Shattered Kingdoms

Capturing on SK devolves down to attempting to put them in jail. I'm not condoning keeping people perpetually stunned.


That's not something that I changed. It didn't ever say 'will'.


Your assumption about the direction of the change is wrong. It used to say "will work with anyone". It now says "will work with almost anyone". It's subtle but there ARE unspecified limits as to how much of a bastard that a scrupulous person will work with now.


This is where alternatives should come into play. Ignore the other lightie and kill the evil guy anyway. If necessary, you may come to blows with the other lightie and attempt to stun him. Since you are both lighties, he has to do the same, so there is no tactical disadvantage. If both the lightie and the darkie end up attacking you at the same time, you were screwed from the start and should run. (Plus see below).


Your elf should in-characterly express shock and horror and attempt to help cure the other elf of their madness. Meanwhile you should be sending up prayers about the enmity violation.

Not being sure they are good is a plausible loophole that a scrupulous person has. IF, (big IF), the opposing good character has done nothing to indicate their good nature and is blatantly siding with evil (which would be against their own alignment 99% of the time), AND it comes down to a kill or be killed decision, then a scrupulous person might kill them. In such truly complex situations, I'm sure every immortal would allow leeway.

In either case, if and when the scrupulous character finds out that the other person is good, then he should feel appropriately remorseful and attempt to make sure that it doesn't happen again. The intent here is to remove the option that scrupulous people have been using of murdering any lightie that happens to disagree with them.


This example is plausible but a bit far-fetched. At any rate, during a state of war other considerations may come into play. If two groups of lighties are being forced to attack each other, they should be reluctant to kill each other. If at all possible, they should use stun and/or attempt to take advantage of their law NPCs to bring justice to the attackers.


I will concede that you have a point here. But I'm not sure what wording would fix it without being too restrictive.

Well, my memory fails me again, and what it didn't fail me on was addressed in the last two responses.

Dulrik wins. Good changes.

I have consistantly disagreed with this statement. Whether or not you may come back from death is irrelevant. The act of being killed is still a traumatic experience with no equal. No character should be willing to throw their life away on a whim even if a friendly priest is right there. Having a cavalier attitude toward your own death has always been cursable (and not just because it is almost always associated with twinking).


This elf is already in a perilous RP situation. While he may not feel like he can violate his own laws to bring these men to justice at the moment, it does not mean he is buddies with them. If he is following his own alignment, he should at least be looking for a way to get these evil people out of his kingdom. There is a strong possibility that he would be willing to help attack them once they are out of his jurisdiction.


And this is just the sort of situation that the alignment change is here to stop. As a scrupulous person you have several options here, but the one you listed isn't one of them. You can try to talk the elf into helping you get them out of town so they can be attacked. You can enter the room and try to provoke the evil guys into attacking you, in which case the elf is also obligated to help you both as a lightie and under the law. You can hide and wait for the elf to leave before starting your attack. Or you can go ahead and fireball away as long as you use mode stun - although that would be pretty dumb since you are going to end up hindering yourself from entering this kingdom in the future.

All of these options provide a lot of potential RP for all sides, which is better than yet another random murder spree.

As much as it pains me to agree with Dulrik, he is absolutely correct. A good aligned character casting fireball into the room is not adhering to his alignment. At best, it is a selfish act, bordering on evil.

I am not suggesting there shouldn't be aggressive, crusader type good aligned characters that actively hunt and seek to destroy evil. However, they should not be killing other good aligned characters in the process, as that is the domain of selfish and evil alignments. If you want to play a character where the ends justify the means, and you will destroy evil at any cost, choose the unprincipled alignment - not scrupulous or principled.

Maybe I'm just being a whiny [REDACTED], but what always makes me mad is light characters refusing to rp with dark characters (me).
What I see:
You walk into a room full of lighties. <---OMGIMGONNADIE
The lighties look at you.
The lighties kill you.
The lighties tell you to stay out.

What I'd like to see:
You walk into a room full of lighties. <---OMGIMGONNADIE
The lighties look at you.
The lighties all type "mode stun."
The lighties collectively beat the bejezus out of you.
The lighties surround you and when you wake up, you can't get out. Naturally, you start to wheedle and whine and rationalize etc etc etc.
The lighties roll their eyes and respond to each of your whinings with "As if." or "Yeah right." or "No, actually, I've SEEN you walk in here and kill things, therefore you have been expressly forbidden from coming in here, therefore you are going to die now."
You do some random darkie thing, for me, a bit of big teary puppy eyes before they cut my head off, for someone else, maybe a desperate escape attempt, RPed. Like emoting trying to get out, whether successfully or not.
They kill you. Or you escape.
Everyone thinks to themselves: WOW, that was fun.

Halcidan should have gotten cursed by the immortals even under the old alignment wording. That was not a principled character.

He was principled. Just because he destroyed face, doesn't mean otherwise. He actually RPed everything out. Just because people rip off the concept with none of the RP doesn't mean the origination was bad.

kthx.

That was then, though, and this is now. These changes give you more room, not less.

He posted a note in Exile glorifying how he drove his lance through a pregnant woman's stomach to kill her and her unborn child at once. That is not valuing life.

I really can't speak to whether Halcidan played his character according to the principled alignment, as my interactions with him were limited to melting his face with magma. What I can comment on was his penchant for pkilling low to mid level evil aligned characters while they exp'd.

He used to log off when any powerful selfish or evil aligned characters logged on, but then again, I have often witnessed that behavior on SK and it is a reflection of the player not the character or alignment.

I think it is pretty clear from Dulrik's refined definition of scrupulous that you can play a good aligned character as a bloodthirsty zealot bent on destroying evil, so long as you don't kill other good aligned characters in the process.