A tregil smirks as you miss an uppercut

[Spoon]

As if the smirking wasn't enough, it's a bit annoying how the script has you strike whatever it is in the face all the time. Even if you're a dwarf lying on your back.

[Lizzie]

What about instead of hard-coded changes, people just play realistically/in-character and not use six inch wrist-spikes/razers/whatever when they're fighting with a 12 foot spear from the back of an inix?

This exemplifies the point, actually. The point, is that code trumps roleplay. People wear those things because they're cool looking. They wear them riding, to get from point A to point B. And maybe they plan on getting off their inix and attacking that leaping hopping tregil at close range.

However, when big lumbering gortok comes out and starts clawing your head (how did he reach your head anyway? You're sitting on top of a 12-foot-tall mount and the gortok is only 7 feet tall - oh yeah - code), the code for your gear AUTOMATICALLY kicks in. You can't say "Oh Mr. Gortok, please hold up a moment while I remove my slicing bracers."  The code doesn't care what's realistic. The code cares how the code is written. The code is written such that you, the player, have no choice. If you are -wearing- those bracers, their script will *automatically* kick in if you get put in a combat situation. You have to roleplay around the code of it. The code will not accommodate your roleplay.

[Xeran Van Houten]

It sounds more like some of you are assuming that when you enter combat with something, the two (or more) things are just standing there swinging, immobile.  This is not the case, and I'm sure I've seen staff say that in several posts about other things.  You, your mount, and the thing(s) you are fighting are moving around - dodging, looking for position, striking, hopping around, etc.
If you think that gortok is not trying to jump up and lunge for your face, that's being less realist than assuming you -have- to have a 12ft spear to fight from a mount.  That's how canine animals fight - they go for hamstrings, throats and faces.
True, a dwarf that keeps hitting half-giants in the face and such is pushing it, but there's plenty of possibly explanations why it might have happened.
Point is that combat is chaos, and you can't easily predict how it'll happen or even remember clearly what happened during afterward.

I've always viewed the script attacks as more of attacks of opportunity that happen while you're trying to connect/miss with your main weapon(s) or while defending from attacks.
The only actual problem I've ever had with them is that the scripts do not respond to the disengage command, so if you forget to take them off during sparring, you either have to take them off during the combat, or flee.

[jhunter]

I've always viewed the script attacks as more of attacks of opportunity that happen while you're trying to connect/miss with your main weapon(s) or while defending from attacks.

Yeah me too. Since you happen to have the spikes or whatever available it creates another way to strike when an opportunity presents itself. My only complaints regarding them is the echoes they sometimes give and the unrealistic pricing.

[Potaje]

I would like to weigh in on pricing, I believe one should simply consider the pricing as being what happens to any product that has a high demand. Once that demand is known then the merchants will always squeeze as many coins out of it as possible.

Its rather realistic, in that sense.

Imagine for a moment it started out something like this;

Some where in a small shop off a dusty room, Merchant/crafter Amos Da Amos is working with some teeth from a predator and a strip of leather from the ruined hide he tried to make into whatever. He comes up with this ugly monstrosity of (currently) useless materials and he tosses it aside.
Enter the warrior, one day poking around Amos shop, this warrior comes across the leather and teeth, asking what it is, the crafter/merchant says oh it was just something ta go around da wrist, but its really worth anything. Well the warrior sees a possible purpose in it and buys it for 20 sid.

Fast forward in time, the warrior has become widely known and more so his ability to tear at the face of an opponent that pushes past the guard of his weapon, a twelve foot spear/pike, which in the earlier years happen'd often.
Next thing you know people are seeking out this cheaply made/ but rare item. The merchant Crafter begins to think, oh well, perhaps there was a greater value to these since so many people want them, specially since less want these fancy bracers. So he at first still only charges 20 sid, but its not something he enjoys and more and more people want them, seeking them.. so he begins to charge more coins, since it is his time they are requiring, and he figures if I'm going to be asked to work on shit, well then they should pay me for roses. Thus he now requires 2000 a wrist wrap, and finds that he gets it, so he continues to charge that much.

Now is it his fault (or staffs fault) that everyone is willing to pay this price, no, just as much as its not someones fault that they are killed by another to get that item. Its economics.

Now will people complain, sure they complain about everything, I poop to much, I don't poop enough. It matters little what the situation is, there with always be someone that is not satisfied.

[SMuz]

The problem is not really in supply and demand.. it's that it's the demand and supply is almost exclusively from PCs, with no demand from (v)NPCs. It's possibly something very simple to craft, but few have the recipe, so, not many people with the skill are making them.

