| 1: [Jan 25 1999] Because you asked for it (Biblius) |
| This board's purpose is to enable the discussion of topics related to combat within dartmud. As well as to keep such topics from spilling over onto other boards. |
| 2: [Jan 25 1999] Grappling (Qualinst) |
| I recall a discussion that took place, oh maybe 9 months ago regarding brawling. It was going to incorporate and support some new commands such as subdue, and other non-lethal ways to become victorious in combat. Many people were a part of this discussion, I can't really recall who though. It'd be nice to see something done along those lines. Wrestling moves, perhaps some form of martial arts. Maybe even disarming (which is currently the name of a skill) would become part of that. Qualinst note Bows |
| 3: [Jan 25 1999] bows (Qualinst) |
| Sounds like a cool skill to have. Perhaps in the hexes thrown wouldn't work so well and bows would be needed to attack from row 2, or from some form of missile weapon. Perhaps inside (i.e. not the hexmap) bows would still work, but only in the same room I suggest this because I _think_ that was one of the main concerns about coding bows in the first place. It'd be neat to see 'em, even if they didn't do all that much more than thrown. Qualinst. |
| 4: [Jan 25 1999] Polearms (Qualinst) |
| I'm not sure why these haven't been implemented. Noone ever seems to really want to talk much about them when I bring it up (to creators). Perhaps it's the answer fighters need for animals. If you are in row 1 of your party, you could attack row 2 of another party. *shrug* This is another skill I've seen, and wanted to see something done with. The weapons are already craftable, you just can't learn the skill by using any of them. Qualinst |
| 5: [Jan 25 1999] re: Subdue (Ral) |
| I'm going to take a preemptive shot at the idea for a subdue skill. Here's what I see happening with it... Let's say that a subdue attack was implemented where an attacker could use a weapon like a blackjack to knock out their opponent rather than kill them. I can already see an argument people will have against this idea. "If I'm knocked out, they'll just remove my amulet then give me the final death!" While I personally have a "c'est la vie" attitude about this, it's probably going to have to be dealt with if any form of subdue skill is added. If this is the main reason such a skill would never be implemented, I would suggest, for the sake of progress, that perhaps amulets should only be removably by their wearer. This would pretty much solve the problem of people worried about the final death. Just a thought, since I have a feeling someone else was going to bring up this point with much more enthusiasm than myself. Ral |
| 6: [Jan 26 1999] re: subdue (Nimbus) |
| while I agree that subduing an opponent would be great, the means of doing so is yet unresolved. To me, it would be better to simply have a combat flag akin to "set retaliate = off". However, instead of not initiating combat, the "subdue" flag would limit the final blows. It would direct combat to a focused end. In essence, this would be a high degree usage of aim, with control over the amount of damage inflicted (not to kill). The current combat system produces an unconcious opponent and due to lag and other forces I've always found my quarry slain. However subdue could function in other ways. It could be a function of percise targetting (note necessarily the head). A two-finger upward thrust to the solar plexus or any of wide variety of nerve pinches (even a knee to te groin!).. all could be used to incapacitate or kill. This would be an extension of unarmed combat (brawling). Either it can be built into the current system as a function of brawl/aim combo, or as a standalone skill (or better, a subset of the current skill.. also having to so with the "set" command). As for weapons that subdue, that would be fairly simple to create although a bit too powerful (generally) for the current PC population. A sap or blackjack would fit in okay so long as they require a few parameters be met (that the target be unawear of the attack fully unable to stop it's blow). Thus this sort of weapon would be very useful to thieves and assasins, yet would be barely usable in a direct combat siduation. As has been mentioned, if subdue were a function of brawling one way it could work is by requiring that the target be success- fully grappled and have it's concentration knocked down severly). By such means, a fighter could subdue an opponent alone or someone could grapple an opponent, thus limiting it's ability to defend/attack, leaving the door open for the spank of a blackjack on the noggin. I envision that blackjacks and other such devices would function much akin to the flash spell. Whereas the flash spell is unstoppable, items created for fighters and thieves would be (and have to meet specific criteria for use -- as mentioned above). I'm not sure that low conc is something that will knock out a npc. So for that reason I'd guess things like blackjacks would instead either do the calculation (take npc's current conc, subtract the amount effect of the weapon employed, add/sub any modifiers, and if the result is zero or less set the unconc flag of the npc) -- or directly set the unconc flag for a duration. Since it seems that the near future will see the release of many ancient and powerful spells (some of which are already in select hands), then it doesn't seem unreasonable to give similar functionality to warriors and thieves. Mages take the direct approach to causality, the rest of us must abide by our limitations and hope Lady Luck smiles upon us. -Nimbus |
| 7: [Feb 12 1999] Just an idea... (Euros) |
| Just an idea I came up with while bored, as I always say, I know nothing of code and what can and can't be done, but what about jousting? The way I thought it would work was like this: Say polearm were in. I ask Qualinst to joust and he accepts. The computer does all the calculations from here. (Hmm, just realized Qualinst is a she.) Anyway, you give polearm, riding, and shield use skill checks. So, to make this easy for me, say we both have average riding, etc, with average aptitudes, but Qualinst has 3 more polearm improves than I do. So the computer does a random roll for both of us. (Totally unrelated to skill or anything.) So I roll a 75, and Qualinst rolls a 74. The skill check comes in and with Qualinst additional improves in polearm, she could receive some sort of minor bonus. She wins, I fall over my horse's bottom. This way, the more skilled person h as a good chance of winning, but will most likely not win consistently. (As I feel is the case when it comes to jousting.) And the lesser skilled person has a decent chance of winning, especially if the two people are close in skill. I'm sure that was a bad example with bad numbers, there should be a chance that both fall off their horses, or none do. (Maybe depending on the difference in rolls?) Most likely the weapon will break on impact, and the loser will fall off her horse. The fall should not be a bad one, minor bruises and such. They usually stand up right after to engage in battle, right? If not, perhaps agility, acrobatics, or armor class checks? If the loser is seriously outclassed, maybe a broken arm or something. Technically the damage could be grave indeed, but I posted this up as a game like dice or fishing, just something to do when two fighters are bored out of their minds. With the world out there, consequences are often serious enough, so when one takes a break from adventuring, a little harmless fun might be nice. Euros |
| 8: [Feb 12 1999] Additional thoughts. (Euros) |
| Maybe an additional modifier on top of the random numbers could be a sort of rock-scissors-paper deal...aim high, aim mid, aim low. The winner of the RSP gets another small modifier. Also, War Horses from Tobermore could be put back in (debugged, if that's why they were taken out), trained up, which gives a bonus in the riding vs riding skill check. A normal horse from the hexes can be used, but little or no modifier, maybe small one if mastered, though his riding skill still gets checked, just with no modifier. |
| 9: [Feb 19 1999] re: jousting (Nimbus) |
| A bout a month ago I recall someone saying they were working on just such a thing, Euros. It was just about the time that people started getting all excited about polearms (again). What's become of that project I don't know, but it certainly would be a nice addition. My question is.. although horses/warhorses would be cool.. what about jousting with non-traditional animals? Jousting on elephants would seem a bit difficult and I'm sure they'd need to be trained to charge and to not gore the opposing mount. However, a battle between mounts might be kind of cool... something else to bet on :-) -Nimbus Ps. Euros, anything can be made with code.. if there is a sharp mind involved. :-) |
| 10: [Feb 20 1999] Re: Nimbus (Euros) |
| I thought a little about that, divisions could be implemented by players based on size, and mount (besides whatever the code takes into account.) A halfling jousting an orc is probably at a disadvantage if strength is a factor, not sayin that characters like Fergus wouldn't do extremely well, though. Wolves and elephants can be made into separate divisions, no way a gnome on a wolf is going to joust a sasquatch on an elephant without there being serious problems. Of course, that can be solved ICly by the players, if the gnome is willing to joust that sasquatch, so be it, I'm sure there'll be a few healers present to clean up the mess. Differences in the same types of mounts could be taken into account as well- stallion vs clydesdale, each with their own advantages and d disadvantages..speed and strength of the mount. How well the animal is trained could be an advantage as well. (The gnomes on the wolves would only serve as pre game entertainment, of course.) Euros |
| 11: [Feb 21 1999] Blackjacks (Gered) |
| An important thing to remember about those particular tools, is they're pretty much useless if the target has any decent head protection. Armets or heaumes, for example, would make blackjacking impossible, and lesser coverings like coifs would still seriously impede it. Gered |
| 12: [Feb 23 1999] re: Blackjacks (Ral) |
| An interesting point. Armored headgear would provide some protection from a blackjack. But since this is an ooc board, I'll bring in a little real-life example of headgear not negating that type of damage. The university I go to gets a little silly sometimes, like around the Halloween festival and the Daylight Savings Time change, when students are forced out of the bars a whole hour early. Last year some cops started a riot by wading into students in riot gear and mounted on horses. Guess they didn't like a few hundred students walking around on the streets at such an odd hour. At any rate, one of these cops had an empty bottle of Jack Daniels lobbed at his head from a nearby student and was knocked out. The officer was in full riot gear, which includes a visored helmet. A blackjack swung by a skilled and burly person leaping from the shadows would inflict a wee bit more damage than an empty fifth, I'm betting. Just tossing in the usual gibberish, Ral |
| 13: [Feb 23 1999] Peek. (Euros) |
| Here's an idea for the thieves out there...what about a peek skill? Lift that flap on the backpack, sneak a little look... Now you know what kinda person you're dealing with. I mean, a thief can pilfer stuff out of a pack already, but what a waste of time to find that newbie you were picking on only had a few empty moneybags and a rusty dagger in his pack. If you could take a stealthy peek first, and see that he really has a Lesser Portal book you could certainly use, then maybe you may sit and hold friendly conversation with him a bit longer... On a similar thread, what about a show command, where players could show you their bags, packs, keyrings, swords, etc, and you could see what's in them, in the case of containers, or their long descs, in the case of individual items. Euros |
| 14: [Feb 24 1999] Blackjack (Nimbus) |
| Although blackjacks may have their faults, another option would be the introduction of garrots. A simple attack, sneak up and wrap a cord (with handles at the ends) around the victim's neck. Then tighten and lift (if able) until the body sags like a bag of wet grain. Most armor in the game is open at the face, or possibly extending to the chin.. but that leaves the neck exposed to this sort of attack. Brawling and strength should be factors both for victim and asassin. Armor would only be effective if it secured the neck. A poor asassin might cause the victim to passout, while a skilled may break the victim's neck. The thief class was never really made as a separate class from fighters, therefore there are a lot of possibilities for improvement. -Nimbus |
| 15: [Feb 25 1999] RE: neck protection. (Rhun) |
| A coif is a chainmail hood that covers the wearer's head, neck and shoulders. A Bascinet has an attached piece of chain mail called a 'camail' that extends from the lower edge of the helmet to cover the neck and shoulders. Plate armor should include a 'gorget' which is a metal collar which would also protect the neck (note that an armet usually was worn with a gorget.) Also, the heaume, or 'great helm' would protect the neck unless the wearer had their head tilted back. Rhun -- who knows entirely too much trivia about medieval armor. l |
| 16: [Mar 11 1999] I suck. (Open for debate.) (Euros) |
