Assassins assassinating asses outsides Allanak alone atnight

[theebie]

Ho,

why's there not a class 'outdoor assassin' that is about the same like
a city-assassin, but has outdoor sneak, outdoor hide and outdoor backstab ?

and no, that's not the ranger class...

---someone---

[Akaramu]

Why is that not the ranger class?

[Anonymous]

ranger:

guy who doesnt get lost in sandstorm
is able to track down animals
medium fighting abilities
can find edible worms on the ground

out-sassin:

guy who does get lost in sandstorm
is able to track down people (allright makes no difference here)
good backstab/assassinating abilities
can find only normal worms on the ground

andsoon

[Armaddict]

Outsassins would die pretty fast.

It's a role that requires certain things the city provides.

The ranger is the closest thing to an outdoor assassin that you can get.

Compare Jason Bourne (Yeah, I know, cheesy) to a Marine Force Recon.

There's reasons they work in entirely different settings.

[Cenghiz]

Maybe because backstabbing someone in a room which's a league long should not be a usual practice.

>emote leans forward a little and starts walking towards ~chubby with careful steps.
>emote keeps on walking, readying ~knife, a grin on his face.
>Think Good.. After 20 steps more, I'll be able to see his face clearly.
.....
Of course you may say you were hiding and the victim passed by the bush you were hiding beneath. But then; ask the victim.. He will claim that there was a league between you and him. Please, pick a ranger and use poisoned arrows. It'll be much more deadly and realistic. Rangers are best suited to become outdoors assassins.. Because they don't even need to be in the same room with you. And the extra advantages are extra advantages.

Of course it's just my opinion but... Making a class to become desert backstabbers doesn't look right to me. I'm already deadly bored of "The class <bla> consists of twinks!" topics.

Note: I've met assassins outdoors, well-played ones. It's not impossible, either. Choose a bush by the road which you know your victim will pass. Of course crouching by some bush is not the same as standing silent and still nearby a shadowed wall but, bah. The penalty is not that huge I believe.

[Anonymous]

Because it is not the sort of character role that would be pervasive enough to warrant a new guild?

Rangers make better outdoor killers than some backstabbing, desert-wise assassin would any day of the week.  Pull out that arrow and shoot that dude much further away than you could ever chuck a knife, and why even bother getting close.

[Ghost]

It -is- the ranger class.

And archery is the wilderness version of backstab.

[Anonymous]

Maybe because backstabbing someone in a room which's a league long should not be a usual practice.

Tell that to a game-full of NPCs that can do that.

Sa'alam,

Dirr

[JollyGreenGiant]

Backstab works in the outdoors just fine as it is.  As for the rest, there are existing ways to make things work.  I'm sure you'll figure it out.

[jhunter]

He will claim that there was a league between you and him.

And he would be full of shit if he could not see his stalker in the first place. I just can't believe that victims who do not see someone in an outdoor room think they have any right to claim how far away an unseen attacker was.

Edit: It's sort of like the childhood thing:
"I got you!"

"*whine* No you didn't I had a forcefield!"

:roll:

Gimme a break.

[Malifaxis]

I can not find a single way to reply to this post in a non-offensive manner.

I can't even figure out a way to make a humorous quip without it coming out as a flame.

Theebie, if I could change your IRL name to Kenny, I'd change mine to Cartman.

[halfhuman]

I agree with the popular thing that you should just shoot an arrow at them.

I don't think that backstabbing in the desert is OOC, I mean, not if you're with a companion.  If you really have the desire to kill grebbers, go foraging salt with them, wait till they've found a piece and be like:

grebber (picking up a grain of purple streaked salt and holding it up inspecting it) Hey! The streaks in this salt look cool.

assassin (getting to his feet from where he was picking at a vain with his dagger, and walking toward grebber and looking over his shoulder at the salt) Lemme see... AAAGGGHHH!! AAAAGGGHHH!!!! DIEE!!!! DIEEE!!!

