LuciusDomitiusAurelianus
Sergeant
Caveat: Since this suggestion touches multiple areas (Quests, Scenes, Kingdom, etc.) I put it in the general Single player suggestions.
Caveat 2: This will be a long one, you should grab a tea or an IPA!
Tl;dr = I would like both an expansion of the Roguery skill tree and an expansion of intra-Kingdom/Player-Lord Relationship, give meaning to Traits, expansion to add Quests / functionality to assassinate Lords for either the Players’/A Lord’s/Both in-game dynamics.
I was toying around with console commands and the “campaign.kill_lord” option showed a pretty cool (IMHO) text option and Encyclopedia option. In the in-game log, when used, the command shows that the lord was “Murdered”, and the encyclopedia entry notes that the Lord was assassinated. I am not sure if this is intentional to differentiate console commands, cut content, or proof of some future development but the suggestion in multi-layered.
Currently, outside of convincing other lords to join your Kingdom (this is heavily biased towards gold & Charm) intra-Kingdom chances for succession upon a ruler’s death or to heighten the chance of being awarded a fief, relationships with Lords do not mean much. There is enough development to show breakdowns between “Enemies” and “Friends” and that at least for Friends, there is meaning enough there to negatively impact the player regarding taking (seemingly random) relationship penalties when executing other lords.
I would likely to suggest another layer of delving into relationships and intra-Kingdom dynamics, as well as giving meanings to Traits and expanding Roguery, by introducing Assassination missions. At a high level, if a Ruling Clan has drastically low relationship with a clan in their own Kingdom or in another, they can have a quest available that will ask the Player to Assassinate the other lord. I imagine the dynamics would work something like the following.
Due to voting or some other future functionality (insults, in-kingdom subterfuge, losing a fief, losing a battle, AI executions, or hardcoded relationship hits), a ruling lord may incur negative relationship with a clan leader in their own kingdom. At a specified threshold (maybe -80 or -90, so it is not so frequent) they will want that other lord “dealt with” and if a player has a specific Trait or roguery skill (or maybe no prerequisites at all) they will ask the Player to assassinate the other lord. This can be extended to out-of-Kingdom missions but only during wartime.
Right now, the mechanics for sneaking into a Town is only applicable during war, and there is only one associated Roguery perk to increase the chance of success, I do not use it myself given you are more likely to be arrested than anything else. Outside of war, you do not need to “sneak” anywhere, you can simply bribe your war into a Keep – early game you don’t do this much but mid/late game when you’re rolling in cash you will probably do so without issue. This leads to the first area of expansion – giving more reason to “Sneak in” and putting heavier weight on success given your Roguery (and maybe Charm) skills.
I could see it play out that the ideal mission success is that you sneak into a town (passing a Roguery or Charm check) and sneak into the Keep as well (same checks) and there is another percentage of catching the Lord on their own given the time of day. Provided you pass all the checks, you initiate combat in your “civilian clothes” and if you kill the target, you will just need to pass one last Roguery / Charm check to break out. Given all the “Rolls” – it would behoove the player to make sure they have remarkably high Roguery and Charm skills (and ample gold) to achieve success.
Any failure throughout will result in your being attacked by guards, like how it was in Warband when you initiated a Prison Break or failed to sneak in, that should be a default action. A “critical failure” will result in your being arrested. When getting into the Keep, there is a chance to “wake up the palace guard” and then you will have to fight all the guards plus the initial target will get away.
With these variable failures, you will fail the quest, and take negative relationship with the quest giver, the target lord and their clan, and likely random -10 relationship with anyone they are friends with. You should also take negative relationship hits with all non-Crime Boss notables and spike your criminality. That lays the groundwork for future development of this feature where a high criminality / botched assassination attempts can lead to you being immediately executed by the other lord depending on their traits and relationship.