| Okay, I've talked about this with several people off the boards, but I find that I repeat myself a lot, especially to the same people, so I'm going to post a final note for posterity, and hopefully never mention it again. Just a bit ago, I tried to destroy Grashlin's left hand so my cat could get some exercise. I put my aim at 175,bonus at 75, speed at 50. My aim blows really isn't too shabby, but I wound up hitting Grashlin's head, legs, and body more than the limb I was actually aiming for. I'd say I hit his left hand about 4 times before he gave in and died on me, which took lots of hits, being and elf and all. This isn't too bad, I suppose, since some of the time I can actually grind the limb off before he dies. So after that bout of fighter depression, I went to talk to Qualinst, and we had a short discussion of fighting. Strength is way to important to the fighter's career. I know I'm probably the only one who constantly complains about it, but given that every other weak fighter has opted for a more suitable race (which I definitely can't blame them for, every time I attack something bigger than I tiger, I wish I was born an orc or catfolk), I guess I'm a pretty decent example. I'm not saying strength shouldn't be a factor. Someone brought up the point that yes, an ogre will always hit harder than an elf or gnome. This is true, but when it's an ogre with able skills and an elf with about 1600 improves on the ogre, I don't see why the elf loses in the being deadly category. Yes, the ogre won't be able to hit, but in the cases when both are attacking something that they can both hit, like an elephant, this is when it shows. One point Qualinst brought up was yes, an ogre is vastly more strong, but whether or not he can use that strength should be reflected in his skills, and just because something is weaker, doesn't mean it's not deadly. I agree totally with her here. The reason is, when I view combat here on dartmud, it's really not who can take off the most hit points in one swing. The phrase 'You hit X's head with destructive force with your X' can be a little misleading. An eye poke, or a thrust into a tendon in the shoulder would have the same results as totally beating a limb to a bloody pulp with a club. If anything, the quick efficient thrusts would just be that... more quick and efficient. With the lack of brute strength, I'd imagine this is how an elf would fight. And though it doesn't say so exactly, this is what I imagine when I hit something in the head with destructive force. Not totally obliterating it, just doing the important parts. Another thing is strength isn't calculated into aptitude, yet it's a huge bonus (multiplier). So why not make it part of an aptitude, so if the weaker fighter trains harder, he still has a chance to gain some sort of respect without saying, 'I have agaawel offensive. I know it looks like fair at best, but it's true.' Of course, this leads to another problem, which would be that even stronger races would fight like me, if I were the standard, the ogre would only have what, 200 or so improves on me at the same skill level, but he'd still hit pretty badly. The same thing goes for mages and power and intelligence and all that, I know I posted it somewhere else. One mage with average power, and another with 250 power, the more power laden mage may have an advantage of aura, but I don't think it's as much as strength gives. Besides, the average powered mage can make up for his deficiency in aura with more spell casting skill. I'm pretty sure I'll never hit Kala or an elephant harder than just a normal hit, and with really not much progress in skill levels left, this is a bit depressing. Varied races really do nothing, the way things are set up now. In the search for best performance with skill level, any interesting race really has no chance. Humans, catfolk, orcs and trolls, possibly dwarves are the only races this mud needs (a who at any given time shows players feel this way too.) If you actually got this far into the note, thanks for listening, and I meant no insult to anyone, including spyder fighters, mages, and people that have changed race. A response would be welcome, I really want to discuss this. Euros, the elf with an inferiority complex. |
| 17: [Mar 14 1999] Re: suck.. (Nimbus) |
| Agreed, aim doesn't work (even at high skill). With low skilled (low stats?) opponents Nimbus can hit what he's aiming at fairly well. Switch to a skilled opponent and aim drops dramtically. (I think it's based on stats not skill - reason being that when Nimbus fights the Target he can't hit the ring he wants (except by random chance). That's pretty bad considering my character is in the top 1percent of skilled combatants. Btw, I don't think daring works much better. I don't use it much, but I seem to do better with bonus and speed than b/d/s. Maybe daring works.. maybe someone could comment about that. I'm not sure how effecting aim should be, but I expect that at high levels (ootb+) hitting your mark should be easy.. and at high levels (virtuoso+) hitting the mark should be in the 90+ percentile. However, a change of that nature would mean that NPCs would be able to kill more effectively as well. Would players find that to be a problem? Personally.. I'd find it more realistic. (ps.. halve the conc hit with thrown..atleast!..and increase the casting time of firebolts. I throw that out a lot because Celetar, when he "broke" thrown, he said it was to make thrown in par with gfb.. he missed the target!). -Nimbus |
| 18: [Mar 15 1999] Re: Nimbus. (Euros) |
| Daring is a bit useful, in its own right. For example, a while back, when brawling with Lialah, I noticed I could hit her harder with daring. Daring also helps you hit things that you wouldn't usually have an easy time hitting, stuff that usually parries you. (Although I don't think Nimbus has a problem with this.) The bad part is, I notice daring makes you miss a lot, and you get a lot more sloppy with what you hit. Oops, when I meant I could hit lialah harder, I meant putting daring in along with offensive. In both cases, actually. Daring alone causes you to hit lighter, and more rarely. When I'm in serious mode, I don't use daring at all, because every hit needs to count, and daring isn't dependable enough. But it could be, if you couldn't hit your target at all, and leg shots and all that would be and improvement. This is just personal experience, I've heard other things about daring, but I'm not sure how well they work, since I've never noticed. Euros |
| 19: [Mar 15 1999] Daring and Offensive (Spiffy) |
| I think they are both 2 different types of fighting.. The game defines offensive as careful fighting.. or should I say controlled fighting.. Daring is like wild.. I guess offensive works better with aim and stuff.. Thats the way I always saw it.. I also thought that Control was effective against daring and parry was more effective against aim and offensive.. That may be why you hit some targets more when using daring.. maybe they just have worse control than they do parry.. Spiffy Spiffy whoops.. am I making any sense? I cant even hardly understand myself sometimes. |
| 20: [Mar 16 1999] offensive, daring and aim (Bond) |
| as for me, if I were to go on serious combat I'll use only bonus and speed as I've found out a few things 1. daring does helps, hits harder and u miss more, I rather use more speed or bonus to compensate on the hard hit 2. aim works like 50 50 percent chances on fighting except when u're bushing, it seems to work quite well though I would suggest have a percentage of hits successful for aim for each level and daring, if pumped more, and the opponent's control is lower than the total skill for your daring + how much its pumped I meant make a calculation using these 2 it would meant harder hits like what its now or maybe add conc blown to it cause a wild fighter does makes my heart beats faster Bond |
| 21: [Mar 19 1999] Will (Spiffy) |
| I would like a creators input on this if possible.. what good is will for a fighter? I know its useful for channeling and scrying and stuff but is there anything else that affects aside from magery? There really arent vampires we have to worry about Unless it does something else.. Spiffy |
| 22: [Mar 19 1999] Re: Will (Merkle) |
I always thought that the higher your will was the faster you recoverd from conc hits...I could be wrong though. -Merkle |
| 23: [Mar 20 1999] re: Will (Eddard) |
| Will does help recover conc, so I guess that makes it good for sd and ma. Will also plays a large part in determining your teaching aptitude, a skill many of us are fond of. It's also good for scrying (which any warrior can do with a decent will). There are a couple of other things, but then you'd have nothing left to discover :) Hope this helped, -Eddard |
| 24: [Mar 21 1999] Re: will (Spiffy) |
| I know it provides some protection against Vampires.. but since there are really none around worth worrying about.. I have heard about conc but I havnt really noticed a difference. My teaching apt did improve but I thought that was attributed to my small increase in intelligence. Anyway.. Thanks Spiffy |
| 25: [Mar 23 1999] Re: Spiffy. (Euros) |
| Teaching seems to be a combination of intelligence, and will, it seems.. Although I'm fairly smart, my aptitude is a lot lower than my intelligence.. and as an elf, i have sorta bad will, which would explain it. Also, will helps out riding and animal training, although riding seems to be a combination with agility as well. euros |
| 26: [Mar 25 1999] Fighting (Eddard) |
| Ok, I give up. Warriors fight, right? We may craft or practice stealth, but in general, we fight, and that about sums us up. So why is it so ungodly hard to get into the war or destruction alignments? I just don't get it. I haven't crafted or snuck around, done any considerable teaching, or done anything at all other than straight fighting. Yet for more than a month of this, with many hours put in, I just can't get rid of passion. What's going on?! -Eddard P.S. Since fighting certainly wasn't working, I tried everything from incessant flipping to invoking scrolls of yfb. Nothing seems to work |
| 27: [Mar 26 1999] re:Fighting (Nimbus) |
| As it was mentioned long ago.. in a realm far far away.. What fighters expect: "We are justice! We kill and maim. Destruction and chaos is our way of life. Our weapons taste blood and gore every day. We smell it, taste it, it is in our lungs and in our hearts. We are not all the same and thus reason our methods differently, yet we all know that where we tread, death follows." What fighters get: "You attack, an act of war. You kill, an act of death. Yet these two balance out so you are left with the remainder (nothing). Fighting is mundane. " In the past (original DM), alignment was less complex (either good or evil and it was adjusted based upon how much your own alignment value differed from that which you killed. Warriors/mage/thief all shared the same alignment system and were equally subject to "bad alignment". As as this flavor of DM goes.. being a combatant carries no alignment weight. However a mage can alter their alignment at will. A while back I (and others) commented about how easy it was for smiths and farmers to obtain a passionate alignment and requested that fighting get similarily weighted. End result.. smithing and farming alignment was vastly decreased. I guess the motto of this story is... "Request equality and you'll get a kick in the crotch." -Nimbus Ps. Bashing doors is one way to get a war alignment.. although it's also one way to die rather quickly. Since most doors are beyond anyone's bashing skill, bashing seems to be yet another skill that has been effectively killed (so much for fighters being destructive.. :-/ |
| 28: [Mar 29 1999] GFBs. (Gered) |
| A couple of disadvantages to GFB though, that you didn't mention. 1) It has a nasty habit of backfiring and killing the caster. 2) It can really only safely be used by most people while in the right alignment, otherwise #1 happens. 3) With the exception of the troll aura-gods, very few people can manage more than a couple GFBs at a time. After that, they're stuck for half an hour waiting for aura. 4) Foci are only a partial solution to #3. Apart from needing the right spells (many people don't have them) or filling up one's hands with webs (if they can get them), making a large enough focus to matter takes quite a bit of channelling. Half an hour of work for a couple of GFB hits is pretty mild compared to what a half-skilled fighter could do in that amount of time. That said, throwing should probably be reexamined. I think a solution to it might be to allow it to do better damage, but have it take time to execute, rather than being an 'instant' effect as it is now. Damage and throwing speed could easily be at least partially tied to the size of the weapon. Darts are fast, but not very damaging, whereas a large spear would be slower and more dangerous. Gered |
| 29: [Mar 29 1999] An addendum. (Gered) |
| Please check my post on the mage board concerning a way to keep a revised throwing skill balanced in respect to mages and casting. Gered |
| 30: [Mar 29 1999] Re: 29 (Euros) |
| I know Gered said thrown damage could be *partially* tied to size of the weapon, but I just want to throw a few points in anyway. First off, I can't throw a large weapon, much less wield it. Things that should be throwable (darts, rocks) are either too light or too heavy. That's not the pont, what is, is an average sized person throwing a sword like a zweihander and doing more damage for it is unpractical. Having size directly proportional to damage is just wrong. Sure, a twelve foot ogre might get away with it, but it's heavy, slow, and probably won't fly the way you want it to. Secondly, when I imagine thrown, I tend to think of the sly type, a quick-wristed person who produces daggers out of nowhere and pokes his target full of them before she has time to blink. I don't disagree with delays for game functionality, but what I'm getting at is any weapon, even a dagger, can be deadly is used properly (whether thrown, thrusted or swung.) I think that's really the problem with smaller races, like mohnkees, who can't wield anything larger than Gurne's dagger one handed. A blade placed nicely between the ribs would definitely hurt someone, regardless if it is size 15 or size 150. I only had two points, but writing those reminded me of a third..awkwardness of weapons. After a weapon reaches a certain size/weight, it becomes awkward to its wielder. This makes sense, but there's nothing to offset this penalty except strength. With agaawel sword skills, weaker people will never be able to handle a longsword correctly, until they start over or reinc into a body with at least average strength. Maybe certain weapons should all have a difficulty, ie, a katana takes more skill to use properly than a shortsword would. (Dunno if it's true, just an example.) Higher sword skill means you can use a difficult weapon more efficiently. This actually brings me to yet ANOTHER point, body shopping seems more common than it ever was, but I'll save that for next time. Euros |
