My issues with Kick, and also NPCs

[Elven Mul]

After having had the bejeesus kicked out of my warrior by just about every race out there, I've had it with the kick skill. It was one thing to have a gith kick me for 15 damage or more. Gith are unrealistically strong, uber-creatures designed solely to make life hard for players and thin out the player base. OK, check.

But elves, and even _halflings_??? Come on. Two kicks delivered by ultra-skilled NPCs, even if they are weakling races, can incite most people to run away even if they are actually winning the fight weapon to weapon. And that's through armour, I hesitate to think of the damage without protection.

In fact, kicks frequently seem to do more damage than weapons in a given fight, which is a bit ridiculous. I suggest kick be toned down a little bit, especially for NPCs that seem to kick especially fast and never ever miss a kick. Think of the consequences if you face two or three such NPCs, you die in a matter of 30 seconds from kicks alone even if the NPCs have trouble getting past your defences. Two raptors can kill an experienced warrior with their kicks even if they'll never touch him otherwise.

My other problem with kick is that it seems to leave blood stains on clothing and armor very easily. I guess because of the high damage it delivers, but it doesn't seem right.

[Glowworm]

While I agree that many NPC's are unrealistically strong, many would argue that they are this way to discourage players from slaughtering hundreds of NPC's and also to create an overall harsher atmosphere.  

As for kick being overpowered...I'm not quite sure.  The force that someone can produce with their leg (unless they are grossly mutated, which may be the case for some in zalanthas) far exeeds the force that someone can produce with their arms simply because the muscles are larger and stronger.  I'd argue that being hit with a well placed kick is akin to being hit really hard with a club in the same location.

As far as kicks doing more damage than weapons - I'm not certain of the coding, but I believe weapon damage is not only modified by where you strike and what weapon you are using, but also by your offensive skill, weapon skill and how well your opponents armor protects against your weapon type.  Kicks, as far as I have seen, almost always land on the head and neck in the game, which are the two highest damage locations.
Kicks are also blunt-based attacks, which I assume does significant amounts of damage regardless of armor type.  The same cannot be said for all weapons - they randomly land on body locations, and they are not all blunt-type weapons.

While I do not agree that kick is overpowered, I think that kicks should randomly land on body locations as weapon-based attacks do and produce damage accordingly.  I'd also like to see sucsessful kicks and bashes resulting in stun damage, if it isn't already coded so.

[Eleven Mul]

The message you see when kicks are flying about always says to the head or to the waist (double over, whatever that is) but I am not sure that means they are actually necessarily landing in those spots. It may just be the messages. I have noticed armor other than body and head locations becoming bloodied after suffering some kicks, that is why I say that.

Sorry, but there is no way that your average raptor, halfling, gith, elf, etc NPC has ANY excuse to kick that hard. I don't care how strong their leg muscles are, it's simply silly. A mul or a half-giant or maybe even a dwarf I could understand as being fearsomely strong and kicking as hard as NPCs kick now, but not much else. Here I am hacking at an opponent with a big, sharp bastard sword, and their kicks on me do more damage than I manage to land on them with my big sword and decades of training? It's silly. Especially because in many cases (such as raptors) these NPCs are not skilled enough to land a single blow on my character otherwise, yet their kicks can put me out of commission in a matter of moments.

At that point kicks ought to be calculated in a similar manner to combat, anything to whittle down the ridiculous amounts of damage at present. So if you kick an opponent who is skilled in kick, and who has a high defence skill, that should have an impact on the damage that is actually delivered (plus armor and location of course). Something like that. Right now kick is ridiculous. Not necessarily on the PC side, but the NPC side (these guys almost never miss a kick and they just keep them coming).

Yes, kick already does quite a bit of stun damage. I THINK that at the moment kick does more stun damage than a humanoid bash, or about the same.

[creeper386]

Try being a person WITHOUT the kick skill, it seems to mean you have less defence against it, and it can hit harder, I've seen often also that someones weapons can't get anywhere past someones defence, there is a good chance that a skilled "kicker" with a well placed kick well end up with a weapon to their leg the same as their weapons get.

I don't agree that the damage should be reduced, because legs period, of any creature tend to be strong, no matter how small, out of shape, or whatever else they are, legs are almost always used, and that is shown through stronger muscles.

But I can see it being looked into about how it's determined kicks land, it seems if you don't know how to kick good you get hit almost all the time, even though I'm sure most the equation is well agility and defensive skill(Or at least should be, something like kick or bash I don't much like skill in it being determined to avoid it, but then it could not be and everything I've seen came acrossed in a twisted matter)

Creeper who says what must be said even if people don't like it, moo!

