The only problem I see with Village Influencing (besides karma, Die karma die!), it always happens at the most inopportune time for one side. Then we get posts saying "OMGz! We had noone on! This sucks! I quit! Ban Shiri!"

In conclusion, die karma die!
-penned by my hand on this date

I know how frustrating it can be when the village is demesne'd already and theres little hope of getting anywhere... but destroying demesnes is really only a delaying tactic. Within a few minutes someone will come and race to get it demesne'd themselves.

If demesne's are really a problem, I'd prefer a solution that isn't a knee-jerk reaction. For instance, make villagers in an uninfluenced village very unhappy with foreign mages melding their village. If they are sitting in a demesne they will be doubly resistant to influence from that city. This way mages can still do their work to set up an advantage, but they have to think of the consequences, and even though a demesne'd village might be able to resist other cities influencing, they will have to keep it up for a lot, lot longer.

If it isn't changed so demesne's get destroyed when the village becomes influenceable (which I'm not sure I agree with) can it just get made that if the person who made the Demesne is sitting in a sanctuaried room, or is shielded in another area entirely (both of which happened in Delport) their demesne stops working and can be cleared as though it wasn't there?

Magnagora couldn't influence Delport simply because the Aquamancer who set up a demesne was sitting in a sanctuaried room, and his demesne kept hitting us and, because every single room that could get unmelded was also sanctuaried, it was impossible to break the demesne at all. That seems to be to be using the sanctuary skill in a way it wasn't intended.

If someone can not be hurt they should not be able to hurt others... nuff said. Thats just wrong.

I can agree with the Sanctuaried bit. If you can't be hurt, you have no business being able to hurt anyone else.

However, the whole -point- of a Demesne is to be able to sit far, far away and hurt someone. So, sitting off in another area smiting folks is -exactly- what a Mage is -supposed- to be doing, and thusly, needs no changing.

Maybe change it so Sanctuary doesn't stop things like Forecetaint (And the Aquamancer and Hartstone versions), so they can't just defend the edges like that, and prevent you from ever breaking the Demesne?

Then let them sit in a non safe room far far away.

If you can't be hurt you shouldn't be hurting others... I don't think theres really anyway you can defend the opposite opinion.

I agree the person being in a safe room should cancel demesne effects, and sanctuaried rooms should be breakable if normally possible. That sounds like a bug rather than a deliberate decision.

In my role as the devil's advocate, however, consider the person sitting in their city with a large demesne stretching into the village. They are basically just as safe and untouchable.

I'm fond of the idea that any room more than, say 5 or 10 steps away from the demesne holder or center, is open and fair game for forcing regardless of adjacent demesned rooms. (The numbers I provided were for example - it could be more, could be less, depending on what was found to be balanced.)

Perhaps have this 'range' to their demesne based on skill training.

This still allows for sizeable demesnes, while not making them impervious.

Then again, I've never had a demesne nor spent much time as a demesne-using class, so perhaps this is a greater limitation on such classes than it sounds.

Thoughts?

I can understand this might be workable if demesne's didn't have to be adjacent... but consider a demesne that runs from Serenwilde to cover Estelbar. If you can break a single location along the highway, suddenly the whole part of it in Estelbar goes 'poof'.

So for me, I'd say that probably wouldn't be a good idea.

Wouldn't this just totally mess up the skill Influence that i know the Geomancers have, not cure about Hartstone or Aquas, you know the one that makes us more influencial (If that's even a word) in our Demesne?

I don't think anything needs to be changed at all except what is most likely an oversight with demenses and sactuary rooms.

Even if a person is in the city surrounded by 2,000 guards the demense is breakable and you can get them out of that room. It may be hard but its possible. However, in a sactuaried room its not even possible to either A. Harm the mage/druid or B. break the demense.

Enemy demesnes make influencing villages impossible.

I fully support that idea. Sanctuary shouldn't cancel out force taint/flood/. Though in the same spirit it would be very annoying having a mage walk into that room, force whatever it without anyone able to kill the mage. Perhaps sanctuary rooms must destroy any demense already in place at a cost of a little extra power. Making other mages capable of forcing the adjecting rooms.