Sparring.

[a strange shadow]

There are other ways to train people than just whacking the shit out of them... even now.

The more experienced people, if interested in your progression, will let you attack first and disengage.

[RogueGunslinger]

That's still people working around the code, inspead of the code functioning properly.

If you make it so the newbie only attacks you, then newbies are only learning offensive abilities, and will still get fucking owned any time they fight someone with moderate skill.

I'm talking about sparring, with an unfamiliar blunted weapon in your off hand, and only taking two or three hits to get someone below 'So-and-so doesn't look well.' Granted that a case left to high-strength hits, but it happens more often than is realistic.

[Zoan]

Teaching a 'soldier' how to hit and not take hits is counter-productive, as anyone who knows fighting knows that tankiness wins fights (at least amongst warrior tropes). Why this is the case I won't go into, as it's too much information on the boards, but for a warrior, merely being able to hit someone doesn't make you skilled.

This is why I encourage beating the everloving shit out of other soldiers, but certainly letting it play out to be fun for them (emotes etc during the bout). I'm guilty of not doing any entertaining things within spars with certain people in my clan because I don't want to kill them, having typed 'disengage' into my zMUD command bar and waiting for the inevitable 'Blah reels from the blow.' message. Boring.

[Synthesis]

Teaching a 'soldier' how to hit and not take hits is counter-productive...

For both of the non-warrior combat-related guilds, this is most certainly -not- true.

[Yam]

Teaching a 'soldier' how to hit and not take hits is counter-productive...

For both of the non-warrior combat-related guilds, this is most certainly -not- true.

From the meat of his post, I believe he meant the opposite of that statement.

[Synthesis]

Teaching a 'soldier' how to hit and not take hits is counter-productive...

For both of the non-warrior combat-related guilds, this is most certainly -not- true.

From the meat of his post, I believe he meant the opposite of that statement.

My point is that "beating the everloving shit" out of a non-warrior is only mildly productive, at best, because of the bizarro-world of skill branching, and the fact that the defense nerf made base defense sans parry skill practically useless, unless you have god-like agility.

I believe his point was that offense doesn't matter in the long run--defense does (which I suppose is true).  However, his mistake is that, since the defense nerf, base defense has precious little to do with defensive capability.  The results you get from beating up warriors are from increases in parry and shield use--both of which warriors start with, and can get very good at.  Since non-warriors don't start with the parry skill, and seem to have fairly abysmal skill in shield use, the only thing you are really improving by "beating the everloving shit" out of them is base defense...which again, is practically useless unless you plan on convincing all of your opponents to fight unarmed.  If you continue only to beat the shit out of them constantly, they will -never- reach their full defensive potential.

[Forest Junkie]

Eh, on a side note, I understand why the defense nerf was enacted. I simply think the only ones whom benefit from it are mobs.

[Spoon]

I can see the frustration with being beaten to a pulp on a regular basis and having to act it out. However, I really do believe sparring should be as brutal as it is. It's not comparable to fencing, or any other kind of sport we have these days that involves sparring. I think to receive the level of training that PCs do (the ability to face god-knows what nine foot monster is lurking out in the desert) you would need to be doing some hardcore sparring. We're talking about Zalanthas here, and Zalanthan military organisations. I have no doubt that sparring should be something dangerous. People thumping each other with pieces of bone or wood, as if they were fighting for their life. True, they're not trying to kill each other, but that's what the mercy code is, which most of the time means not beating someone when they're down.

If sparring was a kind of game, where no one got hurt too much, I seriously doubt that soldier could face a gith in combat.

[mangler]

Yeh I agree somthing needs to be changed.. i find it kind of silly how badly you can maim someone with whats ment to be a blunt weapon, and in a controlled environment, I mean would people really put their full strength into hitting a person on the head in a friendly spar when they know it'll put them out of action of IG days.. or weeks.

How do you imagine you could train a person to kill another person without actually, ya know, trying to kill another person?  Blunted weapons are used to make it harder to kill the other.

Im not saying you wouldnt hit them on the head or neck, just I dont think you wound do it with as large force as possible..  I imagine it would be more like if you had the ability to hit someone in the neck, you've practically won the spar, so you wouldn't just try and behead them for the fun of it.

[Barzalene]

I tend to agree with the original poster here. I think that if sparring were such a dangerous proposition in real life we'd have had fewer wars. Most people would have stayed home and invested in stronger locks. They'd have moved to islands. Distance weapons would have been more popular.
If you're sparring, mercy on, with a sparring weapon there should be a  damage cap. And the better you are at fighting, the less likely you are to hurt someone by accident.

The thing is, how exactly do you code that? I think a multitude of sins can be covered by not expecting people to rp that they're about to keel over every time they have a bad day at training.  A simple "ow," should suffice unless someone is deliberately trying to hurt them in the sparring ring.

[Barzalene]

Completely unrelated I have an issue with leader types at sparring lessons. And this is very prevalent, and not aimed specifically at anyone I've been playing with recently, but rather at everyone I've been playing with all along.

You have some buff leader type. You have a bunch of scrawny mewling trainees who have trouble buckling their own helmets on. Sparring time comes. Leader spars weakling A, gets no damage. So he spars weakling B. Then weakling C. Then weakling's A, B, and C. And then A, B and C all at once. Then sparring is over. The next day they do the same thing.

Why doesn't it occurr to these people to let A, B and C fight each other once in a while? He could call out instructions and encouragements.