| 31: [Mar 29 1999] Weapon sizes. (Gered) |
| I had in mind actual throwing weapons when I said that. Chucking daggers is going to be a lot faster than hurling a spear at someone, but that spear is going to hurt a lot more than one of those daggers. Gered |
| 32: [Mar 30 1999] Thrown and stuff (Tsnilauq) |
| I have to agree with the point that was brought up about a thrown spear being able to cause more damage than a thrown dagger...but on the same note, shouldn't it be harder to throw a spear properly? When I say "harder to throw" I mean both more show health finger connor skill being required for an accurate throw, and more of a conc hit, than I think a smaller, faster dagger would require. Another thing I'd like to bring up is a possible new skill, or just a new "check" being made during combat.....One for a critical hit. I have to agree with Euros both in saying that strength is way to important for fighters, and that a non-strong elf (or gnome) should be able to deal a precision blow to their enemy in a critical spot (heart, lungs, throat, etc.) to compensate for their lack of strenght. Possibly this could be based on aim ,and dext or something, since usually the weaker races do possess more dext than the larger, stronger races. Tsnilauq the gnome |
| 33: [Mar 31 1999] Thrown vs GFB (Nimbus) |
'For creators who don't want to wade through this note: 'Thrown needs the following fixxes: much lower conc hit, 'and more influence by aim. 'For those who have missed the old battle over the thrown 'skill here is a little background: Initially thrown was 'a fairly easy skill to perform. Too easy it seems in the 'eyes of some people. Some folks likened it to GFB. And 'thus the following is a spawn of that contension. '|A Comparison between Thrown Skill and Green_Fire_Bolt: | '|--------------------------------------------------------| '| T H R O W N | G F B | '|--------------------------------------------------------| '|Adv: Ranged Attack | Adv: Ranged Attack | '| Fast "throw" time | Fast "throw" time | '| Silent attack | Silent attack | '| | Hits unerringly | '|Learning Aid: Thrown Knife | Learning Aid: Book, weight | '| | | '|Only ranged attack | One of many | '| | | '|Dependant upon: Strength | Dependant upon: aura | '| Obj weight | alignment | '| this skill | this skill | '| Aimed blows| | '| | | '|Use limited by: #items avil| Use limited by: aura | '| conc | conc | '| skill level| skill level| '| | *extras | '|Front row combat effect: | Front row combat effect: | '| Compounds conc hit | Spell disruption likely | '|Rear Attack effect: None | Rear Attack effect: None | '| | | '|Percentage of missing: 50 | Percentage of missing: 0 | '| Based on: Aim skill | Based on: none | '| | | '|Failure damage : none | Failure = : nothing or | '| | death(uncommon)| '| | | '|Damage: factor of str,skil,| Damage: constant (hard!) | '| defender's skills, | | '| weight of throw obj| | '| | | '|Downfall: Two+ throws and | Downfall: Mana costly, | '| you are too confused to | casting successive GFB | '| fight ..easily killed. | may deplete mana. | '| | | '|Pitfalls: Highly dependant | Pitfalls: Requires Able+ | '| on strength. The best | skill to cast (else | '| thrown weapon breaks in | likely to backfire - but | '| combat. Makes user too | can be cast anytime prior| '| vulnverable to be used in| as well). | '| real combat siduations. | | '| | | '|Rear attack functionality: | Rear attack functionality: | '| Same as frontal attack | Multiple uses, can be | '| minus extra conc combat | supplimented by focused | '| hits. If fighter's conc | items or OSS. Can be | '| is bad then the fighter | supplimented by other | '| is useless. | Combat/defensive spells. | '| | | '|Minimal learned skills: 1 | Minimal learned skills: 4 | '| (this skill) | Channelling, casting, | '| | lg or pg, this skill. | '| | If altered like summon | '| | spell, then the total is | '| | 7 (incl. rfb,yfb,ofb) | '========================================================== '*Note: In reguards to front row attacks it is listed as 'a mage's GFB is "likely" to be disrupted. The first GFB 'if set as attack response is triggered prior to combat. '(This information is 2nd-hand, I have not tested it myself.) 'Thereafter, any spell the mage tries to cast while in the 'front row will be disrupted - if the mage is hit. 'I've probably missed a few things above but it seems 'well covered. It should be noted though that GFB was only 'used as a comparison (initially) because damages for 'both were similar. However, if you make the same comparison 'using YFB,OFB,RFB,DB,DK or any of the other offensive or 'defensive spells that mages can possess then the spell 'advantages far out-weigh thrown. GFB is a dangerous 'spell to both it's user and target, yet it's still the 'favored spell of mages. Thrown on the other hand has 'been raped and is of little use to fighters, except in 'that it is the only ranged attack they possess. 'Also something that should be addressed for this 'comparison is the learning factors. As far as I'm awear, 'all spells can be improved through books (although writing 'a highly skilled level of GFB would be quite difficult 'and time consuming). Spells can also be increased by use 'of weight. Thrown has none of these aids, nor does any 'combat skill. Thrown does have craftable throwing knives 'although their helpfulness falls off quite quickly. 'A mage can learn thrown and a fighter can learn GFB, 'however the fighter has to become proficient in atleast 'three other skills prior to attempting GFB and it would 'take a very long time before a fighter achieved sufficient 'casting and GFB levels to be able to use GFB in combat, 'whereas the mage could be combat ready in a quarter of 'the time (theoretically). ' 'There is quite a bit more that can be said about thrown '(Euros is doing a fine job of that). However, the only 'usefulness of this message can be summed up quickly. 'Summary: The comparison of thrown to GFB is a bad one. 'To give fighters back a reasonable measure of ranged 'attack ability the thrown skill needs the following 'augmentations: (first and foremost) half or quarter the 'conc hit. If it is a non-factored variable then do as 'above, else change the weight ratios of the skills 'required to use the skill (1*strength,3*aim,1*dex, '1*detail). 2. If an object can be lifted, it should be 'throwable (factor the weight of the obj vs pc's max 'carry weight). 'If critical hits were added then this would be a 'perfect venue for it. It also would take some stress 'off of fighters who feel vulnerable in combat in 'that their only avenue is to learn to sneak and 'ambush. Fighters are not just cannon fodder, they 'are also strategists.. if given the tools to be so. 'Ps: ' If people want to contintue comparing GFB to thrown, 'GFB needs the following changes: alter the "unerring hit" 'to match thrown(it hits..maybe..and might do little 'or no damage). And throw in a heafty conc hit that renders 'the mage ineffective for the rest of the battle. Oh, 'and you might as well trash all the other ranged attack 'spells since fighters only have the *one* ranged attack. |
| 34: [Apr 01 1999] Thrown (Yoda) |
| I was reading that throwing a spear would be more difficult than throwing a knife. I think it may take more strength to throw a spear than a dagger, but I don't know that it takes more skill. IRL, I could stick a spear in the side of a barn 9 out of 10 times I think. If I were throwing a dagger or knife, maybe half that. More often than not, I'll hit the barn with the handle end of the knife. Maybe I'm just clueless and doing it wrong. But if that's the case, It seems I have to learn more to throw a knife than a spear. Another thing I read, was that bigger weapons would be slower when thrown. While to a certain degree, I agree, but I think the size of the weapon size vs the strength/speed of the thrower would be the real factor. An ogre can probably throw a longsword just fine since his strength is ungodly. A gnome however, is likely going to have problems throwing short sword. The down side to linking damage done to weapon size in this manner is that it still pushing more emphasis on the strength stat which is already too important in my oppinion. But then again, it doesn't make sense for a small weapon to do same amount of damage as a large one. I think a arrow to a human, would be the equivalent of a spear to a gnome. Maybe the small fingers with the better dexterity could throw and "Arrow/tiny spear" much more effectively than an average human, but to me, that seems a little unlikely. Hope this note made some sense. Yoda . |
| 35: [Apr 01 1999] Throwing weapons (Spiffy) |
| There are different types of spears.. Throwing spears and spears used for thrusting into the loins of your enemies and watching the blood splatt.. er umm anyway I think there should be different types of weapons craftable especially for throwing like throwing spears, and javelens, maybe throwing stars.. Throwing axes etc.. Anyway.. It may be harder to throw a regular spear but a throwing spear is weighted for throwing.. easier to toss and stuff. Perhaps throwing weapons should be easier on the conc to throw than non throwing weapons. That could be an idea.. Spiffy * whoops |
| 36: [Apr 01 1999] new weapons (Spiffy) |
| Since I am on the topic of weapons.. I think it would be cool to be able to throw Oil vials and such and they could break and coat the target in oil.. or not depending on if you hit or not. Anyway you could have a fuse in it lit or swing a torch at someone and catch them on fire.. Maybe we could implement a stop drop and roll command ;) Spiffy |
| 37: [Apr 02 1999] spears (Fergus) |
| I think a spear is basically a long stick with a point on the end. You can throw it or stab someone with it. Maybe the blade on the end would change, but I don't see too much difference from one spear to the next. A Javelon would be more of a distance spear, but I'm not sure why you would want to try and attack something from 50 yards away. Unless it was just that ferocious. But then again, attacking Shelob or Azarak from that far away might have saved me an [34mamulet[0m a time or two. Oh yeah, being a distance spear, I wouldn't think it would have the characteristics to do serious damage. An I would think, if I saw it coming from that distance, I could easily step aside. But that's just my feelings on the matter. Maybe I'm clueless, but I guess it doesn't hurt to throw ouot an oppinion. [33mFergus[0m |
| 38: [Apr 03 1999] More thrown! (Yay!) (Euros) |
| Reading all the arguments (each with their own good points), I'm beginning to think thrown should not be compared to gfb in any manner. Aside from animals, gfb is the major source of firepower the mages have, while we fighters (the stronger ones at least, not going to go into THAT discussion again) have the capability to sling 'gfb's' round after round without getting tired. Nimbus did bring up two really good points, which I'll restate since I think they make a lot of sense. One - gfb NEVER, ever misses. Sure it can do really crappy damage if you haven't practiced it, but I don't think any mage is really willing to go into serious battle with cruddy skill. The second - thrown does take a lot of concentration for damage done. If I'm not mistaken, in the 'modifying' of thrown, both the concentration penalty AND damage were lowered. Which is a bit extreme. On the other hand, with maybe one or two exceptions, anyone with decent thrown can do as much or more damage with a held sword quicker and with less concentration penalty. Mages have no chance when it comes to facing a fighter one on one - they're not supposed to. And someone else made a good point (was it Phylogeny? i've heard so much on the topic I forget); an unprepared fighter is just as dead as an unprepared mage. I don't care how big, bad and buff a mage is, if he's being swung at with a sword, there really isn't a way he's not going to lose his concentration.. mages are the big, bad guns that stay in the back ranks and drop the other party's members from a safe distance. The way disruptions work is just fine, I think. I just can't see how a mage can spend hours locked away somewhere with a target or pet, come out with a high gfb skill and be prepared to launch them like a seasoned battlemage. Maybe a new skill for mages should come in. (Yeah, they have enough skills as is, but frankly, every mage usually learns every spell with little or no specializing, a healer can learn 20 new ways to kill another person with magic and be just fine as long as her alignment is right, so just hear me out.) A concentration skill for the battle oriented mage. As mages launched spells in real combat, without practice casts, and at real targets, his ability to handle combat without screaming and running away would increase. The average mage goes into battle with little more than robes, he's not going to hang around a place where skilled fighters are dropping unless he's really confident in his skills and experienced on the battlefield. A mage is a mage, a healer is a mage with sometimes rarer spells.. To be fair, the same could be said for fighters. The skill woulnd't make you run away, it would just help you complete your casts without dropping bricks, and help successful casts (a bonus even, if you concentration skill was high enough). |
| 39: [Apr 03 1999] more.. (Euros) |
