New Skill Idea: Choke

[williamson]

Skill: Choke

This skilled is used by those who have subdued their victims. A successful choke will place the subdued victim into a choking headlock. As the choke is maintained, the victim will eventually lose conciousness if the attacker has the stamina to maintain the hold. Once placed in the choke, the victim will lose stun points and the attacker maintaining the choke will lose stamina. If the victim loses all of her/his stun points, she/he falls unconcious. If the attacker loses all of her/his stamina, the attacker is forced to release the victim.

Example:

subdue templar
>You subdue the balding, obese templar.

choke templar
>You position yourself behind the balding, obese templar and place him in a headlock.

Failing the choke:
>You try to position yourself behind the balding, obese templar, but he escapes your grip.

After success each tick:

You tighten your grip on the balding, obese templar's neck as he gasps for air.

Tick:

You tighten your grip on the balding, obese templar's neck as the color of his face begins to turn a dark shade of blue.

Each tick would reduce the victim's stun and the choker's stamina until...

Final Tick:

You release the balding, obese templar as he collapses to the ground, unconcious. (or the choker no longer has the stamina to maintain the choke and must release them)

Once in the choke hold, victims could type flee and try to break free just like a subdue.

-Williamson

[brytta.leofa]

And what would a critical fail look like?

[MeTekillot]

Perhaps have escape attempts be automatic if you don't have nosave on.

Critical fail may have victim injure assailant as they escape?

[Harmless]

This sounds fun in general. I wouldn't mind seeing various additions to unarmed combat. Finding out where it'll fit in, who'll get it, and balancing it... those will be challenges.

[brytta.leofa]

I like the stun damage idea, but what about some way of killing outright?

[Schrodingers Cat]

And what would a critical fail look like?

Here's my idea for what a critical fail might look like:

>choke templar
As you attempt to choke the balding, obese templar, he slips away and you are left defenseless.

The intended victim would be free to attack the perpetrator.  The perpetrator would have a significant delay of  5-10 seconds to allow them to act, run away/counter attack/emote/monologue/etc.

[Marauder Moe]

Code Select Expand

You attempt to choke the balding, obese templar but choke yourself instead!

[Drayab]

Functionally, sap already does this, albeit without the delay and with the added necessity of wielding an appropriate tool.

Sounds neat, though, if a bit redundant.

I wonder who OP imagines getting this skill.

An old thread of possible relevance: http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,27071.0.html

[Desertman]

I like the stun damage idea, but what about some way of killing outright?

Hehe, I see what you are doing here.

Trixy Brytta is trixy.

[brytta.leofa]

That doesn't mean I don't also like the idea. (Choke, I mean, not necksnap.)

[Desertman]

That doesn't mean I don't also like the idea. (Choke, I mean, not necksnap.)

Yup, necksnap is exactly what I was thinking heh.

I like the idea as well, but I think it should only work if your opponent is also unarmed.

Having choked out more than a few folks in exactly the way being described above, I can say yes, it is fairly easy to do once you get their back, but, put a knife in their hand and it's no go.

If they are armed they would stab a thousand holes in your guts before you could choke them out.

[MeTekillot]

Having been choked out before, I agree with Desertman.

Also you should be able to try to go straight to choking out a sitting person. Unless you get a +to subdue a sitting person, which you probably do.

[Schrodingers Cat]

An old thread of possible relevance: http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,27071.0.html

This thread is also relevant:
http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,44126.0.html

Also for "necksnap":
http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,38033.0.html
(no it's not about that hottie gladiator gal, find out about that IC)

[brytta.leofa]

Trixy Brytta is trixy.

Oh, beautiful, I've proposed this myself. I am self-trolling.

[musashi]

Trixy Brytta is trixy.

Oh, beautiful, I've proposed this myself. I am self-trolling.

Is that so unusual for a Republician? 

I dunno about this honestly, I'm wary of possible abuse, but I'm also wary of hobbits and circus folk.
>_>

[Spoon]

'You fumble and choke yourself instead.'


I don't see a need for it. I assume you wouldn't want badass warriors choking out other badass warriors - which leaves everyone else. Warriors are already great at knocking out anyone who isn't as good as them at fighting (sort of already implemented in subdue). Also, I think it would cheapen sap as a skill.

[FantasyWriter]

I like the stun damage idea, but what about some way of killing outright?

>choke Templar
You lean over the unconcious templar and choke the very life out of them.
<beep>

If they were asleep (as opposed to being unconsious) you would likely wake them up and they would be 'subdued' until they tried to flee.  Then you could try choking them again.

[Morrolan]

circus folk.

Small hands. Smell of cabbage.

[Potaje]

If choke took into account for my silt horror gorget, because short of a half giant cracking it with its massive grip I do not see being strangled when I have on throat protecting armor.

I think that it would have to consider many aspect for such a skill to be effective and realistically applied.

[FantasyWriter]

Heh, I hadn't even thought of that.  Obsidian/shell neckguards would become all the latest rage in fashion!

[Dar]

I dont really see the problem.I mean is a silt horror gorget just a circlet hollowed out of a shell? Is it completely solid? Or is it like pieces of shell tied together with leather straps, or even a leather length with shells sewn in? If it's the latter, that means you can bent the gorget in, no problem. Wont be able to press on a jugular or anything like that, but maybe crash the wind pipe, no problem.

[Maso]

You could just use the neckguard as a tool to strangle someone with....by pulling on the back of it.

