Faethan had an excellent idea regarding karma curses on the forums which
we have decided adopt in a modified form.

-The cost to initially remove a curse depends upon how many people have
suspect on you at the time of the curse, calculated as 20 karma plus 5
karma per suspect. This includes the suspect status of the person
cursing you, so the minimum it will cost to remove a curse is 25 karma.
The maximum can never go above 100 karma. The cost still goes down by 5
karma per online hour to a minimum of 5 karma.

-The cost to curse someone also depends on how many people have suspect
on the curse's target at the time of the curse, calculated at 80 karma
minus 5 karma per suspect. This includes the suspect status you hold
(which will be removed after cursing), so the maximum cost to curse is
75 karma. The minimum curse cost will never fall below 5 karma.

There is a new command to help decide whether or not you want to curse:
KARMA CONSIDER <type> <target>. This will tell you how much it will cost
to curse someone and how much it will cost your target to lift that
curse.

Thus, it will be much easier to curse someone who has a lot of suspects.
Conversely, the cost to life a curse will be quite low as long as few
people have you listed as a suspect. The 'break even' point is 6
suspects (meaning it would cost 50 karma to curse and 50 karma to lift
the curse).

Roark and I have been looking at some numbers, and we note that the vast
majority of people have 5 or less suspects. Since very, very few of you
go over 5 suspects, most likely you will never see a curse. For example,
if you kill someone and they get suspect on you, and that is the only
suspect someone has on you, it will cost them 75 karma to curse you and
it will cost you 25 karma to remove the curse. In 4 hours of online
time, that would be reduced to the minimum of 5 karma. (I assume someone
is just making a statement if they curse you in such a circumstance.) On
the other hand, if more than 15 people have suspect on you, it will cost
someone 5 karma to curse you and cost you 100 karma to lift the curse.
We note that very, very few people have so many suspects.

What does all this mean? This means if you do engage in PK and get
suspect (i.e., kill someone on the prime plane in netural territory), as
long as this happens infrequently (say never going over 5 suspects),
then you will probably never see or a curse. If you do get cursed, it
will be relatively easy to lift the and its impact should be viewed as
more RP-related rather than a 'punishment'. However, if you
indiscriminantly engage in PK to the point where many people have you
listed as suspect, it would appear to us that you are going out of your
way to 'hunt' others on the prime in neutral territory. In this
instance, you will be an easy target to curse and it will be painful to
remove the curse.

As with all karma, you reap what you sow.


Penned by my hand on the 5th of Avechary, in the year 112 CE.