| Okay, seems Gered had already posted a similar idea, and that was argued about on another board... I hadn't intended for my concentration skill to mean mages could take hits and still cast, I meant it to decide whether they could cast at all. Mages would still be interrupted any way they are now, maybe more. Eddard brought up a really good point, with a skill like concentration, it wouldn't stop mages from hiding behind a wall of animals, entirely safe, even from ranged attacks. So, just to let you know, if I misled anyone, that's not what I meant. And yes, LSAa is going to be tweaked, and other more powerful spells are going to be put in. I imagine one or two landsharks would take a bit longer to kill than a few falcons, all the while the mage is shooting stuff at you. Another note, in my last post, I had entirely forgotten the argument about thrown and gfb was in regards to ranged attacks, not normal, so I did mess up a bit. Euros |
| 40: [Apr 03 1999] Concentration in that respect... (Gered) |
| Is already covered by the spell skills themselves. If you're not skilled enough/expending enough fof your power, the spell will fizzle or backfire. All that would be accomplished by adding a concentration skill on top of that would be to make it much harder on novice casters. (And, if it was designed so there's always a chance of fizzle regardless, I would bet that serious-backfire spells like reinc would suddenly become a lot harder to convince people to cast.) Gered |
| 41: [Apr 03 1999] Reinc shouldn't be affected, if I understand right (Tsnilauq) |
| I think they were saying that in combat a mage with a lower concentration skill would have a harder time maintaining their focus and being able to cast spells properly. It shouldn't effect any reincs, unless you start doing reincs in combat situations. Tsnilauq |
| 42: [Apr 03 1999] In combat... (Gered) |
| A mage already has a hard enough time maintaining concentration in combat. The slightest little nick disrupts casting, whether by melee, weapon, or opposing spell. The only spell that isn't subject to disruption is Tell, because it casts instantly. Gered |
| 43: [Apr 04 1999] Concentration. (Euros) |
| Nope, what I had in mind refered to combat only, anything a mage would try and cast to kill or harm another player. armor and healing cast in battle could be affected as well, but reincs, jonathans, the like woulnd't be affected, of course..unless done in battle. And mages already have a hard time casting in combat? I really don't hear of many mages who die in combat because someone disrupted them, unless they were being silly. Like I said, a mage shoulnd't be casting in melee. Thrown can disrupt casting even from behind a safe wall of feathers, but how fast can someone throw something? A trigger for 'X begins casting a spell' could be disastrous. And as for opposing spell, if you start casting before the other mage does, I don't see how you'd be interrupted. Euros |
| 44: [Apr 04 1999] Seems we're off on a tangent. (Nimbus) |
| Seeing how we're off talking about mage skills/spells there's one thing that I find a bit problemistic with spells.. namely the casting time. Anyone who has played a caster and has learned multiple spells of a similar type (heal_*, bolts, ect..).. any spell that is a variation of another - they all have the same casting time. Bolts are silently cast and have a time of 2, healing spells are 6, summon ..I don't remember. But anyhow, it seems to me that if a spell is harder to cast it should be equally adjusted in reguards to throw time, ..not only damage, diff, and cost. Doesn't it seem a bit odd that a mage (highly skilled) could cast such powerful spells so quickly? Look at Reinc or Ress.. both are powerful spells, but have long casting times. Both of those are very vocal (spammy) and difficult to master. Should it be so much easier to kill someone than it is to restore them? (notice I threw in combat there at the end so it fits on this board's charter). -Nimbus .. I could be totally wrong.. |
| 45: [Apr 04 1999] Bolts silent? (Raven) |
| Since when are firebolts silent? Speaking as someone who got killed by a firebolt within recent memory, I definitely saw the caster cast at least one of them. And yes, it's always a lot easier to break stuff than it is to put it back together. R. |
| 46: [Apr 04 1999] Firebolts are... (Gered) |
| Not silent. The only way they can be made so is to OSS them so they can be instantly triggered, but that's a different story, and applies equally to any other spell used with OSS. Mind affecting spells are the only ones that have silence among them, and not all of them are. Gered |
| 47: [Apr 04 1999] Bolts silent? (Patrick) |
| Thats funny... never has any bolts spells been silent. And for goodness sake spells like gfb is not as easy to learn as you think. My recent two deaths cause by gfb backfire proved it and I am above proficient on that spells. Patrick |
| 48: [Apr 04 1999] .. one thing (Nimbus) |
| Please don't try to suggest you know what I think. I do know a few things. However, it sometimes takes a stupid question to rile ppl into posting. As for spells in general, I have never stated that they are easy to learn. However, *some* are easier to learn than others. Spells in general have more learning aids than other skills. Not that it's a bad thing, it's just something to keep in mind. As for thrown, I can honestly state that I've spent over a year (not constant) working on Nimbus' thrown skill and it is being extremely stubborn. I've practiced many spells and gotten them up levels expodentially faster (not with Nimbus). However, I've also not utilized any teachers with this skill. Then again there don't seem to be too many new (since the change) throwers with much skill in thrown. For the time being, lets separate thrown and spells. There really is no reason to compare the two except for the want of something to argue about. GFB is probably the most powerful (common) offensive spell to *most* mages. Thrown is probably the most useless skill to fighters (yet there are so few, we have to fight to keep it). Thrown could be powerful. It could be a viable combat option. At the momment it is neither*, but we are always hopeful. *Note: The effectiveness of a throw attempt has many factors and the conc level of the thrower is directly propotional. The only effective throw is the first. Combat does not last long enough for a second throw. Throwing multiple items in successing leads to problems. The first item hits or misses at full power, the next item at half, and if you try for more you'll likely miss everytime (not to mention your mind will be so blown that fighting is strictly out). Extremely high willed characters may have better luck. But that's not to say that only dwarves, ogres, ect.. should be the only races that can throw effectively (as Euros stated). Nimbus |
| 49: [Apr 05 1999] Thrown.. with dwarves and ogres (Spiffy) |
| conc say whoops heh I really dont think dwarves and ogres really have an advantage in thrown when it comes to will. Spiffy's apt for thrown is poor, I believe its because of poor dex but im not sure. Anyway I dont believe an ogre would be much better. I have tried learning thrown and have only managed 3 plusses in that skill. I havn't practiced it much more.. Spiffy |
| 50: [Apr 05 1999] Ogres throwing? (Rhun) |
| Rhun's aptitude for thrown is even worse: a beginner. I believe it depends on agility and distance vision...which ogres are not too good at. *If* I could actually get the skill up with these poor apts, I'd have to get it much higher to even hit. Strength would probably play a part in the damage, but so does aptitude. As for an ogre's will...you don't even want to go there :) Rhun |
| 51: [Apr 05 1999] I'm in! (Euros) |
| Yeah, I think Rhun's right about the aptitude thing. My thrown aptitude is able, but this body lacks in the distance and agility category. However, my will is the same as Rhun's, so there. Also, I hear varying things about aptitude. One is a low aptitude will make it harder to learn the skill, on the flip side, you just need to get it higher to be where everyone elses' is. Catfolk lockpickers, troll thieves.. the point being, it's not consistent. Not all things can be made up for with harder work. I've said that before, I know. A fighter/thief that's a troll can be just as sly as a mohnkee with hard work, but the mohnkee will never slam like the troll does. Also, there are ogres are there with monstrous thrown. Nothing like a greataxe splitting my body in half lengthwise while my daggers are bouncing off his lumpy skin. I've gotten my thrown up to a decent level, but have all but stopped practicing since the changes..like Nimbus said, can't pick up a lump of coal and get a few more improves for difficulty. in face, most decent throwers out there probably nearly got where they are before the changes. Euros |
| 52: [Apr 05 1999] Re: Thrown again.. and Aptitude (Spiffy) |
| I take that back about my apt.. I looked again and its Beginner.. Spiffy |
| 53: [Apr 06 1999] Mess about thrown (Sarderic) |
| Something that bothers me about this discussion is that for some reason, everyone expects to be able to do EVERYTHING. To me, thrown seems like it is more of a thief skill, or at least a skill less desirable to those who have the ability to wield a sword or other weapon well. I think one drawback to the whole problem is that as it stands, a mage can utilize the most powerful forces of healing, then go and farm for a few hours, feed their friends, cast some practice bolt spells, and then go kill something. To me, this doesn't make any sence, although I dont think making other disciplines just as versatile is the way to go. IF you want to be a sneaky, non-hand-to-hand combat player, then learn those skills as well as thrown. Certain races are better at those things anyhow, and that makes sense. But I strongly disagree that thrown should be a skill just like all others that can be learned up to a great level just to have on a skill list and have an alternate way to kill something. There was a discussion a while back about how unbalanced the economy is. Well, I believe I know why. If a player needs something that they cannot make themselves.... they dont seek out someone who can after a while. Instead, they learn how to do it themselves, totally ruining any notion of a player specializing in such an art. I short, I suppose I am saying that maybe it is more of a feature that thrown is such a hard skill to use and learn. What makes it different from any other skill if everyone has it and can use it? -Sarderic the creator |
| 54: [Apr 06 1999] Re: Sarderic. (Euros) |
| I totally agree with the economy thing..I've posted the points you did many times before. For instance, i refuse to learn smithing and mining, even though it would really help me get my wood working up. But, if you're an off time player or a loner, or broke, sometimes just doing things on your own is the easier way, until we're forced. (ie, the way magery and fighting are forced to hard to learn together.) Maybe thrown shouldn't be a fighters' skill, it's true it's sometimes viewed as a range attack, and most fighters belong in the front row. But, if someone wants to learn thrown as the only way to attack things like you seemed to suggest, it's still underpowered. Unless you do something like increase damage, lower conc penalty, and make it virtually unlearnable to those with fighting and magic skills.. For it's difficulty to (er its) practice, it still reaps little reward. But, first and foremost, I'm a fighter, so here's my main point: A true fighter (no crafts, magic or stealth) has about what, 8-14 skills to learn throughout her life? If she learns err, scratch that. 8-14 skills depending on what she WANTS to train, a few fighters specialize by not learning hafted, daring, or what not. If she doesn't learn any crafting, stealth or anything else besides fighting, it's a very boring life indeed. I think the reason a lot of fighters turn into big crafting enthusiasts is to give them something else to do than parry, be parried, parry, be parried until their skills reach AGAAWEL. The true mage, on the other hand, will learn spellcasting, and maybe 70 interesting and new ways to utilize their talent without having to stray from their magic path. Granted, mages do learn crafts, but you see my point, I hope. Can't see more than one hex? There's a spell for that, can't speak a language? A spell for that...can't see at night? etc. So while fighters tend to learn a lot of things outside their 'class', mages can stay within their classes while learning new 'skills'. Didn't say it was fun, but when something resembling a fighting skill like thrown comes out, it's really no wonder mostly every fighter here picks it up. Euros |
| 55: [Apr 07 1999] In agreement (Spiffy) |
| I Agree with Euros.. The fairness of the game just seem HEAVILY slanted towards mages favor. Consider the following... The majority of the quests out there have spellbooks for the prize. Mages can overcome most shortcommings they have through the use of spells IE The Johnathans spells, Qv, Thh. There are areas only mages can safely traverse with little or no danger of being slaughtered, where as it would take several HIGH powered fighters and thieves to traverse the same areas. Take for example the UD.. A mage can traverse the UD with a few spells. 1) A Light Spell - So they can see 2) BAI - so they dont get attacked 3) Recall - In case they get lost 4) Any of the summon spells - In case they DO need defense 5) Fire Bolts - In case they need to attack back It seems the only thing mages lack is the ability to fly and walk on water. Take the strongest fighter out and send him down to the UD with full armor whatever weapons he can carry, however many shields he can carry, and however many torches he will need, I promise you he will get lost and either die of starvation or get pummelled by a pitfiend. (hell, 1 of them took out 3 decent fighters in a matter of 6 hits) Now take the most skilled mage you can find.. You dont even really need the most skilled mage.. They can go down, fiddle fart around, get lost, and still be able to recall out in time for supper. A fighter and thief together cant accomplish the same as a mage. |