[Lizzie]

Some of these items are not craftable at all, and their rarety is *exlusively* an OOC device, created by staff. They are special order only, the Merchant is required to make the customer wait. Theoretically, some of these items are made of cheap materials AND incredibly simplistic enough that ANY master crafter should have no trouble making it at all. However the whole "this can only be made by that clan" thing is a playability issue, so at LEAST, they should be craftable by any master crafter in that clan. But they're not. And their rarety and minimum selling price is imposed on players by the staff, and is not an IC situation. You can come up with all kinds of IC excuses, but that's all they are - excuses. And if another character of influence (like, a templar, or noble) pushes hard enough, and rejects the excuses..the only thing you CAN do, is go OOC and explain "sorry, the clan staff refuses to load them up and they're not craftable. Please roleplay around this" and hope the player of said templar or noble is understanding.

Some of these items were craftable by certain clans, but the clans are now closed and therefore you can't get them at all, unless you kill someone who already has one and get it before the game crashes and it is gone forever.

[jstorrie]

To be clear, I'd prefer if the 'extra attacks' functionality was removed entirely, and replaced with a 'backup weapon' functionality. This way the hands slot could be itemized for pure protection (heavy gauntlets), skill boosts (work gloves/climbing gloves/riding gloves/etc) or backup weapon utilty (spiked gauntlets, cesti, brass knuckles, etc.)

[jhunter]

To be clear, I'd prefer if the 'extra attacks' functionality was removed entirely, and replaced with a 'backup weapon' functionality. This way the hands slot could be itemized for pure protection (heavy gauntlets), skill boosts (work gloves/climbing gloves/riding gloves/etc) or backup weapon utilty (spiked gauntlets, cesti, brass knuckles, etc.)

So when you say backup weapon...do you mean that if I were wearing spiked gauntlets and my character was disarmed I would still function as though wielding a bludgeoning weapon utiliziing my combat skills the same as if I were armed with a club?

[jhunter]

Actually, instead of removing the extra attacks functionality I say fix the echoes -and- add in some of what he's talking about. Make some of the others options more appealing from a coded standpoint so that people have to choose. Do I want an extra minor attack? Do I want additional defense? Do I want them to be a backup weapon instead? How about locking gauntlets to keep people from disarming me? Do I want gloves that help with climbing? Do I want gloves that help with my riding? Etc. Make alot more options of items that have more obvious coded benefits but basically all fit the same locations so you can't stack them up, only choose one over another depending on your pc.

Edit: Oh, and make them all pc craftable so they aren't so hard to come by to help keep the pricing down. (or not depending on the materials and the difficulty of crafting them)

[jstorrie]

To be clear, I'd prefer if the 'extra attacks' functionality was removed entirely, and replaced with a 'backup weapon' functionality. This way the hands slot could be itemized for pure protection (heavy gauntlets), skill boosts (work gloves/climbing gloves/riding gloves/etc) or backup weapon utilty (spiked gauntlets, cesti, brass knuckles, etc.)

So when you say backup weapon...do you mean that if I were wearing spiked gauntlets and my character was disarmed I would still function as though wielding a bludgeoning weapon utiliziing my combat skills the same as if I were armed with a club?

Yes, although the backup weapon would not be as powerful as a standard one.

[Spoon]

Maybe no weapon skills, just added damage for unarmed... But then stun damage would probably need to be pulled back else we'd end up with ninja monks all over the place.

[SMuz]

To be clear, I'd prefer if the 'extra attacks' functionality was removed entirely, and replaced with a 'backup weapon' functionality. This way the hands slot could be itemized for pure protection (heavy gauntlets), skill boosts (work gloves/climbing gloves/riding gloves/etc) or backup weapon utilty (spiked gauntlets, cesti, brass knuckles, etc.)

This makes sense. I mean, how many people even try to slash someone in the face while swinging a sword at them? Ironically, the only situation where this makes sense is if you're fighting a gortok with a 6 foot pole. It could function as like a secondary dagger if you get disarmed, but not a secondary attack.

[Bilanthri]

What about instead of hard-coded changes, people just play realistically/in-character and not use six inch wrist-spikes/razers/whatever when they're fighting with a 12 foot spear from the back of an inix?

This. Although the word you're looking for is pike (not the FISH!), I think? I've never heard of 12 foot spears... 12 foot pikes, definitely.

Spear is a general term. Pikes are a particularly long style of spear (See, Square vs. Rectangle).

Iron Age spears from Scandinavia were generally at the shorter end of the range (~6ft) as they were employed more often in small skirmishes or one-on-one combat, but it was not unheard of for them to be tall enough that a man could just touch the rivet with an upraised hand (~10ft). Longer spears (i.e. pikes) were employed by the people further south who were more experienced with fighting in large-scale battles.

Parallels can be seen in Asian cultures as well, with foot soldiers using shorter spears for close combat and cavalry using flexible long-spears from horse-back. The flexible design made the adoption of more rigid pole weapons, such as the lance or iron-shod pike, less of a priority as breakage was of less concern.

/archeology derail

[jstorrie]

Maybe no weapon skills, just added damage for unarmed... But then stun damage would probably need to be pulled back else we'd end up with ninja monks all over the place.