The flipside to this is that you can warn the target of the attempt, which will of course net you a ton of negative relationship with the ruler (and perhaps an immediate vote to be kicked out, since that functionality exists) and a ton of relationship gain with the target and it should trigger an immediate Rebellion against the Kingdom. The optimal design for this would be you are immediately kicked out and allied with this “Rebellion” Kingdom – the idea being is someone going to take your word or the Emperor/Empress/Khan’s word on the ordeal? There is also future synergy here for expansion if Civil Wars / Succession Wars are ever added – if you have great relationship with a bunch of other lords it should trigger a separatism event where the Kingdom will immediately go into open Rebellion and form a new kingdom for everyone who allies with you.
The above example can also trigger if you fail the mission, but I think the Player should be able to use Roguery / Charm to lie and then they will only take negative relationship with the quest-giver and no one else. To add some meaning to Traits, depending on which Trait the target has determines some other minor outcomes. If they have a bunch of negative traits, then everyone should be happy that “evil bastard” is dead. If they are Valorous or Merciful, then everyone should hate the Player even more (as well as the Quest giver) as they are a good person and likely not needing to meet such a brutal end.
As far as targets outside of the Kingdom, this can be less “Assassination” (unless a player wants to) and more of a specialized Raid w/ its own Scenes (the Assassination should have its own scene in an “antechamber” of some sort). In this case, the Player does not need to rely so much on Roguery / Charm and can instead lead a “sortie” with similar mechanics to the Hideout Raids, you pick 10 (or 11, if you have the Small Unit Tactics perk), and can fight through various stages – such as taking over a gatehouse, breaking into the Keep, and killing the target. It would be best for the Player to use a combination of brute force and subterfuge (via Roguery / Charm) to get into striking distance unless they risk dying, getting captured, and failing the quest. That said – if they player decides to “go kinetic” and lead a direct-action mission – they should take negative relationship with the target’s clan and any other Lords who are in the town.
Another way to add more layers to this is to not require the player to sneak in somewhere to kill a Lord, but they can do it out in the open, however only during night. While there is a much lower risk of being caught / killed / triggering Rebellions / failing the mission – there should still be some nuances. For one, it would be nice to a have a custom scene akin to the “Caravan Ambush” mission to the “siege camp” in the background of a siege scene. You start on the outside and you are essentially ambushing the target. The catch here is that if a single enemy can get away – they alert everyone and you still fail the mission, even if the target is dead.
That sort of weighting will make the Player have to consider what their approach is. For a Charm/Trade/Roguery heavy playthrough I may decide to sneak in and execute the “wet works” – but if I am going combat heavy and have a ton of T5/T6 troops in mid/late-game, I may decide to spring a trap for the lord. This can expand to better dialogue options too and let you indiscriminately kill Lords without declaring war on their entire faction.
And thus, leads us to the end, being that Bannerlord is a sandbox, the Player should be able to do these even without the Quest. When you initiate the dialogue option to “deliver your demands” you should be able to choose a very corny dialogue line like “prepare to meet you end, dog!” when the dialogue happens at night, and be able to kill the lord straight up. I think to prevent Players from cheesing wars by systematically running direct action missions like it’s 2005 and you’re on an ODA in Iraq (#iykyk) and killing every damn Lord, you should only be able to do this with a Perk (maybe at 150 Roguery?) and a Trait. You can get the Trait from successfully carrying out an Assassination, from being an evil bastard (maybe doing 10 – 20 successful Raids / Devastations) or have an “evil” option at character creation to get it (at cost of sacrificing FPs/skill points).
While a lot of this will require tons of work across Art, Scenes Development, Quests, Dialog (and even Music, unless that’s in the Art department?) and some of it is a bit extreme, I think it will add a level of immersion to a ton of elements that already exist and give reasons to having them. Some tertiary ideas to round this out is that Lord deaths should play a part in peace-time calculations. Perhaps a constant of 0.5% or 1% extra chance to request peace per Lord death. Successful missions should award the player A LOT – given how hard it is to do, and how many other elements need to be satisfied, the Player should immediately get at least one of the target lord’s Fiefs and at least a portion of their wealth or some higher T6 Armor. This gives you more reasons to do it, for the “out of kingdom” / “because I feel like it” – that shouldn’t happen.
