Assassin Suggestion

[dirza]

[quote="AnselHoenheim"]I'd prefer to see another improvement in this Assassination mechanics instead the -investigate, that the message that contains the quote that you are marked comes with the NAME of the one who did it, and the murder of the one who did it erase the contract, a more hitman-like-contract about kill or being killed, because, honestly, how it is the system done right now, you need to avoid being attempted of being assassinated over and over until you got bored and quit.[/quote]

[Cerk Evermoore]

I don't know what they're talking about. Evil organization's heads are constantly trying to get assassinated and usually they usually don't have a bunch of city guards around them. Brogenstein as an IC rule that nobody is allowed in the city while disguised.

You don't get to walk around all whilly nilly once you are a faction leader, that's just the life of faction leaders. Most people are used to the life before they ran the city, where they could explore the world with their friends and everything was fine.

Except now you have a multi-million dollar account to your name and everyone in the game knows it, even people you've never met ICly because at that point you are a celebrity of sorts. I mean I don't know how Rannos died but once some person went all over the world and put up 50k bounties on the guys head. I might have considered taking a boat to a distant island, or hiding in a cave and doing governing via notes.

Sure, it sucks leaving all the people behind to go into hiding, but that's just what you have to do when you are hunted. Lots of people get hunted to extreme degrees, it is just rarely lawful good characters.

Lots of people manage to survive while the whole server is out to kill them, I don't know why factions leaders should be any different. Heck you could even -disguise yourself.

[Mr_Rieper]

Brogenstein as an IC rule that nobody is allowed in the city while disguised.

How would you know they are disguised if you fail the check?

I might have considered taking a boat to a distant island, or hiding in a cave and doing governing via notes.

Lots of people manage to survive while the whole server is out to kill them, I don't know why factions leaders should be any different. Heck you could even -disguise yourself.

Some assassins are also scriers. Or have scrier friends. Scrying instantly breaks disguises and reveals your location. You can run but you can't hide.

[Cerk Evermoore]

While it is true that they are coming non-stop for you the nice thing about hiding in a generic cave is that a lot of them are named the same thing. You could hide in a place named cave level 2 and they could scry you and then it's like "Okay... What cave is it." Or if you hid under the deck of a boat that was docked in that one really far off island only a couple of the ships can even reach.

I had to think on it for awhile to think up ways to try and get around scrying however, so I am not going to say it is some trivial task, they'll always eventually find you. But the least you can do is drive their assassins guild, and scryer and everyone involved in hunting you down complete crazy for as long as you feel it is worth your time.

If you force people to actually look for you, by any means you can it will drastically increase the likelihood of surviving. Not saying you didn't try that, because I am unfamiliar with the events surrounding recent assassinations and I am not even claiming the RP will be even the most enjoyable because the majority of the time it's you alone or with your close friends / family / guards on the run.

[dirza]

While it is true that they are coming non-stop for you the nice thing about hiding in a generic cave is that a lot of them are named the same thing. You could hide in a place named cave level 2 and they could scry you and then it's like "Okay... What cave is it." Or if you hid under the deck of a boat that was docked in that one really far off island only a couple of the ships can even reach.

I had to think on it for awhile to think up ways to try and get around scrying however, so I am not going to say it is some trivial task, they'll always eventually find you. But the least you can do is drive their assassins guild, and scryer and everyone involved in hunting you down complete crazy for as long as you feel it is worth your time.

If you force people to actually look for you, by any means you can it will drastically increase the likelihood of surviving. Not saying you didn't try that, because I am unfamiliar with the events surrounding recent assassinations and I am not even claiming the RP will be even the most enjoyable because the majority of the time it's you alone or with your close friends / family / guards on the run.

How long your going to rp being in hideout or isolated in some no-name cave? Week? Two weeks? Month? A year?

[Cortex]

@Sockss

A canditate can gather support without being online, either having IC renown before hand, OOC buddies, or having a pre-prepared group of supporters.

If someone wants to kill all non-supporters, they'll just throw 10k contracts willy nilly at anyone they know isn't going to support them, maybe not even citizens. They won't try to find out who's voting against them, they'll ASSUME who's not voting for them and kill them. Sure, it takes an assassin, but killing simple voters isn't hard, considering the average character is teen level, it'd just be a bloodshed.

Finally, rather than making a large chunk of a settlement a target for assassins, keeping it just one at least allows others to play bodyguard without necessarily being target themselves, VIPs, the head of the snake.

[Cerk Evermoore]

How long your going to rp being in hideout or isolated in some no-name cave? Week? Two weeks? Month? A year?

