Goblin Squad Member
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There has been indication it could be unlimited though.Right, so anybody interested to not be permanently flagged will just wait until the first flag runs out, then subsequent ones don't compound the flagging and escalate it to permanent.The severity of your criminal act will affect the length of the time you will be flagged as a criminal. Repeat offenses while already flagged will have additive effects. It is entirely possible that one may become so notorious that they are permanently flagged as a criminal.
Just a thought - how about flag timers being linked to reputation? That way, the more notorious you are, the more people are likely to be able to come after you. I can see this would not be popular with the CE crowd, but 'the wages of sin is death' and all that. Or is that way too much of a penalty?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I suspect if there are as many EVIL players wanting the right to attack all GOOD players (even non combat builds) at random on principle and just as many GOOD players intending to smack down every merchant or crafter with an EVIL alignment in game as post in this forum ... there will be an awful lot of CN, TN, LN crafters and merchants out there.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I suspect if there are as many EVIL players wanting the right to attack all GOOD players (even non combat builds) at random on principle and just as many GOOD players intending to smack down every merchant or crafter with an EVIL alignment in game as post in this forum ... there will be an awful lot of CN, TN, LN crafters and merchants out there.
I would say probably most of them. If I was going to RP a trade foccused char, some N alignment would be my choice as both Evil and Good players would suffer more penalties by attacking me, than if I was in one of the extremes of the G-E scale.
...welcome your True Neutral Druidic banking overlords...
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Goblin Squad Member
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4 more posts and they should lock this down... 1000 posts is enough to fully discuss anything, and really too large for that discussion to still be of value.
There have to be at least 5 good ideas in all of this to merit their own thread and focus our energies on them.
Yeah, this one was getting way to long for me to care. That's one reason I started the Alignment Mechanics thread (plus I didn't want the concept/question to get buried in here).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I support sheets of lead in PFO.Or they may just start observing the halfling tradition of carrying a lead sheet.It could simply be that casting detect alignment is seen as rude and a little anti-social. People are free to do it, but others may shun them for it - if people roleplay that is.Certainly, at minimum. Definitely if they're Neutral they may well take offense ;-)
And if they're Evil, of course, seeing you Cast Detect Evil is giving them warning of what's coming,
so they may well decide to flee then and there, or decide to take the advantage of first attack against you.
This would be pretty much how it works in the pen&paper game as well.
I prefer the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would say probably most of them. If I was going to RP a trade foccused char, some N alignment would be my choice as both Evil and Good players would suffer more penalties by attacking me, than if I was in one of the extremes of the G-E scale.I suspect if there are as many EVIL players wanting the right to attack all GOOD players (even non combat builds) at random on principle and just as many GOOD players intending to smack down every merchant or crafter with an EVIL alignment in game as post in this forum ... there will be an awful lot of CN, TN, LN crafters and merchants out there.
I certainly see your reasoning, and if you are able to be based out of a settlement with a like alignment, that would work.
The problem lies in is if your organization is going to be based out of a good settlement, and you want to stay there, you need to have a similar alignment.
1000! WTF.... 10 posts disappeared!
10 posts...try like 90 now. Sounds like someone did some chopping!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wrong! For the purpose of this game, the 7 PC races are essentially "at war" with Orcs, Goblins, and the evil races. That is why we can kill them just like any other faction we are at war with.Not quite true. Paizo has published adventures where you are supposed to non-violently cooperate with Goblins and escort them to the destination, as business partners basically. Literally, there is no stated exception to Alignment adjudications for violence against certain races. There are plenty of "PC races" which may be at war with each other at any one point, they aren't exempted either.
Yes very true. PFO is NOT one of those modules. In THIS campaign we are at war with the evil races.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sorry dude, but no DM worth a grain of salt would allow Pallys to randomly detect evil on everything they see and then proceed to hack their heads off wherever and whenever. That is not a Dungeons and Dragons Paladin. Never was, never will be.Well, it would probably be Un-Lawful in either the Cosmic sense or in the Law of the Land sense.
But in a real game, there is a vaste range of subtleties the GM can use to determine Alignment, including intent.
In PFO, Alignment is totally automatically adjudicated. Death isn't even real, everything is just efficiency in economic transactions.
Everything already is reduced to a game of rules and so on, so to insist that in this one area,
that people cannot act based upon flags/categories/rules seems a bit off.