| 56: [Apr 07 1999] Underdark (Patrick) |
| Different places required different ways of doing things. Sometimes you need to avoid fights to solve things. In Underdark the idea is to avoid fighting. Even if a mage with 5 animals in front of him, he would not last at all if he jump into a room with 5 ratmen or orcs. I doubt there is anyone in this mud that can fight his/her way through underdark at all. Now back to a mage going through underdark. Firstly a mage needs those spells specified by Spiffy to safely move around there. And those spells you need to learn them to high level as well. But even so, spells then to behave unpredictable sometimes. Bai can expired at the most unconvenience time, gfb can backfired when you are in the midst of a battle, and your marked shield can get lost if you lost connection or get your hand chop off. Any of these would killed the mage. Which is why a mage would like a fighter, prefer to have a party down underdark as well rather than alone. As for fighter having trouble in underdark, I know at least 2 people who are warriors and has explored underdark alone and mapped out large areas of it. As to how they do it, it is for you to know. :) Have a bit of imagination on how to use your skills. :) Rdgs Patrick P.S. Now did I mention spell casting do not work in a lot of rooms in underdark too? :) |
| 57: [Apr 07 1999] Throwing not a fighting skill? (Rhun) |
| If you think throwing is not a fighting skill, tell it to one of the norse, who were as good at throwing their axe as at cleaving heads with it, or a Frankish warrior who used his francisca to good effect either way as well. I would also not like my post to be construed as saying I believe I should be able to do anything equally well, just to note that ogres aren't the best at throwing. I chose an ogre and I can live with that race's limitations. I would also like to bring your attention to the term 'renaissance man' (sorry Euros, this term arose before the PC movement would have corrected it to 'renaissance person') It was much easier to become proficient in a wide variety of skills before modern society required increasing specialization. I am not suggesting that everyone learn every skill, but note that a renaissance man was expected to have a wide range of skills. Try reading 'The Courtier' (who's author my memory fails me on at the moment' |
| 58: [Apr 07 1999] re: Magecentrism (Desla) |
| Spiffy, the inequality has been noted, and is pretty old news. None of the several quests released in the last two months have spells for prizes. One is highly geared towards crafters, another is highly geared towards fighters. Part of the reason there are so many mage things is that so many ex-mages become creators--I was a healer, myself. I coded Segliz, and I coded a lot of spells, so I suppose I'm raising my hand here as part of the problem. My point is that we're working hard to remedy the discrepancy--not by taking stuff away from mages, but adding stuff for crafters and fighters. Desla |
| 59: [Apr 08 1999] Thrown (Nimbus) |
| I'd just like to note something reguarding DM's past. Back a number of years when DM was in the alpha-beta years, the time when fermat, Ds, and the crew were deciding which races to include and what skills should be ..ect. Fighters were the base class. Parry and shield were still rather buggy and fighting on the whole was inconsistent. After several months of that new combat skills were added (disarm, thrown, polearm). I thought thrown was a cool idea and that DM would go the way of other innovative muds by allowing thrwon items to travers multiple rooms. However, that proved to be a big headache so it never was added. The point being that thrown was concieved of as a fighter/fighting skill, not athief skill. Thieves as a class weren't added until quite a while after (6mo-1yr). Thieves were an afterthough.. to spice up the game and add "evil" players. In the past, fighters were much more able to handle combat siduations. Even now a fighter who has obtained mastery (agaawel) of all combat skills is merely a shadow of the old warriors. An old warriors could easily thrash the living daylights out of today's fighter. Know the past histor of Dm and you will have a proper perspective of why players of fighters and thieves are still waiting and hoping for change in their favor. (IMHO thieves were never made into a full class.. more of an extension of fighters - examplified by the low learning barrier between the two classes skills..and the low number of skills for both combined). -Nimbus |
| 60: [Apr 08 1999] More thrown (Sarderic) |
| I quite agree. I don't mean to imply that fighters have no place to learn a skill. The whole glory of Dartmud is that you can make your player into whatever you want it to be, and that is also half the fun. I do not think, however, that examples of human history where a 'fighter' type could do this and the like is relevant. Human history and people's ability were diverse. Certain cutltures excelled at certain things, not because everyone could, but because their culture prized such abilities. Dartmud, on the other hand, has one culture. If it is to be a culture where everyone can do everything, with the exception of mixing magic and fighting, pretty soon you just get a bunch of people with similar skills, and noone is diverse any longer. Peeking around in how things are set up, I quite realize that there is no easy way to fix it, except for strict and huge changes which would probably upset a number of players to the point of not returning. Also, I am guilty of being a healer turned creator myself. I tried playing a fighter a number of times, but it was just too boring. One of my goals is to help fix that, but that is beside the point. I think I have rambled and strayed from my original point far enough, so I will just say that I agree thrown should do more damage, but not if it is to be used in conjunction with hand-to-hand combat. Gfb is something that I think tips the scales a little too much, but would adding a similar skill for fighters solve the problem? I dont know, perhaps it should, and then NPC could just be buffed up a little bit (once again punishing newbies to try and balance powerful players). -Sarderic |
| 61: [Apr 08 1999] more on thrown again (Solis) |
| just a quick note: thrown is for fighters. fighters fight, and try to kill, thrown is a way of trying to kill. you may say what about ambush. you want to make thrown like ambush? cool. make it a silent attack when perfected, and make the user of the skill able to stay hidden while he/she throws. and when the user is hidden, make the weapon thrown unblockable (as probably the target will not see it coming, make it have better aim and do more damage. that will make it a nice thief skill. another quick thing i want to say, is i have to totally and whole heartedly agree with euros. about the power of stats for fighters, i think sure, the stronger you are the harder you hit, but only for a while, why even have such a thing as agaawel if when you reach it, if you started in the wrong body you still suck, i sayu make a point where if you are that good, then you are deadly, i mean, it seems like after a while you dont really hit much harder which to me seems funny cuz why are we still practicing, (well actually cuz we have no other goals to shoot for but thats another topic for another day) yes i understand the attempts to keep the races different, but i say if you work hard enough for long enough, anybody should be able to make any race into any profession, and anyways the only thing being accomplished by making stats so powerful and skills so powerless is to make all mages rowans and trolls (mostly trolls) or atleast all good mages, and all good fighters catfolk, etc etc about the concentration thing, if mages dont want to be hit, they should learn to parry :) s/s (sorry if i rambled, havent written in a while) |
| 62: [Apr 09 1999] I'll try to be brief..although rarely am. (Nimbus) |
| If sweeping changes are to be made they should be in the favor of the player-characters, not against. Early Dm had a thriving economy and all classes were challenged (and most everyone quested). The downgrading of the combat skills (and spell casting skill) has not done anything in the way of "balancing" the skilled players in favor of the newbies. Look at what this "balance" did.. This occurred after House of War had already become the epitome of the highest skilled players migrating towards each other. To fix the the "problem" of players who player there characters a long time and built up high levels of skill, extra skill levels were added..(doubled or nearly). So if you had a character with agaawel skills they were now at ootb (approximately). Many players walked away from DM at that point (mostly the most effected ones). Characters that were frequently played became infrequent or in the case of War and Id.. they visited to read mail (although Id did return to play full-time a year or so later). Others left alltogether or just stuck around to take their frustrations out by Pking. In essence the game was ruined for many long-time players. The economy, which is severly damaged at the momment, was also quite functional in the past. The issue then was also one of too much in too few hands.. namely very wealthy pcs. Although the ecomony was disabled to curtail the wealth of the few.. it only penalized the newbies.. those who had large accounts rested on their laurels..and some still do. Some accounts were closed..for one reason or another. However.. nothing beneficial came of that effort either. So we wind down to today's DM.. we have all these old problems that were "fixxes" which were never properly handled. They could be now, but as Desla stated on his post to the Casting board.. there is a concensus among the coders. It seems that concensus of the past was to balance by disabling and whittling away at what was a functional and stable balanced system. From what Desla and other coders have posted here it would seem that there may be a change in the mood of the concensus body.. that restoration may be forthcoming. I certainly look forward to the day when DM is once again "whole". As for fighters.. fixxing the problems as discussed here would be a good start (thrown, aim, fighting). Also a shift towards an emphesis on skills rather than stats would help greatly to allow all combatants of all races an equal chance at being good at their trade and at par with mages. Newbies will always be at a disadvantage. If you arrive late to the party you may find the punch bowl empty.. don't go saying it's not fair.. it's not our fault that you arrived late. Old players try to help the newbies, but atleast for me, most my training was self-taugh and I don't think I should go out of my way to see that newbies get to combat ready levels in a few hours. I have done it on occation, but it's not fair to the old players. Once the established problems are fixxed the next step is to narrow the skill gap between the classes. The mage's 70+ skills that provide them with every possible benefit seems to be the biggest factor. To make it fair for fighters, they need skills that allow them to be more than mundane front-liners. NPCs have been altered to do cheap shots (breath weapons, non-blockable attacks..ect) that target the fighters, yes the fighters are not equipped to handle the changes. (change "yes" to "yet"). As example I site the "Fighter's" amulet quest. In the past a small band of fighters could do it.. (I'm talking about the direct method, not the non-combat method). The only thing I ever heard creators grumble about was that highly skilled fighters would go and spar with Shelob for hours, much like all fighters do with Pelidor. With newer spells (mark/recall) and other additions, the quest became less of a fighter's quest and more of mage's/thief quest. In the end.. the addition of changing Shelob to a demon and adding the breath and "attack from all sides" initial attacks have rendered this quest one that is not for fighters - since fighters cannot fight shelob without facing a very quick chance to be amuletized. The only way for fighters to do the quest now requires a throw-away npc (if you want to fight). the quest still favors non-fighters.. which would be akin to altering the Segliz "mage's amulet quest" by putting in a no-casting room with an agressive npc that first dispells any spells active on the mage and then proceeds to block all the exits. It would make a good warriors or thief quest, but makes would be at a severe disadvantage. There's nothing wrong with making quests that encourge multi-class paries, but when the quests become doable by a single person - of the wrong class - then players begin to complain and creators tend to ignore them. As has been stated, coders code for themselves - they may have the interest of the players mixxed in, but on the whole it is their project and most are stubborn ... er um.. proud of their creations :-) Okay so this wasn't even close to brief.. sometimes there's a lot to be said. It may have been said many time before, but we players live with the illusion that somehow what we have to say has meaning. We don't expect immediate change, but are always hopeful that our words do not fall on deaf ears. If coders are tired of seeing the same old topics discussed then they either need to see that those topics are looked into (and players are made aware of the decision), or place a board somewhere that briefly lists all the past requests for change and what if anything was done by creators. -Nimbus |
| 63: [Apr 10 1999] Can I be more brief than Nimbus? Bets? (Euros) |
