Burn, baby, burn!

[Carnage]

How about a combat style implemented with a goal to light someone on fire? For example, I wield a torch and try to hit someone with it. If it's something small (a graze, nick...), they take damage. If higher, there can be a chance to set them on fire, depending on their armor. Sandcloth and cloth? Light it on fire!

Of course, there should be the chance of a torch going out.

[Rindan]

Intersting... but I imagine it would be less then effective against anyone with any skill.  You really have to hold a torch to someone in order to build up enough hit the set them on fire.  Further, you can't swing a torch and full speed, and a torch is certainly no weapon.  Setting people on fire would be more of a novelty you would do to a person you have captured or unarmed, not so much a fighting style in my opinion.  It is a neat idea being able to set people on fire, but I don't think it is exactly a coding priority.

[lukie]

This brings up another point: Why not be able to use ANYTHING as a weapon? Bar brawl? Bash somebody with a mug! Fighting with a shoe would be plain hilarious... and imagine mugging an old grannie and being knocked out by her purse? Of course, this could really screw up being arrested, as the little jail man would take everything you had, claiming they were weapons. If he didn't, though, you could bust your way out of jail with a chisel if you were good. I saw it on another mud, and krath was it fun fighting monsters with a flute. Of course, non-weapons break easily. Like arms. Imagine ripping somebody's arm off and beating them over the head with it! Which also comes to:

Area damage: This has been talked about before. Being hurt in certain locations shouldn't effect your whole health. I died once getting bit in the foot by a scrab. Does that make any sense? Of course, if your leg/arm/etc. gets hurt enough, it breaks. Broken leg? You move slower than normal. A lot slower. I think they had this in Accursed Lands... oh, so accursed those Lands were. Nice damage system though.

Just my two 'sid.

[Carnage]

It is a neat idea being able to set people on fire, but I don't think it is exactly a coding priority.

And implementing a think-emote or poison resistance or any other idea is?

[Sanvean]

Here's some of the things we think about when figuring out our coding priorities:

Cost: How much time and work will go into the change/addition? Will it require additional work in the form of changing existing objects, rooms or npcs? What impact does it have on other code? Is it likely to break things, so we'll have to spend a lot of time troubleshooting? How much testing and/or background work will be necessary? Do we actually have someone who wants to, or at least is willing to, work on it? Is there a work-around already existing, and is that workaround good enough?

Impact: Is it a change/addition that a lot of players will see? Code for a relatively small group is much lower on the list than code that affects all players. If it affects only a few, is there a way we can make it more generic, so it affects more players? Will people use it? Does it answer an existing problem? Will it cause any new problems? Is it something that a lot of people are asking for?

Coolness: Is it neat, is it nifty, is it new? Will people go "Woah, that's awesome." or "Oh, yeah, seen that elsewhere."?  Rip-offs of code from other muds is not really high on the list; something new (like the think command, when it appeared, or much of Morg's nifty emote additions) takes a lot higher priority.

Discoverability: It is something horribly complex that people will have a hard time figuring out? Does it make the game more complicated than it is? Those are negatives. Something easy to use or, better yet, that makes other parts of the game easier is great.

Consistency: Does it fit in with the feel and the flavor of the world? Does it make sense? Is it realistic, for Zalanthas? While this is a fantasy based world, most laws of physics apply most of the time. Instituting the capability to shoot laser beams out of people's eyes, therefore, wouldn't be high priority. Maybe it'd work as a spell or high level psi ability, but... maybe not. Does ithe proposed new code work the way other code in the game works?

If I were prioritizing the three projects you mention, I'd put poison resistance first. The code is halfway in place, it affects a lot of people, it's realistic.  Think emotes are much lower, because I don't think they'd add a lot to the game. Being able to set people on fire is also pretty low, mainly because it doesn't seem really realistic to me. If someone wants to come over to my house and let me beat them with a burning stick to prove otherwise, fine, but I do think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to set someone on fire unless you doused them with volatile liquids first. Perhaps it could be something that only applied to drunken Fales, but having flaming nobles running through the city doesn't seem really fitting with the game atmosphere to me.

My last paragraph has a touch of tongue in cheek humor, but the priority list is quite serious. We do listen to proposed ideas, but we get a lot of them, and come up with some of our own on occasion, so we have to pick and choose.

Before I actually reply to the idea of a burning torch fighting style, I should preface my post with the note that although I'm a retired staff member, I don't speak for the MUD, don't speak for any active staff, and so on. This post is simply my personal opinion.

One of the 'tests' I use for myself, when considering how realistic something would be in the game setting, is to try to think of an analogy from real life. There are some areas where this breaks down, such as in magick or materials engineering, but by and large I think that we can reasonably compare things like fighting styles between real life and the game. As someone else already said, you would find it difficult to set someone alight by trying to hit them with a flaming torch in combat; even in a hot, dry world like Zalanthas, you would need to hold it to them for a while for them to start burning. To take a real world analogy, did we ever see Arabs develop a burning torch fighting style? Not to my knowledge. Apart from the fact that it's hard to try to set someone alight when they're dodging, there are many other factors to consider: weather (I doubt a torch would stay alight for long in a harsh sandstorm, though the game code allows it), maintenance (would you carry a burning torch around with you even during the day, and how convenient would it be?), and so on.

