forensics suggestion

[northwoodschopper]

how about items that are stolen/looted from blue players, who aren't members of the thieves guild, are tagged with a flag 'Stolen from: <name>', which is only visible to the perpetrator, and to detectives that use forensics on the item, which would make the status known to everyone. if a detective recovers the item, the detective can turn over the item to town guards, who will deposit it in the victim's bankbox, rewarding the detective with justice, fame, and karma. (the stolen flag could even be a trophy for some thieves and murderers).

this would apply to items that don't stack.

equipping visibly stolen tagged items result in a karma hit, and rapid decrease in your virtue stats. the stolen flag would wear off after some determined duration. vendors won't associate with stolen flagged items (whether visible or not), so the perpetrator would have to fence the item person to person only until the flag wears off, which means a detective could forensics it during trade negotiations.

forensics should also be able to remove/dispel disguises and incognito, along with revealing thieves guild. high forensics should boost detect hidden by preventing hiding/smokebomb/invis use for 10 seconds upon reveal.

i had more, but i seem to forgot in my last train of thought. i'll add more later maybe. obviously this would be of best use on siege and with roleplay guilds.

 

[AtlanticVlad]

YES!!! MAKE MY DETECTIVE MORE FUN TO PLAY PLEASE!!! I love all of them! WOOT!

 

[Viper09]

I like those ideas

 

[Sergul'zan_SP]

forensics should also be able to remove/dispel disguises and incognito, along with revealing thieves guild. high forensics should boost detect hidden by preventing hiding/smokebomb/invis use for 10 seconds upon reveal.

I like these ideas. The item theft idea seems a bit complicated.

Bring back the bounty system!

 

[Jhym]

Shouldn't be THAT complicated -- add a theft flag if there isn't one, and a pointer who last stole it. The other restrictions could be added later, or just make it that anything with a theft flag cannot be sold to npcs and leave it at that.

Have the flag cleared on two conditions:

1) after 2 days outside of a bank or secure
2) you can pay a thief guildmaster ???K to remove the mark, based on some value system -- possibly your karma/fame level and that of the original owner, calculated at the time of the steal. A Dread Lord that stole from a Glorious Lady might spend close to half a mil to remove a mark if he was in a hurry.

I love the ideas though, it would be very cool to have detectives around, and make me a little less inclined to restrict thieves as much as they are.

 

[shanshu]

/signed

My GM Detective has been sitting dusty for years.

 

[northwoodschopper]

I like these ideas. The item theft idea seems a bit complicated.

Bring back the bounty system!

it wouldn't be that complicated, there's already similar tags for personal bless and faction items.

the stolen tag should last a couple hours in-game while it's in the perpetrator's backpack. the tag won't decay if it's stashed, if that's even a possibility that a stolen item could be stashed.

it may become difficult to provide enough checks and balances to keep things fair and fun for both thieves and detectives. the sad thing is, with how convoluted our skill set and skill dependancies have become, it may not even be feasible to have forensics on a template to bring down a murderer, or a rogue thief.

i remember back in the day, a character only needed a weapon skill, tactics, magery, resist, and wrestle to compete in pvp interaction, mainly because magery didn't need eval int, anatomy had no bearing on damage, meditation didn't exist, parry wasn't worth it due to the fact 2 handers did much better damage in conjuction with casting, and healing only worked like once every minute or so. the last 2 skills could've been anything, hell i knew reds that had blacksmithing or fletching. a detective could have detect hidden and forensics, and still compete effectively. i'm afraid that's just not viable anymore, unless detectives are meant to just be mages flamestriking criminal flagged naked thieves.

anyways,

it would be pretty interesting if using forensics on a player would bring up a dossier like animal lore does for creatures, showing skills, affiliations, total resists, total item mods, etc. maybe have it where in peace mode, it pulls up the dossier. in war mode it does the more aggressive 'remove disguise/incognito' and reveal perma-grey status, kinda like criminal pursuit mode.

 

[Fink]

Do you lose virtue points (against Honesty?) equipping a stolen item that you're not aware is stolen?

 

[Adora]

Those are all awesome ideas - best I've ever heard regarding the forensics skill.

 

[Hildebrand]

Too bad the halloween event didn't have any forensic use involved. Tracking too.
Forensic to find the notes and get MORE clues for a separate quest for detectives only. (Detective costume by holding a spyglass?)
Tracking to be able to find certain paths of the quest for the detective that lead to other quest chains.
*sigh* maybe next year.

Oh, Xmas coming... use these skills on the snow to find Santa!

 

[Assia Penryn]

I'd love to see forensics used! I really like the idea of unmasking the disguise kits.

 

[northwoodschopper]

Do you lose virtue points (against Honesty?) equipping a stolen item that you're not aware is stolen?

interesting point...on one hand, this would promote players seeking 'honest' merchants, and make thieves work to build their own fencing network before goods can be sold to the general populace once the tag expires. if you know the person you're dealing with has a reputation of selling stolen items, you aren't being virtuous anyways.
on the other hand, it could cause grieving.

would be interesting to discuss either way. it really depends how stolen-flagged items are handled.

maybe, items that the perpetrators sell to anyone that isn't in the thieves guild, or a red, once the transaction is complete, the item is identified as 'stolen', but doesn't say from whom, it can't be turned in unless a detective identifies from whom, and the tag doesn't decay. the tag only decays on the perpetrator, thieves guild members, and reds. this way, a player can make a choice of finding a detective to return the item to it's rightful owner, or choose to use the stolen item and lose virtue and karma. interesting concept.

the more i think about it though, it seems these ideas are a bit too late. in the age of insurance and blessings, this would ammount to mostly novelty, except on siege. then again, it may very well be worthwhile for just siege.