[musashi]

Unless the neck guard is described as fastening to the cuirass/helm/coif. It can be complicated.

[Maso]

I have never seen one described like that...why would it be? What if you were wearing a neckband but otherwise naked?

[musashi]

Then I suppose you'd be engaging in some hyperbole?

Google some ye old armor. The stuff almost always fastened to its adjoining component. It wasn't just dangling all willy nilly like.

[Desertman]

You could just use the neckguard as a tool to strangle someone with....by pulling on the back of it.

My assumption is we are going for a blood choke and not an airway choke.

The reason I assume this is I -think- the choke skill would be basically a quick knockout skill designed to take someone out swiftly with stealth.

A blood choke can put someone out in six or seven seconds.

An airway choke could take A LOT longer to put someone out. I've never choked someone out with their airway before, but, I would imagine it would take about as long as the typical person can hold their breath, since you are basically just making it so they can't breathe. They would also fight, A LOT more. The beauty of the blood choke is that by the time the typical person realizes the real danger has nothing to do with being able to breathe, their brain is already foggy enough that they stop fighting and go limp.

That being said, if you pulled on their gorget/collar/neckguard to choke them, you wouldn't be applying the proper pressure to the correct arteries to perform a quick blood choke, you would be applying an airway choke.

That being said, you couldn't blood choke someone through neck armor. Even a heavy leather collar would pretty much prevent it from being applied properly unless the person applying it was incredibly strong.

[Synthesis]

I dunno, I bet you could still put a triangle on someone with a stiff leather collar.  A leg triangle, especially, since it generates a lot more pressure than a rear naked choke.  But Zalanthans doing BJJ seems kind of weird.

[Desertman]

I dunno, I bet you could still put a triangle on someone with a stiff leather collar.  A leg triangle, especially, since it generates a lot more pressure than a rear naked choke.  But Zalanthans doing BJJ seems kind of weird.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I don't want this skill. I think the Sap skill pretty much covers its real purpose, the end game is a knocked out opponent either way.

[roughneck]

I would not be eager to attempt a flying triangle on a person holding a bone sword.

[MeTekillot]

I would.

[evilcabbage]

Be prepared to have your leg cut off, Tekillot.

[Synthesis]

That's funny, because...

"Jujutsu is a Japanese martial art and a method of close combat for defeating an armed and armored opponent in which one uses no weapon or only a short weapon."

[Is Friday]

Japanese Jujitsu is primarily throws and is more similar to Judo, is why. I think a hip throw/axe stomp combo is incredibly useful against armed opponents while you are unarmed. I've used this during sparring. Sometimes it works, sometimes you get stabbed.

[Withered Ocotillo]

The problem with this proposed ability lies more with the subdue ability than anything else, imo.

Gather round the campfire for a story in Armageddon history.


Once upon a time (back to 1991), the subdue skill allowed you subdue a target in pretty much the same way it does today. It's been a very, very long time since I played with the subdue code back in 1991, but there have only ever been two changes to that code that I'm aware of.

The first code change was allowing agility to play an added role when defending vs subdue, whereas I believe it used to be all strength in its first incarnation.

The second code change (and it took just over 10 years for this change to happen - this was a very heated back and forth debate on forums for years) was a change in the way subdue allowed you to draw a weapon. To go into some explanation:

The original subdue code allowed you to subdue someone, and then you had the ability to draw a one-handed weapon if it was already sheathed on your body. I.e. you could only use the draw command. This was the equivalent of "pulling a knife" on your opponent's neck while holding them.

The grab and pull a knife idea seems perfectly reasonable and realistic from a real life perspective, which is one of the reasons it took so long for this code to be changed. The two sides of the argument were "playability" vs "realism", but after I thought about this issue long enough (and I've had years to do so), I came to the conclusion that it wasn't a question of whether drawing or not drawing the knife was playability vs realism, but rather it was the subdue code itself that should have been under scrutiny.

If anyone has played Harshlands MUD (not even sure if it's still up), you might be familiar with the subdue code in that game, and how it breaks the process into many steps. There are grapples and tackling, tumbling, tripping, double collisions that harm both PCs involved, and all sorts of interesting layers to the code that don't determine the fate of a character in a single dice roll. The process is spread out into multiple rolls during the struggle. Furthermore, the Armageddon single subdue roll does not take the target's preparations into account (such a drawn weapons, spiked armor, RPing standing on a table/boulder, etc). For this reason, any ability that increases the lethality of the subdue ability (in its current form) threatens to make the subdue skill too attractive as a method to fully minimize the coded defenses of a target.

While the current implementation of subdue is less abusive in 1v1 scenarios after the draw-kill option was removed, it is still plenty abusable when the attacker has another PC helping out. For this reason, my opinion is that a choke skill (or any skill that empowers subdue in a 1v1 situation further) is not a good idea until the subdue code has some changes made.

Necksnap is the exception, though.

[RogueGunslinger]

+1 to that post.

[X-D]

I agree...and also want to know if Ocotillo was a different Ocotillo at one time.


Mostly because I am just always happy to see anybody with a start date in 91 or 92. There really is not many of us.

[CravenMadness]

Would love to see something like this as a hg only racial or something hilarious...

Also further ideas for hg racial 'abilities' ...

shove - stumble target
shake - after target subdued, shake to empty living target of loose objects.
yell - induce 'ringing ears' echo that's an annoying few tics and maybe messes with languages.

[MeTekillot]

I think the HG racial "land an unarmed hit and target is unconscious" is plenty enough.