So I notice the new trend is to give all gear back, that's all well and good. However I see villagers giving back clearly powerful magic items that could be used to thicken a thin veil, and I see goodies giving back items of foulest evil. People would freak out on my recent rager attempt when I would give their sleek rods to Tahren after killing them. My problem is giving all this stuff back completely breaks the RP of the cabals, I am tempted to make another villager that brings all magic items to Tahren or a Maran that destroys all evil gear, but I have a feeling I would not just be full looted everytime(which I'm fine with) but that it seems like the cabal leaders are the ones enforcing this new counter RP ideal. And most of the time it's not because they are trying to be nice, but that they don't want to lose their shinies when they die. Maybe I should see if I can get a Maran kicked out for destroying evil gear or Village for destroying magic gear from a Leaders kill. What do you guys think? I posted this elsewhere but then figured I was curious about the Imm response because this behavior seems to be rewarded.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

Personally (and yeah I don't really play but still) my preference is if you're going to leave everything that's fine just don't tell me about it. If I show up at my corpse and everything is there - great - but getting a tell from a fire giant AP to my paladin saying my gear is still in my corpse is just awkward. What am I supposed to say? Thank you? OOC that makes sense but IC I don't really want to be exchanging pleasantries with the enemy.

Twist tells you, 'Wait.'

It's cool as a player but sucks icly$

Or is at least poor RP. Just let it be. People will loot, or people will let you get your stuff back. This has come up way too much. To me, these arguments might as well be about people who accidently say, 'who pk' during the middle of a conversation. That's breaking RP, but it doesn't matter. If you're so worried about RP, then RP a worthwhile interaction. This really doesn't have to come up.

This is the way I see it, on one hand, you kill someone. Instead of obsessing about what they were holding onto, you move on to more important matters, finding other combatants, reporting to your superiors, etc. On the other, you kill someone and take either what you need, or what your enemies can salvage. Perfectly acceptable too. No one is really breaking RP.

I have a few random comments which may or may not add up to a coherent post.

First, I'd draw a big line between giving gear back vs. just not taking it in the first place. It is fairly rare for me that I PK someone and I have the luxury of looting whatever I want -- either the kill is near enough to the victim's recall that they're back before I finish figuring out what I want and grabbing it, or more likely there's something else going on that makes me reluctant to #### around by the corpse for very long.

I mean, you wouldn't hate on a Rager for not grabbing all the magic #### out of a guy's corpse if there are three more people running down the Eastern Road to try to finish him off, right? Or if there was another mage in the room he thought he could kill? Those kinds of scenarios are pretty common for me.

You're always in danger of getting thrown out of any cabal if you piss the leader off, no matter what the reason really.

With my imm hat on, I don't mind people who loot or sac stuff as long as they can take what they can dish out -- and I'd guesstimate about 10% of the people who dish it out can also take it. Which is why you'll see me commenting in someone's comments that they really cleaned someone out, because I'm waiting for the likely "it happens back to them, and they throw a huge fit" moment. Adarmar is a good example of a recent character that I saw clean people out a couple times, but when they got their revenge and did the same thing to him didn't complain at all.

Generally, I think people have gotten too defensive about looting these days -- any time someone killed you and looted 1-2 pieces of gear, regardless of whether or not they can use that gear, regardless of whether or not those were your two best pieces of gear, if you cry about that, you're a bitch. And people do that every day.

I've thought more than once about creating a character who (for whatever reason) would loot more to try to swing the looting tolerance pendulum back a little bit.

All that being said, with my player hat on, if you kill me and I have to pretty much full regear afterwards, not only am I probably going to try to do the same to you (as you allude to), I'm also probably not going to take anywhere near the kinds of chances against you I would otherwise. If that means stomping you with a ridiculous gang, I still might do it.

I do sometimes give things back I take out of a corpse, but usually its for a reason. A. I can not really use the thing and I did not know it when I took it but thought it looked cool (like some sword that might be neutral only or something) and the fallen was cool about the event and did not ask for the thing back to begin with or B. he did something to deserve getting it back. I've seen this a few times, where maybe they do something so unexpected that they merit having something returned.

Plenty of RP reasons probably exist for looting everything or nothing, that's a player choice that other players should try to respect a bit more, but I try to abide by take what you want if you want it from a corpse, but don't take stuff just to piss them off or "weaken" them so to speak.

Never revenge full looted or sacc'd anyone, but I don't think I've ever killed anyone who has done it to me to find out if I would. I probably would have fulled Dupmasione if I ever got the chance with my bard just cause he killed me so many damn times it might have given me ten minutes of time alive while he regeared.

Daev rolling a guy that excessively loots. Wonderful. At least I imagine he would be killing the corpses he loots for the most part.

...And for some reason got wide spread REAL quick. How it did I am quite unsure of.

Something like this happened to my knowledge. Ragerguy kills nexunguy and loots powerful magicstuff. Ragerguy gives or (trades?) powerful magicstuff to empireguy.

