Instead of blocking GP completely, it might be more interesting to have a guard that will passively fling people from a room in a random direction with prone/stun. Or if random is not good enough, you can order the guard to always attempt a given direction. Then the tactic isn't completely destroyed, but there's a lot more pressure to hurry and get what you want done, and you can't just camp a spot indefinitely (since we're talking about putting this on bard/mage/druid guards, which can't be targeted).

We're not trying to lock down the village. We're trying to keep you from locking yourselves down in the village. See the difference there?

I see silly comments, yes.

Or it could be Urazial, that they are looking for ways in so you could get the conflict that you claim you desire. Yet sitting behind Greater Pentagram, while whacking guards seems to be little more than a bashing trip.

They have ways to get in or drop Greater Pentagram - many have been listed here, and I'm sure there are others that haven't been thought of. It's not 'just a bashing trip' - we remove guards from villages so that we can bash the denizens in that village, which helps our Conquest government. It's not a 'meaningless raid'.

-sigh-

Pathtwists work even if the druid is not around. See the old path twist from the Moonhart into the Flame. Did that require the owner to be around 24/7? NO. My goodness, you can even have path twists to every important villager within the demesne. And yes, it's practical to have a pathtwist into and out of the guard clots - everyone can use it, unlike bond unite, among other things.

I'm not sure how you think that given I don't even have Great Pent and haven't been on a guard bashing raid that utilized it in quite some time.

Well, if we're talking about the last raid on Estelbar, that was also for the comms the farmers drop, because we got word back that Rikenfriez wouldn't start stocking comms until we brought a certain number in. Farmers are greedy and can't be begged from, so... more mechanical incentive to do what was done.

Which was ultimately kind of pointless, since I don't think Rikenfriez is producing grain and vegetables on its own now, and we didn't get enough fruit to even get that comm on the General Store listing.

You're thinking of two different things... Pathtwists are the demesne effects that move you around inside an active demesne. Paths are a Hunting ability that creates a rift-like gate between two locations of natural terrain of the same type. Most guard locations are at intersections - meaning roads, which aren't natural locations, and therefore you cannot make a path there.

Then why are you weighing in on a discussion about GP turning a raid into a guard bashing trip..?

EDIT: That was directed at Urazial, one would thing I'd learn to quote the posts I'm replying to.

Ohh. Alright. I've never been an ecologist/druid so I mistook those two skills and combined them into one, or something.

Edit:

now, I'm a bit confused. There were old pathways from the prime moonhart to other key locations and they appeared on the exits as 'a twisting pathway' or something like that. What I know about it is that it only required the meld to be unbroken, but yeah, maybe the natural terrain does render this skill unable to be used for where guards stand.

That old pathtwist was because of one druid who basically never did anything else but log on to make sure that path was up. We don't have enough Hartstone around who would rarely be using their demesne for anything else in order to keep pathtwists up all the time in every village.

When we're expecting them to try something and actually have time to prepare, I'll meld and put some twists up, but it's not really something we can reasonably do all of the time.

The spores and bond unite when we actually have a tracker or ecologist available were decent suggestions though.

Find a hartstone!

If you'll read my initial post you'll see it was directed at the continued complaints despite all the suggestions brought up. Real question is, why do you care if someone chooses to voice an opinion and/or comment?

.... what? o,o

I mean, find another hartstone who logs in from time to time to ensure that the path still exists!

Question: Will spores going into the village still work if Distort is up?

What, to keep up the old path to the Flame? I'm not having a rarely awake druid hold a demesne in a village that probably needs defending.

oh, right. heh, my bad! i forgot how breaking melds can be a pain.

Would it just be easier to say "GP should be replaced with something else."? As Eldanien pointed out, it's already been pruned back several times over. I'm not particularly invested in it one way or another, but I think people who've bothered to trans highmagic over low might appreciate that more.