| I've suggested in the past that Shelob's quest actually be made easier. (This was before the breath thing.) My reasonsing was, in effect, the same reason it is now: unless the first person who walked in the room could parry Shelob, or be close enough to and take hits long enough for her to die, the party would probably not make it back out again. At the time, only one or two parties were actually doing the amulet run, and this was the most common (only?) way to quest them. So I suggested this, in order to make the competition more.. competitive. My idea was turned down, instead, Shelob was made toughter and tougher, and finally the gas was added in. This brings me to several points. (Yay!) First, when I view the mud, I view it as any other fantasy world, with people of all types - traders, mages, warriors. Some not important enough to mention, or code. (A book that mentioned every single inhabitant of a planet would be quite boring and long.) The players, I feel, are the heroes, the ones which stand out (the ones that don't say, "I need a better job!" every five minutes, although they are more important than others.) So what bothers me about the Shelob quest is, as players became more skilled and were able to actually take on a monster like Shelob by themselves (I was never one of these), creators buffed her up. I don't understand why this was hard to deal with, as heroes are heroes, you don't hear stories about how the dragon came back several times stronger because the knight killed it the first time. Secondly, we have stats and bodies. In the past, body shopping was a lot less rare. A LOT. And, creators seem very against it, but the way bodies are set up now, promotes it, I think, from my point of view. Yes, it still happened, but in a different way. You have a catfolk fighter, he dies, loses his body, but that's okay, because Belion and Nazakaner are right there, with better stats than they could ever hope for. (I do like that the new registration system allows a race to stretch its limits without stripping sense and other stats, but that's off topic.) Now, while races like sasquatches had no choice but to change races, and others, like me, had to accept a body with base stats, the point is, once you found you liked Thrain, you tended to stick with Thrain, every time you died, body shopping done with. Nowdays, with the random stats, body shopping is a lot more rampant, as and elf (I'll just use me, I'm tired of thinking up examples) who either bought and rolled for strength constitution, and agility, finds herself a magnet for magical energies and not too strong. Hence, her fighter career is now over, unless she risks it and takes another chance...So, the question posed in the previous paragraph is once again asked. Why aren't players allowed to have good stats, stats that suit them? I've heard, "Death isn't supposed to be a reward. Deal." But really, what does this accomplish besides making players unhappy with the game? And why is it, NPC's, who, like Belion, may certainly be noteworthy, but not exactly a hero, have stats double, maybe triple that of the real heroes? Certainly a hero is one because he stand out somehow, smarter, stronger, quicker, whatever, than the other members of his race. My third and final point concerns newbies. There is definite conflict here, I've heard some creators say they want fighters to be able to kill each other easier, I've heard some say they want to give newbies a fair shot against the big guns. I don't think the skill curve, skill cap, or whatever it is and how it works actually helps either or these views in any way. Here's why: The curve might actually help lower level fighters against a higher level fighter, which accomplishes the second, but punishes the high level fighters. Why? If I train five years, why can't I mop the floor with the mid level fighter who's been around a few months and has been constantly harassing me? (I must note that, fighters do learn themselves up pretty quickly too.) I didn't intend to mention this, but I guess I will. I could not hit a fighter whose parry was less than half my offensive skill. (In number of improves.) She was parryin with two hands, and swinging, but the details are negligible, maybe next time, this note is becoming a bit too long as it is. After several minutes, I did manage to hit her barely, but that's it? Killing? Not likely, unless the fighter lagged for a few hours, or opted for a very slow, very painful suicide by my katana. As for the concern of newbies never being able to make it due to rude, cruel, higher skilled players..this isn't true. How often does it happen now? Yes, I couldn't hit aforementioned fighter, but I'm sure I could manage any newbie that shouted, 'Okay! I just registered, what do I do now?' It doesn't happen often. And, according to several sources, this is a player run society..you may occasionally get those cruel types, but more often than not, they are dealt with by 'player justice', so I really don't think it's too much of a concern. Anyway, I said I'd write about body shopping later, so I did. Tune in next time for more about mid level fighters versus me. I'd also like to thank creators who take the time out to post responses, a lot of the time I think some things are just plain wrong, and discover the reasons for them and shut up. Euros |
| 64: [Apr 10 1999] I understand the feeling. (Patrick) |
| I have to say I understand how Euros felt. I mean I was around for quite a long time myself and have trained for years to get to my present level of skills. I have went thru' a few degrading of mage abilities including lower of aura max and so on and everytime it happen, it pains me greatly to see everything go down a level. I also understands the need to make the mud fairer for newbies but look at it now. Newbies these days have great teachers to teach them while us have to be on our own right from the start. Every little improvement we get is time and effort taken. When we train hard to be able to solve a quest only for it to be make more difficult later can be a bit annoying. There should be a better way of doing things. Let us all think and see if there is a better solution then simpler making quest harder or reducing player abilities. Rdgs Patrick |
| 65: [May 08 1999] Disarm and break weapon (Patrick) |
| Just a few suggestion to spice up fighting. Maybe we can allow fighters be able to disarm or break an opponent weapons. Just a suggestion. -Patrick |
| 66: [May 12 1999] re: disarm and weapon breakage (Bishop) |
| well i believe there was a disarm skill or one that was planed on. but either never installed or taken out. Weapon breakage would be a good idea i think though might actually get the econimy going a bit. also adding in clothes getting old and shoes wearing. but only my opinon -)- Bishop -(- |
| 67: [May 13 1999] Disarming and weapon breaking... (Gered) |
| One serious problem is the fact that a fighter's defense is based on holding a weapon or shield to parry with; no weapon/shield, no defense (and fast death). If disarming or weapon breaking can affect those defense weapons/shields, then it poses a serious problem, because one successful disarm, or one inopportune break, will probably end the battle rather abruptly. If these are going to be implemented, then I certainly hope some form of non-equipment-dependent defense becomes available first. Gered |
| 68: [May 17 1999] An idea to give fighters more variety ... (Pixel) |
My idea : Fighters get a new set of skills, ones for special moves. These skills are for all of the flying kicks and spinning double-sword attacks and whatever that is currently subsumed into the combat allocations etc. The difference with these skills/moves ? They are researched by fighters, just the way mage spells can be researched (or used to be, at least). So, some fighter of suitably high skill gathers the neccessary spends a lot of talk time and research time and maybe ven sparring time with a creator (maybe), and at the end all, they get their + in a new skill. Once that's done, they merely have to practice it up until they're good enough to teach others. I'd imagine these new skills would give some bonus during an attack, or maybe some of them could be used defensively, and so on. With a system like this in place, I believe some of the arguments comparing fighters unfavourably with mages based on skill counts would be gone. Fighters would have new skills to with, skills to trade with other fighters, and could build up even more distinctive fighting styles. Just imagine watching two legendary fighters sparring, and seeing kimar's_flying_headkick launched into action, countered by war's_diveroll. Well, hope this made sense to someone. (oh yeah, there really should be some way for a fighter to hold a weapon, a shield and be able to see - without mage assistance ... it's just too basic to playability to not have ...) Pixel |
| 69: [May 17 1999] Re: #68 (Ramik) |
| I couldn't agree more with Pixel's excellent idea. I've often thought about how, if I were a creator, I'd add in this or that fighting skill. The concern, of course, is that such skills quickly become common knowledge and unbalance the game. This would not be so much a concern with these skills, as anyone who went to the trouble of researching their own, unique skill, would certainly balk at passing it out as a party favor. Perhaps the unique style of a Baron or Sir might be disseminated freely throughout his house, but that would only another element to inter-house conflicts. Perhaps the members of House Tellborn would be feared, not solely because of their skill at arms, but because they, alone among the Mud, know how to disarm. Of course, martial arts maneuvers will likely be one of the first things to be researched, bringing sweep kicks and bare-handed parrying to the mud. But, although martial arts maneuvers are good, I look more forward to racially specific skills! I, as a spyder, would love to pioneer the use of a four-handed sword. Perhaps a braman might train himself to be able to constrict with his trunk. Catfolk might well be able to scratch with their hind legs, etc... Of course, these researches might be dependent upon other skills and factors. For example, before inventing my Four-handed Sword, I might well be required to achieve virtuoso proficiency with Two-handed Sword. Some sort of constrict attack would probably require reasonable proficiency with brawling. I hope this research gets the green light, although I'm doubtful it will. I think to those up above, there's too much potential for abuse, which, to be honest, I can see. I just think that what it has to offer is too valuable to ignore. Finally, one fighter won't be a boring carbon copy of the next. Finally there might be some potential for surprises. ---Ramik |
| 70: [May 19 1999] fighters (Serafin) |
| was thinking about that line you always get when reading helpfiles or talking to newbies, the one that says fighters can have different styles :) depending on what they work on. HAAA!! how many people on purpose avoid working any weapon skills so that they can be full fledged brawlers?? or any of the other supposed fighting styles, and why would you? what reason would someone have for putting themselves at a disadvantage when with just more practice you can have great brawling and also great hafted for when you need it, or whatever. the problem is theres really no advantage to specializing, and there are so few skills that to not learn one is to handicap yourself, also with stats being so important you prolly wouldnt want to be a brawler unless you had great strength cuz otherwise even at agawel you still aint doin no damage cuz somehow all your practice hasnt helped you to learn where to hit to do the best damage :) so what can we do to diversify fighting?!!! spheres of fighting! just kidding... 1. we need more skills. for this we need ideas, theres a whole bunch of us so lets start putting them down on paper. er virtual paper. 2. these new skills, together with the old, need to somehow be opposed, no not like spheres :) ok, maybe like spheres, i dunno, whatever way that would force people to make choices, to diversify, and not to try to learn everything, like say you had 8 groups of fighting skills, yes we'd all be jumpin for joy, and maybe the sheer number would be enough to keep us from learning them all. maybe. maybe not. now say there was a point like master or high master where only 4 of the groups could go above that point, and the way that was determined is once one skill from a group reaches that point then others from that group can, but from some opposite group cant :) and being high in one group, makes you somewhat equal but different from some other group, like different types are good at different things, the whole paper rock scissor :) thing. 3. maybe fighter mages should be hampered by the fact that they cant get as many groups above that point. (while im on the topic, other races are gonna need some help if we dont want the mud to be overflowed with trolls :) was gonna write more, including some ideas for fighting skills, but im a little burnt out from writing posts on the mage board and then the idea board before getting to this one. so maybe tomorrow ill come with those ideas, in any case, you people have all the above statements to scream bloody murder about. im sure well whatever. these are my thoughts. serafin. |
| 71: [May 19 1999] Fighter ideas (Arryn) |
| I've looked at the combat code because it is one of the reasons I became a creator. First off I agree with almost all of you regarding fighting, that it would benefit from new skills and there should be more to it. Secondly, from a coding perspective, any changes to fighting requires a major coding changing to combat and a greater amount of testing. Does this mean I don't want to do it? No, it means that I am looking at but before I make any changes, I want a full plan on everything that it will need rather than trying to do patchwork. I have some of the things already planned and I am working on in conjunction with other things. You can either mail me or post here all the ideas you want in fighting. Since I see many good ideas I haven't responded to any one specifically. Just know that your ideas are being looked at and hopefully most of them will be incorporated. A change of this magnitude takes a good deal of time, but don't think we've forgotten about it. Arryn |
