I have a mod where I can track things like:
- target is in combat
- target was killed in one hit

I did this by creating an array that shows all actors and what their status I am interested in are. When my weapon script runs I can tell if they were hostile or if it was one hit to kill. From this I decided to make some judgment calls about the player's honor. I decided that even if the NPC (animals and monsters excluded) is of an evil faction or considered "not murderable" then I will record a murder and/or assault by the player. I want to track the motives of the player.

It sounds distasteful is some ways, yet my sense of justice says that unless an NPC attacks you then you are murdering them if you attack first. On the other hand I have it set that if you EVER kill a guard it is murder as well. Now killing a bandit no matter how you do it is never recorded by the game as a murder or get the Dark Brotherhood quests. Yet, I still record dishonorable kills of bandits (the player started combat) as murders. Is there some lore to help me make this conceptual decision?

So, what are people's thoughts on this?

Entering a large fort populated by bandits, desertors, etc., would be a huge problem then. Because stealth is eliminated. Every time you would come upon a new group of enemies around a corner, through a door, , etc., you would have to first alert them to your presence.

Setting it up like you describe just eliminates the stealth game.

gothemasticator

I'm not sure that's quite what he's getting at. It sounds like what he's referring to is not a penalty, but just a tracking system for the players amusemant, and potentially for some special events such as a gift from say, the dark brotherhood for working so well as an assassin, or from the gods for being honorable, even to bandits.

As for the OP's original question (Hopefully I'm understanding it), I'm not sure there's any lore specifically stating this, but it seems to me that the Dark Brotherhood wants the people killed to be civilians, not bandits. After all, the blood of the innocent is all the rage among the evil types. If there's nothing specifically stating that, it wouldn't be hard to make a book or add a little to an existing one that essentially states this idea.

You are correct Teron. I am collecting data about the actions of the player and making a judgment call as to the morality of the action. There is no penalty, only a way to calculate the alignment of the player relative to what they do. This relates to later bonuses with light/dark bent. So the stealth attacks/kills are not eliminated they are just considered to be evil. Dishonorable kills(murders)/attacks(assaults) are attacks without warning or meeting on the field. If you think about it, killing/attacking someone without a warning is what bandits do. The more honorable bandits are the highwayman that ask for money for passage.

I also like the idea of a book explaining how things are tracked. Of course dress it up as some tome of some sort. I guess I will have to decide which way to go. You are correct in that the "blood of the innocent" is all the rage. However, consider the poor fool who got mixed up with the wrong people and was mistaken for a criminal. Now he is on the run from the law. Does Sithis know? Does he/she care? After all, his name was stricken from the official record (database) and is ever more known as "Bandit".

I'm not misunderstanding, I'm disagreeing. :blush:

I do not think that all situations where I attack first are dishonorable, not the way this game is set up. Again, I enter a fort full of enemy NPCs. Under your tracking system, in order to maintain my honor, I would have to alert each new group of enemies to my presence and let them attack me before engaging in combat. Thus, eliminating stealth as an honorable tactic.

Because of the above situation, which is common in the game, the tracking would be meaningless to me, because it would fail to make a distinction between the killing of non-hostile civilians and hostile armed criminals.

gothemasticator

Ah, I think I see the problem. If they need to actually hit you first, rather than just be alerted, it wouldn't quite work. Otherwise though, most people wouldn't consider stealth and backstabbing an honorable tactic anyways.

Okay, I get where your coming from. I may include some way to disable that for evil factions. I am torn between doing it the Oblivion way and doing it the non-practical look em in the eye kind of way. I am thinking about how the Samurais viewed the Ninjas in the Orient. I have already included tracking of Stealth Kills and Instant Kills. Generally Instant Kills are best done by Stealth, but not all Stealth kills are Instant. You can remain undetected through multiple shots even though the reticule lights up.

I could call the kill something else like Dishonorable, meaning the attacker was not faced on the open field. I would have to track separately from Murders though. Oh, I don't add these to the Oblivion Murder count either. These are completely tracked separately. It would not mess up Oblivion's statistics. I will still track Assaults (player started combat) and track these kills as Dishonorable, but not Murders if against evil factions. What it boils down to is tracking actions for bonus assessment base upon how one plays the game.

