Arelith

If a character is NOT on an exile board, and not costing the settlement, it is cheating to use IC guard authority to force them from a settlement as far as I am concerned and a growing meta cheat game being done and carried out by the settlement.

What a strange take. But I'll engage regardless.

Strongly disagree, assuming that I'm parsing the original post correctly.

A mechanical exile represents having NPC guards turn someone away at the gates, but it is not the only way of a settlement enforcing their wishes regarding your presence. It is not the only way for a settlement to express displeasure with a character, however.

It is not cheating (though it is perhaps an IC abuse of power, which is totally fine) for a PC guard to tell a character to "gtfo before I beat your Snuggybear". In a way, we should be encouraging this over mechanical exile, since it allows people to continue engagement with a settlement after being punished, and I know I personally try to reserve mechanical exiles for characters that look like their continued engagement is going to involve a bunch of pvp with weaker characters when I'm not around to step in.

Nevermind, already know, will get in the 'my character's perspective' weeds here. There is no longer a point to alignment, laws, and a lot of other IC structure on Arelith anymore.

Scurvy couldn't have said it better.

The fact that this takes a weird turn to "cheating" makes me think this is about far more than you're really letting on.

So, this is locked.