As of tonight (or this morning depending on how you look at it) the new bounty system is going live. Been a toil of love for the last month to make and now it's finally in. The features of it, as well as new rules updates, will be listed below.
RULES CHANGES1) With the addition of this system you can now legally attack any player that is at most 4 levels lower than you, or any level equal or higher than your own.
2) If a player has a bounty on their heads then they are fair game PERIOD. Doesn't matter if they're a level 1 or a 30, anyone of any level can feel free to attack them to claim the bounty (which is wiped out after they're killed by another player).
3) If an effortless rated player attacks you and gets killed, it's their fault. There will be a general server shout that you killed the effortless rated player, but take a screen shot of them attacking you first and your pretty well defended.
4) Any player caught trying to steal from you is as always fair game to get attacked/killed regardless of level.
FEATURES1)
Arena Stuffa - Deaths in the arena will no longer apply respawn penalties, so you can respawn at will as much as you like!
b - If you get a "legal" kill (as noted above being no more than 4 levels lower than you or equal/greater than yourself) you will increase your persistent arena statistics. You'll also find an arena stats board around which can tell you about the top rated players in their perspective fields, and about all the currently online players. The top arena victor will find a special little goodie for themselves too. There's also a specialty little routine that happens on doing a certain nasty thing which I'll leave for players to find out
2)
Death and Repawninga - The respawn costs have been changed now to be 350 xp per character level and 10% of your unhand gold uncapped (compared to being capped before at 10k). Basically, if you have to respawn it will pretty much take you same number of kills as your character level to get back what you lost.
b - If respawning would have dropped your experience below your current level requirement, it will not make you lose a level (this was a bug from obsidian with modified ECL races) and instead apply a "Negative" xp which is stored persistently on your character. Your level is also counted from your total xp, so if you had just got enough to level and then got whomped you'd still have your level after respawning with whatever was left of the respawn cost applied as negative xp. Basically until you kill enough monsters to "clear" your negative xp debt you won't be able to get xp from kills like you would normally, and each time you kill a monster it will tell you how much negative xp is left (or if you just cleared, that it is cleared and you gained however much was leftover after the fact).
c - When you die to a monster you stand a 1% chance on each non-equiped item in your inventory to be dropped on the ground around you. This is added somewhat as incentive for going back and killing spawns, and also to encourage not carrying around oodles of equipment and items that your worried about losing (and in general the whining if a thief happens to steal them that always occurs after as well). In general unless you carrying around an obscene amount of items your not likely to drop many items at all, if in fact any.
d - Any STOLEN items, equiped or in your inventory, will be dropped on ANY death be it from a player or monster or getting smited or anything else.
e - Deaths to players that within "legal" limits as noted above being no more than 4 levels lower and any level higher than the killer will have some nice victory shouts for the killer. If the player was effortless it simply notes that they were effortless, nothing more than that since as noted you can attack anyone any level higher than yourself (therefor the effortless player could have initiated it, to do the CYA take a print screen if they attacked first).
f - As noted in the rules any player of any level can kill someone with a bounty, the killer will recieve this bounty and a shout made about claiming it along with clearing the victims bounty. This won't however count as being a successful PK even if they were within range.
g - When you PK someone within range it will apply a bounty to your head if you weren't claiming one from theirs, which then makes you open season to anyone else. So basically what goes around comes around, watch your backside.
3)
Pickpocketing & Youa - Anytime you steal an item from a player, or fail to do so and are caught (by the new pp checks) your going to find you now have a bounty on your head making it open season.
b - Any pp'd item will be unable to be trashed, and will require having to visit one of three strategically placed "fence" npc's which can get rid of the "hot" property at a small profit to the thief. These items will then be available at a greatly increased price as "legal" goods from the fence merchants, no longer being stolen. The fence npc's can also identify the origins of any stolen items for a price, showing who they formerly belonged to on the off chance one was either to find some stolen gear or wished to sell it back to the original owner. You'll have to find the locations of them on your own, as the local vermillion/port salem/arcadian authorities aren't fond of their line of business.
c - Any stolen item that is acquired by it's original owner will no longer be stolen, so basically if you kill the thief and get back your items they're good again. Similarly if the thief were to sell back the stolen property to its former owner it would do the same.
d - The pickpocket calculations are now set as follows: The DC is the victims base spot skill + wisdom modifier + any skill bonus feats to spot + spot class levels + 1d20 roll vs the thiefs base pp skill + dexterity modifier + any skill bonus feats to pp + pp class levels + 1d20. Any tiny items like scrolls or potions and ammo don't require this check if you succeeded in the default obsidian theft check, if you rolled a 20 you also get an automatic success, if you rolled a 1 you get an automatic failure and the item is returned with the stolen flag removed along with dropping you out of stealth and informing the victim, and if you fail the check your similarly dropped out stealth and the victim is informed along with returning the stolen item.
e - As noted in the death and respawning section any stolen items you possess in your inventory or on your person will be dropped to the ground when your killed, be it by a player or a smite or a monster death. In other words: Easy come, easy go.
4)
Bountiesa - Any time you kill a player who is within legal range of yourself (see above references for legal kills) who does NOT have a bounty themselves you will receive one. The moment you have this bounty, it's open season on your heinie so watch out.
b - As with legal pk's you will get a bounty when you steal from other players, and again it will make it open season on your rear.
c - When you get killed by another player it clears your bounty.
d - To view the player with the highest bounty find one of the Bounty Posters in the cities and use them. It will view who has the top bounty, and then cycle through the player list showing if any currently on-line players have one too.
5)
Death Statsa - In town you'll find a codex of death will hold the various death stats for players. These include PK kills, PK deaths, PvE deaths, and total deaths (total counting in both PK deaths and PvE deaths) along with top recorded amounts for each. Will cycle through the player list showing each players specific stats after the top stats.