Just grab a bow and some poison and camp out your favorite road/deposit, and wait for the carnage

[Larrath]

I don't think that backstab is a skill that should be used in the wilderness, unless you're standing specifically in a narrow pass where you can realistically hide.  It's possible to see extremely far in the desert, and most dunes don't work like those old fashioned lamp-posts that could hide an elephant.

Sneaking UP on someone in the desert, unless it's in the middle of the night (and even then), is incredibly difficult to realistically pull off.


Though then again, if you want to set up such an ambush, by all means.
Go to a pass, pick up a ton of big stones (a pile of twelve head-sized rocks can probably block a place pretty nicely) and set it with custom drop descs.  Then hide, and play it out slowly.

If my PC was walking in the desert and was suddenly backstabbed without any emotes or background or anything, I would write a complaining email (sounds useless, does it?  It's not) and then I'd kill someone.

[Anonymous]

Sneaking UP on someone in the desert, unless it's in the middle of the night (and even then), is incredibly difficult to realistically pull off.

I'm kind of curious why you say this.  Some hunter busy scanning the horizon to the east might not notice someone creeping behind dunes behind him.  When you add in the winds which blow enough to cover the sound of footfalls in loose sand it doesn't seem like a hard thing to do.

[JollyGreenGiant]

I don't think that backstab is a skill that should be used in the wilderness, unless you're standing specifically in a narrow pass where you can realistically hide.

Common misconception.  Backstab, contrary to popular belief, is not a skill limited to stabbing someone in the back.  If I walk up to someone with my arms wide open and a big smile like I'm going to hug them, and ram a dagger into their gut when I get close enough, that's a "backstab".  If I pull a needle out of my hair while embracing someone and stab them through their carotid, that's a "backstab."  If I get up in someone's face while arguing with them and throw one hand up as a distraction, wait for their eyes to follow, and punch a shiv through their ribs when they look, that's a backstab.

A backstab is any kind of sneaky assault aimed at something vital, whether I'm flanking someone who is already locked in combat, distracting someone and then jabbing them when they're not looking, or just plain sneak up behind someone and land a poniard between some vertebra.  They might be more difficult to pull off in the wilderness, but certainly not restricted to places where you can hide.

[Larrath]

This said hunter will have to scan east so intently that he wouldn't notice someone walking at least three leagues, up and down and around dunes, wearing a cloak.
Unless the victim is a dwarf whose focus is to keep looking east and be a moron, I don't see how anyone wouldn't turn around at least once in that timeframe, just to make sure that there are no silt flyers, raptors, jakhals or gith archers approaching.

Desert sneak, in my eyes, is used far more to sneak around someone than it is to sneak up at someone.

So that's it.  If you sneak up to someone from three rooms away using your l33t sneak and hide and then backstab them without any emotes whatsoever, you should die.  Sometimes all the thinks in the world don't cut it, and backstabbing someone in the open desert is exactly one of these cases.

(Naturally, this is different if there is something else that is specifically distracting them, like another raider or a meteor shower).

[Bogre]

I think desert sneak could be used to approach someone in rough terrain or scrub. Not flat sand-dunes, but maybe among gorges and thorn-forests, etc.

[Agent_137]

As long as you can imagine what you are doing in your head, and it's roughly logical, you'll do fine.

If you are just using the coded aspect of sneak and leaving it at that, you're doing something wrong. Even if you are within acceptable limits, you're cheating yourself out of the real experience here.

[mansa]

I have successfully played an assassin class in the wilderness, surviving on very little.  I died when I went into the city.

[Anonymous]

flat sand-dunes

Am I the only one that finds the idea of a flat sand-dunes ridiculous.

Sa'alam,

Dirr

[jhunter]

No. Your not.

[EvilRoeSlade]

This said hunter will have to scan east so intently that he wouldn't notice someone walking at least three leagues, up and down and around dunes, wearing a cloak.