Perhaps the question wasn't really to propose the idea of a fighting style, but just that perhaps, when wielding a torch, there should be a chance of an opponent catching alight. If so, then I'd dare say that would be a low coding priority for the staff, as a guess. (Sanvean's post goes into a lot more detail about this, of course.) On the whole, however, I personally would find a burning torch fighting style unrealistic. That's not to say that I think people shouldn't propose new ideas, of course, and it's not to say that quirky ideas never get coded ...

Krrx

[Deathtakeusall]

:oops:  :oops:  :oops:  :oops:  :oops:  :oops:  :oops:  :oops:  :oops:
id rather being able to burn down buildings and fire arrows and stuff

[Eternal]

Flaming fales... it's either a good idea, or redundant, depending on how you look at it.  :wink:

[Sephiroto]

I submitted arrows for that purpose, one of my ownly item sumbissions.  They must not have been good, cause I've not heard a response

I just thought it'd be cool to send a volley of flaming arrows into a city during a war or something.

[Delerak]

I find it hard to believe flaming arrows would NOT have been used in the past.  Several flaming arrows sent into a wagon and say goodbye to the wagon, then again it would make wagons pointless to have if that were implemented which is probably why it never will be.  But it is plain and realistic, if I were attacking a wagon I'd just shoot it with arrows on fire.

[witchman]

If you actually look at the desc of several wagons, you'll see that has been taken into account.

[Plazgoth]

I think in the past there were "burnings" but they were coordinated with the staff. So if you plan on attacking a certain waon and want to RP torching it you would have to coordinate with the staff. This are all my personal beliefs on the topic.

[Rindan]

A flaming arrow is not a personal combat weapon.  A flame arrow is a siege weapon.  I don't think that it should be coded, or if it is coded, it is coded as an RP proper for a special event.  It would be down right silly to see people walking around with flaming arrows except when they are going to burn a non-living object.  If you want to destroy the environment in such a destructive manner, then that is something you need to coordinate with the staff to make sure that it happens realistically and so that the appropriate room changes can be implemented.

[Vositus]

:twisted: A flaming, black-fletched arrow sails in from the North, striking a bull duskhorn in the throax. :twisted:

emo chants 'Code it! Code it! Code it!'

[Delerak]

flaming arrows were used with deadly precision by Rome, during the early periods of the Roman age, yeah they used them in bulk, yes, but a flaming arrow is deadly never the less, it doesn't just pierce it also burns, it increases the pain inflicted upon the unlucky person who is dealt it.  IF I were an archer on zalanthas and I was trying to kill someone I would drench my arrow-heads in oil, and set them on fire.  If I were hunting, no, it is pointless, but a flaming arrow is still deadlier then a normal arrow just because it is simply on fire.

[Angela Christine]

I hope you are only planning using those arrows in the sandy wastes and the salt flats.  You do NOT want to use fire carelessly on any of the grassy or scrubby plains, much less near the forest.  Everything is tinder dry, and no fire fighters.  A raider group that started using fire carelessly would probably be killed in the first flash fire that resulted from their stupidity.  If they avoided death by fire, the humans, elves, halflings and gith would probably band together to hunt their asses down.  (Gith were blamed for burning Alanaki farm fields many years ago, but the land surrounding those fields didn't support enough vegitation to allow the fire to spread out of control).

With the high winds, hot temperatures and arid conditions, there is nothing to stop a grass fire or forest fire from taking out half the northlands before it hits a natural firebreak.  With the vegitation burned, there is nothing but ash to stop the encrouching deserts.  Congratulations, you've just turned the Northlands into the southlands.  Even Tek isn't crazy enough to try a stunt like that, wood is far to valuable to just burn away.

So yeah, if you want to try something tricky with fire you have to get imm intervention, and they may apply consequences; like an out of control grass fire that stampedes your animals, burns your supplies, destroys almost everything of value in the wagon, and kills a few of your chums.  Than some secret northlands Vivaduans rise up to quench the fire before all is lost, and are reluctantly allowed back into Tuluk with status medallions not unlike those given to free muls that fought in the war.  And all because you wanted to rob some wagon.  

AC

[Eternal]

Actually, historians have proven that flaming arrows did not improve the likelihood of harming a living target any more than a regular arrow.  Who cares if your chest hairs are singed, or if your horse has a light scorch?  The tactics of using flaming arrows were very simple, enough fire directed at enough flammable areas (the ledges/wooden ramparts/thatched interiors) of a bailey (central area of a castle) would start fires which would quickly spread and consume the interior, those flames would then consume/imperil the guards.

Flaming wooden arrows have one great flaw, the fact that they are nigh impossible to hold with standard roman/medieval gloves (you'd be surprised how dangerous this could be wearing even leather-padded gauntlets, special gloves were designed by the greeks, who were masters of war by fire) and lost most of their accuracy do to wind resistance.  The most accurate arrows of the time would simply extinguish themselves in flight, or snap due to their already thin frames.  Greek fire was actually very well implemented on heavier arrows, but again not for the effect of hitting people (greek fire was -doused- on people for that reason... the flames that will not die, even under water, usually caused people to do stupid things when they realized the nature of their plight).

Luckily, the secrets of Greek Fire were lost during the medieval period, the so called dark ages, and never really rediscovered until it arose once more as 'napalm'.  That particularly nasty implement of warfare would have won almost any war, in the wood, dung, and straw construction of most medieval towns, villages, castles.

Lord Templar Hard Nose is more than willing to get medieval, even Dark Medieval on your arse.