I can see quite ways where RP could justify this and I have no idea if this is the case or anything. There's like a thousand reasons for ragerguy to do this. Both RP and OOC.

Either way I am 100% sure that if you imms saw something like that you'd snuff up if there's some decent RP thought behind the action and if not crack down on it.

But just hearing about this sure makes it look real bad for ragerguy.

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

What you're talking about is indeed lame, but I don't think that's what the original poster was complaining about. More so the type of behavior that produces imm comments like these, with respect to poor role-playing:

"One bleh point for taking an adamantite weapon from a guy he killed, realizing it is adamantite, and giving it back because he can't use it. It's not like you full looted the guy, it wouldn't kill you to destroy one piece of gear."

You should accept that in CF just as in RL politics are never cut and dry.

It is easy to be an idealist and say this is how I and everyone should act in a given situation all the time but the reality is that our actions have consequences. Even battle is more in depth then just kill mages (otherwise they wouldn't care about parity) there is a respect factor involved there and the idea of reciprocity is big.

Even in real life wars we have the so called "rules of combat" that ignoring would give obvious tactical advantages in the short term but end up with bad juju in the long term.

I mean if you want to be ignorant of the fact that people will react to your behavior in a manner they deem fit(allies and enemies) or are fine with the consequences then do your own thing. Coming here to complain that we as players are not as apt to do things purely to inconveince other players is a little silly. At the end of the day do you think putting all their magic gear in the forge will earn you brownie points? I can tell you that it won't.

To a degree, that makes sense. Fortress types should probably be displaying mercy, Ragers should not only be killing mages, but making an honorable effort to prove to the world they are the finest warriors, etc.

The problem is that a lot of characters in CF, according to their roles, rhetoric, etc., are not the kind of people who would say, give a mage back all their wands or coveted magical artifacts. People say and act like they're these idealogical fanatics who simply display what is absolutely usual behavior during certain circumstances.

Your argument makes sense the other way around too.

At the end of the day, you just have to accept the fact that CF is a game and sometimes people are going to BEHAVE as players, even if that behavior is contrary to the stories their characters are wrapped up in. That occasional logical disconnect from 100% IC/RP to OOC/The Game is just something that has to occur, and the sooner people learn to ignore it or live with it the better.

No I'm just saying if your whole goal is to destroy all magic in all it's forms, but you just handed back that nexun all his potions, pills, scrolls, wands, and sword of eldritch power, then we might as well just call the cabals team A, B, C and you pick which powers you like best. I'm not saying go out of your way to be a prick and full loot, but it seems like if you even say destroy a mages rods ignoring all the other magical goodies in his corpse it's like a huge deal now, which is silly. Same goes for a Maran slaying some necromancer but handing him back his five faces of evil and his shadow sword of zurcon so he can go butcher up some people to make zombies. Yes it's a game that supposedly has RP requirements. It seems like there is now this, "You don't take my stuff and I don't take your stuff." wink and nod with the whole player base. I agree with Nep's thing that ya if I'm fighting three guys I'm not going to go out of my way to do it. At the same time I've repeatedly seen people go out of their way to hand every piece of gear back when they should definately not have in a game that is supposed to be RP enforced. Is it a huge problem no, but it annoys me that everyone almost expects it now.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

in all its forms. But we don't just summarily execute all islamic people to achieve it.

One reason I do take gear and hand it back is for the following:
I kill some hero on eastern or galadon, or hell, anywhere where there are other players in the area. I look in his corpse and see five or six pretty good pieces of eq that I have no need of. If those other players are maybe evil, or thieves, or chars that I think might be inclined to take things I might take a few of the nicest pieces just to prevent them from taking the gear, and hand it back to the guy if he returns. I don't like low ranks getting windfalls like that. Corpseguard works, but not always, and at least this way I don't see some level 12 warrior running around with insane gear tearing up his range because he happened to be in the right place at the right time. Kind of hard to justify RP wise though, but I'm still going to do it most times.

... Even though I know that it would in fact in many cases be better RP to sac that APs whip even if it just contains 5 charges I as a player might "slip" and take the wrong weapon just because I don't want to make the other guy have a bad day but rather a good day feeling real lucky that he actually got to keep his awesome stuff than to lose it and regather the charges/potions/super item I cannot use/or whatever.

As I said, I agree that it in many cases are bad RP. It's same reason to why I sometimes have a big problem playing an imperial.

Fine, if they obviously intentionally break the imperial laws I won't blink about demoting/anathemazing but if I know for a fact that it was a mistake like a guy by accident only using the first 3 letters when attacking and attacked a cabalmate in hamsah (murder dre ended up with him attacking the imperial blade Dreduda instead of the Maran who had already attacked him in Hamsah whoms name was Dremboda. This is just an example btw.)

And yeah, call me a #### but that's me. It's the nurse in me you know...

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.