What if you could order a merc to stand guard? A merc could perform the "where" command every tick and if anyone is about, either wake the owner or yell.

Not sure how hard this would be to code, but it seems a realistic use of a mercenary/slave.

It would make dealing with hiding classes much less frustrating, since some mercs can see hidden. As it stands, depending on your own class, stealth classes are able to make your entire login miserable/borderline unplayable if you don't have det hidden.

Of course, this will never be implemented for that exact reason. Personally I think it would be a great addition.

At best detect invisible.

If it only pings every tick (or, hell, even every two ticks) I think it would be a perfectly reasonable (and still defeatable) stopgap against the insane power that comes with being able to select all your fights against non-det-hidden classes.

Consider that with the current system, if an assassin is online and in your PK range, lagging yourself literally at all on a mage means you are risking getting thrown to death with zero ability to stop it. That's not what I'd call my idea of a good time, and it would be nice if there were solutions other than "LOL JUST HANG OUT ON THE OCEAN/GUILD YOUR WHOLE LOGIN UNTIL THEY LOG OFF."

Lagging yourself as a Mage won't get you killed, unless you ranked in an area where an assassin can move around without coming out of the shadows. You just need to put in more where's if an assassin is on. And you should know that by using who.

Being able to locate someone is an extremely important power. It's one of the things that makes the clairaudience spell so good; you hear people getting greeted as the enter hamsah from eastern road.

Mercs already do decent damage and lag. And can take some damage. Isn't that enough?

Oh, did I mention there's an edge that helps you avoid being surprised by classes you can't see?

You're pretty much wrong - lagging yourself as a mage WILL get you killed no matter how much you're spamming where if there is an assassin online. All he has to do is pop into the area, where, pop out, and see where you are, then rush you. Having played many mages I have learned the only reliable way to avoid a completely miserable login is to just skill/spell spam in my guild whenever assassins are online. It's unbalanced, so I simply refuse to play with it whenever I can.

As for knowing by using 'who' - no, not really. At least one of the current assassins is fond of regularly logging out and logging back in ten or twenty minutes later. Unless you have some sort of limited detect hidden (a friend with detect hidden who can tell you if they're online, a raven/owl/cat familiar, etc) you're sort of boned in that respect, and the best you get here is "educated speculation" as to whether they're online or not.

To me this is less about "should mercs be more powerful" and more about "stealth in general is too powerful in CF, and needs more drawbacks." Assassins in particular are unbalanced here (although I'd probably also completely remove the edges that reduce lag on duo.) It's messed up that a class with some of the best melee/PK potential in the game (without even taking 'hide' into account) gets stealth on top of it. You could fix this problem to a large degree by giving assassin hide the same drawbacks as thief hide (and keeping the special assassin adrenaline hide timer.) Basically: if assassins are going to be this overpowered (especially in the early and midranks), I should at least get more of a chance to see them coming so I can avoid them.

Yes, there's an edge that pings you if a hidden guy in your PK range enters the area. I'm pretty sure that doesn't work 100% of the time, so you're stuck with the same problem where you can make no mistakes and still get completely owned.

I guess we'll agree to disagree. My precautions are effective for me, at least.

With sodsob around (and I know he's not an assassin), in most areas every other command would be a "where" when I'm fighting. With assassins it is the same if I think they are dangerous. Usually less frequent, but still every 4 rounds or so.

Now if you are fighting mobs that will lag you, then I would agree you are in danger. But you never need to do that.

Or you can rank somewhere like the planar sanctum and be strong enough that an assassin can't kill you because of protections and resist physical.