Shattered Kingdoms

You will be outlawed for attempted murder if the NPC that reports you runs off and reports you before you kill him. I believe that the charge will change if the report changes (second mod or char reports the same thing with you killing could just double up).
Law NPCs miss behave as soon as you stun or flee from them. A stunned law NPC acts as any aggro NPC not counting it racks up crimes.
The law system is so often messed up because the options needed for it just are not there the AI is simple so it works for most conditions.

The NPCs don't move until everything is said and done. That is to say that until that person is dead or flees the NPCs won't go report you.

This is the start of two battles in Nerina:


and



Then I get reported and go to jail. A dwarven guard was present at the attack. The law system needs to be revised.

[EDIT] The green-eyed one did not get reported even though he fought with the guards.

I would agree there's something wrong with the law system. Especially considering the above action got someone thrown in jail who only knew their starting language. OUCH.

Logic: The law system can sort out that if someone charms a NPC and does something against the law, the one doing the charming is accused.
The law system should be able to sort out if someone is using an item offensively to initiate combat, the one using the item ought stand accused.

Bug: People know using items and certain abilities allows them to dodge the law and they use them freely. Other times people aren't aware of the bug, and they do something their character would do, and even newbs have been caught in this trap, and some of them being new to the mud, have little concept of what just happened. Ugh.

Place to look for solution?: The dueling system at least recognizes when a player TRIES to do this and aborts the duel and says 'cheator, you lose.' (though it does this with any item, beneficial or aggressive).. So there is apparently some code in place to take note of such a situation. If that code can somehow be incorporated into the law system 'hey you used an item to attack someone, you're guilty' we'd be on our way to a huge fix.

Hope this helps.

The fact that I can be wanted multiple times for simply casting spells in the back row is ridiculous. I recently just got 11 days in jail form one single fight. I really think this should be looked at and changed somehow, and should be bumped up higher on the priority list.

My question for my own understanding: If I'm in the back row, fighting a group of 9 and I flamestrike said group, do i get wanted for 9 counts of attempted murder each time I flamestrike??? If so, that's wrong, because casters get the shaft.

END QQ

My other problem with the law system is all the talking the guards do, sometimes one guard can say 4-5 lines of "You shall pay for your crimes" Etc, when there are 3 guards in the room this can be a lot of spam, I mean _A LOT_. If there is more than one guard in each room, the first one should do the yelling/saying and the rest should just assist him without having to repeat the speech for every person. I'm just interested in cutting down the spam. In an already sensitive pk area, this spam can be very annoying and dangerous.

I think the general trend is, don't PK anywhere except uxmal or cabal hqs. Literally, just run if you encounter enemies even if you have a stronger group. It's worth it just to not rack up more crimes and have bounty NPCs spawn at higher rates. Especially don't try to solo pk, or pk in cities unless you have ironguard+a shitload of members. Our 6 man champ/GM group got annihalated in nerina not by local guards, not by the talons (who did practically no damage), but by 3 golden male griffons that spawned at the SAME time when we moved one room into the city.

I even tried the "serve the crime when it is commited" policy, and i've probably served 20 days (nonconsecutive) of jail time in the last week. That stopped after the last fight where i ended up racking up 15 days of jail time for attacking 2 people. Hmm...

One thing I would appreciate is making spells such as charm person, which always provoke an attack if failed, considered as initiating combat.
I was just recently attempted to be charmed, and returned fire, outlawing myself. Shouldn't a hostile spell be counted as the beginning of combat?

Were you on mode stun?

If they legitimately "failed" the spell, it was never cast but still enacts an action from you. Since it was never cast it doesn't cause a crime though.

A common trick of old was to get a really low level combat spell like colorspray and train it once so you always fail it. Then cast it at someone, fail, flee and then go report them.

I was there too and it was chain lightning. Another reason the law system sucks though is because you can get charged with multiple counts of attempted murder of Frollith and then also with the murder of Frollith all from the same fight! Because of only about 4 or 7 murders, I got all my eq, all my money from the bank and 27 days, 12 hours of jail. My list of crimes was terribly long all because attempted _blanks_ became successful _blanks_.
LAME
Double Jeopardy