Evil in PFO is not going to be triggered by the vast range of subtleties that it could in a real tabletop game,
so far it is triggered by murder, necromancy, and slavery... So attacking somebody 'for being Evil'
is not different than if the flags for those 'crimes' simply never wore off...
And as far as I can tell, there is no objective reason for flags to persist any specific amount of time,
so if you take PFO's stated/planned flag duration for those, and add 10 seconds, what is the difference in Good/Evil terms? Not much.
You wound yourself up like a pretzel in this argument and ended up nowhere. The flags have to wear off because that's the whole point of the system. If everyone had flags all the time then it's the same as FFA PvP.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or the DM gives a good NPC/PC a magic item that obfuscates their alignment and if the pally whacks them, smile merrily as they irrevocably lose their paladinhood for the rest of their natural life.
Spoken like a man with experience. Goblin works is not the only DM you'll ever have that will downright cheat to get you where you have to be for the game to run correctly. We all do it. Often.
Yes very true. PFO is NOT one of those modules. In THIS campaign we are at war with the evil races.Wrong! For the purpose of this game, the 7 PC races are essentially "at war" with Orcs, Goblins, and the evil races. That is why we can kill them just like any other faction we are at war with.Not quite true. Paizo has published adventures where you are supposed to non-violently cooperate with Goblins and escort them to the destination, as business partners basically. Literally, there is no stated exception to Alignment adjudications for violence against certain races. There are plenty of "PC races" which may be at war with each other at any one point, they aren't exempted either.
Given what Mark said during his Fear the Boot Interview, things aren't exactly so black and white as that. While we are generally pitted against most NPC humanoid races there will be times when we may ally with them or even aid them. Some may even go so far as to become friendly to certain races.
I look forward to these interactions and think it'll put a new spin on what normally happens in cookie cutter MMOs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why would good or neutral players want to disguise their alignment as a matter of course, which could cause other good players to accidentally attack them? I would think it would only be of help for evil characters to avoid being attacked (or *very* occasionally for a neutral or good character to infiltrate an evil area)
Infiltrating Evil groups? 8-O But yeah, probably MORE used by Evil characters. So what?
That would mean that the skills to DISCERN/SEE THRU Disguises are more used by Good types. So what?
If good/neutral players have no reason to disguise their alignment, the accidental killing of good/neutral players by other good players suggested by Mel simply wouldn't happen, or it would be so rare as to be negligible, thus the big deterrent Mel suggested for good players to indiscriminately attack anyone who detected as evil wouldn't actually exist, that's what. You did actually read the post that I was replying to for context, right? I even quoted the relevant bit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Given what Mark said during his Fear the Boot Interview, things aren't exactly so black and white as that. While we are generally pitted against most NPC humanoid races there will be times when we may ally with them or even aid them. Some may even go so far as to become friendly to certain races.
I look forward to these interactions and think it'll put a new spin on what normally happens in cookie cutter MMOs.
I am looking forward to evil organizations parlaying with evil races. Let's see what the penalty for doing that is ;)
These will be exceptions to the rule however.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe this has been mentioned somewhere already.
I know people, for various reasons, don't want to have flags last "too long". I think we might all have a different definition of how long "too long" is, both for the actions taken and our own opinion of how serious each of those actions are. To me, the question isn't simply how long the flag should last, but who should see it. In the past, flags seem to be universally triggered - once you do the bad action, everyone sees your flag for that bad action.
However, I have a problem with that sort of all or nothing flag. So the bad bandit just killed and robbed pedestrian #1. If pedestrian #2 comes along and doesn't see the murder in action, doesn't see the body, and doesn't chat with resurrected pedestrian #1, then how would they know that the guy standing along the road was the bandit and thereby be able to attack him with impunity? The answer seems to be, he can see that the bandit is the bad guy because he's flagged...because we want bad guys to get some form of possible punishment for bad actions...which leads us back to using some all or nothing game mechanic to police behavior.
What if instead, the bad behaving bandit was flagged to his victim only? Before you say that the poor pedestrian, too weak to survive the first attack, has no chance for revenge, what if anyone that the victim parties with can see the flag as well? Now you have the injured party rallying support by actually sharing the "story" and allowing others to know the deeds of the bandit. In this way, the bandit would able to hide his previous actions from pedestrian #2 and continue his banditry (unless they're actually filled in by pedestrian #1), we have a means for pedestrian #1 to gather enough friends to seek revenge without turning it into a morally questionable bounty contract (which leads to the dubious situation of paladins taking money for righteous acts...plus not every victim is going to have the coin to make contracts), and finally, the bandit's actions come with risk, the likes of which may curtail unwanted player behavior. More like real life (and not a game system), the doers of crime would want to avoid their past victims. In the traditional flagging system, once the short-lived flag wears off, the criminal has no reason to fear their victims and often taunts them from behind their non-flagged status.
