Shattered Kingdoms

I originally mentioned this on the faction leaders' forum but this is a matter that impacts a lot more people than just the current faction leaders.

As it stands now, tribunal bodyguards (guards refer to themselves as such: A Peacekeeper warder says 'Your bodyguard is already present.') will only follow you in your own territory and into enemy (meaning someone you have declared war on) territory. This makes some sense. Of course they should patrol with you throughout your own lands and it also makes sense that they would be willing to launch attacks on your nation's enemies.

What does not make sense and actually has a negative impact on RP, diplomacy, and battle tactics is that they will not follow you into allied or neutral territory.

Concerning allies, often times if you are going into allied territory it is because you are trying to repel a mutual enemy. Since your troops are willing to strike at that same enemy in enemy territory, they should be more than willing to follow you into allied territory to do the same thing. Since the law code still attacks allies even for trying to defeat a mutual enemy, there's really no reason to be allies with a tribunal anyone except for the warm and fuzzy.

Your troops should also be willing to march across neutral territory to strike at your enemy. You can gate directly to enemy tribunal territory, yes, but you can't do this with cabals (as far as I know) so if you try to attack a cabal you lose your troops while en route. This can be considered as "harboring" the cabal within tribunal territory which is something the tribunal has no control over (the cabal's behavior or its location) even if they aren't on friendly terms with the cabal in question. The only solution for this problem is to declare war on another faction that you may not want to go to war with just to facilitate troop movements.

Nevermind that "bodyguards" should follow their charges everywhere anyways otherwise they are pretty terrible bodyguards. Bodyguards are what tribunals bring to the fight after all and while cabals always have access to their skills or spells regardless of location (unless their relic is stolen) tribunals have a considerable portion of their utility taken from them.

This, of course, assumes that tribunals even have a military mission which I think they do as they are empowered to conduct attacks on enemy territory. If they have a military mission than they shouldn't be balking when their commanders try to move them somewhere. If they are strictly supposed to be a police force than the guards should never leave their kingdom. They should strictly be patrolmen charged with upholding the law which would give defending tribunals a substantial advantage over invaders. It is this in-between state, caught between a military and police role, that seems to create the confusion.

I would be fine with bodyguards moving through all territories (being more of a military force) or with remaining only in the home territory (being only a police force empowered with some extra 'oomph' for defending - and only defending - the people).

Anyways, I've created a poll with all available options and am curious about your thoughts on the matter.

Your options clearly show your bias, which is poor sport. Stop QQing please.

-

You can gate into the first room of every cabal HQ- the troop movement thing is not terribly relevant.

It is, however, kind of silly that you can't bring guards into allied territory. A lot of things about the law/tribunal code in this game are silly.

The IMMs have consistently been adamant that no change will take place that allows tribunals to take guards into allied territory. I'm not really sure why, but I wouldn't count on that changing.

I also would not like to see tribunal guards made available only for defense. It's too limiting.

Really? When I was discussing this issue and post with some of the more experienced players they were telling me I could still bring guards into allied territory and were genuinely surprised when I said I could not. They said it used to be that way so what prompted the change?

I'm pretty sure these 'experienced' players of yours are mistaken.

This poll is rigged. There is no option to vote that Ardith is awesome. The code has never supported for tribunals to take guards into allied territory. These players of yours are neither experienced or old, and should commit seppuku immediately. As for getting them into cabals, it is possible to gate or rift inside of a cabal hq at the first room.

In the end though, all of you should surrender and give me your loot.

Tribunals are not 'police'. Maybe the Peacekeepers are under you, but the Black Hand could care less about 'the people'. The MC probably isn't much better. And if that's how you want to RP the Peacekeepers? Go for it. Tribunals are the military. The Fist sure isn't an 'army'. Neither are the Druids. And those groups are frequently at odds with their nation's Tribunal.

All the people voting for the police option are fountain RPers, or people who die all the time, I'm sure. It's already almost impossible to PK in enemy territory due to bounty NPCs. You kind of have to go spend hours and hours draining accounts so you can PK in enemy territory. If you lost the ability to take guard NPCs to enemy territory, PK would completely die off. And it's not like it's unbalanced or something. The defenders get a guard NPC, guards in the city, and spawning bounty NPCs. Cabal members get their cabal abilities everywhere unless they lose their relic.

RP-wise, sure you should be able to take your NPCs to help allies, or wherever you want. But. Considering you already get outlawed by the code when you help allies, I don't see that happening.

Honestly, imo, it's fine the way it is. If Dulrik wants to spend time modifying the Law code and this, that'd be cool though.

Is reader, syn while she is temp banned?

What? No way.

What'd I get banned for exactly? Swearing in the GD forum? Which is uh. Closed unless you log into the forums, because people used to whine about it?

If not for that, I got banned because Villy's filter sucks. Not my fault.