Before I get to the main point of the topic I want to say a few things about past TES justice systems and how they should fix there probelms in Skyrim.

The two things that I don't liked about Morrowind's and Oblivion's justice systems, were 1. when you commit a crime and get a bounty EVERY guard in the entire world automatically recognizes who you are, and the fact that you have a bounty, and 2. If you resist arrest you are hunted down forever and never get the option to surrender.

When you commit a crime only the guards in the town you committed the crime in should recognize you. The more bounty you get the more your wanted, and then more and more guards recognize you because by now there are wanted posters of you everywhere. Also when you resist arrest you should have the option at all times to surrender and go to jail or pay the fines, just like you could in real life. You still would have to serve time for all the additional bounty you received while resisting. In addition you should able to lie low for a while in which case the guards eventually stop actively hunting you.

Alright now on to the main point of the topic. Bounty hunters. If you have a high enough bounty the government should send bounty hunters after you. If you have a low enough bounty they try to take you alive. If you have a very high bounty they kill you once they find you. They would range in skill from some guy with delusions of grandeur, to professorial bounty hunter teams. For each one you kill you get one infamy point and the chance to live another day. Family members of people you've killed should also be able to send private bounty hunters or assassins after you. In addition to being hunted by bounty hunters if you have a bounty, if don't have a bounty you can also join a bounty hunter guild and chase after dangerous criminals if you feel like playing a good character.

(heres a random fun fact. Do you know that the government actually still hires bounty hunters today to chase after people who've skipped town after paying bail?)

This kind of goes with something we had in morrowind: the option to yield. In morrowind, if you unequipped your weapon and "used" your opponent, he would sometimes yield and stop attacking.

And I love the idea of having bounty hunters. It would really go hand-in-hand with what appears to be a frontier-esque setting in Skyrim, and would make playing a drastically evil character just that much more fun.

I liked the bounty hunter mechanic in Red Dead Redemption, I think it'd fit pretty well in Skyrim if you have a high enough bounty. It's a lot better than "STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM! You've committed murder! Pay me 1000 gold or spend a couple weeks in jail!"

I reckon you should be able to be a bounty hunter, looking in the black horse courier (or the skyrim equivalent) or wanted posters to get quests of bounty hunting.

Hell yes. One of my character's is a Bounty Hunter Lycanthrope. I definetly would love to play as a Bounty Hunter.

We don't need their scum...

There should be bounty hunters for the famous as well. More than likely, those who are famous are just as likely to piss someone else off as those that are infamous.

Not only in Morrowind, but in Oblivion as well. So I suppose it will be in Skyrim.

So your saying assassins that are sent by jealous people to kill you, because your better then them? That could work to.

Haha. No disintigrations!

Something I would kind of like to see is people being afraid of you. In Morrowind people would say "You're that criminal" and such. Also, in Oblivion they would comment on your attributes or skills if they were particularly high. I think it would be cool if they could combine those two aspects so that if you had a reputation as a killer mage, people would be afraid of you when they saw you. Either that or one guard wouldn't chase you down, he would wait for reinforcements or run away.

What about being one and accepting bounty contracts?

What I did in OB to fix the problem is raise my personality high either artificially or by doing it when I level up, and raise all the guards (that I can see) dispositions. Unless I murdered someone or attacked them then they would pay the crime off. It doesn't fix the problem but takes away some annoyance.
On topic:
Bounty Hunters would be cool. I vote yay.

Well it could be that. It could also just be plans of the wicked that you thwart. Whether you do a good deed or a bad, it's always going to upset the balance somehow. Plus, I wouldn't mind having Darth Brotherhood assassins try and track me down for upsetting "the way of things."

In OB you could yield after resisting arrest by holding block and "using" the guard and it would bring up the resist arrest, go to jail, pay fine menu

In Oblivion and Morrowind you could yield at any time and have the guards arrest you even if you resist arrest. But I like the bounty hunter idea. It would be cool to be a bounty hunter to make extra money.

:laugh:


I'd love to see bounty hunters in the game, who actively hunt us. A major factor in it not becoming at best tedious -- and at worst, ridiculous -- is how the frequency and number of hunters is limited, though. There are a bunch of easy ways to do that, I reckon, from both a design and programming perspective.

What I'd love even more is for there to be a dynamic bounty system - one that can apply to, and even generate NPCs, making a bounty hunter PC not only a viable roleplaying choice, but part of a whole player- and AI-driven sidequest framework.

I agree in that bounty and fame should be largely regionally, and only the big things you do should be nationally recognized. I always despised the idea of committing a heist or a murder, executing it perfectly so that know one could know it was me, and still collecting infamy for it.

Yes that's true, with radiant story they could pull off both you being a bounty hunter and NPC hunting you. If they don't have it in the base game it really should be in a DLC, it justs adds more immersion to the game.

For like, the perfect Bounty-hunter system, look no further than Red Dead Redemption, both the Player-side Bounty hunting, and the AI hunting you are wonderfully done. Overall, that game has probably the best criminal-oriented game play since Thief, hindered only by the total lack of incentive behind actually robbing people (Since money is almost pointless in the game).

I have been playing Red Dead a bit lately, and a lot of the "random" quest generation seems, at least from what I've read about it, what is being attempted with Radiant Story. There's not nearly as many variables in Red Dead as there would be in an Elder Scrolls game, but it wouldn't surprise me if Rockstar's system served as inspiration.

My main character, Broken-Scale, has always been called a bounty hunter. It'd be nice for him to actually be able to hunt for bounties.

That was my favorite Fighter's-Guild quest branch, along with the dude in Ald Ruhn, because of the interesting places you get to see when taking his high-tier quests.

I like most of your ideas with one change, if you played oblivion you may have noticed that when you resist arrest and you're too tough for the guards to take down and just go around killing the reinforcements, the game forces you out of the city (if I remember correctly), this should be removed, if you're a beast and can kill the entire guard force of a city you should not get kicked out.

You don't kicked out it's just that you pretty much can never show your face again because if you do they instantly recognize you and try to kill. They should only recognize you if have so off the charts bounty and you get declared a public enemy, like the Grey Fox.

I love the way they did it in RDR I wouldn't bother me too much if it remained the same for me