Specific abuse scenario with unreasonable Stand and Deliver demands

[Guurzak]

"If the victim was offered and rejected stand and deliver, the Outlaw loses no reputation for killing the target within five minutes of the rejection."

Without further controls, this means that chaotic players who flag Outlaw can kill with impunity: Issue an impossible S&D which the victim is forced to reject, and then murder away.

There are only two options for avoiding this abuse: create a complicated mechanism for evaluating the reasonableness of a S&D demand; or, get rid of the non-penalty mechanic and treat rejected bandits who kill their targets like any other murderers.

I'm not a fan of a reasonableness-judging mechanic; more often than not, solving an abuse by adding complexity creates more new abuses than it resolves.

What happens if all bandit attacks are subject to reputation penalty? Obviously, this provides incentive to the bandits to make more reasonable demands. Does it eliminate any incentive for merchants to comply? Assuming that a bandit can afford to take a few rep hits without completely trashing his score, I think there's still enough risk/reward to justify taking the occasional unreasonable merchant's life and goods.

And, realistically, even the most charming of brigands shouldn't be able to have a maxed out rep; a life of crime may not automatically peg your rep in the negatives if you play reasonably, but you're not going to get any "shining example to mankind" awards either.

Guurzak say if bandits not get tribute, dem get bad names when dey clomp.

[Bringslite of Fidelis]

As a big fan of merchanting and caravanning, I can say that I have often advocated that I will fight to the death every time. That is the plan, as I do not intend to spend coin on guards (or coerce "guildies" to ride with me) for nothing.

I have also said that I will re evaluate how that works out for me when we get in game.

Now if I didn't have that attitude, I might be accepting of the system (when bandits have me over a barrel) and prefer a reasonable "road fee" much more than I would care about whether a bandit's takes a rep hit and I lose ALL. The bandit taking the hit would be less important than the amount of goods I would lose.

So yes, I would love for there to be a cost to reputation in attacking for a refused S&D. I think that it would give a bandit some hard choices to make that would work better for them in the long run: i.e., a direct incentive for a reasonable S&D.

As we have had very intense discussion about this before: notable one here, and were asked by Ryan to move on, this will be my only post rehashing this.

Edit: There you go Bludd. Fixed to say exactly what I mean, that does not cover your listed costs. :)

[Bluddwolf]

Bringslite of Fidelis wrote:

So yes, I would love for there to be a cost to attacking for a refused S&D. I think that it would give a bandit some hard choices to make that would work better for them in the long run: i.e., a direct incentive for a reasonable S&D.

You cite the second longest thread on these forums, and yet from there you can not glean from it that there are in fact costs.

I won't rehash it here either, but I had listed no fewer than 9 consequences in the thread.

[Lifedragn]

I think we have too many assumptions about S&D to have reasonable discussion. We do not know what limits are able to set. It may not even be possible for a bandit to offer a 50%+ S&D. We don't know.