| 72: [May 19 1999] just an idea (Sarderic) |
| Here is one idea, just to throw something out on the table. I know this may be somewhat cliche, but there are a variety of different kinds of fighting. Right now, we have fighting with a sword, an axe, or whatever.. and other than that the weapons are different... there really isn't anything special about one or the other. However, suppose there were different fighting techniques. In the martial arts, there is a variety of different kinds of fighting. Some kinds focus on defense, some on offence, some a variety of both. Perhaps if we had different types of fighting, that showed up as skills (for instance, not to suggest these as skills, but just as the general idea, a karate skill, a fencing skill, a kickboxing skill), and much like one can 'set aim to head', one could set which fighting style they used, or maybe even a combination. These skills would probably conflict with magic to a great extent, but it would be the perk for the pure fighters. Just a thought, be gentle. -Sarderic |
| 73: [May 22 1999] Combat (Nimbus) |
| In general, fighters do want to specialize. The problem is that along the way to becoming a full warrior they find that their learning rates stagger or stop for extended periods (days, weeks, months..). It gets very frustrating when you train and slaughter everything you can find and still can't learn. It is times like these that fighters turn to those skills that they've neglected or just never wanted. Seeing the new skill rise usually coaxes the "stuck" skill into action. In my opinion, it's the learning curve and it's lulls that make most fighters into one-man armies.. not because that is what they truely want, but it's what they have to do in order to succeed. -N |
| 74: [May 24 1999] An idea about fighters (Bishop) |
| I notice that alot of fighters seem to go on for hours fighting the same being with equal skills. how about adding a system of endurance.. after holding up a wepaon shield armor after a period of time is very hard on the body... maybe adding a endurance that slowly goes down like movement, and rebuilds the same. this would add a little more realism to fighting as well.. only an idea though. |
| 75: [May 24 1999] endurance and fatigue (Arryn) |
| Endurance and fatigue have been considered as an option to fighting, however if we do this it would cause great difficulty with practicing fighting, so we have refrained from doing this. Arryn |
| 76: [May 25 1999] Fatigue, on the other hand... (Gered) |
| Would make for an excellent new fighter skill - one that reduces the accumulation of fatigue. Gered |
| 77: [May 25 1999] Re: Gered. (Euros) |
| Right along with my concentration skill for mages. :) Euros |
| 78: [May 25 1999] re: fatigue (Fergus) |
| perhaps we should also add in mental fatigue. so that mages cannot sit and practice spells for hours on end. I know my mind starts getting fuzzy after working on calculus problems for a couple hours. Fergus |
| 79: [May 25 1999] At the moment... (Gered) |
| That's what conc does for mages. Now, putting a separate skill in for 'mental fatigue' and a mental fatigue rating wouldn't be such a bad idea - but the conc hit for spellcasting would need to be replaced by it. Gered |
| 80: [May 26 1999] Re: fatigue (Celetar) |
| The main problems with either combat or mental fatigue, is the boredom factor. They both make sense realisticly, but at first glance it sure looks like it would decrease the playability of the game. There's enough wasted time here, time wasted waiting for fatigue to recover might put us over the top in the 'things I could have more fun doing in Real Life' category. -- Celetar |
| 81: [May 27 1999] Well... (Gered) |
| As things stand, perhaps. On the other hand, if the learning rate was tweaked to take a fatigue system into account, it could work. (I know, I know, you don't want to mess with the learning rate. :) ) Gered |
| 82: [May 27 1999] re: learning rate (Desla) |
| Gered Said: (I know, I know, you don't want to mess with the learning rate. :) ) Not so. I very much want to mess with the learning rate, so adventure is more rewarding than practice. As is, adventuring is just a way to wind up dead, since practicing ad infinitum will give you more safety and the same results. However, we don't want to give a net increase in the learning rate (i.e., power level) for "free"--but we don't want to tick everyone off by altering the balance in a way that's not properly playtested. So in essence, it's something that has to be done carefully, but not something that's impossible or our of the question. Desla |
| 83: [May 29 1999] re: fatigue (Bishop) |
| well waiting on aura is already a huge fatigue.. but a mental fatigue would be very acceptable . put the term mental would then have to be allocated towards crafts and fighting as well. for you need good mental condition to continue fighting proper. ;-) I still think either or would add to the reality here ( and was only an opinion) -)- Bishop -(- |
| 84: [May 29 1999] re learning rate (Bishop) |
| is it not possiable to make the creatures in a quest be more prone to increase improves. And perhaps only for a few exciting moments.. (basically to stop botting these creatures). just an idea. -)- Bishop -(- |
| 85: [May 29 1999] Learning rate (Patrick) |
| I think Desla's suggestion is great if it can be effective implemented. I myself dont like standing all day at one place learning spells. :) Rdgs Patrick |
| 86: [Jun 01 1999] re: learning rate (Honor) |
| The learn rate on combat is fine. It certainly would be better, as Desla suggested if quests were more rewarding than idle practice. However that would have to carry over to mages as well (as I expected Desla intended). However, a problem with combat (of many) is that skill does not mean success in combat. It means you might live a little longer against enemies that fight like you do (no breath weapons, or other dirty attacks..including spells). Fighters unfortunately do not fight well, Euros is a good example of what I mean. She is a skilled combatant, but if she wants something to die fast and with a high degree of success she uses "other means". It is the wise thing to do, but shows that direct combat is ineffective (alone or in a two-person group). Against a small target it's fine, against a skilled player or large Npc.. Your mileage may very. -=Honor thy Eldar=- |
| 87: [Jun 14 1999] Specializing (Vespiel) |
| Heya I think that specializing for warriors is the way to go. We should look closer at that, and perhaps devise a good system that would make this profession more exciting. It would have to be balanced, so that not everyone goes for that ultimate style, forcing players to chose their fighting style according to their preferences, talents, tactics and perhaps even race. One way of doing it (and hopefully not the only one) would be to make weapons a more diverse. If that's already in, forgive the ignorance, but generally different weapons give different combat advantages and disadvantages. A spear, for example, helps one with defense. A dagger puts one more at risk, but is one of the best weapons to hit the head with. A staff can be a very defensive weapon, while an axe is a primarily offensive weapon and not a very defensife one. That may be one of the areas of specialization, but of course a player could end up learning all the weapons, and learn all the techniques. In this case, however, that's still fine, as you can only use so many weapons at one time. Chosing that correct style for the particular engagement would be the key. Other specializations should be more inherit. I think it would be very good if players were not able to learn _everything_ on the grid. A warrior that is profficient at everything is... well... extremely rare. A warrior that has more than one fighting style is also rare, and most warriors will chose one style to specialize in. Styles take long to learn, so the jacks-of-all-trades don't achieve such great skills in their many styles. Those that specialize do. Vespiel |
| 88: [Jun 15 1999] re: Specializing (Artag) |
| I have to disagree with you, Vespiel. Most of the changes you suggests are already present in the combat system to some degree, and I think trying to implement them more fully along the lines you suggest would be disruptive and harmful to what is an effective, mature combat system. Besides, I think combat specialization is much less common than you suggest. Everyone I know who is good at combat is just generally good at combat. They have a particular weapon of expertise, but they are very nearly as effective with weapons other than their chosen one. They have a consistent style and way of moving -- but that is reflected in combat allocations. Just my $.02 Artag |
| 89: [Jun 15 1999] Specialization (Raven) |
| For what it's worth, all my player chars were combat specialists - one incarnation only did sword, another only did 2hs, with some degree of success. The hardest part was convincing teachers to set their teach list appropriately, so unfortunately I picked up isolated improves that I didn't want. (Of course it's nicer now that you can choose skills not to teach. Good job, whoever coded that. Oh wait...) |
| 90: [Jun 16 1999] Hooray (Eddard) |
| for polearms! |
| 91: [Jun 16 1999] Polearms (Ramik) |
| Are polearms working now, or were you just cheering for the concept? Either way, I agree, but I'd like to know if there's another skill I need to fiddle with. |
| 92: [Jun 16 1999] re: Polearm (Eddard) |
| Sorry if I got yer hopes up, that was just my two cents on polearms. |
| 93: [Jun 16 1999] Re: re: Polearm (Ramik) |
| Well, dammit. I want pikes and lances to work right...not to mention glaives and fauchard-forks and whatnot. |
| 94: [Jul 26 1999] setting parry and control (Thtek) |
| I've messed around with the "set parry/control" command, changing the default and the amount for enemy 1 and enemy 2 (not working more than 2 with split yet). It doesn't really seem to make any difference. Anyone that can explain how and if setting those works? |
| 95: [Aug 13 1999] Pelidor (Eddard) |
| Out of curiosity, why is that Pelidor doesn't regen? If it's no important reason, could he be made to do so? Does anyone agree that he should come back between boots? Player of Eddard |
| 96: [Aug 14 1999] Re: Pelidor (Nimbus) |
| Pelidor doesn't reset for a couple reasons: 1. He serves no functional purpose (offers no verbal help to a functional quest, nor does he have any real purpose). 2. He is a sparring partner only, and one that fighters learn well with. It may be spite or there may be other reasonings, but generally creators don't favor fighters sitting around and sparring all day (mages can sit cast all they want though). There are probably better reasons that creators and long-time players will point out. 3. Lastly, there has been a recent movement to provide more challenging combat npcs (packers and waderers). A nice change from the dirty fighting npcs that use unblockable attacks, or are overskilled (as a minor example I'll point to the fish trader that throws a mean axe - it's good that he uses thrown, but he should be throwing fish not axes! :-) -N |
| 97: [Sep 10 1999] Grapple (Caterus) |
| howdy all Hrmm.Thats Myth and I was testing Grapple for fun I seem to notice that escape grapple really is useless when you can walk South or anyother way maybe you guys could fix it so that escape grapple is the only way out unless you are higher skill or close to the person grappling it would be nice change when you Grapple an Npc like tupper and he still gets away Thanks for your time **Caterus** |
| 98: [Sep 12 1999] Last (Brixia) |
| I agree on that. Block and grapple are absolutely worthless as it is now. I had an rowan, no combat skills, that walked right past both Grashlin and Gudz. |
| 99: [Sep 12 1999] Re: Last (Phylogeny) |
| Try walking past Shelob then. Phylogeny, who tried it once or twice. |
| 100: [Sep 12 1999] blocking (Caterus) |
| Well as far as I know it has to do with the size of the door, you Of corse a Gnome cant block a door that a Braman can walk thrue Then again I might be wrong! **Caterus** |
| 101: [Sep 13 1999] Grappling and blocking (Ramik) |
| Well, the fact that blocking is of limited use doesn't bug me nearly as much as grappling. I can see how blocking could be a straight SIZ vs. AGILITY test, involving the size of the doorway as a modifier. This doesn't involve actually using any skills, so it makes sense that a newbie braman should be better at it than an old, experienced gnome. It has to do with raw stats, not a learned ability. Grappling, however, is of such limited effect as to be useless. I don't think it's out of line to expect your skill at grappling to advance as a subset of your skill with brawling. However, as a Legendary brawler, I can attest that Telinor has no problem wriggling easily out of my grasp. Escape is apparently not a function of agility either, as Fossil, a newbie ogre, escaped just as quickly. These days, grappling is only used to prevent someone from blocking. While that's all well and good, it does seem to elevate a mere side-effect of grappling to a rediculous prominence in the overall scheme of things. I, for one, think it's just about time grappling was made effective...or at least useful. ---Ramik |
| 102: [Nov 20 1999] Aiming question (Nimbus) |
| Hi, I'm solicing insight on how to hit what you aim for. How high does aim have to be to function adequetly? (aka damage the targetted appendage more than surrounding appendages). The head is not a good thing to aim for (since it seems that as the opponent tires the head is the first thing hit solidly). Does anyone have a combat allocation setting that works extremely well for this purpose? I've tried several setting but the results are usally less than satifying. Really what I'd like to do is be able to IC dismember an opponent *before* they die. I've been able to do it with weak and unskilled opponents to some degree, but nothing that I could call reliable (as in a definitive combat style). Ps. Has anyone ever hot a ring on the Target that they aimed for more than five percent of the time? Ten? Fifty? -Nimbus is curious. |