That's the hardest part, how long are people going to RP looking for you in isolated no name caves? But I do somewhat feel that if you fail your assassination contract, you should be fired from that same contract. Because if you can just revive and attempt the same assassination tomorrow stopping an assassin has absolutely no value.

Assassinations need to be well orchestrated plans, if you think you can just run into the city and slaughter the guy in front of everyone and it counts because it happened so fast nobody could stop them and they just self-res afterwards anyways. That just isn't good RP. Luring someone via a speedy messenger to meet with someone and jumping them at that location, that would be considered fair game.

Assassins need some risk for themselves if they die trying an assassination they should fail the contract and it should be either awarded to someone else or suspend the contract and refund the money.

[Cortex]

Worth noting that as it is, an assassin doesn't "takes" contracts. Available hits are presented in a board, and you can take them or not at your leisure without saying "I'm picking up this contract", run into Joe McTarget while adventuring? Feel free to murk him and carry onwards, target down.

[Mouthy Expert]

I really don't think "lock yourself in a room for a month" is a tactic that is conducive to good roleplay.

[Sab1]

I thought an assassinated leader trigged a new election?

If you are running for election and are assassinated during the election, are you removed? If so maybe have it reset the election instead so people can have a say and not someone simply getting it by default.

[Durvayas]

That's the hardest part, how long are people going to RP looking for you in isolated no name caves? But I do somewhat feel that if you fail your assassination contract, you should be fired from that same contract. Because if you can just revive and attempt the same assassination tomorrow stopping an assassin has absolutely no value.

This idea has merit. Failing a contract could be retooled to prevent an assassin from making another attempt, either any time soon or permanently. It would raise the stakes, and encourage the assassins in existance to possibly work together to ensure a payout, albeit split between more people.

[Yellena]

Reposting my suggestion from the other time this topic showed up:

What about:

Hiring
1) Person A pays a base Base+G (base service cost plus extra Gold) for victim V;
1.1) If person B, C and so on also pays for victim V, the "Base" service cost is added into the bounty.
2) The contract time, in IG days (or weeks, or a month, up to devs), is a fixed time period (T) that can be extended by based on the G value. The extra value can multiply the base time (2xT, 3xT and so on). If more people hires to kill same person, the gold is summed to calculate the final number of T circles.

Mission Assignement:
1) A list of current victims is shown on a message board (or more), sorted from of current highest to lowest bounty.
2) An assassin may take the "paper" of the chosen current target, and only that one. He will only be allowed to get another target if he either failed or fullfilled the mission.
2.1) If a paper is removed, no one else can take the mission.
3) The assassin who took the job have a T circle to finish it.
3.1) If target is not killed after a T circle, the paper is put back to the board and the same assassin can't take this job again until another T circle passes (so others may try the hit). This continues untill the number of T circles of the contract expires.
3.2) If the target is killed, the paper disappears and the killer receives the prize.
3.3) If the assassin is killed, the contract expires. Accepting a job is a great responsability.
Optional: if the assassin is killed, the contract doesn't end, but the remaining T circles are reduced. It still ends if there is no T circles left.
4) If a contract expires, the person who hired is given the G value back (the extra is still lost). The victim can't be marked again in a period of time (1 RL month?) and further marks on said person doubles the Base contract value (and the gold needed to add an extra T circle is doubled also).

Reputation:
Reputation is a sum of internal points (varies from 0 to 30) + assassin levels.
1) Success on a mission increases the points of the assassin. The points increase is based on the target's Level/CR (higher of them) VS Assassin's CR.
1.1) Failing a mission as by T circle expiration results in losing points.
1.2) Being killed by the target (or its party members) results in heavy point loss, based on the target's Level/CR VS Assassin CR.
2) Higher Reputation have priority on contracts and other benefits.


Targets:
1) The targets may (or not) be given the option to outpay the contract by coin or value.
1.1) The "coin" is a mechanically limited choice on the line of "Contract Cost x Lvl modifier". The gold is added to the Guild Vault and the assassin takes the prize as if killed the target but doe snot earn points. The assassin must have Reputation above X to offer this.
1.2) The "value" is a choice open to RP. It could be items, adding a spy to the target's guild ranks or someting else. The assassin do not earn contract based prizes or points. The assassin must have Reputation above Y to offer this.
2) People may pay taxes to increase the Base contract value, making them harder to be marked. Depending on taxes, they can know if they are marked, be given some T circles of "advantage" (so they can prepare themselves), knowing who asked to mark them or even receiving a counterproposal.
NOTE: This need to be done cautiously to not favor gold farming, but is also a way to low levels have a chance against high level assassins.

