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.
|