Suggestion: Defeat

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

Currently, if you're involved in mortal combat in Armageddon, there are only a few possible outcomes:
1. Neither of you can land a hit on each other. Stale mate.
2. One guy definitively beats the other guy. Mantis Head for the loser.
3. One guy creams the other guy, but has mercy on, or simply reduces them to negative HP. There's some potential for RP, but the unconscious individual cannot speak, somewhat limiting the chance for interaction. This result usually ends in the Mantis Head, too.

What I'm basically suggesting is a fourth possibility. What I suggest is that once a PC's HP goes below a certain number (something very, very low... 3 or 5, for example), they are effectively defeated, but retain consciousness. They collapse from blood loss, or perhaps they break a leg, or maybe their opponent simply pins them- doesn't matter, players should be free to RP it however they want.
When somebody is "defeated", they'll fall to the ground, and won't be able to stand up until their HP rises above the "defeated" mark. Their HP recovery will be slowed, and they'll be in a very bad combat position... being as vulnerable somebody who's resting or mounted.
Once somebody is defeated, combat will halt. Either the victor or the victim can decide to continue combat by simply typing "kill <target>" or "hit <target>" again. This "break" in combat, however, allows time for roleplay. The "defeated" player, unlike a player in negative HP, will be fully conscious, and able to respond to questions and such. Just imagine the roleplay potential- you can gloat over your fallen enemy, or beg that templar for forgiveness, or give your mark one last chance to submit to your raider's demands, and possibly escape with his life (after a long and painful recovery from your smack-down).
And for those of that love the gritty, "quick and sudden" feel Arm's current combat system, keep in mind that in order to be "defeated", your HP needs to fall into a very specific zone- between 0 and 3, or 0 and 5. It's still quite possible for that mul to smash your head in with a single blow, and I imagine many character will meet their ends without passing through a "defeated" phase.
Anyway, I hope I made my idea clear. What does everybody think?

[Cegar]

Sounds nice, but I'd rather have it be bypassed if you were set to "mercy off".

[Dakkon Black]

I think this would rock the socks off. Allthough the stop command does help with trying to get in a scene, this sounds kickass.

[jstorrie]

I was under the impression that bludgeoning weapons dealt some stun damage, and that it was possible to knock someone out if you managed to reduce their stun to 0 before their hp?

Players collapsing when their hit points reached a certain level is an interesting idea. I'd like to see it tied to some sort of blood loss:

1. Each attack deals a certain amount of 'bleed' damage - slashing the most, then chopping and piercing, then crushing.

2. Blood loss is kept track of on by separate invisible counter (in addition to affecting your hp).

3. If you've lost x amount of blood over y amount of time, based on your stamina (or maybe your current stun?), you collapse or go into shock.

This isn't completely the same as the bleed code that's been suggested and turned aside before, as the bleeding stops on its own after a while and is basically like a percentage of the original hit, so you wouldn't get nicked for 10 on your leg and then bleed out 100 and die because you couldn't find a PC physician. But if you were in an out-and-out slugfest, you might bleed enough to immobilize you. The other side of this is that if you went into shock you might get some unspecified bonuses at the cost of, say, losing some health per action - I've seen people do crazy things in shock, but it's certainly not a healthy state to be moving around in.

I'd also like to see crushing weapons have their stun damage upped to bring them in line with this, to the point that bludgeoning weapons would be (as is reasonable) the best way to subdue someone without killing them.

So under that system, if you took three massive hits and got gutted, well, you're dead. But if you're in a drawn out fight or series of fights and you take a lot of damage over time, you may collapse from weakness without immediately dying.

[Dresan]

Yeah i was just thinking of this recently too. If you knock someone unconscious you should be able to incapacitated them for at least 5-10 mins. Be able to talk to then and have them talk back to you, and decide if you want to finish the job or not. I mean after you knock someone out it usually means mantis head for that person. Also if someone is unconscous i think they should still be able to hear what is going on, not only see the emotes. While this can easily be argued, I'm willing to suspend a bit of realism there for more interesting deaths.

[EonBlueApocalypse]

1. Each attack deals a certain amount of 'bleed' damage - slashing the most, then chopping and piercing, then crushing.

The first two would cause more obvious bleeding, but the latter two can cause more dangerous internal bleeding.

[Morgenes]

Doesn't stop and disengage allows you to choose to RP this out without having to have it as a hard-coded limit that affects everyone?  I understand you want some coded halt that keeps the player from just running off, but if this is about RP, couldn't it just be left to RP?

[Dresan]

Doesn't stop and disengage allows you to choose to RP this out without having to have it as a hard-coded limit that affects everyone?  I understand you want some coded halt that keeps the player from just running off, but if this is about RP, couldn't it just be left to RP?