As for your situation in the fort above, why do you have to kill everyone? I have snuck around dungeons before and had one or two enemies out of 5 or 6 initiate combat and dispatched them without the others knowing. Yes, there is something very satisfying about dispatching someone with a bow or sword for that x3 or x6 attack bonus. However, if you could sneak past them then why kill them? Or is your intent to "clear out" a dungeon of "evil doers" by becoming accuser, judge, and executioner? BTW, this is not a criticism of anyone's style of play or motives for playing. It is a conceptual rant to elicit great ideas from people. I appreciate every idea posted as it makes me think. :foodndrink: gothemasticator, your posts have made me think the most.

Perhaps in real life.

I feel a little bad harping on this, but the way this game is set up - with auto-hostile NPC enemies and dungeons populated with hostiles only - there is nothing dishonorable about stealth kills.

My suggestion to make such a tracker useful is to reverse the following:I suggest reversing this decision, because including stealth kills on "not murderable" evil NPCs and one-hit kills on friendlies in the same list actually fails to track the "motives" of the player.

gothemasticator

EDIT: I posted the above before seeing your most recent post, Demolishun.

To make the tracker most useful, I would suggest doing away with moral judgement titles like "dishonorable" or "honorable" altogether. Perhaps somthing like this:

• Assassinations: One-shot kills of friendly NPCs
  
• Murders: Initiated lethal combat against friendly NPCs
  
• Stealth Kills: One-shot kills of hostile NPCs
  
• Battlefield Kills: Hostile NPCs killed after they initiated combat

Again, it's the difference between real life and the limited scope of the game design. Sure, it's a playstyle challenge to sneak past every hostile in an area, but there is no in-game recognition of any difference between that and clearing the area of hostiles. I don't have to become "accuser and judge," because the game has already accused and judged by setting the NPCs to evil factions and making them auto-hostile. With something like the above suggestion of categories, you can simply track different kinds of kills and let the player voluntarily create playstyle challenges for themselves. If someone wants to try to complete the game only committing Battlefiled kills, they can. If someone else wants to avoid Murders and Assassinations but is just fine with Stealth Kills, they can.

If there were well-execucted Flee, Parlay, Yield and Hail mechanics in Oblivion, a distinction between Honorable and Dishonorable would probably make great sense. Existing gameplay mechanics, though, don't allow for much moral subtletly.

BTW, I do really like your idea for the tracker. I'm just entering the discussion you initiated. Cheers!

gothemasticator

It works off of the IsInCombat flag for the NPC. I track to see if that was on before the attack by the player occurs. If it was off then it tracks as assault. If a kill results then it tracks that as a Murder currently.

I like gothemasticator's input on this because it does not distinguish between a known Criminal and a Non-Criminal. This is an "armed and dangerous" situation. So I think tracking them as Murder and Dishonorable (did not meet on the field of battle face to face) depending upon faction alignment is completely doable. Again, this has no bearing on Oblivion's stats. It is a way to track player motives and how they play for bonuses related to those actions. I may have to play with the idea that this is a fine line and have the dialog in game reflect this. Something like this: "So you walk a fine line between murder and the rampant slaughter of the accused? Sithis may not see, but I know what you have been doing. I taste their blood as you dispatch them in the dark. Only the stones hear their screams. Please enjoy this +5 bonus to killing unawares evil faction dudes." Okay, I am having way to much fun with this.

Thanks gothemasticator and Teron.

Added to my above reply while you were replying, Demolishun. Great idea, this tracker. I can imagine all sorts of uses for it in creating mods.

gtm

I like where this is going:

Assassinations: One-shot kills of friendly NPCsMurders: Initiated lethal combat against friendly NPCsStealth Kills: One-shot kills of hostile NPCsBattlefield Kills: Hostile NPCs killed after they initiated combat

I am going to rearrange this a bit:

Assassinations: One-shot kills of friendly NPCs  (it may be interesting to include this for bonuses for the truly unseen evil doer)Murders: Initiated lethal combat against friendly NPCsStealth Kills: Stealth kills of NPCs ( I have found I still get x3 bonuses with bows for 2 or 3 shots if they are far enough away.  Hence still hidden.  I use the IsDetected flag for this. The recticle does not tell the whole story. )One Shot Kills: One-shot kills of anybodyKills: Tally for some bonuses regardless of typeBattlefield Kills: Hostile NPCs killed after they initiated combat

I am not sure I will even show these stats. I have them in a scroll you can look at, but I may remove these. The point is still for bonuses and progression. There are many other things I will be tracking too. I do like the clarity this discussion has provided.