Sorry for the long post, hopefully some of this will be considered, there is so much functionality that exists in this game to open the way to something like this without breaking the action/RPG flow!
Caveat 2: This will be a long one, you should grab a tea or an IPA!
Tl;dr = I would like both an expansion of the Roguery skill tree and an expansion of intra-Kingdom/Player-Lord Relationship, give meaning to Traits, expansion to add Quests / functionality to assassinate Lords for either the Players’/A Lord’s/Both in-game dynamics.
I was toying around with console commands and the “campaign.kill_lord” option showed a pretty cool (IMHO) text option and Encyclopedia option. In the in-game log, when used, the command shows that the lord was “Murdered”, and the encyclopedia entry notes that the Lord was assassinated. I am not sure if this is intentional to differentiate console commands, cut content, or proof of some future development but the suggestion in multi-layered.
Currently, outside of convincing other lords to join your Kingdom (this is heavily biased towards gold & Charm) intra-Kingdom chances for succession upon a ruler’s death or to heighten the chance of being awarded a fief, relationships with Lords do not mean much. There is enough development to show breakdowns between “Enemies” and “Friends” and that at least for Friends, there is meaning enough there to negatively impact the player regarding taking (seemingly random) relationship penalties when executing other lords.
I would likely to suggest another layer of delving into relationships and intra-Kingdom dynamics, as well as giving meanings to Traits and expanding Roguery, by introducing Assassination missions. At a high level, if a Ruling Clan has drastically low relationship with a clan in their own Kingdom or in another, they can have a quest available that will ask the Player to Assassinate the other lord. I imagine the dynamics would work something like the following.
Due to voting or some other future functionality (insults, in-kingdom subterfuge, losing a fief, losing a battle, AI executions, or hardcoded relationship hits), a ruling lord may incur negative relationship with a clan leader in their own kingdom. At a specified threshold (maybe -80 or -90, so it is not so frequent) they will want that other lord “dealt with” and if a player has a specific Trait or roguery skill (or maybe no prerequisites at all) they will ask the Player to assassinate the other lord. This can be extended to out-of-Kingdom missions but only during wartime.
Right now, the mechanics for sneaking into a Town is only applicable during war, and there is only one associated Roguery perk to increase the chance of success, I do not use it myself given you are more likely to be arrested than anything else. Outside of war, you do not need to “sneak” anywhere, you can simply bribe your war into a Keep – early game you don’t do this much but mid/late game when you’re rolling in cash you will probably do so without issue. This leads to the first area of expansion – giving more reason to “Sneak in” and putting heavier weight on success given your Roguery (and maybe Charm) skills.
I could see it play out that the ideal mission success is that you sneak into a town (passing a Roguery or Charm check) and sneak into the Keep as well (same checks) and there is another percentage of catching the Lord on their own given the time of day. Provided you pass all the checks, you initiate combat in your “civilian clothes” and if you kill the target, you will just need to pass one last Roguery / Charm check to break out. Given all the “Rolls” – it would behoove the player to make sure they have remarkably high Roguery and Charm skills (and ample gold) to achieve success.
Any failure throughout will result in your being attacked by guards, like how it was in Warband when you initiated a Prison Break or failed to sneak in, that should be a default action. A “critical failure” will result in your being arrested. When getting into the Keep, there is a chance to “wake up the palace guard” and then you will have to fight all the guards plus the initial target will get away.
With these variable failures, you will fail the quest, and take negative relationship with the quest giver, the target lord and their clan, and likely random -10 relationship with anyone they are friends with. You should also take negative relationship hits with all non-Crime Boss notables and spike your criminality. That lays the groundwork for future development of this feature where a high criminality / botched assassination attempts can lead to you being immediately executed by the other lord depending on their traits and relationship.
The flipside to this is that you can warn the target of the attempt, which will of course net you a ton of negative relationship with the ruler (and perhaps an immediate vote to be kicked out, since that functionality exists) and a ton of relationship gain with the target and it should trigger an immediate Rebellion against the Kingdom. The optimal design for this would be you are immediately kicked out and allied with this “Rebellion” Kingdom – the idea being is someone going to take your word or the Emperor/Empress/Khan’s word on the ordeal? There is also future synergy here for expansion if Civil Wars / Succession Wars are ever added – if you have great relationship with a bunch of other lords it should trigger a separatism event where the Kingdom will immediately go into open Rebellion and form a new kingdom for everyone who allies with you.