[Summer]

Kicks aimed at people's heads are also pretty slow, and they put people off balance unless they are pretty damned skilled at fighting hand to hand. Most hand to hand really comes down to wrestling, because if you are big and strong, the best way to hurt someone is get them in a hold and then apply pressure. A kick simply puts you off balance and at risk of someone rushing into you, grabbing you and throwing you to the ground. I think there should be a rather large defensive penalty while kicking.

[the halfling]

Gith are unrealistically strong, uber-creatures designed solely to make life hard for players

It's a beautiful thing.
But I do agree, the gith in Arm are by far way to strong compared to the gith on earth.  It's completly unrealistic.

I still think there should be hidden super NPCs hunting people!
Make them kick twice a round.  Give them four legs!
That's a joke with the two kicks a round, incase you didn't know.
Though I still want hidden NPCs sitting there waiting to eat you.

[John]

Okay, here's an idea. From what I've read here, the main reason kicks are so powerful and can kill people in 3 kicks, is because they always aim for the head. Why not have kicks aim for the legs more often then they aim for the head? I'm not saying make head blows impossible, just not as common. And if someone is lying on the ground, then the chance of a head kick would increase.

All just my opinion, I know nothing about combat, so just ignore this post.

[Ezikel]

Hmm, from what i gather from this is that a kick will do more damage than a large blunt object depening on your skills, and your opponents skill.  Well, if someone tries to kick me in the head, but i clock them with a 2X4 no matter how skilled i am, who do you tink will be worse off?  

Leg muscles have got nothing to do with it, unless you are Kung foo master then i dont see how they would land a kick to your head anyway.  Sorry but Gith/halflings etc dont come accross as martial artists to me.

[Elven Mul]

Creeper, do you ever read over what you post? Because I can't seem to grasp your output. I won't go into what you are talking about with kicking and "weapon to their legs the same as their weapons get" because frankly I can make no sense out of that and most of your post.

Your suggestion that kick ought to have high damage because the legs of any creature tend to be strong has some merit. My point was that the kicks of a "weakling" race such as halflings or elves, races with overall quite lower strength and mass than the others, should be more limited in damage. Like I said in my earlier post, I can kind of conceive that a half-giant's kick ought to hurt like hell. But a halfling's???

Whatever your point, kick as it stands is hardly a sensible thing. Take two "kicking" NPCs, match them against a strong experienced warrior, and before the warrior can kill them off he will have sufferred significant damage just from bloody kicks (one on one this is tolerable, but two or more opponents will kill you by kicking in a matter of moments, as I also said before). That ought not to happen. I have noticed no difference in the success rate in kicks when the target is a skilled kicker or not, so your own skill in kicking may have little effect on defending you from others' kicks (my 17 day warrior gets kicked ALL the time, I rarely see an NPC attempt fail). Frankly I am not sure of the mechanics involved in kick, but I suspect they are not as refined as the rest of the combat system.

Right now, if your kick skill is substantially better than the person kicking you, it is possible to pull funky moves such as grabbing the kicking leg and knocking the person down before the kick can connect on your delicate head (works like a successful bash). Guess who is really good at this? Gith :evil: . That is the only form of "kick defence" I am aware of, and you won't be seeing it until your character is 15-25 days old or so (because all NPCs that kick seem to be great at it, so you have to get realllly good first).

I can understand if an ultimate master of the kicking arts could deliver deadly kicks in spite of being a halfling or elf or human or whatnot. But that every single NPC be such a master kicker is patently ridiculous. Kick needs to be modified in some way. And some NPCs need to slow down on their kicks and the success rate of their kicks, and especially the damage delivered.

[Summer]

If kicks are doing that much damage, it's pretty silly. A circle kick to the head? That would take ages and would easily be seen coming, what is probably more effective are kicks to the knees that can be done quickly while stepping forward, these could conceivably cripple someone in that leg.

Also I'm not sure, but are there any weak gith or halflings?

[Elven Mul]

weak, in the sense of physically weak (strength). Gith are supposed to be roughly between elves and humans in terms of strength, but of course they are powerhouses in the actual game. Halflings are physically very weak.

Of course, both races are currently NPC only, and both, particularly the gith, are very skilled. In the case of halflings you may actually be able to tell during combat that the little guys aren't physically strong. In the case of gith you'd think you're fighting an enraged mul gladiator!

[Elven Mul]

it's good that you keep yourself amused by posting puerile humour making fun of other people. You come across as smugly superior, which I don't doubt is your intent, but seeing the same crap from you worded differently over these boards is, you know, pretty boring.