I'm no designer, so I don't know how difficult this would be to implement. Also, the length of that "vengeance" flag would need to be debated. However, this seems to me a far more realistic way to deal with flagging than the current all or nothing version.
Just a thought. Feel free to find the holes. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Hobs the Short
You trully have a point. A global flag actually does not make much sense.
I would add the player's guild as being able to see that too, as long as the player activate some "alert guild command" after he is back in town. Maybe if he goes to a NPC sheriff then the entire settlement would be alerted too, and now all settlement population will be able to see the flag.
That would recquire to rethink how long the flags must last. Maybe, as we restric who can see the flag, it should last longer.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...
What if instead, the bad behaving bandit was flagged to his victim only? Before you say that the poor pedestrian, too weak to survive the first attack, has no chance for revenge, what if anyone that the victim parties with can see the flag as well? Now you have the injured party rallying support by actually sharing the "story" and allowing others to know the deeds of the bandit. In this way, you would have the bandit able to hide his actions from pedestrian #2 unless they're actually filled in by pedestrian #1 (so there's the chance the bandit can keep being a bandit), we have a means for pedestrian #1 to gather enough friends to seek revenge without turning it into a morally questionable bounty contract (which leads to the dubious situation of paladins taking money for righteous acts)...and not every victim can afford a contract, and finally, the bandit's actions...
My thought is that the flagged player might actually get a particular color of flag or icon over him. Different colors for different things, the dominant color being the most serious in the system of values decided by GW.
Bear in mind I am of the opinion that generally name tags are suppressed, unless possibly those people you have actually transacted with might be always available to you if that is how you configure your options.
But criminals and 'flagged' people, especially if they initiated violence against you might get their names displayed in maybe a red color.
Possibly, though, even those people should only get icons if they haven't actually attacked you.
There might be only one icon, say a skull, if they are attackable, but perhaps that skull might be embellished according to the kinds of flags currently on them. For example if they just committed murder maybe the skull would drip blood, or if their act was 'heinous' it might be aflame.
When the current value of their flag expires, assuming it does, then the icon would vanish.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would say probably most of them. If I was going to RP a trade foccused char, some N alignment would be my choice as both Evil and Good players would suffer more penalties by attacking me, than if I was in one of the extremes of the G-E scale.I suspect if there are as many EVIL players wanting the right to attack all GOOD players (even non combat builds) at random on principle and just as many GOOD players intending to smack down every merchant or crafter with an EVIL alignment in game as post in this forum ... there will be an awful lot of CN, TN, LN crafters and merchants out there.
That's a very good point. I'm going to get with Nihimon and see if he's got that quote from Ryan about neutrality.
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Goblin Squad Member
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4 more posts and they should lock this down... 1000 posts is enough to fully discuss anything, and really too large for that discussion to still be of value.
There have to be at least 5 good ideas in all of this to merit their own thread and focus our energies on them.
Aye, I think the discussion has reached that intangible limit whereby all the quality stuff has been squeezed out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel - I think giving the players an option of recognizing or not recognizing a settlement / kingdom is a complicatedly bad idea. Good guys would simply not recognize any evil settlement as to not lose alignment.
Areks,
Probably true from a strictly mechanical sense of gameplay. I am not neccesarly saying that's the way PFO should handle it....just trying to put forward what I believe would be accurate from a purely cosmological sense (E.G. If we were actualy RPing it in tabletop with a human GM). In other words, just because being X calls themself a king and physicaly holds a piece of land doesn't that players Y are being "unlawful" when they go into that land and abrogate the laws being X has declared.
If players Y country/leige doesn't recognize X's legitimacy to claim that land or X's authority then players from Y (again RP sense) aren't really being "unlawful" when the ignore X's "laws". Players (from a cosmological sense) are bound to follow thier own nation/lieges laws and any other that nation recognizes as "legitimate".