The above example can also trigger if you fail the mission, but I think the Player should be able to use Roguery / Charm to lie and then they will only take negative relationship with the quest-giver and no one else. To add some meaning to Traits, depending on which Trait the target has determines some other minor outcomes. If they have a bunch of negative traits, then everyone should be happy that “evil bastard” is dead. If they are Valorous or Merciful, then everyone should hate the Player even more (as well as the Quest giver) as they are a good person and likely not needing to meet such a brutal end.
As far as targets outside of the Kingdom, this can be less “Assassination” (unless a player wants to) and more of a specialized Raid w/ its own Scenes (the Assassination should have its own scene in an “antechamber” of some sort). In this case, the Player does not need to rely so much on Roguery / Charm and can instead lead a “sortie” with similar mechanics to the Hideout Raids, you pick 10 (or 11, if you have the Small Unit Tactics perk), and can fight through various stages – such as taking over a gatehouse, breaking into the Keep, and killing the target. It would be best for the Player to use a combination of brute force and subterfuge (via Roguery / Charm) to get into striking distance unless they risk dying, getting captured, and failing the quest. That said – if they player decides to “go kinetic” and lead a direct-action mission – they should take negative relationship with the target’s clan and any other Lords who are in the town.
Another way to add more layers to this is to not require the player to sneak in somewhere to kill a Lord, but they can do it out in the open, however only during night. While there is a much lower risk of being caught / killed / triggering Rebellions / failing the mission – there should still be some nuances. For one, it would be nice to a have a custom scene akin to the “Caravan Ambush” mission to the “siege camp” in the background of a siege scene. You start on the outside and you are essentially ambushing the target. The catch here is that if a single enemy can get away – they alert everyone and you still fail the mission, even if the target is dead.
That sort of weighting will make the Player have to consider what their approach is. For a Charm/Trade/Roguery heavy playthrough I may decide to sneak in and execute the “wet works” – but if I am going combat heavy and have a ton of T5/T6 troops in mid/late-game, I may decide to spring a trap for the lord. This can expand to better dialogue options too and let you indiscriminately kill Lords without declaring war on their entire faction.
And thus, leads us to the end, being that Bannerlord is a sandbox, the Player should be able to do these even without the Quest. When you initiate the dialogue option to “deliver your demands” you should be able to choose a very corny dialogue line like “prepare to meet you end, dog!” when the dialogue happens at night, and be able to kill the lord straight up. I think to prevent Players from cheesing wars by systematically running direct action missions like it’s 2005 and you’re on an ODA in Iraq (#iykyk) and killing every damn Lord, you should only be able to do this with a Perk (maybe at 150 Roguery?) and a Trait. You can get the Trait from successfully carrying out an Assassination, from being an evil bastard (maybe doing 10 – 20 successful Raids / Devastations) or have an “evil” option at character creation to get it (at cost of sacrificing FPs/skill points).
While a lot of this will require tons of work across Art, Scenes Development, Quests, Dialog (and even Music, unless that’s in the Art department?) and some of it is a bit extreme, I think it will add a level of immersion to a ton of elements that already exist and give reasons to having them. Some tertiary ideas to round this out is that Lord deaths should play a part in peace-time calculations. Perhaps a constant of 0.5% or 1% extra chance to request peace per Lord death. Successful missions should award the player A LOT – given how hard it is to do, and how many other elements need to be satisfied, the Player should immediately get at least one of the target lord’s Fiefs and at least a portion of their wealth or some higher T6 Armor. This gives you more reasons to do it, for the “out of kingdom” / “because I feel like it” – that shouldn’t happen.
Sorry for the long post, hopefully some of this will be considered, there is so much functionality that exists in this game to open the way to something like this without breaking the action/RPG flow!