Prizes:
1) The guild keeps an internal Vault and stores the gold from the contracts or "pay offs". Players can't "withdraw" that gold.
1.1) Upon hitting the mark, the killer gains gold based on the contract total price (Base + extra Gold): 50%xB + (50%+Reputation%)xG
2) When assigned to a mission, there are special tools an assassin can have access to use on the mission. The tools avaiable varies with Reputation and consumes gold from the Guild's Vault. Some examples could include special +5 weapon (vs target's race or alligment), Epic Traps, unique items (appearance changing?), and all of them would vanish after mission T circle.
2.1) The acquaintance of such items would reduce the Guild Vault's gold, and above certain Reputation, an assassin may use a limited amount of the Guild Vault's gold (based on Reputation) to "buy" them.
2.2) Any extra gold needed to "buy" the items, are deduced by what would be earned by Assassin (item 1). If the contract amount isn't enough, then the Assassin loses Points and needs to pay the guild back somehow or...
NOTE: This opens something very interesting: the careful choice of targets... it have a price for the Guild itself to have losses, and it would punish those taking any missions it can't fulfill. It also makes accepting a counteroffer interesting to increase the Guild Vault's gold.

Durvayas wrote:
Yellena. Under your idea, assassins can protect targets by accepting the contract and then sitting on it. Assassination should be a race against time to kill expensive marks before other assassins do. You ever see the movie 'wanted'?

The assassin would only be able to "sit on it" during a Time Circle. After that (considering the hirer paid extra G to have extra T Circles) said assassin fails the job, loses Points and loses the contract (and can't get it back), allowing other assassin to take the contract.
So, if the hirer paid enough for let's say... 5 T Circles, the victim would need at least 4 assassins to sit on the contract.

Notice that sitting on it lowers Points (part of Reputation), loses the opportunity to earn gold to the Guild's Vault and risking some IC consequences. Also, if one is sitting on it, a higher Reputation assassin have priority over the contracts (possible not earning Points on success, for balance), allowing the guild to send someone more... qualified... to do the job.

These together opens a LOT of opportunities for everyone, and lots of RP hooks.

[Nitro]

That's the hardest part, how long are people going to RP looking for you in isolated no name caves? But I do somewhat feel that if you fail your assassination contract, you should be fired from that same contract. Because if you can just revive and attempt the same assassination tomorrow stopping an assassin has absolutely no value.

This idea has merit. Failing a contract could be retooled to prevent an assassin from making another attempt, either any time soon or permanently. It would raise the stakes, and encourage the assassins in existance to possibly work together to ensure a payout, albeit split between more people.

I think it's just going to make assassins rely on stuff like epic traps, timestop and other methods to get an alpha strike in before the target can even react, why bother even trying to make it a fair fight or RP with the target first if it could lead to the complete inability to complete the contract after getting hit with an implosion?

[dirza]

Constant attempts to assasinate until it works out is according to you a fair fight?

[Cortex]

Why not pay the contract off? Even if the message bugs, after the first attempt, it will be very clear what is going on.

[Flameborn]

As someone who's played an assassin to 30, and been assassinated several times across multiple characters, I can say very honestly that the only issue is that you shouldnt be able to place a contract then hit someone 5 minutes later. Give them 24 hours IG hours to react before the contract goes live.

Otherwise, pay it off. If you don't pay it off for weeks, then you deserve to die. There are a lot of clever ways to kill a player.

Epic traps? Don't chase an assassin that baits you. If they start a fight and you run after them into a trap wall, thats 100% your fault.

You know you have a bounty but sit on a town bench half afk totally unwarded? Boy I hope you get hit.

Aside from the contract time, this all seems like some silly issues. Leaders need a way to be forcefully unseated by people, or they'll sit on it forever, especially now that you only get one vote per account for one settlement. There are a LOT less votes rolling around now, so one person with support now is going to be free to own that settlement for months or years to come.

[Sab1]

Not sure how the current contract works, but instead of trying to say assassin A can only have one attempt, contracts need to have an expiration (if they don't already).

It was just as hard to unseat people with many votes per account, look at how long groups like baneites held Wharftown. To me one of the big complaints seems to be during an election people vote, the person they vote for dies thus making all the votes they cast worthless. So all you need is one person to vote for you and poof just assassinate the front runner and become mayor.

[DMTemplate]

Some assassins are also scriers. Or have scrier friends. Scrying instantly breaks disguises and reveals your location. You can run but you can't hide.

To clarify, scrying information cannot be used to bypass having to beat the disguise check at a later time. Even the scryer would have to beat the disguise check to confirm the target after scrying.

[Lorkas]

Some assassins are also scriers. Or have scrier friends. Scrying instantly breaks disguises and reveals your location. You can run but you can't hide.