Example: (again imagine this from a RP scenario in tabletop) A Brigand grabs an uncontroled piece of land and proclaims himself "King". He further proclaims a "law" that anyone passing into this land are to be his slaves for life. A merchant from Andoran gets lost in a storm and unwittingly wanders into said land. Is a party sent from Andoran to rescue said merchant acting "unlawfuly" when they do so?
If I were a GM in a tabletop game, I certainly wouldn't rule that they did so or shift the chaotic for it, would you? Andoran doesn't recognize the legitimacy of the Brigands claim to said land nor the right to hold slaves. The party is bound to follow Andoran's laws, not the Brigand "Kings".
Onbviously this is probably something too difficult for an automated system to adjucate...and may not even be desirable from a pure gameplay standpoint in this type of game...but it probably is the correct answer from the pure cosmology of Pathfinder and the characters outlook upon the Universe (which is really what Alignment is supposed to measure).
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Goblin Squad Member
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The hurdle you have to overcome is that GW's stance is Killing = Evil. We, the other members here don't much matter in this aspect. Just like the thread on Necromancers and raising dead, no matter what logic they brought, the raising dead = evil wall continued to stand between them and their desire to have neutral necromancers. The same type of wall stands here, killing = evil. Until you can get GW to change their minds you'll just end up with tired fingers.
Sure, but isn't that what this process is supposed to be about? Examining the proposals that GW brings forth and offering critique?
Furthermore killing clearly does not equal across the board, as there are contexts they've proposed (war, bounties, self-defence, etc) where it does not as proposed grant an Evil shift.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel - Oh I get where you are coming from and agree completely on the PnP side. Crossing that aspect over into PfO would almost be impossible, and since the game is built around everyone establishing their own territory and the reprecussions of their actions it would be counter productive.
I think building a settlement will be difficult enough.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel - Oh I get where you are coming from and agree completely on the PnP side. Crossing that aspect over into PfO would almost be impossible, and since the game is built around everyone establishing their own territory and the reprecussions of their actions it would be counter productive.
I think building a settlement will be difficult enough.
You could use reputation as a measurement of lawful vs unlawful as well as good vs evil.
Being a productive and lawful member of a settlement earns you reputation, even if that means being unlawful in another territory. Acting unlawful would earn you negative reputation in that settlement. Hence, you could be a law abiding citizen in settlement X but an outlaw in settlement Y.
Your moral actions are judged by the deities. Some actions are more appropriate to some gods while other gods would disapprove. You would gain reputation, or as I like to call it favor, with the deities who approve of such actions while losing favor with those that disapprove.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Richter
That would be a workable system. However, I think there are some things that GW wants to put some controls around or push player behavior towards from an entirely Meta-Game standpoint...which has absolutely nothing to do with the logic of what makes sense in Golarion.
It's why I've advocated pretty strongly that they use seperate systems for such goals.
So they can have one system that represents what they want to have happen from a Meta-Game standpoint with player behavior. It doesn't have to make sense according to the logic of Golarion because such a system exists entirely outside Golarion.... call it a karma system or a player honor system or something like that.
Then they can have a seperate system which is used to reflect the logic of where characters stand within the context of Golarion's cosmology.
So you have Johnny who is a very respectfull player but plays a very wicked (CE) character. Johnny gets high karma which gives his PLAYER ACCOUNT a certain number of perks that he can spend on things that give mechanical bonuses for his character(s) or possibly even cool things completely unrelated to his character(s)...like being able to step into the shoes of a monsterous NPC for a couple hours. These are rewards to Johnny - the player for basicaly playing in a way that is respectful to his fellow players and helps improve the game community. Johnnies character - the wicked CE villian has access to only those things which are THEMATICALY appropriate for them... so necromancy, poison and sacrifices to the dark gods - great... access to the temple of healing and mercy - not so much.
Each Character has things which are thematicaly appropriate for them and which make sense according to the cosmology of the Pathfinder Universe but players can still find themselves bonus'd or penalized based on how THEY behave as players according to the sort of behavior GW wants to see.
For example, if GW wanted to keep Player vs Player violence in check. They could allow each PLAYER a certain monthly quota of unjustified attacks beyond which you start to accrue negative karma. The target of the attack could elect to WAVE the karma penalty, if they believed the attack was actualy justified, etc. and you still have a clear set of rules of engagement that players understand. Yet the difference is that players aren't thematicaly pidgeon holed into playing the types of characters that they don't enjoy. YMMV.