The bar
Whenever you are holding a sword in either hand and your crosshair is on a villager, a 102-pixel reputation bar draws near the bottom of the screen. It fills green when that villager's opinion of you is positive and red when it is negative, with a marker at zero, and it is scaled to a quarter of its original thickness so it does not dominate the screen. The client asks the server for the number rather than guessing it, so it is always the real vanilla gossip value.
Tip: Switch villagers and the bar hides until the real answer arrives, so it never shows the last one's opinion.
The threat is a dice roll
Right-clicking a villager with a sword rolls a random number from 0 to 8 and succeeds if it comes in under your sword's attack damage. That is 33 percent for wood, 44 for stone, 56 for iron, 67 for diamond and 78 for netherite. Sharpness adds half a point per level on top, so an iron sword with Sharpness V reaches 89 percent, and 89 is a hard ceiling, because at 100 percent the mod stops being a gamble. Only Sharpness counts; villagers are neither undead nor arthropods.
Tip: Modded swords work too; the roll simply reads whatever attack damage the sword has.
What success and failure cost
A win adds 10 reputation, the villager plays its happy particles, physically steps back from you and the actionbar reads 'The villager reluctantly agrees.' A loss subtracts 25, plays angry particles and the villager's unhappy head-shake, and (this is the real price) every iron golem within 16 blocks turns to hunt you. There is a five-second cooldown per villager per player; try again inside it and you are told 'The villager ignores you.'
Tip: Attacking a villager with a sword also costs 25 reputation, every hit, with no roll involved.
A natural zero is a critical
One roll in nine comes up zero, which is always a success and is also a critical: it doubles the reputation gained, adds an extra particle flourish and a brighter sound, and gives you its own actionbar line: 'The villager agrees. Immediately. Enthusiastically.' There is no critical failure. This pass of the mod was about feeling good, not about new punishment.
Tip: The reputation cap still applies to criticals, so a double gain near the ceiling is still capped.
Discounts you can actually see
Reputation feeds the vanilla discount system, but vanilla's version is an absolute emerald count that vanishes on expensive trades. This mod replaces it with a percentage: up to 30 percent off, reached at reputation 60, scaling smoothly below that, never worse than vanilla's own discount and never less than one emerald off. All of it is done without mixins on the Forge build, by hooking the moment the trade screen opens.
Tip: Everything is config-driven, so a server can retune the cap, the roll, the golems and the discount curve.
The ceiling on intimidation
Threats stop paying out at total reputation 60. Past that, a successful intimidation still plays all its feedback but adds nothing, and the game tells you the villager cannot be intimidated any further. Sixty is exactly where the maximum discount lands, so a bully can reach the best prices, and nothing beyond them.
Tip: Curing zombie villagers and honest trading are the only ways past 60.
Gifts, for people who never needed the sword
A villager at reputation 80 or above will occasionally throw the player a small gift flavoured by their profession: bread from a farmer, cooked cod from a fisherman, paper from a librarian, a poppy from a nitwit. It is a roughly one-in-five chance on a periodic check within 8 blocks, at most one gift per villager per in-game day, and holding a sword is explicitly not required, because a gift given at swordpoint is not a gift. Since intimidation caps at 60, this reward is unreachable by threats.
Tip: The fairness lesson lands without a single line of tutorial text. That is deliberate.
The flinch, and the apology
A villager who hates you, meaning reputation at or below minus 50, visibly flinches when you come within 4 blocks holding a sword: a step back and a small angry puff, at most once every ten seconds. It has no mechanical effect at all; it exists so the world remembers what you did. The way out is a diamond: right-click a villager holding one and every scrap of gossip about you is erased, the diamond is consumed, and the villager accepts your apology.
Tip: The apology wipes good gossip as well as bad, so do not apologise to somebody who already likes you.
