Balance: Knights vs Mages

[Kinaed]

I think it'd apply to piety in any religion that disliked or was resistant to magic by nature, which is not all of them, but more than just Davism.

[Geras]

Will piety in other religions have other code advantages then?

[Kinaed]

Not sure.

[Geras]

You might have missed my previous edit on how to justify other religions having the same benefits btw so I'll repost:

I mean, it can make a certain sort of sense as a placebo effect even, and that people who are more unsure of their beliefs are more susceptible to being "drawn in" my the magic.

It'd probably be simplest if piety worked the same for all religions, so theres no concerns about balance...

[Kinaed]

Good point/post.

[Estelle]

This is Amethyst's player. :)

I want to prepend this post with the humble admission of not having played for a very, very, very long time. I occasionally pop in to read all the board and IC notes, and chat with friends, so I suppose I have a rough idea of what the current game situation is, but not as much as most of you do.

That being said, I think it is quite telling that as of now, one year later, the example used for 'hardcore (successful?) criminal' is still Amethyst. Don't get me wrong, I'm really touched that she's remembered. But it's a pretty darn strong sign of the fact that maybe there haven't been very many following in her footsteps.

And if she was one of the more 'successful' ones, as claimed, there really wasn't much to show for it even then. Despite all the IC terror that I did my best to engineer, there was no actual 'string of PKs' - she was only ever physically present for 2, and 1 of them was requested by the player OOCly. She was perhaps involved in the planning of 2 other murders, one which took literally months and a few failed attempts to achieve, and another which involved manipulating a sacrifical pawn. It was all really, really difficult to achieve.

And she wasn't even a mage, so she could afford to put most of her xp in combat, and had bonus xp from beta like most of the old characters do.

Contrast that with my next character, Vincent the Cardinal. He played a major part in ferreting out, capturing, and finally burning, at least 6 mages (I'm sure there are a few others that I'm forgetting). And yet that wasn't even considered extraordinary by any means -he was much more easily forgotten than Amethyst. And it was all so much easier to do - the ONLY times we ever encountered problems was when a mage player (who is now banned, I think) twinked his way through. This was even in the era where armor was not even powerful yet. Armor costs money, and thus strongly advantages the lawful guilds that receive regular payment by ingame mechanics (correct me if I'm wrong currently, but the nobles, Reeves and Order did previously receive weekly payments for doing nothing much at all, whereas the Manus and Brotherhood could bust their asses kidnapping and extorting and stealing all day and not even come close to the amount the Order got).

I'm not sure how much of this is relevant now. I guess I just posted when I saw Ames being cited as an example of how evil could easily prevail. But it really isn't true. The 'lawful' side was quite advantaged over the evil, even during that early phase of the game.

[Kinaed]

The law does have the advantage theme-wise due to perceived legitimacy. This has to do with the culture and attitudes of players. Code-wise, however, I think this thread aptly demonstrated that there is no bias against baddies.

Armor is costly, but neither hard to get nor exclusive to non-mages. There are also no rules in game that rich ppl can't be baddies or mages.

I think so long as thieves and mages are "prohibited", they will always be harder to play than "legit" concepts. I've seen desc notes that indicate a few "good guy" chars are widely hated, but have only once seen a failed assassination attempt on TI, most don't even try. The few assassination attempts I have seen used the Order to execute the victim, barring one or two.

[Burnt]

Just worth noting, Bryne's a knight, and the extra pay he gets is a whooping 40 silver a week. He bought his steel sword using using his immortal guild pay (there were delays in setting up his guild pay), and made his own leather armour - the knights didn't foot the cost of either of those bills.

[Estelle]

Kin - I definitely agree. However, there is an innate codewise advantage in the Reeves and Order receiving income through ingame mechanics, and the nobles receiving a huge amount of pay from the immortals that they channel to the other legit guilds as well. I mean, Amethyst blackmailed the Queen, was paid ransom for 2 very prominent people that she kidnapped, sold Lithmorran plans to the Daravi during the quest for a huge hefty price, and received sponsorship from select nobles. Yet the amount she actually earned, I got on Vincent from just sitting around for a month and watching the cash flow in from code payments. I was paying most Orderites of mid rank and above, 100 silver or more a week, and it was still actually a challenge to spend it quickly enough to prevent it from capping off every week, though in retrospect I can think of a few things that I -could- have done (certainly it would have been easier had armor been more prominent then :)).

Also, not to nitpick! <3 But I can definitely think of two direct failed assassination attempts that I was involved in planning. ;) One occured when RPA was paid to oust the assassin from the guild hall. Another occured when combat stalled and help arrived (fortunately, I think this is mostly fixed now). There were several others that 'failed', but those didn't involve actual combat engagement, but rather the target didn't take the bait or didn't walk past the place that was ambushed.

Definitely easier to use the Order.

[Geras]

You should make a new baddie Estelle... :)