Not quite because your always going to find someone that will try to run or you risk them healing and having to fight them again which is always dangerous. In short the other PC (victim) has to be willing to play along inorder to RP with them while they are 'vunerable'.  When you knock someone unconscious their life is in your PC's hands, i think we players would like more opportunity to interact with victim and have them be able to interact with us when we find ourselves in the situation.

[Beux]

I think this would be awesome. A lot of the 'complaints' in the dissatisfied deaths thread seemed to mention the lack of closure due to the lack of RP around their deaths.

I'm thinking the lack of RP is generally due to the 'killer' not wanting to give their prey an opportunity to escape, and the fact that the prey usually take an opportunity they get to escape.

This would give the party an opportunity to interact and RP, offering the victim the closure and satisfaction they need, while the killer still gets what they want. Of course it always gives the victim further opportunity to barter for their life.

I know I died once in a situation where I probably could have bought my life, but the guy killed me straight off, most likely due to fearing I'd escape.

[Quirk]

Doesn't stop and disengage allows you to choose to RP this out without having to have it as a hard-coded limit that affects everyone?  I understand you want some coded halt that keeps the player from just running off, but if this is about RP, couldn't it just be left to RP?

Not really. There's a problem in that it's codedly possible, though not realistic, for someone who's leaking blood and guts and all but dead to speedwalk off into the distance without their much fitter adversary catching up with them. While the killer may want to RP the death scene, the victim may either through deliberate powergaming or innocent OOC panic run away when the killer chooses to disengage. In practice it's foolish for the killer to do this unless the intention is to let them escape, as they're passing control over the scene entirely back into the hands of the likely very frightened player of the victim.

A flag like mercy on that allowed you to stop when your enemy was helpless, unable to run away, but conscious so you could RP with them would be immensely useful in making death scenes more interesting, as assailants wouldn't feel they had to make the kill at once to prevent their quarry from getting away. This would also open the door for raiders to leave victims they rob alive and conscious, upping their chances of survival.

To argue against it, briefly, though, there's probably a bit of work in adding a new "helpless" state just a little step above unconsciousness, and if that state allowed people to cast spells or use psi powers people might not use the "defeat" capability for fear of being magicked, or word getting out about their evil deeds.

There are a number of scenarios however where victims are "rewarded" for poor RP in that doing something unlikely ups their chances of survival, and attackers are punished for good RP because any attempt to delay coded adjudication in order to talk is likely to lose them a large proportion of their victims. This is one of them; another of them is the situation where an attacker could come in and type "kill" on the spot and engage in combat, but will not get a chance of combat if instead she emotes heading the victim off and threatening him with her spear, for in that case the victim can ignore the emote and spam-walk away. It would be immensely beneficial to have coded help in these situations so that raiders, say, don't have to either attack their victims at once and not stop until they're dead, or rely on their victim giving consent to be robbed.

(Thought I might throw in the vaguely similar case of the occasionally-suggested "threaten" command, where "kill" isn't invoked until the target makes an aggressive move, casts a spell or attempts to leave the room; again, this is a feature that allows the side that begins with coded benefits not to lose them just because they want to add RP flavour to proceedings).

[jmordetsky]

(Thought I might throw in the vaguely similar case of the occasionally-suggested "threaten" command, where "kill" isn't invoked until the target makes an aggressive move, casts a spell or attempts to leave the room; again, this is a feature that allows the side that begins with coded benefits not to lose them just because they want to add RP flavour to proceedings).

Well said, I was thinking of Threaten while I was reading the post. I believe implementing this would be the way to go as it's applicable to both the "first encounter" scenario and the "end of combat" scenario.

Raiders who entered a room could use this to engage in some sort of RP when they entered a room putting an end to the enter and flee syndrom Quirk mentions.

In addition it allows us to get close to what the poster has asked for. IE When combat is getting hairy and the attacker who possibly wants to add some RP to things disengages. If his victim also chooses to disengage, the attacker could then invoke the threaten command to keep the victim there rather then allowing them to run off.

[Edit - Again, because my original edit was in the middle of my post.]

As an aside, Soldiers coded to use Threaten rathen then auto subdue to insta-kill would be much more realistic. Imho.

[Edit - Numero dos]

To address the original posters concern, what might be absolutely ideal is another flag in addition to mercy that allowed you to halt combat and move into a threaten when the victim would normally be rendered unconcious. Perhaps leaving them at 1hp rather then -1hp?

[Agent_137]

i applaud the goal, that of more pre-death rp. There are indeed many ways to achieve this, and I support most all of them.

I espescially like a more detailed mercy command, besides mere on and off.

[spawnloser]

Negative hitpoints = defeated.

