Run out of town for saving a life.

[swillo]

So I'm on my first visit to the swamps with this particular game. I'm hanging out at the dancing skeleton, enjoying the conversation when I hear a fight outside. I peek out and watch as a hound is fighting two blood spiders. ( I hate those things). Sure enough the spiders win and knock the hound off the causeway into the water. They then run down into the water and start sucking the hound dry. Thinking I would like to help, I try and attack the spiders. but they are in the water so I can't attack them. So I try and pick up the hound and take them to safety hoping the spiders will follow and I can dispatch them there. But the only option of picking up the hound is considered kidnapping. (several of his buddies have already walked by and ignored his plight. )
I try and just bandage him up hoping he will get up on his own but I quickly see that is not going to happen.
So I "kidnap" the hound and bring him up on to the walkway. The spiders follow just like I suspect they would but before I can do anything, someone on a turret near by "Raises the Alarm" and shoots my character. I drop the hound and try and kill the spider but now I have a stream of hounds coming from the next building. So I do the only thing I can. I run. As I run my "kidnapping" timer is still running, so the whole dancing skeleton empties out behind me and I have half the town chasing me to the exit. Luckily some red sabers were fighting some blood spiders at the gate and I was able to run past them and tangle my pursuers up in that altercation.

But now my rep with the hounds is trashed because of the "Self preservation" shots several of my team took as they were fleeing. Guess I'll head to the united cities and have a drink there. Oh wait, I sold them a slave and they attacked me, I don't think I'm welcome there either?

Just a reminder that we need some way to "help" wounded allies to safety. and a way to attack enemies in the water.

[cosmo bozo]

Maybe this is where the crossbows will come in handy?

[swillo]

it would have allowed me to shoot the spider yes, but I still would not have been able to pick up the Hound and take them to a bed without being accused of kidnapping.

[Kwikwilyaqa]

This is in game already - but you need to have good rep with the faction to be able to help members without the "kidnap" option.

More than once I carry a npc (shinobi and shek) to a nearby bed with the "pick up" option (rep with thieves 100 and shek 130 - don't know where is the line between pick up and kidnap, but I guess your cursor must be "green" when hover over the npc). In fact, you can't kidnap allies.

[Bunny]

I noticed as well the kidnap vs Pickup thing.

What I noticed is that when in a city the pickup will turn to kidnap. I suppose it is a case that guards/people in the general area wont know you are picking someone up to help them rather then to kidnap them. The only time I don't see this switch between pick up and kidnap is when the person has a bounty. If you can get to them before they are enslaved (by the UC) it will be considered picking up, but if they have already been enslaved it will be considered kidnapping.

Not sure if this is how it is intended to work, this is merely my observation while playing as a medical faction.

[RedOwl]

It's really odd that once you pick a person up, they can't do anything about it. There should be a mechanic where if you are intending to kidnap/enslave/imprison a person, you have to tie them up or shackle them first. If you do not, they can escape being picked up at will. This would solve several problems with the current system, this one included.

[swillo]

It's really odd that once you pick a person up, they can't do anything about it. There should be a mechanic where if you are intending to kidnap/enslave/imprison a person, you have to tie them up or shackle them first. If you do not, they can escape being picked up at will. This would solve several problems with the current system, this one included.

I like that idea. I know that kidnapping happens outside the towns as well. I wanted to save some escaped empire servants from the fogmen but I was neutral to them and it sill considered it kidnapping. "Sorry guys, guess you are lunch. wish I could save you but we have to go to town and don't want the guards to attack me."
Having a different option on the menu for pick up and kidnap would allow you to just pick them up and move them, or pick them up and bind their hands and feet to kidnap them. You could have rope restraints instead of shackles as the default, but if you did have shackles handy you could use them as well. If they are not restrained then they can attempt to break free. That should work with all NPCS as well, so when they arrest you in town they would restrain you too.

[Pyracles]

The game needs someway to distinguish a rescue from a kidnap. I've rescently had some trouble trying to be a good samaritan to dying NPC. Things that could be better.

- If none of my characters attacked or knocked out an NPC then my picking the NPC up should not count as an attack, as long as I don't carry them out of their "home" area, don't stick them in a cage or on a pole, don't lock them into a house I own, don't continue carrying them too long after they become conscious and don't take stuff from them other than bandages and repair kits.

- I should be able to take an NPC's bandages and repair kits, to use on them and their friends, as long as I wasn't the one that attacked them.

I recently had an example of this going wrong while passing by Burns Tower in the Floodplains. An iron spider happened to be close, Burns aggroed it but the spider easily took him down to a Dying state. After kiting the spider away (I was too weak to take it out) I came back to try and heal Burns. So I picked him up, walked into his tower, found one of the repair kits he keeps there, applied it enough to make sure he was not going to die but would remain unconcious, put the repair kit back into his inventory (think I actually combined it with the partial one he already had, together they made a whole one), then put him on his repair bed. He woke before I managed to leave his tower. I was no longer carrying anything of his, yet he still aggroed me and chased me away.

It's hard work being a good samaritan