Shattered Kingdoms

My problem with this:

The way things are right now people will be afraid to hold symbols because other people will gank them since said symbols unlock certain areas, or have some other benefits.

Random Solutions:

-Make symbols rot at player's death (will suck because after every death they will need an F2 priest)

-Make symbols zappy to opposite alignments (difficult to implement as there are grey gods with grey symbols, but at least greybies shouldn't be able to kill someone just to rob them of a symbol)

-Make the locks those symbols open pickable.

-Make the locks only open by a person of said faith unlocking hte door with a symbol

In general, I believe symbols should be more than just an item anyone can horde.
I would suggest that imms check where the symbols of their faiths are, and if they are in the hands of someone the imm doesn't like, they start messing with him.
Example from adnd:
If you took a symbol of helm without approval of the faith for whatever purpose, you slowly feel the weight of your misgiving: It starts with a -2 to a random attribute the first few days. It moves to a -2 to all attributes, then a -2 to all attributes and an added -4 to your main stat, then sickness, nightmares, and if you keep holding on to it, it eventually killed you. If you stopped holding the symbol, but didn't return it to the faith, you were left with the -2 penalty to a random stat until you atoned to helm in some way.

Fun stuff.

Unless those doors are changed completely, no. Being pickable doesn't really compensate for how hard you just made getting somewhat decent/sacred armor.

I'd say all of Erevan's solutions here are bad ones.

I completely disagree with this one. It would ruin all kinds of knightly RP where one steals someone's symbol (of opponent faith) and he is considered disgraced for as long his enemy carries his symbol etc.

I would agree with you, juggs, were it not for the fact that people are stealing symbols not for RP reasons (in certain cases) but because they're keys in a certain area (which I strongly disagree with given the current situation with symbols).

Someone said that this change would be good if we had a large playerbase, then the chance of acquiring a new symbol would be much easier, as it stands now players are forced to wait for who knows how long if they have an inactive HF. I don't really think that the idea of sybmols and their higher value is going to work when certain players only value them as keys, they don't care about disgracing a paladin, priest, or whatever.

Whether it is good to have less symbols or not I can't really say, I know it would be easier if there were more of them, but I can't for the life of me agree with the fact that symbols (in their current rare form) should be keys in any area, because it won't promote RP or the value of symbol and will IMO diminish both.

My proposal is to change that certain area so that the keys required for it are something else.

Please bug log doors that use symbols as keys for review by KD's. Please do so in the room with the door specifically.

*koffkoffchancel*

Done.

My point exactly.

While these sorts of problems are easy to fix in a controlled environment such as a typical tabletop RPG group, it gets a little out of hand in something as vast as a MUD, where the DM cannot just tell you 'dude, that's lame' and stop you from it.
Here, if you leave the chance out for someone to 'cleave' so long as he's not in a fight with his target, someone will eventually that sitting in the 2nd row and removing his reach weapon puts him out of combat, so he can just wear it the next round and cleave again, grind rince repeat. (not-so-random example, is it *cough* Keroc *cough*)
When something like this happens, the system needs to be tweaked. It'd all be nice and wonderful if people could resist the urge to 'exploit' these things, but sometimes the line is too thin to notice, and gets crossed. from that point on, there's only one way to fix it

I would much rather see said doors changed than symbols zap anti-aura. Problem solved.