...Just out of curiosity how/why does anyone play Tribunal anymore?

When there were consistently 10-20 people in Galadon and everyone was a magistrate of every city it made sense. Now, what do you do? If you're magistrate of Seantryn Modan you're sitting there doing nothing for hours at a time to get your 'duty time' up. It seems like the original purpose of that cabal - to protect newbies in town - really isn't relevant anymore. Even Galadon seems to rarely have more than 1-3 people in it.

And yet the cabal is still popular...for reasons I really don't understand - seems like it's mostly APs looking for relative safety for their unholy weapons? Just seems like there's not much purpose to the cabal anymore.

Has there been any thought of re-purposing it as a bounty hunter sorta thing and maybe redesigning the powers a bit?

These days, when I go to Galadon what I basically see is the Emperor chilling in his guild...ragers might come in and have a go...get wanted...and there's usually one magistrate around to do all that and it just seems really silly - mostly on the roleplay side. Not saying anyone's doing anything wrong - it just seems rather absurd compared to (in my mind) the cabal used to be about which was mostly protecting the new players from random face-bashing at the pit while their gear was returning.

Now it's just about trying to exploit/utilize the mechanics of WANTED and raid/retrieves of the Outlander/Trib war. Or at least that's just my opinion.

For those who are interested in PKing aggressively, it loses much of its appeal. You can roleplay just fine when you're on duty, and you offer an incentive for people to stop by. I mean, people that want to RP generally want some safeguards from sudden PK action, right? They can go to the Inn for that, or be near a magistrate.

I didn't find playing Tribunal that horrible, it's just that you have to rely on yourself to find some fun, instead of relying on your cabal. I entertained myself by bantering with wardens and forties (both of my tribs were good-aligned), exploring, arena fights, and listening to endless complaints about warrants.

Too bad I've been under impression that I shouldn't PK imperials, and they never attacked me either. So I eventually did get bored.

P.S. Tribunals have better paycheck now too, per Santa Zulg.

In fact, I had a goodie tribunal try to kill me when I was standing next to the captain helping them defend against retrieving outlanders.

Really though, for evils your cabal options are scion, empire, tribunal or outlander:

Scion: Need to be a badass to get inducted, until recently the only player who could induct you was never around, hard coded limit to number of members

Empire: Can't attack people in cities unless attacked first, need to make donations which are constantly depleted, cabal dogma to go to great lengths to raid and retrieve - little help from heroes who are always raiding or defending and don't have time to gear up their lowbies or rank up the up-and-comers. It's three times the work of any other cabal and only the sect leaders have powers worth much

Tribunal: Can't attack people in cities unless attacked first, giving you a significant advantage, savings constantly accumulate while on duty, cabal dogma only allows one cabal to be raided and doesn't insist on it. Heroes have great leisure to help out lower level cabal members and help others rank up to hero. Cabal powers useless outside jurisdiction

Outlander: Encouraged to attack people in cities, no need to even use money (cabal powers to help with this), cabal enemies often embattled because they're also fighting the forties and each other (You can even group with dwarves and conjies if there's an imperial or scion to gang down). I don't have any experience of how helpful heroes are but it can't be worse than Empire. Cabal powers aren't quite as game changing as battlerager but they seem quite cool, chameleon in particular is huge as it turns classes which don't hide (balanced so they don't have to) into classes which can. Restrictions on which classes can join.

So if A-Ps in tribunal are a bad thing, we can do the following:

Allow them into Outlander

Make Black Sect powers more attractive

Lower the bar for entry into Scion

Reinstate the 'no evils' policy in Tribunal

Chameleon trumps "Dude Magistrate of Seantryn Modan" every time.

And unlike Tribunal, you give up a lot as an outlander. Including a lot of roleplay possibilities because most people don't see you, you never come to the Inn, etc.

I'm sure some people will argue that not being able to attack in a city is giving up a lot too, but there are a lot of situations where it's impossible to get a PK despite being able to reach the target anyway. So just one more doesn't bother me *that* much.

You EVER saw an AP properly take advantage of Tribunal powers and become really scary.

And I mean, actually make 50 charges due in part to sequester on manacles and/or bash + blind + spec guards scary.

It just doesn't happen. AP's roll tribunal to imagine it's easier to keep their weapon, get firestarter edge, attempt to abuse summon in Galadon, and it's all good.

And then they delete at or before 40.

Every. Time.

Remind me again why you weren't better off with call nightwalker and call nightfist?

Exactly why are you rolling a character that needs to play conservatively but you are required to facecheck for snares and brambles? Barrier does not save you from everything and costs a lot of CON to get to begin with.

My guess is, people generally aren't better off with scion powers because they can't get into scion.

Imperials and scions have to facecheck for snares and brambles too.

As for naming the last Tribunal AP that was scary, maybe Karak. Yeah, it's been almost 3 years.

I mean it happens but it's more common to fight a scary warrior or a scary conjurer than it is to fight a scary AP. Probably because APs require a certain amount of aggressiveness in facing the toughest people in the game while never dying.

Their upper end potential is higher but I guess the term "delusions of grandeur" comes to mind.