Posted By Steevo at 6:28 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By Lunaus at 6:39 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

2.) Depends on the age of the heir, anyone 15 and under cannot be killed. They are as invincible as Skyrim's children without mods.

3.) After so many deaths (dunno time frame) the loss is dwindled so if you spawn kill them somehow they won't loss the same amount each death, instead it stacks against you the killer, making it so when you finally die your spirit loss is like almost x2 times as bad as their if not close to half as much.

If their under aged and cant be killed then they also wont be a viable candidate for that person to take over. when someone gets killed they get a 2.5 hour grace period before any more deaths would have a spirit loss, so if a king dies every few hours then that would result in perma death after 5 or 6 deaths.

Kidnapping a king would be much more effective. You could take him to a secluded part of the woods and camp those 5-6 deaths out of him over the course of a few irl days. He'd probably call his friends on discord though...

I hope we can blindfold players.

You don't actually spawn directly on your dead body, idk the exact distance but they said that you can spawn a "safe" distance away.

Posted By Steevo at 7:41 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

You don't actually spawn directly on your dead body, idk the exact distance but they said that you can spawn a "safe" distance away.

That's why I said secluded part of the forest and not an underground prison.

You could always take him on a boat and make him walk the plank.

I'd advise anyone who is a Mayor or above to form a family in game. If you know another local Mayor for example, make them part of your family. This increases your survivability.

Obviously limit this to people you trust.

After that, see if you have the option of distributing children. As a mayor you'll own some of your local town, but you'll have enough EP to buy the odd remote plot to safely house potential heirs. You might even hide one in another county etc.

Don't forget though, as an assassin, if you're caught, you risk significant imprisonment ie aging and skill atrophy. You may also lose all you own. The latter two might ruin your plan for progress in your next life. What's more, if you did contract an assassin, that evidence might lead to the downfall of the payer too.

Posted By techtwotiger at 03:27 AM - Sat Jan 21 2017

Posted By Steevo at 6:28 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

Posted By Lunaus at 6:39 PM - Fri Jan 20 2017

2.) Depends on the age of the heir, anyone 15 and under cannot be killed. They are as invincible as Skyrim's children without mods.

3.) After so many deaths (dunno time frame) the loss is dwindled so if you spawn kill them somehow they won't loss the same amount each death, instead it stacks against you the killer, making it so when you finally die your spirit loss is like almost x2 times as bad as their if not close to half as much.

If their under aged and cant be killed then they also wont be a viable candidate for that person to take over. when someone gets killed they get a 2.5 hour grace period before any more deaths would have a spirit loss, so if a king dies every few hours then that would result in perma death after 5 or 6 deaths.

Kidnapping a king would be much more effective. You could take him to a secluded part of the woods and camp those 5-6 deaths out of him over the course of a few irl days. He'd probably call his friends on discord though...

I hope we can blindfold players.

No you won't be able to "hold players" for any length of time. Prison time is applied instantly. Holding players as prisoners for RL time would lead to a form of griefing that simply wouldn't be any fun to play for them, and we don't want a culture that encourages players to quit do we.

Posted By techtwotiger at 09:55 AM - Sat Jan 21 2017

Did you guys forget? You can assassinate a players entire NPC family except for their under 15 year old children.

If you know that a player is about to perma-die from age and you kill all his family then his entire dynasty dies with him. Even if he has a 5 year old grandson, he can't take over as that grandson until the grandson is 15 years old and unless the player perma dies on his grandson's 15th birthday you can still target the grandson before he's taken over.

Anyone that wants to keep a dynasty going has to pump out potential heirs like a baby factory, so much so that it wouldn't be reasonable to ask an assassin to kill the guy's 15 possible heirs.

I'm pretty sure that most assassination attempts are going to target player's heirs once they are close to perma death.

For example, you want to remove some asshole duke. This guy only has 5 possible heirs that he can directly take over because if they all die, another player inherits his duchy and this player wants to keep it. So you wait until this player is close to age permadeath, then you hire assassins to kill his 5 heirs during one night. You'd be lucky to get all of them, but if you do, then there's nothing this player can do to give himself the Duchy title anymore. Even if he has 2 months of game time left he can't adopt any NPCs to then take over, even if he makes a baby heir, that heir will only be about 8 years old by the time he perma dies and he won't be able to take over that 8 year old. If you kill all 5 possible heirs in the next 2 months as well. then he still won't be able to inherit his title.

Assassination will be useful and it will bring down dynasties, but you can't do that with just 1 kill, you'll have to wipe out every possible heir the player could take over. You have to kill the entire family to wipe it out. It'll be hard, but doable.