[Summer]

Isn't that somewhat unrealistic? None of us start out as combat monsters, why do all Gith and Halflings? I guess I can see it from an OOC perspective.... but even then it seems a bit dodgy.

[Synthesis]

I'm surprised nobody has yet pointed out the obvious difference between inflicting damage with a weapon and a kick.

With a weapon, you're slamming an inanimate object against your target.  If you miss, oh well.  If you connect, yay.  And if your opponent viciously whacks it out of the way with his equally inanimate object, no problem.

With a kick, you're trying to slam a living piece of your precious body against your target.  If you miss, it probably means you're going to get hurt. Unlike a typical martial-arts sparring match where your kick simply fails to connect and you keep on kicking, in a real fight, if your kick fails to connect, you're probably going to pull or strain something, and your opponent is probably going to do something nasty to you.

So from a "realism" standpoint, I would say kicking is just plain stupid, unless you're sweeping at your opponent's legs, where his ability to do something nasty to your offending extremity is slightly more limited.  (And kicking at your opponent's legs would have more of a bash-like effect, anyway...low damage and a knockdown.)

From a gameplay perspective, kick is annoying for us non-warriors, but it's not too horribly unbalancing. If the gith are kicking you, just kick them back, or bash them so they can't kick in the first place, or disarm them so you can actually hit them with your weapons. There are a lot of nastier things on Zalanthas than a gith kick, believe me.

[Twilight]

Kick used to be an almost totally worthless skill for most races.  As a human with a fairly badass kick, you could do 1 or 2 damage a kick.  That was it.  On the other hand, gith, if they could succeed in kicking you, also did 1-2 damage.

I much prefer the current version, where kick is actually useful.  Under the old system, I had a character that killed a gith by kicking it to death once.  That was fifty or sixty kicks that landed on it.  Trust me, that takes forever.  Forever.  Much better now.

[Bestatte]

Caveat: I know diddly about the game's combat system. I DO, however, have a fairly good understanding of good old logic and common sense.

Halflings are short. We're talking under 4 feet tall on average. A halfling should be *incapable* of kicking a half-giant in the head. It shouldn't be physically possible, period. A halfling should have to be under an inordinate amount of physical strain to clock an elf, and that would be a short elf. At close range, with the halfling asking the elf to stand still for a moment while he stretches his leg upward toward the elf's chin.

A halfling would, I'm guessing, be able to do serious damage to a short human, but would miss the head on a taller one more often than he connects.

In summary, if halflings exist according to the help file's description in the manual, they should not be particularly good at kicking anyone in the head, except for other halflings.

[Angela Christine]

In summary, if halflings exist according to the help file's description in the manual, they should not be particularly good at kicking anyone in the head, except for other halflings.

Maybe they get a run at it?    A running, flying kick could hit higher.  Or maybe the sprint, squrell-like, up a tree and launch their tiny feet at your head from above?

Dwarves have the same problem.  They are short and stocky, being stocky I picture them as being even less likely to effectively kick higher than their own waists than most people.  I believe dwarves can kick hard, but it will usually be a kick in the legs.  A dwarf kicking a half-elf in the head is hard to picture.

Speaking of kicking, why doesn't anyone ever aim for the groin?  Even in the byn where you see a lot of humanoid vs. humanoid sparring, you don't see groin shots.  I assume this is because most of the coders have been male.   :wink:  

Angela Christine

[X-D]

Well, I was not gonna post on this string but oh well.

I know most things are opinion here But I sometimes wish people would do a little more real life research before posting.


One spot of raptor kick being too strong, I say look at one, IRL an ostrich could kill or disembowel you with a single kick and it is much smaller and lighter then a raptor, many other RL animals have devistating kicks and they cannot be nearly as tough as arm critters.


I myself can say with 100% certainty that I could kill or maim a person IRL with a single kick, and have on the maim part, and that is without wearing a big heavy armor plated boot.

I think kicks in arm are way under powered for the most part but work well for game play and balance.

Bash on the other hand....... :twisted:

[Carnage]

I'd rather see the damage have a lower cap or a disadvantage added.

I'm pretty neutral in these arguments, because kick isn't something too unbalancing. I'd like to see a slight disadvantage added (be more open for a hit? Or if you critically fail, your opponent hits you in the leg as an added attack) and have it tested to make sure that it was pretty balanced.

Other than that, I think kick is something easy enough to live with. If someone's spamming it during a fight, I'd consider that to be slightly twinky and would keep a log to send it into the MUD. You've got nothing to lose that way.