You couldn't see someone three leagues away if they were wearing a purple cloak, jumping up and down, waving a gigantic maul, and raving at the top of their lungs about Muk Uteps bathroom habits.  Three leagues is nine miles, and nine miles is a hell of a long ways away.  You might be able to see a speck in the distance, and if you squinted REALLY hard than MAYBE (probably not, huh) you could see it moving a little, but you wouldn't be able to accurately say what color it was.

Furthermore, when we're talking about wave dunes, we're talking about each one being like a small hill.  You kill yourself climbing over one, and then you still can't see past the next one.  At the top of the dune you might be able to stop and take a look around, but your clever pursuer will be at the bottom of whichever dune he's at, waiting for you to continue your journey so he can continue closing the distance.

If I backstab you, maybe I'm the one that -should- die, but you're the one that's -going- to.

And one more thing.

Hey guys, why don't we have desert assassins?

Dunno kid.  Why don't we have desert pickpockets?

[Larrath]

No, in the one second when they're three leagues away, the victim will not be able to notice them.  Realistically walking three leagues in the desert, though, even for an elf, is going to take at least an IC hour.  It's a long way to go and hilly sand is pretty hard to move on.

Nobody is going to stare in the same direction for this direction.  Or rather, I'll put it like this.  Staring in the same direction for such a long period of time is a rare action, and the attacker doesn't get to assume that the victim is doing it.  I could might as well walk up to a noble and emote stabbing them while their guard goes to highfive a friend they meet on the road.  Not likely.


Now, you want to talk dunes?  A person standing in a dune in unsafe, lawless, monstrous animal and raider-infested territory is N times less likely to stand in the same place and not look around, thanks to this visibility constraint that you brought up before.
I'm going to give the attacker the benefit of the doubt and assume that they can sneak up the first two and a half leagues without being noticed.

It isn't really possible to crouch around the corner of a dune and peek behind it, so I would really like to know how someone can walk the final half league...hell.  The final twenty steps from the victim to the attacker, without being noticed.  Again, unless the victim is playing his character as particularly unobservant and/or mentally retarded, this is very difficult to do.


Doing a backstab (going by JGG's definition just to kill two birds with one stone) requires standing very close to the victim.  99% of all desert travellers walk around with weapons drawn at all times.  This is -not- simple, and it is almost as bad as the legendary magicker who practiced spells while mudsexing unless it's done as part of a scene of at least three emotes, one of which coming from the victim to show that it's even humanly possible to sneak up on them like that.


Visibility in the desert is ridiculously good, and most Zalanthans are going to be smart enough to look behind them every now and then.  That's what you do if you want to spot those thousand and five threats that frolic around in Zalanthas' beautiful magickal sands.


And finally, maybe it's my character who will die, but it's you who will have the real concequences to worry about.

[Delirium]

[minor derail]

When referring to distance, I tend to use 'leagues' only for OOC simplicity. Often, if it's possible without causing IC confusion, I'll cut the room numbers in half - three rooms would be a league and a half, or four rooms two leagues.

I don't think that each room outdoors is actually a league. If it is, we got some seriously speedy people. Even if I stopped at every single room to look each direction, check the weather, toss out an emote and sniff the flowers, I'd still be travelling too fast if that's actually the case. (And that would sorely hurt gameplay in most cases, because though the journey is half the fun, sometimes you need to get where you need to be, and now.)

And don't even get me started on the awkwardness of having to bend around the idea of shooting an arrow one league, much less two or three. No, I would much prefer to think that the rooms are actually smaller, and that the animal is actually just the next dune over and I've crept within about a quarter-mile to get close enough to shoot him, even though he's two rooms away, codewise.

[/minor derail]

[theebie]

[...]

Visibility in the desert is ridiculously good

[...]

That made me laugh  :wink:

You havent been in the desert lately, huh ? Try reach RedStorm at night.

---theebie---

PS: rangers can sneak/hide/stuff very well outsides. So that's unrealistic and should be changed ?