raids/hours/commitment one person needs in order to completely lock out a new player on a loot drop. A good starting factor would be 2-3 raids, which equates to about 10 hours. This means that people who have done 10 hours of raiding more than someone else, do not have to roll against them because they will have at least 50 more points. Therefore, the karma entering should be approximately 5 points per hour, or about 20 karma per raid. This is a good value for fairness' sake. Spikes, such as special awards for new boss kills, won't harm the system, but continuously awarding too much karma will have a detrimental effect.

Distributing Loot

When an item drops, the loot master first announces which classes and/or builds are eligible to compete for the item. Eligible raid members have now three choices: pass, roll without bonus, or roll with bonus.

If nobody with a karma score of 50 or more is willing to use their bonus, the loot master may open the item to other classes at his discretion. If nobody is willing to use a bonus of 50 or more, in the end all raid members able to use the item are allowed to participate in the roll.

Members choosing to use their karma bonus must use it fully -- no partial amounts.

If the item is won by someone using their bonus, 50% of their karma is lost, and their karma score is rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5.

There is no loss if no karma was used by the winner (except for class items - see next).

Class set items always cost at least 25 karma, and at most 100 karma.

There is no such min/max loss cap on multi-class items.

After announcing the usage of bonus, those people whose used bonus is 50 points below the highest used bonus are excluded from the roll. If the highest karma used is 50 or lower, anyone eligible may roll with or without karma.

Multi-class items are distributed first, then class items for consistency. (Any BOE's picked up on the way will also be distributed after boss loot.)

Ties are decided by a straight /roll with no bonuses.

Anyone rolling with karma bonus who is uncontested (i.e., only one person wants an item) may get the item as if declared "no bonus".

Karma is kept separately for each character and cannot be transferred (except when you are requested to bring an alt character, you may apply that karma to your main character).

Losses for wins are immediate. Karma is added at the end of the night, or after loot distribution of each boss kill, if feasible. There exists a UI mod to track karma continually.

If you are told not to compete for an item by an officer, you may not roll. (This may be invoked in cases of multiple defaulted/free items being won by one person who then tries to roll on other things, or other situations that seem highly "unfair". Members are expected to not be greedy, but they are also expected to not collude, and to use their karma for items they actually want.)

Examples and comments

One thing no system can solve is the issue of vastly unlucky class drops. The loss cap of 100 points and the minimum of 25 points fixes much of this, however.

The sliding tier window eliminates the extremely-lucky person from competing with someone who has a much higher bonus -- but only if that person uses his bonus. Ex: Person A has a high bonus of 150 and persons B, C, D have relatively low bonuses (70, 40, and 30). If Person A wanted to use his karma bonus, he would win it outright since nobody else is within 50 points (and thus, ineligible to roll). If 'A' declines to use his bonus then the choice goes to 'B'. If 'B' uses his bonus, everyone with 20+ karma may roll with bonus (and A may not roll, since his bonus is zero by choice). If B passes, the option will go to person C. Since C is less-than-or-equal to 50 points, everyone may roll with their declared bonus, including A and B (with a 0 bonus). If Person C used bonus of 40, he'd have far more chance of winning against those not using bonus. This demonstrates how those that save bonus will generally be the last to receive items but get the first pick at new items. The sliding tier eliminates some of the annoying disappointment if both A and B wanted the item... A has way more karma than B, but could potentially lose without the sliding tier.

Remember that there's still a minimum 25 point loss on all class items, whether you use your bonus or not, and a maximum loss of 100 points. That means it's in your best interests to roll with bonus on class items if your bonus is 50 or lower, because you're going to lose 25 points if you win no matter what. It's a good idea to actually force "bonus" rolls on class items if someone's karma is 50 or lower and they want to roll, to prevent collusion among classes. You should not require it for non-class items.

Each person needs to decide how they want to use their points... saving them gives first pick and is much like purchasing the items, but items tend to cost more and if you don't exercise your option, you often don't even get to roll. You do still get items - you either get them first, or you get them last.

Spending your karma quickly, on the other hand, gives more items cheaper, but only if the others don't want it, it's more random when you win, and you cannot "get lucky" against someone that has much more karma. Many times, you won't even get to roll on something you want, but many times you'll get very cheap items.

This duality is a big strength, where karma is more like currency (dkp) when saving, and more like a roll bonus (karma) if not.

Unrelated directly to the system: you need to attend a previous MC run where at least one boss was killed, before you get to roll on any items on the current raid. The only exception is if you are the only one that can use the item.

Also unrelated directly to the system: we allow members to move karma, with restrictions. Characters may move Molten Core karma over 200, to BWL karma at a rate of 20%. Ex: Someone has 325 molten core karma. He can move 125 of it and get credited 25 points of BWL karma. This is some incentive for experienced players to help out in MC, since it will give them karma in BWL. It's not meant to replace going to BWL, but merely an incentive to continue attending MC.

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Acknowledgments: Qed was a co-designer of this system and did a lot of the number crunching and theory. He is a fan of zero-sum and proved how this system "tended towards zero-sum" (although it is not strictly so). I'd like to thank the officers of the Knights who say Ni on Icecrown for their input, including a lot of work coming up with other possible systems, and the entire Ni guild for being so patient as we worked out the kinks

• UI mod for scorekeeping: at curse gaming
• The Knights who say Ni website