Setting ones skill level

[MeTekillot]

Wouldn't that just make going to sparring as a tuff guy as much of a chore as 'General tidying of the complex'?

[evilcabbage]

Wouldn't that just make going to sparring as a tuff guy as much of a chore as 'General tidying of the complex'?

Nobody said you have to turn it on. Duh.

[Inks]

I'm ridiculously keen on this idea.

If you have anything other than, and sometimes even if you have, a warrior PC it can be horrendously dangerous to spar the clan leaders or even older stumps with high str. You can die in one fell swoop. While that unpredictability makes sparring exciting, to lose a well thought out PC to a one shot from a vet would be heartbreaking.

Pretty much what everyone has said about skill gains etc has been spot on. Awesome idea I hadn't even thought about.

[Zerero]

Pretty sure I can state that every single idea presented in this thread has pretty much been made with that in mind - with the exception of the change to sparring weapons.

oh. I can dig it. 

[MeTekillot]

Always a useful reminder:


Mercy off does not make you hit harder. It makes you look like a tool when you murder your clan's newbies and try to knock them silly when they run away though.

[Delirium]

Mr. M and I here are in agreement.

Y'all seriously want a spar mode that will negate skill gain? 

Yeah that would get used like .00001% of the time.

[Zoltan]

Mr. M and I here are in agreement.

Y'all seriously want a spar mode that will negate skill gain? 

Yeah that would get used like .00001% of the time.

I promise I would use it. It's ludicrous when I have characters that try to fucking decapitate every new runner/recruit they face off with. It's often so un-IC it's frustrating.

That said, I far prefer the skill-lowering ideas for concealing your abilities in general. I totally understand Morg's point about the complexity, though. It would just be soooooo nice.

Drunk-fighting as a solution is crap, and it's a poor fit for many characters. Using unfamiliar weapons and "off hand" stuff is little better, due to the other skill checks thrown into combat rounds, but I think it's one of the best solutions we currently have available. Combining that with judicious use of disengage and nosave combat works, yeah. It's possible to go on the offensive and back off again. The problem is, you get caught up in your command delay after killing/kicking/whatever and in the meantime fucking murderize your opponent. I would prefer some level of control rather than offense off/on.

I thought the "holding heavy stuff technique" was against the rules now? I hope it still is, anyway.

MeTekillot, sometimes people want to pulverize their sparring partners. If your PC can't dodge a sparring stick swipe in the ring, how are they going to know how to gtfo properly when the stakes are much higher?

Which leads to my main reservation with sparring mode or skill limits. Such self-nerfing may be OOCly expected and demanded by some players. It shouldn't be. Clearly, I feel the same way about mercy in its current incarnation. I don't just ooc a nub to turn on mercy, I tell them to turn on mercy if they don't want to purposefully or accidentally kill someone. There shouldn't be OOC expectations of safety or PC behavior beyond what's outlined in the game docs. But I digress, I just wanted to point out the one reservation I had concerning these ideas, besides the difficulty of implementing them, of course!

[Delirium]

sparring is enough of a chore that making it also codedly pointless would just be the nail in the coffin...

You guys are really over-complicating things anyway.  I maintain my stance that it's currently very possible to train newbies without killing them.

edit: to clarify, I'm behind 'pulling blows' to reduce damage. I am not behind this 'no skillgain sparring mode' thing. Reduced skillgain? Sure. None? Ppff, nobody will use it after the shiny has worn off. They'll just go back to finding the current coded ways around the limitations we have. Trust me.

/soapbox

[TheWanderer]

We should all just play morbidly obese merchants. Problem solved.

[RogueGunslinger]

Always a useful reminder:


Mercy off does not make you hit harder. It makes you look like a tool when you murder your clan's newbies and try to knock them silly when they run away though.

It's also an accident a lot of the time. At least for me.

[Jherlen]

You guys are really over-complicating things anyway.  I maintain my stance that it's currently very possible to train newbies without killing them.

I agree with Delerium 100%. By reading this board you'd think that newbies get murderized on a daily basis just by stepping into the sparring ring with a long lived veteran combat PC. I don't really think that's the case at all?

I'm more in favor of the original idea than a "pull your punches" mode, but if "pull punches" mode goes in, it definitely still ought to allow for skill gains, or else I don't see the value. If given the choice between using a skill-gain-less "spar mode" or just roleplaying out sparring with someone with emotes, I'd prefer to just emote it, because I think at least I could RP out a more entertaining sparring scene than the code can give me.

[Lizzie]

I'm not even really thinking of it in terms of sparring, because I can't stand sparring and generally avoid it whenever possible. I like the idea because it would be useful in group settings in crafting halls, when maybe you're "this close" to being a master crafter, but don't want your clannies to see how you rarely ever fail the "journeyman-level" stuff for whatever reason.