To clarify, scrying information cannot be used to bypass having to beat the disguise check at a later time. Even the scryer would have to beat the disguise check to confirm the target after scrying.

Is this meant to be a change in policy? The way that this has been communicated in the past, if you scry "Bob" while he's disguised as "Jim (disguised)", and you then see "Jim (disguised)" later in the same clothing, you know that it's actually "Bob".

I think the analogy used was that if a person actually beat Bob's disguise to realize that it was him, then walked away, and saw "Jim (disguised)" wearing the same outfit a few hours later, they'd still know that it was Bob, even if they failed the second check or didn't make a second check at all.

If, on the other hand, the person changed clothes and changed their disguised name, in both of the above cases you would have to beat the disguise check on seeing Bob for the second time. Personally this seems sensible to me--if I see the exact same person in the exact same disguise that I already know is them, it makes sense for me to still know that it's them.

[DM Noxt]

Some assassins are also scriers. Or have scrier friends. Scrying instantly breaks disguises and reveals your location. You can run but you can't hide.

To clarify, scrying information cannot be used to bypass having to beat the disguise check at a later time. Even the scryer would have to beat the disguise check to confirm the target after scrying.

Is this meant to be a change in policy? The way that this has been communicated in the past, if you scry "Bob" while he's disguised as "Jim (disguised)", and you then see "Jim (disguised)" later in the same clothing, you know that it's actually "Bob".

This is still the case.

[Mr_Rieper]

not the case

still the case

I am confused.

I do hope Template's answer was the accepted one, since it's very easy to constantly scry a particular person and ruin any meaningful disguises they may make without any real effort. Most diviners scry on their enemies for fun. You'd be changing your disguise several times a day if you had scryers on your case.

It's been said previously that some people don't see a problem with scrying instantly breaking disguises, because it takes a serious feat investment to get the ability to scry. Why have a problem with scrying instantly breaking disguises if a character with epic spot investment can do the same thing as easily? Both require an investment of some kind, both accomplish the same thing, right? There's a few problems with it, though. The first is that scrying is used for more than just spying on disguised people. Divination is taken for other reasons, and those reasons are arguably more attractive than a massive spot investment. Being able to spy on people and eavesdrop is far more useful than finding traps and busting disguises.

The second thing is that scry does not tell you when your disguise has been broken. Nor does it allow for a godsave. It also encourages people to conceal their character's real names constantly, and live in different disguises. Which is something you need to cultivate from the start and avoid sharing your "real" name around. If an epic spotter finds you, he'll have to be in range to break your disguise, and your Trickery godsave can get you out of a tight situation. No such luck with scryers. Seems a bit unfair to me.

[Lorkas]

Or just using any one of the moderately well-known longish-lasting 100%-effective scry-blocking options, or laying low in an area that's difficult or impossible to reach, or (please do this someone) hiring a couple look-alikes to wear the same disguise that you are wearing to create confusion, or some other creative option.

Or yea, changing your disguise up now and then. They can only scry you as often as they can rest, so it isn't constant like you say (though it is possible to peek in on someone multiple times per session, depending on your rest meter).

[Cerk Evermoore]

not the case

still the case

It also encourages people to conceal their character's real names constantly, and live in different disguises. Which is something you need to cultivate from the start and avoid sharing your "real" name around. If an epic spotter finds you, he'll have to be in range to break your disguise, and your Trickery godsave can get you out of a tight situation. No such luck with scryers. Seems a bit unfair to me.

Also they can just lift your real name off your quarters / shop / boat because it's all done using your real character name.

[Xantor_Stromgate]

Or the person who got assassinated could treat death as something more serious than a rolled ankle. Of course it makes no sense if you're just like "haha I got assassinated, that kind of sucked but no biggie, now let's get on with this election."

You could RP being bedridden, being scared of more assassins and thus not wanting to run again, being too wounded to do the duties of a mayor, whatever.

You can make anything make sense if you want to. Usually people complain something doesn't make any sense when they're against it, and just looking for reasons to not roll with it.

THANK YOU!!! Let's make Clerics (and other divine casters) death great again! Resurrection scrolls completely removed and Raise Dead scrolls only found in chests. You wanna be brought back from the dead? You gotta get an actual Resurrection from a PC!!! Holy craps! Are the tears flowing yet?!?!? And, of course, if you do wanna pass through the realm of death back to the Prime, you gotta make it through your character's respective Alignment's Outer Plane!!!

Holy McNastyballs!!! All of a sudden every single character no longer RP's invincibility!!!

Rule #1: No Dyin'!!!

1.21 Gigawatts

[DM Noxt]

not the case

still the case

I am confused.

We'll have to wait for Template to elaborate on what he meant, but what Lorkas said, and what I quoted, is the current policy.