Shattered Kingdoms

Finney, if you could state your reasoning behind this change and why it would nerf all tribunals, that would be much more helpful to prove your point.


I thought about this a little more, Dulrik, and while I still think it's a good idea overall, I think there's some other points that should be addressed related to them. I also changed my mind a bit: I don't think it solves the inherent problem with Harlequins being law immune while still being able to use law NPCs as bodyguards, unless it comes with a couple other minor tweaks.

Here's the in-game pros/cons I can see from trib NPCs aggro'ing each other.

For attacking Tribunal members:
A) You will no longer be able to stealth attack a city with a guard NPC -unless- you gate somewhere where you will not have to pass by guards to get to your target.
B) Moving throughout a warring city with a tribunal guard in tow will have a much more pronounced effect on building your outlaw list than it currently does, even if you weren't outlawed before you entered. This is especially true for characters' whose RP precludes them from killing all bystanders to crimes they commit.

For defending tribunal members and citizens:

C) You will be just as susceptible in inns to attacks from gates, especially if the person attacking is not outlawed or is minimally outlawed. As long as they have gate access, enemies in warring tribunals will still be able to bring their bodyguards to attack you in an inn as long as they can simply avoid guard NPCs on the way. For Exile and Menegroth, 2 of the remaining tribunal cities, there are NPC gate targets 2 rooms away with no guards NPCs in between the gate target and the inn. Nerina, on the other hand, requires going through at least one group of guards to get to the inn if you gate to an NPC.
D) You will, however, have more safety from warring tribunal enemies if you rest in areas that require passing through groups of guard NPCs even if you gate near them. Resting near a judge, for example, will be much safer than it already is even if your enemy tribunal members aren't outlawed.


Here's the results I foresee from this change if it were implemented in vacuum right now.

1) The inns of Exile and Menegroth will be no safer than they are right now, although Nerina's will be more safe. In addition, it will heavily increase the safety of rooms behind sets of guard NPCs, especially for Exile and Menegroth. This will move traffic away from the inns of Exile and Menegroth into "safer" rooms, making those inns less populated and making it less likely that players, especially new players, will encounter other players in a capital city.
2)Tribunals would be nerfed across the board in terms of their offense, although it would make defending a city from warring tribunals easier by the same token.
3)Tribunal Harlequins would not be any more adversely affected than other tribunal members. If anything, it would comparatively empower them even more as they would be the only tribunal members able to bring a guard NPC to enemy territory while killing the aggro'd guards without penalty.
4)Cities would overall feel safer from warring tribunal members, even if they aren't outlawed.

To describe end result 3: The reason that I created this thread was that I think it's imbalanced that a tribunal Harlequin gets to ignore the primary penalty of joining a tribunal (Building up heavy outlaw lists which severely impair movement in enemy territory) while still retaining full access to the primary benefit of joining a tribunal (Being able to bring a bodyguard even to enemy territory). Just making it so that tribunal NPCs aggro each other wouldn't fix that fundamental imbalance, in that a Harlequin would still able to be law immune even while using their own tribunal NPCs to attack an enemy city.

I think that while end result 4) is positive for the game, end results 1-3 are all negative: If cities are made safer, they should be made safer with an emphasis on adding safety to -inns,- not to other places. This both makes sense from an IC perspective (let's increase the safety of our most populated areas) and from an OOC perspective (Let's encourage players to congregate in public places, not private ones). In addition, I think basic tenets of tribunals and cabals should be of consistent strength across the board, even if they're different. As it stands now, Nerina already has an inherently safer inn than Exile and Menegroth, and I think that's bad.

My suggestion is that you implement this change with the following tweaks:

Tweak 1: If possible, only have guard NPCs attack warring guard NPCs in their home territory, not when they're on the offensive. This would allow a tribunal member to keep sanctuary up on their bodyguard without having it be broken by attacking. Although it may be minor, without this tweak, I think the change would be too much of a nerf to attacking tribunal members and encourage stalemates even more than already is the case. The deck would be too stacked enough with regard to defending a city without being able to retain sanctuary on your guard NPCs. It also opens up the possibility of being able to invis yourself and your guard NPC to bypass non-detecting guards.
Tweak 2: Implement this change along with removing any NPCs as gate targets that grant access to a city inn without having to go through a static guard group. Without this tweak, the proposed change would only further strengthen Nerina's inn safety without having any meaningful impact on Exile's and Menegroth's inn safety, which would only serve to further separate players from each other. I'm fine with the idea of gating to a PC, but you shouldn't be able to waltz your tribunal bodyguard into an inn to attack a city without having to go through at least one group of guards first.
Tweak 3: Make it so that a Harlequin can't have a law NPC bodyguard while also using their signature cabal feature. I know I already proposed this earlier, but I think this is both the most important tweak, and the simplest approach to solving my main frustration with how things are: Harlies are the only cabal members that get to have their cake and eat it too, which is fundamentally flawed to me both from a balance perspective and even a game-sense perspective. If you want to be law immune, fine, that's your cabal feature, but you shouldn't also be able to use your bodyguards to attack a city.