Or if you -want- to fail being sneaky, so no one knows how sneaky you truly are. There are ways to intentionally fail at several different skills (forage rock for [a stone that can't be found in this spot where other stones can be found] for example). But there aren't ways to intentionally fail at other skills. I think of intentional failure as a roleplay device. Adding this to the game, would add it to the already excellent selection of roleplay devices.

[maxid]

I just wanna be able to knock stuff out, hence my idea.   

[Hauwke]

Easy fix for the combat one ....
just make a setting for how hard you want to hit?

[Hauwke]

Continuing from my earlier comment .... if it just lowers the damage then it wouldnt affect skills at all in the first place so my thinking says it wouldnt be all that complicated wouldbit?

[MeTekillot]

If there's any sort of calculations involved in damage-dealing besides "Weapon does x damage" then you will find that it gets maddeningly more complex with every single little variable you add to it.

[Hauwke]

have a setting to ensure it only does -scrathingly- damage easy fix its a whole lot less complicated uf you dont over think it guys that said just give it a go and see if it works if not ditch it and gofir some other projects instead easy right ... the staff can code let tgem worry about that you guys just worry about this is a kick ass idea

[DustMight]

I think for sparring applications we have the ability to tone down our attacks by just defending, don't we? Isn't there a command so that you just defend?  At the worst, you can carry two shield or no weapons.

For crafting mistakes (pretending you aren't good) can't we just roleplay it? That's what we're doing here right?  Roleplaying?  Not roll-playing.  So make a custom message about failing and trust your player friends to go with it.

I think we trying to use code to fix a role-playing problem that wouldn't exist if we just let go of the code for a moment.  It seems to me this is a little like the cloak/mask raider problem - which is not a problem if we just role-play a little.

I think that after years of practice even very good swordsman or crafter will give a lot of clues as to their skill with the way they handle a weapon, tools how they approach an objective way before they ever "succeed" or "fail."  Just being comfortable drawing a sword and holding "en garde" will give you a whole lot of information about the ability of that person.  We should role-play our deceptions (and allow ourselves to be deceived, of course) and not look to the code to play for us.

At least not in this instance, I think.

[Refugee]

Just defending doesn't help your recruit get any better at his defenses, unfortunately, which is the whole point. 

[bcw81]

Just defending doesn't help your recruit get any better at his defenses, unfortunately, which is the whole point. 

However, one brutal slash/bash/pierce/chop to the neck, doing horrendous damage does tend to do count as a failure on their defense. Also, unless you're a mul or half giant, or a particularly strong dwarf, that one hit wont kill anyone.

[Fujikoma]

Just defending doesn't help your recruit get any better at his defenses, unfortunately, which is the whole point. 

However, one brutal slash/bash/pierce/chop to the neck, doing horrendous damage does tend to do count as a failure on their defense. Also, unless you're a mul or half giant, or a particularly strong dwarf, that one hit wont kill anyone.

It may count as a failure, but it could also happen just as they were trying to disengage/flee at a certain portion of their HP. Hope you had mercy flee on.

[Refugee]

Just defending doesn't help your recruit get any better at his defenses, unfortunately, which is the whole point. 

However, one brutal slash/bash/pierce/chop to the neck, doing horrendous damage does tend to do count as a failure on their defense. Also, unless you're a mul or half giant, or a particularly strong dwarf, that one hit wont kill anyone.

Very true, but it's lousy for roleplay when you can just have time to type attack/disengage before someone's in danger or unconscious.  And you don't have to be any of those three for it to happen.

It's unrealistic that a fighter of even moderate skill can't pull punches.

[ClanAlt123]

We should role-play our deceptions (and allow ourselves to be deceived, of course) and not look to the code to play for us.

Until the code allows me to play a lazy warrior that wants to fake being a crappy fighter so he can avoid expectations and responsibility.... I'm not sure how this is gonna work.

I can emote and roleplay blunders and fuckups all day, but when I send everyone to the medic after a round or three of sparring-- they know.

Same goes for intentionally failing at crafting. I can just "emote fucks up something fierce" as I junk the materials, but it'll be only a matter of time before people catch on.

Same goes for intentionally failing a backstab on your friend because someone paid you to kill them even though you -really- don't want to and have little choice in the matter. Sure. You can emote the whole of it, but don't for a second think everything will play out as if you'd codedly failed a backstab.

Same goes for pretty much any skill.

Some of it really situational. Some of it not.

You can say, "Well if there's no skill gain, nobody will ever use this, ever." all you want.

But you don't know.

You're just assuming and underestimating the playerbase.

That's kinda not cool.

The more coded RP devices at our disposal, the better.

That's what makes this better than a MUSH.

[Riev]

Have my children, CA123.

[TheWanderer]

Have my children, CA123.