Shattered Kingdoms

The only drawback which should be noted is that you will not return to your cabal/tribunal with your skillset learned. You must reacquire all of your abilities.

I don't really understand oathbreaker. It seems pretty plausible for someone to act as a sleeper agent inside an enemy's cabal. Recall Venator being in the Hammer, for example... But oathbreaker precludes any of that kind of roleplay.

It precludes it only in the sense that one's country would never fully trust a double-agent who eventually defected to their 'true' homeland. One could always act as the sleeper inside the foreign group (say, Hammer), escape as an oathbreaker and live out their days in Teron as a friend of the Harlequin... without actually becoming a Harlie member of course.

I think that's a decision to be made by the player groups themselves. It's perfectly reasonable to have a cabal/tribunal member who isn't completely trusted. We have those already without any flags.

I heavily disagree with the oathbreaker mechanism because it so violently contradicts the general no-forbiddance atmosphere of the game. You know, the way it never comes out and says "you can't do that." Players may be discouraged by means such as logout thieves and area familiarity, but generally nothing is off-limits as long as you're willing to work with it. That's how I would like oathbreaker to work. Discourage players from switching by implementing a waiting period or permanently disabling the "victory" buff once an oath has been broken, but please don't use this outright prohibition. If the leader of an organization is aware of a broken oath and still wants a character as a member of that organization, and not just a friend, that leader should be able to make it happen.

I would understand the mechanism if it was at all necessary, but there's no need for it at all, to be perfectly honest.

We need oathbreaker to keep Peso in one cabal!