As a fighter, bringing a tribunal guard disables their other signature ability. You are proposing that IF they bring a guard, that it disable their main signature spell. The harlequin warrior is now no better than a cabal-less character. How would this now stack up against the fist/tribunal combo?

Yes, that is what I am proposing.No, the Harlequin warrior is no better than a cabal-less character -if he wants to use a guard mob-. I think that's a fair statement to make. The Harlequin cabal isn't a cabal that should mesh well with tribunals.

Let me reiterate: I -want- to make it so that joining a tribunal nets you very little benefit as a Harlequin. If the primary feature of your cabal allows you to be law immune, and if the primary RP purpose of your cabal is to be totally unpredictable and random, then I think for RP's sake and balance's sake, there shouldn't be much synergy, if at all, with tribunal membership and your cabal skills.

It is true that the strengths of other cabals synergize better with the strengths of tribunals. However, right now, the strengths of Harlequins completely cancels out the primary weakness of tribunals (building up outlaw lists) while still providing access to their strengths, and I think that is a bad state of balance.

Could you cite an example of a recent pk which involved this combo? It seems this is more about the law system than anything else, but avoiding law is part of the harlequin set. Tribunal guards in comparison to elementals are fairly weak. The proposed change wouldnt fix anything but merely weaken classes that arent tanks or can form tanks through spell like sorcs/necros/warlocks. It would only hamper priests and bards.

I only remember the most recent combo being played by a sorc and necro and neither were devastating.

Id still like you to cite an example and perhaps answer my last question about how a tribunal harlequin unable to use his abilities stacks vs a fisty/trib combo.

Like I said, with the change I suggest, then any other cabal will be better suited for a tribunal than Harlies. Yes, this includes Fist Tribunal. I think that's good. If you do really want to dig down that rabbit hole though...What can a Harlie trib member do against a Fist trib member right now? Turn on law immunity and check around the Fist's city repeatedly. The Fist can also poke around the Harlie's trib city to try and find a kill. If the Fist does manage to find the Harlie, he's at somewhat of an advantage on account of the Fist skillset, although the Harlie skillset isn't without its perks either.

With the way the law code works, the Fist is probably going to get outlawed even if he doesn't find the harlie, because of the invaders script. If he plays his cards right, in the absolute best case scenario, the Fist member isn't outlawed until he kills the Harlie, at which point he's banished from the Harlie's trib and will never be able to surprise the Harlie again.

On the other hand, if the Harlie trib member finds the Fist Member and kills him, he can just do it again later because he gets law immunity. Even if he messes up and manages to get outlawed, it's okay, because he has law immunity.



If you want examples, despite PK being extremely rare lately, Suvilivus attacked Exile his fair share of times with this combo. When I was playing Berr, Lydia, despite being notably outlawed, walked right into the Exile Inn with Losquez and an entire undead army without a single bounty NPC spawning, then chased me around the city without any bounty NPCs or guard NPCs intervening. In a panic I deposited coin into the account before realizing that the bounty NPC system wasn't failing because of low coffers: It was because the tribunal necro killing us was a Harlequin.

Keyrah mentioned that it was discouraging to the point of making him go inactive to have to fight against someone who just got to ignore the primary drawback that all other trib members suffer from. Not sure if he has any particular examples.

Now that you mention it, I remember reading a log you posted. It was titled 'suvilivus gets mauled'

It would appear that your issue resides with this one harlequin ability rather than tribunals. You have some points but the proposed change still doesnt address classes that can create protective formations through spells.

Yes, I did kill Suvilivus once. That's completely unrelated to the topic at hand for multiple reasons, the chief of which being that the log you brought up occurred entirely in Uxmal, so law NPCs clearly had 0 impact.

I don't care if a Harlequin uses their class features to make a protective formation. I care that a Harlequin can use a law NPC as a bodyguard while being law immune. My issue resides with the fact that this one harlequin ability actually synergizes with tribunals, because it shouldn't.