| 103: [Nov 20 1999] Targets (Raven) |
| That's a quirk of targets... the name of the ring that you see, isn't what you name to aim at. Try aiming for "center", "first ring", "second ring" etc. Dunno why the coder who made them did it that way, but then again, he hasn't been around to ask, either. R. |
| 104: [Dec 24 1999] Happy Holiday (Eddard) |
| When a mage wishes to practice, they can do it almost anywhere. A thief, while not quite as flexible, is not very limited, depending on what they wish to practice. But any fighter with master skills or higher has one place to go: Pelidor. All it takes to prevent any advancement in these warriors is to kill Pelidor. If Eddard, or any other of the many, many players who can kill Pelidor decides to do so, and is on frequently, the entire population of warriors suffer. So please make the cocky Knight of Karnak repop between boots, like most other npc's. I confidently speak for virtually every fighter in the game on this. I know it's been asked before, but I'm hoping it's changed this time. Thanks. Eddard the orc |
| 105: [Dec 24 1999] re: Pelidor repopping (Flandor) |
| What you should have said, Eddard, is that Pelidor is the one _safe_ place to go. There are plenty of tougher opponents to fight. You just don't want to admit you're afraid of pitfiends, tyhr-kreen, seamonters and giants. -Flandor |
| 106: [Dec 24 1999] re: Pelidor repopping (Ramik) |
| I wasn't aware there was a constant locale in which to find the tyhr-kreen, giants, and pitfiends. Seamonsters, sure...just go sailing...but that involves water, which counts this hydrophobic arachnid WAY out. ---Ramik, who's far more scared of drowning than any NPC out there. |
| 107: [Dec 25 1999] re: re: Pelidor repopping (Eddard) |
| *chuckle* I figure Flandor was being sarcastic, but just in case you weren't: Like Ramik, I don't know of places to find tyhr-kreen and giants(consistenly), seamonsters aren't really suitable for sparring, and neither are pit fiends(damn fangs!). There are a couple of other npc's out there, but Pelidor is really the best pummelling partner around. Orcs Against Water |
| 108: [Dec 25 1999] Places to find things (Desla) |
| There are fixed locations to find just about anything; I know of at least one place to find opponents of your desired type which has not yet been found... Desla |
| 109: [Dec 26 1999] Re: Pelidor repopping (Katkt) |
| Regardless of whether or not there are other places to practice, I'd like to see Pelidor repop because I don't see anything special about him that justifies him being different from virtually every other NPC in that regard. Once upon a time, he was supposed to be nigh invincible, so he didn't repop. That's no longer the case. Some of the randomly generated NPCs in town are now way tougher than him. Once upon a time, Pelidors armor was very valuable and could be sold for lots of money, so he didn't repop. But now, unlike when Peli came into existence, the limiting factor on how much money you can make by killing things and taking their stuff is not the value of the stuff you can get, but the amount of money held by the shopkeepers. Once Peli was connected with a quest. But no more. So why not have him repop? He's a good sparring opponent for fighters. He's nothing more, and he's nothing less. Maybe bring him back every hour or so. Eddard's point that non-fighters are fairly flexible in where they can practice, while fighters are limited to where they can find an appropriate opponent is an interesting discussion all on it's own, separate from the issue of Pelidor specifically. It's certainly largely accurate. But is it a problem, and what effect does it have? I don't really have any specific ideas in that regard. I just think it's an interesting observation... Katkt |
| 110: [Dec 26 1999] Weapons Improves (Goldthirst) |
| Am I the only one who has hit a serious drought of weapons improves? All my other skills, even the ones higher than some of my weapons skills are still advancing at a normal rate... but ever since I became a champion I have been unable to get any weapons improves. The player of Goldthirst. |
| 111: [Dec 26 1999] re: Weapon Improves (Eddard) |
| Hah, I've been having that problem since long before you became a Champion ;) And as for places to find things: I enjoy exploring in DartMud, and I hope to some day find tyhr-kreens and giants, and many more oversized, overlimbed, underbrained monstrosities. But I do not think that warriors should be made to sail/hike/spelunk to the far ends of the planet to practice combat. Katkt really said all that needed to be said: Pelidor repopping will not pose any threat to game balance, and if it came to a vote(not anonymous) I don't think there would be anyone against it except for those who have been killing the poor guy. Sorry if I'm repeating myself. I think everything about this topic has been addressed, and again, I sincerely hope this small change is made. Eddard the orc GRUNT |
| 112: [Dec 27 1999] on pelidor (Cerote) |
| While I sympathise with Ed, I think he's got the Pelidor thing wrong. I don't believe npc's are supposed to be rungs on a training ladder. They were put here to populate the town with interesting people. That they're used as rungs is secondary to their purpose. One could argue that if this is so, why do some repop while others don't? There's no logical answer, but there really doesn't need to be, as they aren't meant to be systematic. That they are so is a happy convenience, but the convenience shouldn't be taken as a right. Cerote the grateful. |
| 113: [Dec 27 1999] re: on pelidor (Flandor) |
| Well put, Cerote. Thanks. And does it really make sense that _any_ NPCs reappear after they die? Maybe you ought to have to ress them if you want to practice on them again. -Flandor |
| 114: [Dec 27 1999] Not to mention (Kythalus) |
| I would like to point out that there are other things out there that can be used for practice... specifically other players. There are plenty of fighters out there who are more skilled than peli, and are also on way too much. In the past, practicing with other players was far more common, and was helpful in promoting partying. That said, I don't think it would be a terrible thing if Peli showed up a bit more often. Kythalus |
| 115: [Apr 23 2000] Weaponry Anti-Nerf (Raven) |
| We're considering tweaking some of the weapons: Longswords get lighter and faster, competitive with katanas. Axes get faster, period. Some weapons might change name, depending on size. Any important suggestions, speak now, or... |
| 116: [Apr 24 2000] Yess!!!! (Spiffy) |
| How about makign a Sickle so I can wield a hammer and Sickle? ;) Spiffy |
| 117: [Apr 24 2000] Hafted (Spiffy) |
| I understand how hafted is more likely to get wedged in your victims body but it doesn't seem like it should for all weapons.. for example.. Scepters? Maces? Mornign Stars? seems like it would be more likely for spears and axes and whatnot. Spiffy |
| 118: [Apr 24 2000] how about (Serafin) |
| makin weapons made of different ores actually be different? is this possible? i mean arent some ores heavier by nature and some more prone to breakage and dulling, like pure gold is pretty maleable i think while iron is heavy. and when i say weapons above i mean weapons and armors and such. I like that something about combat is getting a non-negative tweak. s.f.t.s.o.t.a.p. |
| 119: [May 12 2000] Pelidor Repopping (Ramik) |
| When Eddard brought this up before, I remained silent for a few reasons. We were in the middle of a war, so I had more important things to think about, the mud reset every 3 or so days anyhow, and I had hopes of solving the problem IC. under the current system, however, there's a very real need for Pelidor to start repopping. I understand the argument that "NPCs don't exist for us to practice on." I disagree, but I understand it. Pelidor really ISN'T all that interesting apart from his practice value... sure, IC, he's not there for us to practice on, but OOC he sure as heck is. There is an issue of fairness here that should be addressed here as well. As a high-skill fighter, Pelidor really is just about the only place we can practice. Sure, we can go running all over the map trying to find Thri-Khreen or somesuch, but what sort of complaints would we hear if a thief had to map the globe to get his hiding to Legendary, or a mage had to explore the underdark to get his SC to Adept? I'm not asking for Pelidor to repop as often as Thrain or Kala...not even once an hour like Katkt suggested. I'd be happy with once every 5 hours...every 10 hours..or even once a day. As it stands, it took 5 DAYS after this last reboot for a creator to take pity on us poor fighters and bring Pelli back. That's rediculous, and there's no reason for it. ---Ramik |
| 120: [May 12 2000] Re: Pelidor (Raven) |
| Can any player offer a reason why Pelidor should not repop? Anybody against making him repop? |
| 121: [May 24 2000] New Combat Skill Proposal: Tactics (Ramik) |
| For quite a while, it's been pretty widely agreed upon that there's an unreasonable power imbalance between pure fighters and the other classes. Every now and then, someone disagrees with this premise (usually someone who's never actually played a fighter), but for most of us, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion and a fact of life. Fighters just aren't as cool as mages. They aren't as diverse, sure, but that's fine and only natural. What really bugs me is that mages (and ambushers, to a degree) are better than fighters at 'fighter stuff'. Thanks to LSA, GFB, BAI, LL, GA, Blur, etc…they're more able to kill, defend, explore, and protect than a standard warrior is. Right now there's nothing to set the fighter class apart from any other…no special capability or skill that makes them different. The last time we spent a while discussing this, Merkle said something that made my blood boil and got me thinking. He said (I apologize for the approximation), "Of course fighters aren't as useful as mages. All they can do is break stuff." The madder I got and the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was exactly right. Right now, all fighters can do is break stuff. The thinking, strategic part of combat has been totally omitted…in fact, it's been given to all the other classes free of charge. Aside from the increase in the learning rate, a smart fighter is no better than a stupid one. A wolf is able to block in row 1 as well as a 13X agaawel fighter. 5 measly little hazozats are able to block in row 1 BETTER than a 13X agaawel fighter. I want to change that. Here's an idea as to how. I propose the implementation of a new combat skill, "tactics." It has been suggested that two skills, "offensive" and "defensive" tactics would work better. I prefer one, but it's open for debate. Tactics would represent the shifting positions and constant maneuvering that takes place in melee combat. A skilled tactician would be able to position himself to his best advantage and use the terrain against his opponent. It also allows a warrior different degrees of "blocking" as part of a party or on his own. The tactics skill would allow its practitioners a few new abilities, as well as expanding and enhancing some old ones. 1) In a party, the protection of second row party members would be based on the tactics skill. Better tacticians would be able to protect more people, and protect them against a greater number of opponents. 2) When fighting against a party, tactics would allow a fighter to attempt to bypass first row opponents, and directly engage the second row. The number of opponents in row 1 and each opponent's tactics skill would both affect the difficulty for this. Even on a successful bypass of row 1, the attacking fighter would be at a disadvantage to parry the row 1 opponents he circled past, as they would now effectively be "behind" him. 3) The more row 1 blockers there are, the less chance there would be of someone penetrating to row 2, even before tactics was taken into account. Tactics would merely enhance this defense or allow a single attacker more chance of slipping through. A single fighter with master tactics would be able to walk right through a wall of 5 falcons, but would run up against a problem when trying to do the same thing against 5 fighters with above average tactics. 4) Combatants' tactics skills would be checked to determine bonus or penalty to the "parting blow" when an opponent retreats a rank. 5) Row 1 fighters would gain the <guard> command (syntax: "guard <name>"), which would be used to physically interpose himself between a ranged attack (like thrown or GFB) and a row 2 party member. When this command was used, tactics would be tested vs the attacker's skill and, if successful, the guarding fighter would be automatically struck by any ranged attacks directed at his protected, even if that attack would normally have missed. Furthermore, any ranged attacks initiated by the guarded party member would stand a decent chance of striking the first row guardian (modified by tactics and the attack skill of the guarded). 6) Tactics skill would allow a fighter to back himself into a corner or position himself in a doorway so as to limit the number of opponents who might engage him at one time. Thus, a skilled Tactician might be able to kill a group of 15 ants four or five at a time, rather than all at once. There's been some comment that this ability is too close in function to split defense, which is understandable, so I'd like to clarify. Split defense governs how well you defend yourself against 2 or more folks, all of whom are swinging at once. This would actually limit how many attack you at one time. It's ridiculous, for example, for Ramik to not know to put his back to a corner to limit how many enemies can engage him at one time...yet time and again I have upwards of 10 ratmen pounding on my hide, all at once. At times like that, SD is useless. Tactics would not be. 7 |