As far as I'm aware, a "crime" happens when someone does certain deviant acts, and someone reports it. Then the judge/sheriff/whoever of the location creates a bounty token, which allows you to capture the person doing the crime if you have the token.

So for practicing, many things could be done in such a way that you get experience but no one reports the crime. Like lockpicking your own house, or forging your own documents. In the pursuit of a criminal if you were to also commit crimes, it would then be up to the judge what the punishment would be, including dismissal because it was part of the job.

I'd try to take local law into consideration. I would assume some kingdoms/duchies/counties will throw to book at you for breaking laws, even if you are attempting to bring a criminal to justice. Local government may appoint some sort of Marshall you may want to get into contact with before you start picking locks and find yourself in the wrong place and under arrest yourself.

I like the questions. I suppose that players will create something for this situations, like in real world; something like a secret agent of some sort. :)

Some skills with what you referred to as deviant could help with bounty hunting. By an large you could be a bounty hunter without going to vigilante.

The biggest skill when trying to track someone down is persuasion and the ability to get information out of people. Granted you may need someone good in a fight once you find the subject and if you can't fight well bring a friend who can. However, if you can't get information on where the subject went then being able to fight won't help.

Disguises can be useful for surveillance and casing but you don't have to be really sophisticated to get by. Going so far as to be able to create a whole new identity and building up the forgery skill to complement it could be time spent other skills. However, I could see the need for having high disguise and forgery skill if you had a subject you had to capture in an area that was extremely friendly to the bounty and you were coming from a place that was hostile to them. Then being able to completely change who you are and where you are from could be huge at staying alive let alone catching your guy.

Lock-picking may help but that would be situational. It may be a skill that would come in handy I doubt it would be used every time you had to track down a bounty.

If I end up in a role in CoE where I'm tracking down people/criminals/information, persuasion will be my primary focus. The best investigators/intelligence agents in real life are people who who are great at talking to people and eliciting information out of people.

I can imagine it depends on the ratio for time spent to tracking a bounty and fighting a bounty?

95% tracking and 5% fighting?

So i would guess diplomacy and investigation and survival skills. If you cant find the bounty there wont be any fighting.

Posted By PhKnight at

Should a Bounty Hunter only have good combat skills, or should they be allowed to develop some Deviant skills to help them track down the target they are looking for?

Knight- I think what you are asking is not if they should be allowed to develop the skill but if they should get a pass on using it in an illegal way- Biorules does a great job addressing this.
As Abbi was saying, sometimes you won't be in a friendly area. It is easy to think of capturing a common thief or bandit but what if the criminal is a count who has raided a fellow count or duke's lands. War could be an answer, but instead of destroying armies, perhaps a few highly trained bounty hunters would be preferable; ones that are safe only once they get back to friendly lands, and can be disavowed if they get caught

While I understand it would be nice to have impunity for chasing a bounty, and to some extent it may make sense, I can also see it be a lot more fun to be just above the law- indeed, I foresee many jobs where you will be hunting former partners or competitors; you may even find yourself the one hunted!

Scourge_

I had not considered that, criminal organisations putting a bounty on a famous bounty hunter!

This just got really interesting.

I will be a bounty hunter will deviant skills but if I'm being honest the deviant skills are just personal favor vs having a real need for them. I think stealth will be the most helpful out of them all. Tracking someone down or being a bounty hunter does have some core/ must have skills. The more you add to it the less effective you'll be at your core or the more people you need to add to your team.

If the game's jury is player ran, the jury may not care how you get the bad guy if he's hated enough lol.

Another twist on this could be who you are hunting the bounty for...

Example: If you employed by "The Authorities," they might look the other way in regards to any "deviancy" that you may use in the pursuit of the target. An ends justify the means sort of approach.

Another scenario might be based on who you are hunting...

Example: If the target is of sufficient "value" the rules may be more liberalized in regards to what you may be able to do. Wanted "Dead or Alive" gets a different rule set than a simple burgler.

Also, if the target is of a "higher social standing" then more and more variables would additionally apply, than if it were just a local ruffian...As always, money and power play a role in all things.