Keeper's Pass - Bandits and Ne'er-do-Wells

[Hobson Fiffledown]

That was very fun back in a Mortal Realms MUD from years ago, but you had to have the disguise (appearance), bluff (actions), and mimic (chat) skills to pull it off completely. It was awesome fun and very tough to pull off.

We coded an area with Baby Dragon pet mobs. I would sit with my L99 Assassin disguised as one in the town square and interact with players. We could dance, shake hands, high-five, all the fun emotes, but if someone did anything inappropriate the Baby Dragon would slap them. If anyone ever slapped the Baby Dragon back....instant death knife attack! I'd hand the stolen loot over to their friend and ask them what they learned.

Don't slap the Baby Dragon.

So much fun. But too much abuse nowadays...and bread was a nickel back then.

I would like to see a lot of Bluff v Perception in game though: Getting past Thornguards, Opening otherwise closed off Training and Crafting. Walking through the bandit escalations like one of the group. All sorts of things.

Disguise sounds awesome, but I would add it as its own feat, maybe add a kit, and randomize the name. Pay no attention to little old Bobblydown MacFoogle, certainly not here to kill the keep warden...certainly not that.

[Bluddwolf]

KotC - Erian El'ranelen wrote:

I don't see Bandits being, openly, part of Lawful Evil. Indeed, ideally Bandits wouldn't be a settlement at all. What happens when a settlement becomes known as "the Bandit Settlement?" All the settlements targeted by those Bandits attack the settlement to stop the bandits. That's a natural reaction, and it will destroy the Bandit Settlement due to shear numbers. Bandits don't live in settlements out in the open (until such time as some settlement is powerful enough to fend off most attacks). They live in Hideouts out in the wilderness, working under disguise and secrecy. Lawful Evil might secretly support these groups as one of many elements to keep their enemies weak. This all, of course, would rely on game mechanics that simply don't exist. I hope that it's giving GW some things to think about on how they can make playing Bad Guys mechanically feasible in a world where doing so puts a giant target on the individual/company/settlement, without tipping the scale too far and making the Bad Guys too powerful or too hard to counter.

I agree with this wholeheartedly and it is the way it should be done in PFO, if they were to be consistent with the lore of the River Kingdoms.

I was having a talk with someone last night, who had been reading the lore of the River Kingdoms, and he drew the same conclusion that I did when the landrush was first finalized.

There are too many settlements of Lawful, and Good alignment for PFO's River Kingdoms to even remotely match up with Pathfinder's River Kingdoms.

I forget who it was (Stephen or Lee) that described what the intention was in choosing the River Kingdoms as the setting. It allowed for two things, flexibility and for the PFO River Kingdoms to play in a fashion comparable to the "Wild West".

The "flexibility" was cultural, that is written, it was more to do with the fact that adventure paths for PF TT had not been written in this settling.

Unfortunately we don't have either at this point IMO.

They need to breathe more life into the game.

[Caldeathe Baequiannia]

KotC - Erian El'ranelen wrote:

Lawful Evil might secretly support these groups as one of many elements to keep their enemies weak

There have been plenty of not-exactly-evil nations in our own history that have not been particularly stingy with supporting bandits. From letters of Marque for those that were effectively pirates, to the providing of guns to support rebellion in enemy lands, supporting banditry has been a widespread tactic of "evil" and "good" alike, lawful or not.

[Gol Phyllain]

Attaching alignment to political actions in game is something we really need to move away from as a community. I, and I imagine most other city leaders, will act in the best interest of their cities. Alignment be damned.

[Theodum]

Don't besmirch the good reputation of the Andorans - I'm born there and have been sailing on some of their ships as a youth before training as a wizard.
There is a HUGE difference between pirates and freedom fighters.

ooc: I agree but IC I have to disagree completely with what Cal if writing

Grey Corsairs - some Golarion Lore:

The Grey Corsairs are the Andoran navy’s guerrilla branch. They are among the best sailors on the Inner Sea, and they fly no flags. It’s said that they hide ships along the shores of the Inner Sea, trading crews and markings overnight to prevent pursuit and identification by their enemies. If they attack a flotilla, they save one or two ships for their own use, and sink the rest. When they catch slavers, they annihilate the slavers and teach the slaves to crew the vessels, bringing the freedmen home to Andoran to learn “the ways of freedom”. The ships of the Grey Corsairs travel faster than most others on the sea, and it is said that even captured ships become faster under the guidance of the Andorens. Certainly wizards play a huge role with the Grey Corsairs, and priests of sky and sea are often recruited as well.

For people who don't have much background of Golarion lore - Andorans are the only democracy around the inner sea and they see themselves as superior as they don't have kings and everyone is treated equal.
Andorans are absolute anti-slavery and their tactics to fight slavery might be regarded non-justifiable by others.

[KotC - Erian El'ranelen]

Please note that no aggrieved parties came forward to oppose removal of Savage Grace from this list, and so that name has been removed.

Also, in the process of cleaning up the thread to accommodate internal and external discussion, I broke the link from the first post. Given we are already at 9 pages on this one, I'm going to start a new thread with the new link properly in place.

[Giorgo]

New thread