Just a few things I would like to discuss

Consider them as things I see as 'would be nice to have', in my opinion ...

A) Being within the same room as YOUR, obviously, Inner Guardian, while it's alive, counts as no-summon. Possibly, and perhaps logically, as long as you have the item. The Warlock ward of old created something to that effect, I just think it would make raids far more interesting beyond the regular summon+bash fests.

B) pay centurion

Instead of pay <amount>. It would automatically take the required coins from you, if available.
Potentially, it could then also be extended towards other uses, beyond Centurions alone.

And,

C) "The first is to pay the Centurions, the second is to kill them, and the third is to go back the way you came (this option is not available if someone has fought a
minion of the Empire lately)."

I just don't know if that last part between the () was there before I rolled Nian, but from the looks of it, it would seem that, if you have just fought an Imperial, 1st and 2nd option are available, the 3rd one isn't.

I always assumed, incorrectly as I learned, that you could always pay Centurions. Centurions are greedy, corrupt bastards, and -> greed > pride/principals. With greed, no matter what, there's always the right amount of coin, that may be twice, thrice or quadruple the original amount, but it should be possible.

At any rate, I don't think the help file is clear about the whole can't pay after an attack thing.

- Paying too much shouldn't be a problem. A Centurion isn't going to nitpick over getting something extra.

D) A 'remove taint for money/barter'-mob would be cool

Maybe the money could go to a good cause, like a guardian for the Balator Orphans. These poor bastard's life expectancy is just incredibly low, they could use a break :P


Mmm, that's it for now ...

The most epic against the odds retrieving I've ever done was with my first outlander, a human Shaman. Shamanman at the time had a cloud warrior around my rank in the cabal, and we faced seemingly insurmountable odds against a massive Tribunal. We did, however, sometimes run up, summon out and own people, despite being vastly out numbered. It let us retrieve, on occasion against the odds.

At hero, obviously, this doesn't work because everyone is more survivable, but at least in the midranks it let us "stick it to the man" ;)

There's a few things that play into this:

1. Evils by far have the most summoners, with paladins being poor summoners at best (it's 50 mana a pop!) and shamans being good but small in numbers, this is often what raids degenerate into. This is especially true of conservative evil players, who often won't raid if they can't get a summon-gank going.

2. Maran powers are lacking for mages and priests. Mages did recently get a boost (aegis and wand/scroll/talisman creation) but are still behind. Priests get the least out of maran powers, things like detect evil and protection already being part of their skill set, and other powers being high-mana and therefore hard to use effectively if mana is being budgetted (a problem warriors don't have).

3. The 'everyones a friend, and can heal awesome' bonus of being good only work if you have a significant team of goods about. Then it's awesome, but most of the time a 3-man goodie gank is very much inferior to a 3 man imperial gank regardless of healing bonuses and friendliness.

Something I've suggested a few times and tried to put for is that priest marans get a Ward of Summoning, and mage marans get a Pain Ward to help match somewhat with scion despoil. Like the old pain ward, it will stop working so well once it's been shattered. The summon ward would be perfect for raid/defense situations. It would also block gate/summon from their own team, making it tactical decision not just an extra super-power.

I think these additions would level the field of play a lot, and give us some more interesting raid fights, and would like to hear the Fort imms opinion.

A) Cabals should be nosummon.
Summon kills cabal wars and turns them into summon/gang game when you have advantage (and usually you have, otherwise you wouldn't raid).
The main argument against it I heard before is "cabals should not be totally safe". But I actually believe that benefits of nosummon grounds are more valuable than this little drawback (if it is a drawback... I actually see good side effects of it). After all, it makes more fights if you can find your enemies in cabals rather than in some area explore because they don't feel safe in a cabal.


>B) pay centurion
>
>Instead of pay <amount>. It would automatically take the
>required coins from you, if available.
>Potentially, it could then also be extended towards other
>uses, beyond Centurions alone.

This would be cool. Providing exact number of coins is annoying ####.


>C) "The first is to pay the Centurions, the second is to kill
>them, and the third is to go back the way you came (this
>option is not available if someone has fought a
>minion of the Empire lately)."

There are several powers that promote "bad" gameplay. For example:

1) Centurions is broken power. They are either useless or deadly (especially for ragers). I would like to see them replaced with something else.

2) Maran's cry is another kind of broken powers. If you have several marans and they want to kill you, you better don't attack any of them even if it seems to be a honorable fight in first place.
Again, I would like to see this power removed and replaced with something else.

1) Centurions is broken power. They are either useless or deadly (especially for ragers). I would like to see them replaced with something else.

2) Maran's cry is another kind of broken powers. If you have several marans and they want to kill you, you better don't attack any of them even if it seems to be a honorable fight in first place.
Again, I would like to see this power removed and replaced with something else.

I agree with both of these. Cry of the Phoenix discourages solo battles against Fort members, which is the sort of thing I get the impression we're trying to encourage. On the other hand, I don't think cry gets used all that often anyway.

I've always felt Centurions were overpowered. They're a huge benefit given the very long, narrow walkway that leads to the cabal. I hardly ever see them used to actually collect tolls somewhere with lots of traffic... No, they're placed 99.9% of the time as a second outer guardian, more or less, right at the exit from Balator or the entrance to the Imperial lands. However, this has come up before, and I'm pretty sure the Empire imms have been adamant that they're fine and don't need changing.