It is not a "tracker" per se. It is part of a mod I am working on. It could be extracted though. I intend my mod to be hacked up and used by others so I may modularize the code a bit to make it easier to snag it. It is heavily dependent upon OBSE 0018 as is the entire mod. One thing that may be a show stopper is that I have to use a script on the attacking weapon for this to work. My mod takes care of this by creating a clone of an existing weapon and creating one with a script on it with all the same stats. This is really a weapon mod that progresses the weapons stats over time based upon player actions. It is quite involved to that end. Hence the weapon script. However, weapon progression and stats tracking are independent.

Sounds very interesting indeed. I can imagine several unique weapons that would be very cool.

• Bow of the Unseen: gains bonuses for kills that escape detection/penalties for kills while detected.
  
• Blade of the Righteous: gains bonuses for kills of enemies who initiated combat/penalties for kills in which the PC initiated combat.
  
• Assassins Blade: bonuses for one-shot kills/penalties for strikes without a kill.

I like how you think, Demalishun. Your arrangement of categories makes great sense, too. This discussion has fired up my brain!

gothemasticator

Another point to consider is that if you are using something like Oblivion XP, you need to clear the dungeon out to maximize your experience, otherwise you won't get any. You don't get XP for exploring a dungeon (you do get some for finding it), you only get XP for killing, so you probably wouldn't sneak through a dungeon in this instance. Now I admit that the number of people running Oblivion XP is pretty small and I don't think any of the other levelling alternatives would have the same kind of requirement, but it might be something to consider. I also don't think killing hostiles counts as murder. As gothemasticator said, you don't have any choice in the matter, that's predetermined by game design. There are mods that try to change this, and I think they alter the stats of the NPC's so that they are no longer hostile when you first encounter them. I don't think this would affect your mod at all.

I use Oblivion XP, and you bring up an interesting point. I know that Oblivion XP supports mod-added quests via a script that mod creators can add to their mods. Perhaps Demolishun could define achieving weapon bonuses as quests and include Oblivion XP support.

As for Oblivion XP and sneaking by creatures - The nice thing about the mod is that you can configure XP rewards in the .ini file. So, if you were playing a sneak-based game with resultant few monster kills, you could up the XP you do get for kills to compensate.

gothemasticator

This is a great thread! :foodndrink:

I was just thinking the other day about the honorable nature of killing and looting. I was running a char through haunted mine and she came across a goblin rat farmer who was attempting to flee from her. She's a new char, but what ended up happening was that the goblin was mercy-killed, due to all of his mates being already dead. It brought on a train of thought for me.

How honorable is it in the first place to go looting these dungeons, especially ones filled with creatures / monsters? Sure, a tribe of goblins will be defensive and aggressive, but after all the player is invading their home, are they not? Even with marauder / bandit lairs, they are of course outlaws, but still, the player is looking for trouble and loot, much as they (apparently) have done in order to get the loot they have stowed in their current homes. Even a highwayman may feel forced into his current occupation, and stealing a bit of gold doesn't deserve death in some RP's. I've noticed with different chars that sometimes killing is a blood-driven enjoyable feast, with much arrogance and / or judgment; sometimes it's routine as in "the ends justify the means"; and sometimes it's a guilty, sad endeavor. Just some thoughts.

As far as Oblivion XP goes, I don't use the mod ATM, but I seem to recall other mods checking for ObXP in a script and adding appropriate experience points in some way. (Edit- Ninja'd) teehee.

Also, you may want to figure in magic effects active on the NPC such as frenzy and command humanoid, as those could be used to "work around the system".

Yes, very true. And if Demolishun had quests, this would completely remove the requirement to kill everything and would be absolutely fabulous!! :celebration:

On the detection issue I thought you could hide from the current target. So I decided that when the target dies that I would check for detection by others. If I am not detected and I am sneaking then I take credit for a stealth kill. Not the same as a one shot kill, which could double as a stealth kill. Anyway, detection is a pain so I am taking the easy way out.

I implemented a system to do exactly this in my mod "Vows and Covenants", but it was always a little buggy (this was back in the old days before OBSE arrays).

The reason I tracked stealth kills, etc was much like the reason you've given: "honorable" character types would suffer ill consequences if they ever killed someone without first giving them warning and a chance to surrender (I had a surrender mechanic built into the mod as well). The only people who were affected by this restriction were those who had taken a vow to Stendarr to show mercy to any opponent who surrendered.

The surrendering mechanic has been improved and updated by the mod "Enemies Surrender" (not mine). Vows and Covenants is still around, but I stopped maintaining it a while ago and it's still a bit buggy.

Sounds cool! I can send you my esp so you can get ideas of how to tweak your mods if you want. I am not sure mine is any better, but I have gotten it to be reliable.