Evil characters

[Kaz]

Taking an evil character has always intrigued me but I've never gone through with it because of the way hostility was handled by the engine.

Once I agro someone it was permanent, and there was no way to interact with that NPC beyond that point. This limited your options severely, because I knew if I kill this guy right now, the whole town would go agro on my ass and I would miss out on a ton of quests / events. If I did attack someone the AI would kick in and I would say to myself "Welp, I guess I have to kill everyone in Beregost again". Which is fun in it's own right.. heheh

 

I'd like to propose a new state NPCs can be in, which is the dislike/fearful state. (could be represented by an orange circle under their feet) The AI would not auto attack NPCs in this state, and still allow you to talk to them. Having this gray area would allow a lot of options for an evil character. You could attack the NPC, but not kill them as a form of interrogation. If they are capable of combat, such as guards or other adventurers, then yeah they will agro and there's nothing you can do. But realistically a civilian wouldn't dare try to fight a party of badasses. If you're caught stealing, you could still talk to the store keep and attempt to bribe him to keep his mouth shut. If your reputation drops far enough maybe people around you would automatically change to a fearful state, which would be kinda badass as an evil char.

 

So to sum up, add more gray area to agro states to give evil characters more options - allowing them to experience more game content.

 

Thoughts?

 

Edit: Of course this would mean more dialog options, and I don't want to kill Chris by doubling his workload Perhaps there is a more graceful option?

Edited September 21, 2012 by Kaz

[eimatshya]

Sounds like a great idea on paper. As you point out, however, it might be a lot of work to implement the extra dialogue.

 

I guess you could just have a generic "you're an evil man!" type of spiel that characters would give you until you made a persuade check or paid them or something then dialogue could revert to normal. You'd only have to write a couple different interactions to use depending on the character's reaction (scared and submissive vs. defiant/angry). Admittedly, if you did a lot of illegal stuff, having to go through the same dialogue each time would probably be a bit tedious, but it seems like it might work if you only killed someone in cold blood/got caught stealing/whatever nefarious thing a few times.

 

It would still be extra work to set and test the extra dialogue for each character, but it seems like a more manageable amount. But then, I don't know much about the technical process involved, so I could be way off.

[Grayman]

i had thoughts like this about a non lethal fighting state being an option for townies and intimidation but the extra dialog may be a killer on it. usually the script will allow evil playing, it is the random theft and non quest murder that can catch up with you.

[Amentep]

I dunno, I think there has to be some consequence of attacking someone in full sight. That said there's something about creating a system that allows the evil player to kill a character without worrying about appraisal (essentially assassinating them). None of the "you stole an item from a locked box in an empty room and now your universal reputation -1" stuff (also known as the "donate to the church for good / wack an NPC system")