New skill: Threaten

[Jakahri]

I think this would be a useful skill for both hunter and city-type fighter guilds. Allow me to explain:

Working in tandem with the skill 'guard', 'threaten' would allow you to intice a mob to jump on you to initiate combat, rather than attacking the weakest character in a traveling group. There could potentially be a city/wilderness version of this skill. Note that this skill would also only work against aggro mobs, not normally docile npcs.

Code Select Expand


>threaten status
You are not currently threatening anyone
>threaten on
Narrowing your gaze, you blah blah
>An armored bahamet has arrived from the south.


Now is where the skill kicks in. Instead of the bahamet randomly attacking someone who might be statistically weaker, you will allow others the precious seconds they need to escape, -and- simultaneously avoid the kill lag associated with charging a beast to save others.

Code Select Expand


Gesticulating wildly with your arms, you entice an armored bahamet to charge you!
>An armored bahamet brutally pinches your body.
>flee
>You flee head over heels.


I'll post later to refine my proposal. Feedback wanted!

[Cegar]

I think it is fairly unrealistic. Not that I've ever gone up and tried to threaten a cougar or anything, but it just doesn't seem "right".

[Resurrect]

Guard + Rescue already does a fair job of doing this.

[Hymwen]

And if you really want to make sure an NPC doesn't attack your squishy friend... attack the NPC first.

[Cyrian20]

So the guard skill would basically be useless in the wild?


I mean npc wsould attack you so there would only be need for a guard skill
for pc vs pc. I am truly against the status quo but, in this situation this skill
is all kinds of bad. In an HnS with seperate pk fields and dungeons it would be
niftyriffic, in a rp mud it just seems out of place. If you want it's attention attack it
Or just guard your friend and jump in when the bahamet attacks
When you jump in front of them there is no lag and you can insta flee.

[elvenchipmunk]

I'm not sure I see how this skill would be different than guarding? I mean, you're saying you want a skill that would allow aggressive mobs to attack you instead of someone else, right?

We already have that skill, though. It's called guard.

As in

Code Select Expand

guard weakling

...I took a little more time to read your post, and it seems as though this skill would be used to make them attack you, instead of them going through a guard check to see whether they attack someone else or yourself (if you're guarding them).

I still don't think this skill is needed at all, as it seems to me to be just another form of guard, with a different RP take on it (ie: instead of you jumping in front of someone, they just attack you in the first place).

I don't see why you need a coded skill to represent this.

[jstorrie]

The purpose seems to be allowing one PC to guard small groups, acting as a sort of 'point guard' for a travelling caravan or party.

I think this could be better addressed by increasing the functionality of the guard command, by allowing guards to keep tabs on multiple targets but significantly reducing the chance of success the larger the group gets -

> guard templar noble merchant

You begin guarding the big, creepy templar, the fat, pallid noble and the blue-haired, five-legged merchant.

The fat, pallid noble walks west.
The fat, pallid noble is now too far away to protect.

There would be no coded error message if you were too inexperienced to properly protect a group, you would just take cumulative penalties the more people you were trying to keep an eye on, and only realize your lack of compentence when some slipped past you to your charges (just like failing to guard a single target). An experienced guard could direct a small group and keep it in a good enough formation for him to defend, while an inexperienced guard would likely fail to protect his charges if he took on more than one.

[elvenchipmunk]

Guarding a group might be a neat idea, and if that's what was meant the OP then it starts to make more sense. But instead of making a new command, I would rather see the guard command updated to allow guarding of multiple people.

Maybe you would need to have a very high guard skill or something.

Putting in a new command for it just wouldn't be necessary, I don't think. Not a bad idea, though.

[Jakahri]

And if you really want to make sure an NPC doesn't attack your squishy friend... attack the NPC first.

That's my point. Attacking something gives the dreaded 'kill lag'.

[Anonymous]

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6416&highlight=threaten

Yah

[Quirk]

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6416&highlight=threaten

Yah

That poll shows support for another, and IMO vastly superior, implementation of "threaten" - a command which initiated combat if the threatened person fled the room. It wasn't a "taunt" sort of command, but a command designed to let attackers emote and talk without giving up the code advantage of walking in and hitting "kill".