Suggestion: Bounty Hunters and Bounty Hunting

[immortalfrieza]

With the addition of the Crime and Punishment system, why not introduce Bounty Hunting into the mix? Both for the player to partake in and be a potential obstacle for them. If you smuggle a crate of illegal booze, murder a dozen guards, and soil yourself on the Battanian king Caladog's cat, then run off to say Vlandia, there's basically nothing from what we know of the system that Battania can do about it except attack you and keep you out of their settlements if you ever come back. Therefore, I'd suggest adding in parties of Bounty Hunters that will eventually find you and if you lose to them take you back to the offended kingdom to face whatever punishment is due you. They will keep coming after you until you pay off your crimes in one way or another. This way you can't just go to the border between Battania and Vlandia, (I have no idea how things are positioned right now) commit a dozen crimes, then run to Vlandia and escape all punishment.

Conversely, if you haven't committed any crimes and want to make money or have and want to work it off with a particular kingdom, you could hunt down and turn in criminals yourself. When you enter a town you could select the "Look for Bounties" option, if there is any select one, it tells you where they are, and then you're off to find the mark somewhere on the map or in a town or fief somewhere. Find the mark, defeat them, then turn them in to the nearest lord or town of whatever faction they've offended for money or if you've got a bounty on your head yourself pay off some or all of it.

 

[Rungsted93]

I like this idea!

I think sizes of parties and amount of bounty hunters should also depend on your reputation and the reward for you.

 

[DtheHun]

Assassins worked like that in Warband. If you had stepped on someone's toes, they could turn up in any town for you. It spiced up the early game, but they didn't mean real danger later for a player in heavy armor. However, I think similar "one/few agains many" ambushes - with developing enemies - would work better than map encounters, because bounty hunter parties couldn't compete with the player's growing army for long.

 

[Rungsted93]

Assassins worked like that in Warband. If you had stepped on someone's toes, they could turn up in any town for you. It spiced up the early game, but they didn't mean real danger later for a player in heavy armor. However, I think similar "one/few agains many" ambushes - with developing enemies - would work better than map encounters, because bounty hunter parties couldn't compete with the player's growing army for long.

Agreed, also late game lets assume the player is perhaps one of the most famous warriors in the whole world and earns several fiefs. How many bounty hunters would basically want to even try attack someone like that?

 

[immortalfrieza]

Assassins worked like that in Warband. If you had stepped on someone's toes, they could turn up in any town for you. It spiced up the early game, but they didn't mean real danger later for a player in heavy armor. However, I think similar "one/few agains many" ambushes - with developing enemies - would work better than map encounters, because bounty hunter parties couldn't compete with the player's growing army for long.

Agreed, also late game lets assume the player is perhaps one of the most famous warriors in the whole world and earns several fiefs. How many bounty hunters would basically want to even try attack someone like that?

Either the really stupid, green, and overconfident ones looking to make a name for themselves and get way over their head, or the really really REALLY good ones that can either take on a small army solo and/or have a large army of their own behind them. You could throw that the caliber of bounty hunters coming after the player goes up while the frequency of attempts decreases as your renown goes up and if you're bounty hunting yourself the target might even give up outright instead of fighting you if you've proven yourself to be a good enough warrior.

In any case, I'd say this is intended as more of a early to mid, maybe mid to early late game (if that makes sense) kind of challenge at the most. Let's face it, chances are by the late game the player is probably going to easily slaughter anything the game could throw at them with an OPed PC and soldiers. Trying to keep up the challenge for something like this is pretty pointless at that point. By that point the player would probably be annoyed with having to deal with bounty hunters coming after them and no longer need crime to make money anyway, so they'd probably just pay off their debts and get down to finishing conquering Calradia.

 

[The Meddling Monk]

+1 Great idea, would add some variety to the quests.
And I agree with:

I think sizes of parties and amount of bounty hunters should also depend on your reputation and the reward for you.

 

[Revverie]

I'm into this idea too, otherwise it would be too easy

I think sizes of parties and amount of bounty hunters should also depend on your reputation and the reward for you.

Maybe when you're a too much powerful enemy clan members could come to you and hunt you, that could even drive to factions becoming potential foes