How to Set Up Permission Inheritance (LuckPerms)

Without inheritance, every permission node has to be added to every group individually. A server with five ranks and 40 plugins can easily end up with hundreds of duplicated entries that become impossible to maintain. Permission inheritance in Minecraft with LuckPerms solves this by letting groups inherit permissions from parent groups, change a node once, and it cascades everywhere it needs to go.

What inheritance does

When Group B inherits from Group A, every permission in Group A is automatically available to players in Group B. If Group A has essentials.home, Group B gets it too without explicitly listing it. This stacks, Group C can inherit from Group B, which inherits from Group A, and players in Group C get all three levels of permissions.

Setting up a basic hierarchy

A common pattern is a linear rank ladder where each rank includes everything from the rank below. First, make sure LuckPerms is installed. Then create the groups:

/lp creategroup default
/lp creategroup member
/lp creategroup trusted
/lp creategroup moderator
/lp creategroup admin

Set up the inheritance chain:

/lp group member parent add default
/lp group trusted parent add member
/lp group moderator parent add trusted
/lp group admin parent add moderator

Now the hierarchy looks like this:

admin
  └── moderator
        └── trusted
              └── member
                    └── default

Permissions added to "default" apply to every group above it. Permissions added to "moderator" apply only to moderator and admin.

Assigning permissions at the right level

The key to clean permission inheritance in Minecraft with LuckPerms is adding each node to the lowest group that should have it:

• default, basic permissions every player needs: essentials.home, essentials.spawn, essentials.msg, essentials.tpa.
• member, earned after a probation period: essentials.sethome.multiple.3, lwc.protect.
• trusted, long-term players: essentials.sethome.multiple.5, coreprotect.inspect.
• moderator, staff tools: essentials.mute, essentials.kick, essentials.ban, coreprotect.rollback.
• admin, full control: essentials.*, luckperms.*, worldedit.*.

If you add essentials.home to the default group, you never need to add it to any other group, they all inherit it.

Multi-inheritance

Groups can inherit from multiple parents. This is useful for cross-cutting concerns, for example, a "donor" track and a "staff" track:

/lp group moderator parent add trusted
/lp group moderator parent add staff-tools

Now moderator inherits from both "trusted" (gameplay permissions) and "staff-tools" (moderation permissions). This keeps donor perks and staff perks in separate groups, so a staff member who is also a donor gets both sets without duplication.

When to use multi-inheritance

• Donor + staff overlap, staff should not lose their donor perks when promoted, and donors should not get staff tools.
• Gamemode-specific groups, a "skyblock-member" group inherits from "default" but also from "skyblock-base" which has skyblock-specific permissions.
• Temporary event access, an "event-participant" group grants access to event commands and can be added as a parent to any rank during the event.

Weight and conflict resolution

When a player inherits from multiple groups and two groups set the same permission to different values, LuckPerms resolves the conflict using weight. The group with the higher weight wins:

/lp group default meta setweight 0
/lp group member meta setweight 10
/lp group trusted meta setweight 20
/lp group moderator meta setweight 50
/lp group admin meta setweight 100

If "default" sets some.permission to false and "moderator" sets it to true, a moderator gets true because weight 50 > weight 0.

Negating inherited permissions

Sometimes a group should inherit most permissions from its parent but explicitly not have one:

/lp group trusted permission set some.dangerous.permission false

This overrides the inherited true from the parent group (assuming the trusted group has a higher weight than the parent where it is set to true). Use negation sparingly, if you find yourself negating many permissions, rethink the hierarchy.

Viewing the inheritance tree

Check a group's full inheritance:

/lp group moderator info

This shows all parent groups, permissions (including inherited ones), and meta. For a player-level view:

/lp user Steve info

The verbose mode (/lp verbose on) is invaluable for debugging, it logs every permission check in real time, showing exactly which group provided the resolved value.

Common mistakes

1. Adding permissions to every group, defeats the purpose of inheritance. Add to the lowest applicable group only.
2. Circular inheritance, Group A inherits from B, B inherits from A. LuckPerms detects this and logs a warning, but it creates confusing behavior.
3. Forgetting weights, without weights, conflict resolution is unpredictable. Always set weights for every group in your hierarchy.
4. Using * too broadly, wildcard permissions on mid-tier groups grant everything, including admin commands. Reserve * for the top-level admin group only.

Permission inheritance in Minecraft with LuckPerms is the foundation of a maintainable permission setup. Once the hierarchy is clean, adding new plugins or ranks takes seconds instead of hours. For more advanced features like contexts and meta stacking, see the LuckPerms Advanced Guide.

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