Edoras wrote:
I appreciate you actually trying to debate, and I see all of your points: But what I'm trying to say is that the primary harlie spell, outside of tribunal membership, is fine with me. They're a cabal built around the idea of being unpredictable, unreliable, and being impossible to stop in that regard. I think their signature skill is perfectly fine for accomplishing that goal, and that if it were not possible to join both a tribunal and a cabal, I would have no problem with it.
You keep saying that joining a tribunal is a bad choice in general for a Harlequin. I'm not disagreeing with you on that point. All characters who join a tribunal mechanically suffer the same drawbacks of being unable to enter the cities they're at war with while being able to bring guards to those same places and gaining law immunity in their hometown, but it's still a desirable option mechanically for members of all cabals, especially for support classes like priests. What I am saying is this: If you are in a tribunal, and you are at war with another tribunal, you are at a significant disadvantage if the enemy tribunal has Harlequins in it, -much- moreso than if the enemy tribunal had members of any other cabal in them.
Here's why.
The enemy Harlequin Tribunal members will be able to gate into your city while bringing their own guards without any risk of being outlawed for crimes. They will never spawn bounty NPCs and they will not aggro guards except for the ones which automatically attack warring tribunal members. You, and most likely all of your allies, will be unable to return the favor in kind, and after the first attack your tribunal makes on their soil, you will be fighting a constantly growing set of outlaw lists and bounty NPCs while your enemies will not. There is no cabal skillset that comes even close to touching the usefulness of being able to engage in perpetual city warfare without ever running the risk of being outlawed, and like it or not, the majority of PK happens in cities now because everyone can join a tribunal. It's an -extremely- unbalanced playing field to engage in tribunal warfare against a tribunal with Harlequins in it.
You keep saying that tribunals are a bad choice for Harlequin. Instead, consider this statement.
When war is declared between two tribunals, the tribunal with Harlequins in it is at a significant advantage.
If you think that the above statement is a good balanced state of the game, then you have no problem with the way things are. If you think the above statement is a bad state of balance for the game, then you agree with me that something should be changed about the strength of a tribunal that has Harlequins in it.
For what it is worth this is actually what probably had the greatest effect in driving me to inactivity. The game is simply not fun, not entertaining when you know you're dealing with a player to which you have a severe disadvantage to in terms of the inherent coding of the game. So long as tribunal members can manipulate this system, Taslamar, The Empire, and even Zhenshi's tribunal members will be at a debilitating disadvantage.