I did not play a detective during this era, but I did some research using stratics and poring through the official publish/patch notes and this is what I came up with:
• Forensic Evaluation will tell you whether a person is in the thieves guild, as most everyone knows.
• Forensic Evaluation will not let you know if someone is perma grey.
• Someone who is indeed perma grey was attackable in town, without fear of retribution from the guards.
• The way that it was determined whether a thief was perma once you’d identified them was to use the stealing skill (even if you had 0 stealing skill) if you able to make the attempt then you knew the person was perma grey. (They changed you being able to do this, but fortunately for everyone on this shard the change occurred on January 24, 2000)
The two articles that I made these deductions from, and the passages detailing it are as follows, with important information in bold:
Detecting Perma.
Perma is short for "Permanently Gray". When someone steals from a blue character (NPC, Player or pet) they turn gray for two minutes. Everyone may be able see this. After the two minutes are up they appear blue to everyone EXCEPT the person they stole from.
Because of recent changes, it is now impossible to tell if a character is a thief in town AND then attack him. You can tell he is a thief of course, simply by using the Forensics skill on him, but this DOES NOT give you any in-town privileges.
To reiterate, even if the skill tells you "This individual is a thief" you cannot attack him in town, unless he is otherwise gray or perma. You WILL be guard-whacked. Outside town, of course, you can pick a fight, sure in the knowledge that there will be no count, but it is of course at your risk.
http://uo.stratics.com/content/professi ... tive.shtml
And here is the patch notes dated in January of 2000:
You will no longer be able to use the stealing skill to determine if someone is "perma-gray".
• Players who are not in the Thieves Guild will not be able to steal from other players at all.
With cited link:
http://www.uoherald.com/news/news.php?newsid=596\
Now, I did some experimenting with perma grey with a thief character and a detective character. Whether or not the thief went grey while stealing, or stayed blue made no difference to being able to attack him in town. Detective still went grey, guards were able to be called by thief. Stealing from the thief while his was supposed to be perma grey was not an option as you get the must be in thieves guild message.
So, I propose, based on the research with cited text that detectives be allowed to test perma on thieves they’ve identified by attempting to steal from them. If the thief is perma he should be able to be attacked even in town without the detective having to fear a guard whack.
I hope I’ve drawn the right conclusions with this and it is able to be implemented, as this will cut back on bank thieves, plus add in a very viable class for people to play as. I can say honestly, that as a person who plays a thief that this will add another element of excitement and danger to being a thief, as well as requiring one to use all their cunning and ingenuity to be a successful thief rather than just stealing in front of the bank and if you get guard whacked, shrugging, ressing and continuing.
Proposal finished.
Comments? Rebuttal? Contradictory or supportive research?
As I said, I didn’t play a detective in this era, so I may be off base with the conclusions, but it seems logical.