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Justice system
For a complete justice system, you need five things:
- a judge, who will list all the crime reports
- a courtroom, where this judge shall be
- a dungeon room, that has a locked door and a key to unlock it if need be
- guards that will (attempt to) carry out punishment on crime doers
- witnesses who can report crimes
The last point is quite important. If all your mobs are sentinel, with only one mob per room, it is very likely that the crimes will never be reported. For an effective justice system, you will need wandering citizens and guards. Mobs who report crimes will have to walk to the courtroom to see the judge, so they need a clear path to this room (they cannot open closed doors). Your judge should be in the courtroom.
In the first part of the area file, you should have a block like the following one.
#JUSTICE CourtRoom 4081 Dungeon 4085 Judge 4070 Guard 4021 Crime CRIME_HIGH_MURDER PUNISHMENT_DEATH Crime CRIME_LOW_MURDER PUNISHMENT_SEVER Crime CRIME_ASSAULT PUNISHMENT_JAIL Crime CRIME_MUGGING PUNISHMENT_RANDOM_ITEM $
The first four lines after #JUSTICE list the room vnum for the courtroom, the room vnum for the dungeon, the mob vnum for the judge and the vnum of the guards who wander the area and will come to the aid of any citizen being attacked..
The courtroom is needed for all areas that are to have a justice system. It does not have to be in the actual area. For instance, areas that are associated with Waterdeep like temples and taverns, will use the Waterdeep justice system. This is the room where the command "crime" works.
A judge resides in the courtroom vnum. This is whom the mobiles come to to report the crime. Again the judge does not have to be in the actual area if your area is part of a bigger areas justice system.
The dungeon is not actually needed if you do not use any of the punishments for jailing someone. If you do not use a dungeon, then this would be set to 0. For a dungeon you will need to have a locked room that is not easily escaped from. PC's who escape before their time is served, will be placed back in the dungeon by spec_guard mobs when caught. A PC could actually get out of the area and never return to the area and avoid serving time if they so wished.
The guards from the guard vnum must be actively in the area. These guards when a citizen is attacked will run from the place where they are to aid the victim. They cannot get through locked doors. The number of guards running to the aid of the victim depends on how many are in the area. It is ideal that there are several guards of this vnum in the area, and that they are not flagged sentinel. Note if the citizen has a fight prog on them they will NOT call for help.
Next it lists the punishment associated to the four types of crime:
- CRIME_HIGH_MURDER - is murdering another PC
- CRIME_LOW_MURDER - is killing a mob
- CRIME_ASSAULT - is attacking (but not killing) a PC/mob
- CRIME_MUGGING - is a failed pickpocket/steal attempt
The available sentences are the following ones:
- PUNISHMENT_NOT_ENFORCED - no punishment
- PUNISHMENT_DEATH - death
- PUNISHMENT_RANDOM_ITEM - random item is confiscated
- PUNISHMENT_SEVER - random limb is severed
- PUNISHMENT_JAIL - 1 hour real time in the dungeon room
- PUNISHMENT_EXILE - NOT CODED yet
Setting a mob as a guard is done in the #SPECIAL section of the area file.
#SPECIALS M 16201 spec_guard M 16202 spec_guard S
Please note that mobs cannot open locked or closed unlocked doors when they are enroute to report a crime. So try and make sure the way is clear for mobs to report most crimes.