If the 'glove weapons' had smaller or fewer damage dice, I think it would be fine - especially since normal weapons don't get the wacky stun damage that unarmed strikes do. If people want to forego the 2d8-or-whatever warhammer for the 1d4 cestus, in order to max out on STYLE POINTS, then I see no reason to penalize them more. The lower damage output of using piddly little hand weapons is penalty enough, even the PC still gets to apply his bludgeoning or whatever skill to them.

The average player's choice would be more like 'do I wear these cesti, so I have a guaranteed but weak weapon out in case I get disarmed, or do I wear these cool assassin-y gloves with the wristsheath so I can just draw my sekrit daggers, or do I wear these riding gloves so I can use both hands in combat (let's not consider that one too closely), or do I wear my archery gloves for SHOOTAN, or do I wear these climbing gloves so I'll be okay when Sarge leads us all over the Wall again?' Maybe that sounds min-maxy, but I think it's a reasonable equipment decision that PCs ought to be making.

[Spoon]

I like it, but I was thinking about disarm. It would need a big penalty, or there would be a massive advantage of not being able to be disarmed yourself.

[musashi]

I only read the first few pages before I got sick of reading about how so and so was in the military and thus knows all about wrist razors and ninja knife sheaths (because we totally use those in Afghanistan you know).

I'm agreeing with the OP and Lizzie on this one.

Look rare items are cool, and they're neat to serve as status symbols for long lived PC's, so long as they have an IC reason to be rare.

Sheaths are not rare.
Straps of leather with spikes on them are not rare.

I vote they be adjusted accordingly.

[Anaiah]

This is by no means official staff stance on it, but this is my personal thoughts on it:

The item in question circumvents the intended coding used for combat. It literally changes reality - after a fashion, if you look at Code as the backbone of the reality. As do things like 3-room-shooting bows - which are also intended to be rare.

The fact that the items exist is meant to enrich the gameworld, giving more variety to things, and offering interesting possible 'extras'. If the items were changed not to give the bonus, someone would be on the GDB crying 'nerf', and if they were given to everyone, the fact that they circumvent the code would literally change the overall reality of the combat code - and with the vast majority of people. The same, again, with the bows.

No, it's not specifically IC, it is both IC and OOC: If you think about the fact that any one of the people you sell those to would be able to shred your clan's hunters faces, or shoot/antagonize with the bows from 3 rooms... All that does is endow people with power you might not WANT everyone and their brother to have.

And we could change them to be diamond-encrusted, but that would make it even more OOC for every other even slightly combat oriented pc to try to wear the same thing.

/fin

[Majikal]

The glorious 3 rooms bows I overlooked in this thread because despite the crazy difference in their uses and how they might change the strategies of their users, they tend to not just be worth the coin codedly, but look the part as well.

Sheaths, there is simply no argument they should be rare. None. They need to be common.

Maybe take away some of the appeal to the wrist razors so the price can be made realistic, nerf damage, nerf how often the ability triggers, make the ability not function at all until the user reaches a certain level of off/def (which is almost the case anyway). Give the use of wrist razor weapons a penalty to defense.

[hyzhenhok]

I think if your PC is strong enough, you should be able to rip someone's arm off as a critical reversal of a spiked bracer miss.  You could then use the resulting "spike-bracered severed arm" to *shlif* them to death.

If you do this enough, you can send in a request to have the "*shlif*fing weapons" and "smirking weapons" skills added to your list.

A tregil smirks at you as it beats you to death your own bloody, severed arm.

[jhunter]

I don't  get where people have all this talk about them doing crazy damage. They've never seemed to me to do much damage at all.

[Spice Spice Baby]

What about instead of hard-coded changes, people just play realistically/in-character and not use six inch wrist-spikes/razers/whatever when they're fighting with a 12 foot spear from the back of an inix?

The problem with this is that there is no way to turn these items' scripts off.

If you're wearing scripted spiked bracers as your normal wrist armour, there's no way to be like "heeey this time I just want them to protect my wrists plz."

I suppose you could carry around another set of bracers and swap between encounters on the North Road, but that seems equally strange to me.

[Majikal]

I don't  get where people have all this talk about them doing crazy damage. They've never seemed to me to do much damage at all.

I personally have experienced 1-6 damage from wrist razors. There are lots of factors that determine how much damage goes out.

[MeTekillot]

They should work like those rat tails that got nerfed. They turned your barehanded fists into 'whipping' weapons if you wore them on your wrists. Wrist razors should work like that. Those rat tails also let you parry. Wrist razors should also work like that.

[jhunter]

I don't  get where people have all this talk about them doing crazy damage. They've never seemed to me to do much damage at all.

I personally have experienced 1-6 damage from wrist razors. There are lots of factors that determine how much damage goes out.

That doesn't seem excessive to me. Granted a stronger person using them is likely going to hit for more so... *shrugs*