Obviously, the second scenario occurs, but with far less frequency than the first. You're already buff, dudes. It's nice that you're buff. We get you'd like to be buffer, But it would be more fun for the other three people to give them more than a one in three chance to get to spar in a given period. To have the chance to spar in a match they might win, or which won't be over in two hits.

[Qzzrbl]

I wouldn't say make sparring take away -stamina- points.... Because then you'd have to make real fighting take away stamina points too. To balance it out.

And we all know that in real life, that only kicking or trying to knock a sword out of someone's hand are pretty much the only things that will tire you out, amirite?!

I think that sparring weapons should do more stun damage than anything, really.

HP shouldn't account for things that just hurt. My character cutting his finger while cutting a steak. Should this take HP damage? I don't really think so. Someone hits my character in the head with a padded stick. Should this take HP damage? I'd say it should take away 2-3 HP for every other hit to the head, maybe. I've always imagined killing someone with a padded sparring weapon would take hours, maybe even days of just bashing away at someone. Though knocking someone out with enough hard hits to the head isn't a stretch of the imagination.

[jhunter]

I personally liked things better before all the tweaking was done to combat-related things. I'm getting to like our combat system less and less as the changes happen to it. It's becoming more irritating than enjoyable as time goes on.

[Qzzrbl]

I personally liked things better before all the tweaking was done to combat-related things. I'm getting to like our combat system less and less as the changes happen to it. It's becoming more irritating than enjoyable as time goes on.

Meh, wish I could've seen what it was like before.

I think the only tweak I was around for was the 2-hander and encumbrance changes.

[My 2 sids]

Someone mentioned taking away stun instead of HP.  I think that's great.

Could the rooms themselves be coded to over-ride the normal hit points to reflect Stun rather than HP?

[Qzzrbl]

Mm, I think it would be a change better left for the sparring weapons themselves.

Not everyone has a sparring hall at their disposal y'know. 

[RogueGunslinger]

I think stun is a good idea as well, but how many points would be accurate? Would players using blunt weapons always win a sparring match?

[Qzzrbl]

I think stun is a good idea as well, but how many points would be accurate? Would players using blunt weapons always win a sparring match?

I would say make most/all of the sparring weapons do about the same amount of damage.... Because essentially, they -are- blunt weapons, but just shaped like swords and other stuff.

And of course, the amount of stun taken would depend on where the blow lands. Though of course sparring weapons shouldn't do more stun damage than live weapons.

[mangler]

Would this end up favouring clubs in the sparring ring? As to me a training club just seems like a lighter version or a normal club, but still bulkier than a training sword/dagger, so would having them all do stun instead of HP allow clubs to be more dominant? Since they do more Stun at the moment, or would you say that clubs should be toned down to to do the same amount of stun as the other weapons?

[Tisiphone]

If by "more favoured" you mean, "most damaging," then quite possibly yes. However, I believe the intention of sparring is precisely NOT to mangle your opponent, GDB handle to the contrary.


Don't take that as being snippy, I think the pun's cute, that's all.

[Qzzrbl]

Would this end up favouring clubs in the sparring ring? As to me a training club just seems like a lighter version or a normal club, but still bulkier than a training sword/dagger, so would having them all do stun instead of HP allow clubs to be more dominant? Since they do more Stun at the moment, or would you say that clubs should be toned down to to do the same amount of stun as the other weapons?

In all technicality, a blunted wooden sword would do more damage, as all of the force is on a more concentrated edge.

But again, I say that the sparring weapons could be re-worked so that they're reasonably blunted/padded to the point to where they'd all do about the same amount of damage.

[fourTwenty]

It shouldn't matter if clubs do slightly more damage than other weapons when sparring.
Sparring is practice, it's not about who wins. It's about training yourself in the fighting style you wish to use.

Derail/ I hate people who turn sparring into a competition IRL (It bleeds IG a little to). /d

[Kyviantre]

From experience of LARP weapons, sparring seems to be similar.  You don't go all out, you pull your blows (even if its a little), since while you want to teach rookie-recruit-number1 to fight, you want to teach them stances, how to move, other things in addition to just how to hack at someone.  Fighting is all about how to fight, if you want to learn to batter someone, become a butcher!

Also, blunted weapons (in my limited opinion) don't bleed you, they bruise you like crazy, they stun you if you get your head clobbered, they make your limbs go numb, but they aren't sharp, they don't cut into your flesh easily, so you don't start bleeding from every orrifice at a moments notice.

Hence I'm for extra stun and less HP damage, purely because smacking someone with the flat of a sword will daze them, not make them bleed all over your nice new boots.

[X-D]

I would quote a bunch of things here but I won't.

The OP and most others are wrong. Equating LARP sparring or even SCA sparring to arm sparring is silly. Fact of the matter is. In current RL sparring, it is a GAME, a Sport or acting. You are not trying to train to kill somebody you are training to look good PRETENDING to kill somebody. And never trying to pick up any skills to kill somebody in a real sword fight tomorrow. Fact of the matter is, if you "spar" by pulling your blows then that is exactly what you are training to do...pull your blows, be less then lethal.

In "REAL" sparring with weapons in which you are trying to learn to actually defend yourself and kill. Accidents of crippling or even deadly nature are not all that rare. There is a reason why boxing is one of the deadliest sports IRL, even with rules and padded gloves, the opponents really are trying to kill each other.

Now take that, add weapons and make it training to defend yourself on the street or battle ground...meh. If anything I think Arm sparring should be made more deadly to add realism, it is amazing how rare arm sparring deaths really are.

[Yam]

X-D is right. Full on combat sparring really shouldn't be safe.

Plenty of people died in medieval tournaments. Zalanthas =! soccer.