Aarn

I'm on the fence about summoning from cabals. Yes, I agree, that usually when someone is summoning, you're being summoned into a ####fest.

But does it take too much power away from summoners and cabal raiding? I can't really answer that.

Personally, I think there should be more tactics involved than just summon someone out and proceed to gank them.

The change I would propose: No summoning TO the outer cabal guardian. Period. Everywhere else is free game.

>The change I would propose: No summoning TO the outer cabal
>guardian. Period. Everywhere else is free game.

This, to me, is the worst of all worlds:

1) You can still summon/gank during a raid, i.e., if you're not prepared to deal with summon in that sense as a defender, you probably just shouldn't show up.

2) But now, barring a raid, your cabal is safer than a guild. It's impossible to surprise someone hanging out in there with summon. It's impossible to get someone back out of their cabal if they've fled in there almost-dead, without plowing through the outer and then tanking the inner. These are cases for summon in a cabal I think are actually interesting.

How about a deny summon potion for sale in somewhere like Seantryn Modan. Make it unlimited but it cannot be placed in a container. That way anyone can buy them but a player can't have permanent deny summon.

Or just make them expensive.

2 hour deny summon. That's it. I think the drawback of deny summon is worth having it readily available. You're afraid of being summon? Quaff. Uh oh, they broke in and you can't teleport or recall.

I agree with Daevryn on the downsides to making the entrance nosummon. People already complain about Battle having that advantage, and how it encourages them to hang around their home all the time - now imagine it in every cabal.

To no lesser extent, this downside extends to making ANY room in the cabal nosummon. People will just run there in non-raid situations, and it will be highly annoying.

A deny summoning potion, on the other hand, would really kick summoning in the junk in potentially all situations. If you gave it enough downsides that the incentive wasn't there to use it all the time, then we would just be back to where we were - people avoiding raids because of summoning. If it's expensive or hard-to-get, people wont have them regularly and it wont change anything in raiding. If it has big drawbacks, people wont use it because it will nerf them in the very fight that we're trying to encourage to happen.

Doing anything like this would also leech from paladins (champion's stand) and conjurers.

One potential fix may be in changing summoning itself, not cabals. Maybe summon works less frequently the more people there are in the room with the caster. Something about all the essences of the other people messing up your casting. Undead wouldn't count because they don't have essences. Then we encourage summons use by solo/small sides vs big sides, and discourage the converse. Even if a big gang gets around it by having the gang wait one room away, it still buys the one being summoned a second or two to react, if they're paying attention. Or maybe summoning someone to a room lags everyone in the room for a second, due to the violent displacement of air... there's a number of ways you might be able to tweak summon to have the desired affect on cabal raids, and I don't think the downsides are as bad. This also seems consistent with all the anti-ganging code that has gone in lately.

That is assuming the imms even think this is a problem that needs addressing. I'm not 100% sure myself, although I see the appeal.

Aarn

Let me preface this by saying that summon really screws attempts to defend the Fortress or Palace. This is more true for the Fortress, imho, given Empire powers. It basically makes it so that Fort defenders must fight away from the cabal inner, since with black circle they will always lose a summoning contest.

>One potential fix may be in changing summoning itself, not
>cabals. Maybe summon works less frequently the more people
>there are in the room with the caster.

As an alternative, you could have characters become more and more resistant to summoning as they're summoned multiple times in quick succession. This would still allow attackers to duck into a cabal and summon/gang some guy sitting inside.

It would also make it harder to repeatedly summon back ragers (or people without potions- shame on them!) who are trying to run away on foot.

>As an alternative, you could have characters become more and more >resistant to summoning as they're summoned multiple times in quick >succession. This would still allow attackers to duck into a cabal and >summon/gang some guy sitting inside.
>
>It would also make it harder to repeatedly summon back ragers (or >people without potions- shame on them!) who are trying to run away on >foot.

I like that idea, though I don't think it necessarily has to be an alternative to what I was suggesting. I could see either one or both together to some degree playing a part.

>A) Being within the same room as YOUR, obviously, Inner
>Guardian, while it's alive, counts as no-summon. Possibly, and
>perhaps logically, as long as you have the item. The Warlock
>ward of old created something to that effect, I just think it
>would make raids far more interesting beyond the regular
>summon+bash fests.
>


This is only horrible for the Fortress. Although it is a beautiful, golden palace that all cabal designs should emulate, it is horrific to defend against summoners, especially ones with black circle. There are too many rooms and too many turns in direction between the outer and the inner (as well as a minor maze). One really easy to do alternative would be to make it like the Imperial Lands -- where the main fortress is open access, and the inner temple (with hall of maran and acolytes) is the area protected by the outer guardian. The idea is to keep a smaller distance between the inners and the lone guy getting summoned.

If you get caught out there and summon+blinded into a gang, IF you manage to escape, q teleport is pretty much the only sensible option you have.

Walking up to a Cabal should be pretty easy, with plenty of escape options, once you step beyond the gates, you're on your own. If this principle is covered by all Cabal grounds, I see no problem with a no-summon inner.

Edited to add: Not that I think the current layouts are unfair or problematic. I'm just thinking on how to make it even more interesting.

About "greedy" I just it should be allowed Imperial chars to get paid for leaving Palace "free for raid" ))

A) I am certainly against this.