Bounty system

[Endarn]

ok heres an idea that I thought up just 5 min ago and its a little out there.. and lan told me to post it here so he can blast it out of the ballpark later after some people start to like it

anyone ever play morrowind? in it theres this cool bounty system. heres how it would work in nwn:

*first off if you attack a commoner or steal and get caught your bountry goes up so many dollars.

*when your bounty gets to say 1000 if a guard sees you he will automatically go hostile

*when you attack someone everyone else in the room will attack you as normal but maybe we can make it so they don't chase you out of the building (less scattered npcs)

*if you talk to a guard before you reach 1000 you can either choose to flee and he will attack you or you can choose to go to jail and spend some time in the jail maybe an hour or so then you can leave and be on your way or you can pay the fines

really this system at the moment would be next to worthless really because how many npcs do you attack everyday?

but with some additions (which I know lan hates and would take time) we maybe able to make it so rogues can pickpocket commoners for things then get bounties on their heads if they get caught.. and instead of your only option being dieing you could get away and live for a little while longer or turn yourself in.

If we really wanted to we could add the other element morrowind has and add people that can take away your bounty for half the price and no jail time.

Currently the main downside I am seeing to this system would be lag. I'm not sure how the guards code would handle that many database quarries (sp). maybe if we just made it part of the onperception script it wouldn't be to bad.

[Dazed]

*sighs* Morrowind !! I loved that game, only downside, no multiplayer

Would be fun, and would also be something cool for what I've seen in other places ( haven't seen here at all ) where some new guy enters the server with his future CE crazy gnome/rdd/assassin and proceeds to destroy things and npc's, leaving them scattered in places they didn't belong. Guessing here they must return to their spots or you've been lucky enough not to get the kiddies looking to pk thingies/pc/npc's. Always cracked me up watching them whine to a dm after the guards slaughtered them ;D

On the other side, it'd give me reason to put some points into my pp skill, since I make it a personal rule to never pp pc's and find nothing worth taking on most npc's, I simply stopped using it.

[Longtide]

I think this is a great idea. But at the same time, that must be a lot of effort on Lan's part. Wouldn't his time be better spent on something else? Not that I would presume to know what on, but this seems like a huge project.

Perhaps something similiar but less daunting? I don't have an idea or example to give either at this point though.

About rogues and Pick Pocketing, I have a soft spot for rogues as they are one of my favorite types of characters to play.

In the Lost, all the good treasure is only available to a party with a good rogue. Their are places where a really good sneaky rogue can pick the key off the gate gaurdian and open the gates for the party without having to fight the gaurds. (Maybe just the need to lure them away from the gates).

Also all of the undead in the Akrona city of a "soul gem" on them that is pp'able.

Also, in Battle Isle, all the Assasins, Generals and Sargeants even (I think the sgt's) have loot on them that I gave them soley not to drop, but to be pick pocketable. (Gems, jewelery and gold, scrolls, traps and one or two other miscelleanous items).

Some generals even have the keys to the d**ned's stronghold gates that can be pp'able.

There is even one area where a rogue can unlock a pile of rubble (to simuluate climing over the walls to unlock the gate) and then get the key inside to unlock a main gate).

My belief is that should the player have an actual use for this skill and an outlet to use it on, it won't be needed to use against players unless for rp purposes.

I just wish there was a way to make this skill harder because as I understand it, you only need to beat a 20 and a 30 on a hostile npc. I once had a rogue with a 77pp skill. She could steal the ba er yeah, off on ogre.

For the record, anything I build I try to have a special use for rogues, because here, they really do shine.

-LT

[Dazed]

Very cool. I came from a place where the owner thought it nifty if his traps were weak enough for the bruisers to plow through. Then some of the players complained because they lacked the armor/hp for the damage, so he added a device that allowed all classes to disarm traps and open locks. No use for a party to take along a rogue after that.
He had one npc that was carrying something to pp, one heal potion per reset on a server that had no heal potions. One player managed to nab that one heal after every reset, so the owner removed it too.
Can imagine, lots of angry players who complained about being picked clean because there was no place to use the skill and why bother putting points into traps and locks when anyone could use the gizmo?
Very nice to find a server that allows us to use the skill on npc's.

[Frome]

Wouldn't this promote PK?

[Endarn]

um.. how?

[Dazed]

What would promote Pking are the lamers who take rogue, max the pp skill, then pick other players clean all the time. That's something I saw in those other places and is why I won't pp a pc, period.
Few things worse than busting your buns to earn that certain special thing, only to have it and everything else you owned taken by someone else in a few seconds.
This would actually make them less likely to do the pping if they knew all the guards would be out to smack them around for it. But, yes, it would probably take tons of work to make it happen. *sighs* Ah well, was a great idea, imo.

[Frome]

Gotta hate griefers...

[Endarn]

one thing though.. towns and most of talus is no pvp which if I am not mistaken makes it so you can't pickpocket pcs but you can npcs.

And if the rule was if your caught pickpocketing a pc your bounty automatically goes to 1000 so if a guard sees you your dead. That may distract from that sort of thing.

[Arse]

Hey hey everyone.

Now I'm not a big city lawyer but this bounty idea sounds pretty cool to me. But I could see how it would be time consuming but if we used an existing system some how. Ie the trade skill stuff is specific to the character so there must be some place where data is stored about a character outside the standard bioware stuff. So it seems a system of keeping track of the character information is already out there. Perhaps its just an extra column in a table(or perhaps its mindnumbly teadous I don't know ) Now as for increasing the bounty. It could count everytime you do something that changes a neutral faction to hostile could be the counter. So after 3 times( a score of -3) of doing this they stay permanently hostile. Maybe killing a commoner is an automatic -3 but it dosn't matter to much about the counter.

As is now they will stay hostile till you die so that would have to be changed. But that in its self seems like a good idea to me. After so long any normally neutral/friendly factions that are hostile should return to that state after a time period.

The other part that Endarn mentioned about reporting to the guard shouldn't be to difficult. When you talk to them they would run a function requesting the reputation of the character if its in the minus they can pay a fine or go to jail for a bit.

I really don't know how difficult this would be. But if done correctly I think it could be expanded into a full fledged reputation system. The biggest benifits would be allowing special quests for people with a really bad reputation or a really good one. And discounts/extra costs added to items at store (+/- to apprisal skill).

My biggest concern besides Lanthar's time would be lag introduced by extra scripts.


Arse

[Endarn]

Lag is one of my issues as well.. that I would think it may take some time for anyone to really get this system going. I would be willing to work on it once I get this puzzle system I am making finished (About ready to melt nwn cds at the moment over that one )