Bear in mind too that if a ruler lacks a designated heir then the "next in line" inherits their title. That person "next in line" could very well be an ambitious PC sibling, cousin, nephew or neice, uncle or aunt. Or maybe their partner, or someone in their circle who has influence over them who has ambitions for them (why have influence over the nephew of the king if you could have influence over the king).

This could apply to inheritance of property as well, not just title. A PC son may betray his PC father by assassinating his PC father and his heirs for the family fortune. Or even just to get what was willed to him earlier. A spouse who wishes to leave their partner but not their fortune may well do the same.

it is my understanding that the higher nobility/fame you are the more spirit loss you will suffer upon death. this is what will make murder impact the story more. i think i read somewhere a king will lose 3 months of spirit for a death..

It has its place. I view assassination like a battle. Will one battle take over the entire country? probably not. Will one assassination do that? also probably not. If you can set up a series of assassinations withing a set amount of time, then it could very well have a lasting affect. Same with battles, a series of wins turns a successful battle into a successful war.

Also, you seem to be under the impression that forcing a player to reincarnate as their heir has no impact. This isnt true. An heir has less stats than their previous character, at least at first. The heir will eventually match, or exceed his/her predecessor, but it will take time. Time spent learning skills instead of making counter moves. At the very least, the target would indeed hire more security. Preventing those funds from being used to grow stronger, or harass you.

And yes, this is under the assumption that the target has a certain amount of renown. Those without renown would probably be a waste of time to assassinate. However, as an assassin you are probably there for the money. So, if someone payed you then it wouldn't really matter how much of an impact the players death has. Not to mention you would also have a set of skills useful for getting into places you arent supposed to. So, If i hate this random apothecary, I would maybe hire someone to steal, sabotage, or frame the apothecary. And if i hate a count(ess) i may hire you to kill him/her instead.

In conclusion, renown targets do have reasons to be assassinated, regardless of whether you can kill off all of their heirs or not. Forcing reincarnations will reduce stats for a significant period of time. If you cant force a reincarnation then you kill still force the target to siphon funds from other projects to increase security. Those with little renown probably wouldn't be worth assassinating. This is kind of similar in real life so i cant really complain. However, an assassin could still cause just as much trouble for them.

NPC's that die don't reincarnate do they? So if a PC was doing business and an NPC was providing unwanted competition, he could hire someone to assassinate the NPC to get him out of the way right? If so I think that would be a good reason to hire an assassin to kill someone with little to no reputation.

Killing people, PC or NPC, won't be as easy as this thread is implying... The combat is similar to Dark Souls, and on average you can play a full year off one spark as a nobody, and maybe around 3 months (plus or minus) with the same amount of deaths as a King or someone as Famous as a King.

Plus as mentioned you can't kidnap people, trap them, or anything of that effect (and especially no slaves!). Someone has already listed the skills needed to be a successful assassin which'll take a lot of training and possibly lifetimes to be able to do it effectively (not perfect, but well enough) to be able to maybe kill random nobodies. So unless the ruler you're going after is completely oblivious and trusts anyone who says "Hello", I highly doubt any of this will come to life within the first few years. People are already building complete communities or bringing over communities that have been in placed for years, I don't think they have any inner turmoil enough to cause a good majority to plot against their ruler and destroy their investment in this game.

It's a nice aspiration, but a very farfetched one. Your NPC family (if you have any, and you should at least have an heir) will be able to see through your disguise by default, your neighbors, and anyone you introduce yourself to (as you) will know who you are and be able to see through your disguise if you aren't high level in creating an effective disguise and using it constantly. This type of profession would take a lot of planning and someone with a lot of time to spend between training themselves and their heir, who isn't a blabber mouth and knows how to spy or have someone to get intel from.

More than likely assassination will be only a small slice of an "assassin's" career anyway. I'd be more inclined to think of assassination as a subslice of a espionage career as a whole, with gathering intelligence, stealing documents and items of importance, and staging operations of deception to influence desired outcomes being an Assassin's (more like Spy's) bread and butter.

I can definitely see assassinations being a thing between enemy nations. I really hope that rich/powerful npc's actually hire npc/pc assassins rather then it just being something only players engage in.

I think that assassination is theoretically (as we have no clue on how it actually works right now) in a good spot. Nobles take LOTs of spirit loss, so assassination is still meaningful as you are significantly shortening their rule if successful.

Let's not forget that the most chaotic times in Medieval Europe were almost always succession and inheritance wars. I think the same will hold true in Elyria, and there will likely be many wars after the untimely death of Kings. Even if they did manage to have an heir, their heir will still lack the skills their predecessor had. It's still not known how important that is, but I foresee it having very real affects on gameplay, and this is all without mentioning the RP implications as Elyria has a very large portion of RPers.