Suffer the Highlords Fury, crminal !

[spawnloser]

Hey, either way that increases people's ability to not get killed by bullshit is fine with me.

[UnderSeven]

I Agree 100%.

[Angela Christine]

I wonder what if only the soldiers had 'mercy' on. Can NPC's have mercy on? I assume they may, because I guess a few specific humanoid NPCs just hit you till you blank out, then steal your valuables and then get back to their original duties.

That isn't necessarily Mercy.  

Normally if you strike a blow that renders someone unconcious or helpless you will automatically stop hitting them and have to type "kill <target>" again to finish them off.  However, other people fighting that same target will not stop, so you may not notice this effect if you rarely fight alone.  Some non-agressive NPCs will stop fighting when you fall unconcious, and then ignore you until you wake up.


With Mercy you will withold a potentially killing blow, even if the target is not yet helpless.  So the target is still trying to kill you, but you are trying not to kill them.  If the target is concious and has 1 hp left any hit will potentiall be a killing blow, but the target can still execute any combat manuver or run away, just as well as if he had 80 hps.    Theoretically you could be killed by a much weaker target if you forgot to turn off Mercy.  Thug NPCs don't use Mercy, because if they stop hitting you when you are standing there with 1 hp left they still can't strip all your valuables, they need you unconcious or helpless.  


AC

[UnderSeven]

If mercy doesn't work for the npc soldiers then I'm all for clubs.  ANYTHING that might make the soldiers not kill people so often.

[theebie]

i think even with mercy on, a handfull of half-giants will just kill you by accident (fail their mercy-roll)

[Agent_137]

pretty sure they do this anyway.

[X-D]

(pointing at agent) You can bank on it.

[Ghost]

I guess mercy could work well with the NPCs, bu the question is:  Do they really care?

Would they care that someone is going to die?  To them, you are a criminal who refuses to surrender (Well, if you dont have no-save on you are refusing to surrender)  They will not get punished if they kill a bunch of criminals, but they will probably get punished if they let them run away with that.  So they are just making sure, you are not going to run away.

And the death of a criminal means, one less of the trouble.  Which is quite welcome from their view.

Well, this was an objective perspective.  I still know it is a pain for PCs, for their being so uber, and even one little mistake is to say "bye" to your lovely PC and so much effort along with that.  If we are to save the pain, then blunt weapons can work fine.

EDIT: And, let each one of them use shields.  So there is less attack, and more chance to be knocked unconcious, before meeting your mantis head.

[Angela Christine]

Heck, they'd probably prefer to kill you.  Then they don't have to drag your sorry ass half way accross the city to the jail, complaining all the way.


It is unlikely that southern soldiers will ever switch to using shields, because shield-use is more of a northern fighting style.  NPCs should follow the documented trends.  They could switch to blunt weapons, the problem there is that Allanak is known for it's obsidian mines, and there are few blunt obsidan weapons.  There is also the problem that NPC soldiers often seem to ignore unconcious people.  That might not be a big issue for a pickpocket or petty smuggler, but it could be a problem if the intruder they just put to sleep was a mekillot, because eventually the mekillot will wake up and resume kicking ass.


It would be nice if soldiers would attempt subdue, pause a beat, and attempt subdue again before going in for the kill.  But I guess that would be too open to abuse, TOO easy to escape while the soliders are pausing, especially if you are moving at running speed, have long legs, and good agilty.  Yeah, I'm talking about you, longneck.  


AC