That's my thought.

[Paris]

I see another option, disengage. The person is more then capable of giving up long before
they are that low on hp and they can surrender and stop fighting. That gives control to the
other person if he wishes to stop because maybe I am just out to kill you for something
you unknowingly did wrong. I see really no use for a new state between ko'd and
standing.

[Dakkon Black]

Disengage does give a time to rp if hp's are low, but that's hoping that the other player is where you are at.

Here's a little story. I had a sargeant that had trapped an elf in a cave. I beat the crap out of the elf. And then, when he was knocked out on the ground, I broke his legs.

Yes indeed, I emoted methodically smashing his knees in with the mace, over and over again, while he was helpless. When he woke up from the stun damage. I barely had my first say out when he stood up, and RAN west.

I never brought it up with staff because I was actually laughing my ass off reading the log more then the trouble was worth. But that's the problem with not having a coded "Defeat"

[Flaming Ocotillo]

I'd like to see this implemented, though if psionics can still be used by the "defeated" character (as Quirk pointed out), that might make this feature used less often, but still great.

[jmordetsky]

Disengage does give a time to rp if hp's are low, but that's hoping that the other player is where you are at.

Here's a little story. I had a sargeant that had trapped an elf in a cave. I beat the crap out of the elf. And then, when he was knocked out on the ground, I broke his legs.

Yes indeed, I emoted methodically smashing his knees in with the mace, over and over again, while he was helpless. When he woke up from the stun damage. I barely had my first say out when he stood up, and RAN west.

I never brought it up with staff because I was actually laughing my ass off reading the log more then the trouble was worth. But that's the problem with not having a coded "Defeat"

Yea man, it happens ALL the time. I can't even blame people, sometimes they are just panicking.

But fact of the matter is, unless you throw a subdue on someone, you are RPing at your own expense if you are at the top of a life or death situation.

Sometimes this makes the urge to just kill and get it overwith pretty appealing.

[Sorcerer Kank]

Well I'm sure glad I don't have that problem...

cast 'mon un debilitate yo ass' mansa

emote With sharply narrowed eyes, @ pulls out a dusky, black feather and
places it near %mansa feet.

tell mansa (in a deathful tone) You shall die by the feather of tickling death!!!


Of course, standards for my type are (for good reason) higher than others.

- Your Friendly Neighborhood Sorcerer

[cisalus]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but realistically how often do people actually become notably unconcious before dying? The movies might be lying again, but whenever such-and-such was impaled by so-and-so, there was always a 5 minute period of cheesy dialogue before such-and-such's eyes rolled back and he put it out.

I definitely think that being mortally wounded at negative hitpoints should not make you pass out, but be incapable of doing much more than coughing/spitting up blood and telling your brother that he can have your stereo when you're gone.

Code Select Expand

A greasy mul PWNS you with his bare hands.
You crumple to your knees in pain, incapable of standing.

>tell mul (as blood eerily trickles from his mouth) You.. bald bastard.


Mercy on would cause combat at this point to pause for RP, re-initiated by hit or kill one last time.

And, just to derail a little bit I guess, I'd -love- it if you started (slowly) bleeding to death at this point unless given extraordinary aid.

[Paris]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but realistically how often do people actually become notably unconcious before dying? The movies might be lying again, but whenever such-and-such was impaled by so-and-so, there was always a 5 minute period of cheesy dialogue before such-and-such's eyes rolled back and he put it out.

I definitely think that being mortally wounded at negative hitpoints should not make you pass out, but be incapable of doing much more than coughing/spitting up blood and telling your brother that he can have your stereo when you're gone.

Code Select Expand

A greasy mul PWNS you with his bare hands.
You crumple to your knees in pain, incapable of standing.

>tell mul (as blood eerily trickles from his mouth) You.. bald bastard.

Mercy on would cause combat at this point to pause for RP, re-initiated by hit or kill one last time.

And, just to derail a little bit I guess, I'd -love- it if you started (slowly) bleeding to death at this point unless given extraordinary aid.

This would make assassins useless, the point of them is a well trained one
with smarts can kill you without you ever knowing. Sometimes it is important
to hide the knowledge ooc'ly as well. This would severaly ruin that concept
and ppl would be better off playing warriors for "assassin" types.

[Blur]

This would make assassins useless, the point of them is a well trained one
with smarts can kill you without you ever knowing. Sometimes it is important
to hide the knowledge ooc'ly as well. This would severaly ruin that concept
and ppl would be better off playing warriors for "assassin" types.

I don't see how these ideas would effect assassins much since they are usually backstabbing and running away.

[Beux]

How could it ruin anything for anyone? Aren't we talking about this as an optional, toggle-able flag? Assassins could just turn it off.