Shattered Kingdoms

Who needs cabal abilities when you can just transport someone to Hell.

Leave the adepts, they are awesome. If I hadn't just started a new character, I would probably roll another adept because playing pure evil is extremely fun.

Now...
This could have been put in its own thread, but I believe it would solve alot of trouble that the adepts, who are constantly at war with most cabals/tribunals, would be facing, thus enabling them to persevere.

I believe cabals shouldn't have to pay costs for war.

A tribunal is funded by the city, and payed to protect its citizens from enemies both domestic and abroad. When they go to war, they have to fund troops and pay soldiers, etc... The tribunal consists not only of PC characters, but contains many NPCs and other authority figures such as judges, etc... and while these NPCs don't actually effect change, the upkeep costs are supposed to go to funding them and their efforts in the war (and of course funding an imaginary army). A tribunals goal is to do whatever is best for the province its protecting, mostly. This means that if declaring peace with other nations whose ideals clash, just because funding war is too expensive, then they can do it and wait until they are overflowing with wealth to declare war again. Cabals on the other hand follow different rules.

Cabals are secret societies made up only of PC players. Yes, they have a few NPCs and defenders at the HQ and they should pay upkeep for them, but when a cabal goes to war it isn't launching an army, its just declaring 'war'. It's simply a statement that when members of said cabal see enemies, they will fight and kill them. As I said before, cabals follow different rules than tribunals. They have goals in mind, goals higher than just the well being of the cabal and its members. The hammer has to cleanse the earth of evil, so declaring peace with an organization such as the adepts simply because the war is too expensive doesn't make sense.

The way I saw it, for cabals the war status tool was always just a way for people to be up to date on who their enemies were, etc... they shouldn't have to pay like a tribunal does, because unlike a tribunal they don't have some imaginary army which they are launching. Its just them.

As for the assassins idea, I love the concept of playing an assassin, except for an assassin cabal to be sucessful, they need to escape the law in order to continue killing their marks. And in order to do this, they would need some skill or spell to prevent them from being reported. This spell is already taken and frankly, that particular cabal would make a fine assassin group if that is the direction the leader wished to take it.

Ninjas, on the other hands could be alright, I guess. Having a deep elf tribunal and being able to be born from the deep would be cool but I have a feeling there aren't enough people who would decide to play it. But thats just me. Another cabal would be awesome though, I do agree with that. So, keep the adepts (maybe tweek them slightly) and get a new cabal. Abolish cabal war costs as well.

Some interesting points, Hoolio. I basically considered this thread closed. To me it's fairly obvious that people like the adepts. If you count the two adept options people want the adepts in some form twice as much as anything else. Even Adepts as they are without counting the other adepts option gets 1/3 more votes then the ninja's option.

It's fairly plain people would like a darky martial arts cabal, but not as much as they want the adepts. So, I guess replacing them is an idea that is not popular with to many people besides me.

Thanks to all those who voted.