What is a circle kick anyway? If it's anything like what I'm thinking of, that would be a ridiculous kick to try and pull off in combat, because it would entail you putting your leg out, spinning on your other foot and.. well, slapping them with your boot. I would imagine side kicks, front kicks and knees would be a lot more common in Arm.

[John]

I had a character that killed a gith by kicking it to death once.  That was fifty or sixty kicks that landed on it.  Trust me, that takes forever.  Forever.  Much better now.

So your saying you like kick because it's more powerful? I'm sorry, but if your determined to kick someone to death, then you should have to land 60 blows, because I don't care how many times I'm kicked by someone my age, it's going to take a long time before they can kick me to death. And yes I know, Zalanthan warriors are stronger then us weak Earthlings, but because they're stronger, they should be able to handle kicks more then we could, so all in all, it evens out.

As for whoever said that a kick would be easy to see coming, it is hard to land a good kick on someone when your just starting out with the skill, only uber-powerful kickers can do a lot of damage, so if the Imms don't want to change the kick skill, lower NPCs ability in it.

Although I'd like to see kick do a little bit of damage to the person if they miss once they're skill reaches 30% It shouldn't hurt people when they're first starting out because they're pretty slow, but it should when they get better at it.

ALL IMO.

Nah, once they're down they should be messed up pretty badly by kicks. Seen Akira? You know when Tetsuo was beating on that clown guy, and Kaneda yells at him for kicking him twice, asking if he wanted to kill him? Obviously a couple more would've killed the guy, because.. well, he was on the ground, Tetsuo just kicks him in the face a couple of times and crushes his skull.

[Carnage]

No offense, but I wouldn't consult an anime where people mutate overnight for realism.

[creeper386]

Try being a person WITHOUT the kick skill, it seems to mean you have less defence against it, and it can hit harder, I've seen often also that someones weapons can't get anywhere past someones defence, there is a good chance that a skilled "kicker" with a well placed kick well end up with a weapon to their leg the same as their weapons get.

First, since I've seen before on most other skills your defence deals at least alittle with your skill in the skill, and it's acctually backed up that you can knock people down when you have a high kick skill, with a low parry you parry, with a higher parry you toss the person weapon out of the room. It's similar with most other skills the better you get the more benefits and ussually you have some benefits at the begining.

Now, what I was saying, was if they can't get past your weapons with their own weapons(IE Your defence skills and parry and everything is alot higher then the other person) Their kicks still get through, and it seems your defensive skills don't help a whole lot. It seems to me it's more of a kick skill and agility vs. kick skill and agility, but I don't know the code so can't say for sure.

I would like to see more things with kick, first of all, penelties to your attacks after a kick, if not at least one round of no attacks for the kicker. Also leaving a stun effect of the same length if the kick lands.

Second of all, the chance of kicks being reduced, rather by making defensive skills more of a benefit for avoiding a kick. It seems now if you are really good at kicking you can kick anyone no matter how skilled they are, and again may be wrong but it seems the less skilled they are with kick the more easier it's to kick them.

Although I'm sure just the above would balance it out, without reducing the damage done at all, I could see also some sort of damage done to the kicker if he really fails, meaning he mistimes it and there is a weapon in the area that isn't doing anything else and can do harm to the leg. Though I think this should only be done if the kick skill is low and the other person is skilled in both offense/defense.


8)Creeper now wonders who all is going to say he is absolutely wrong.

[EvilRoeSlade]

I don't have much to add to the conversation besides this.  My current character, who doesn't have the kick skill, got into a fight with a gith who tried to kick him on six seperate occasions.  None of the kicks landed.

All I can think of is that your character must be a wuss, so quit your whining  :P.

Carnage, it was just an example. It's not like thousands upon thousands year old Sorcerer-Kings or gigantic bugs are terribly realistic either. At any rate, I wasn't referring to the parts in Akira where Tetsuo is a gigantic monster.

Anyway, have you ever been kicked in the face? I have, and it was during a sparring match that I had fallen to my knee in. We didn't have gear on, and I got my cheekbone cracked (Fractured, I don't know what to call it, but I didn't need like.. reconstructive surgery or anything) And that wasn't even a full out kick (It was more than we both expected though)

I just used the Akira reference because.. well, it's Akira, and I thought more people would be able to imagine it.

To summize, kicks to the head = bad things, and should probably happen less often in stand vs. stand combat, more often in stand vs. sit, and nearly always on stand vs. sleep/rest/unconcious.

[Eternal]

Ever killed anyone with kick as the last attack... try it...

I believe kick has its finer points, and agree that circle kicks are a little odd for the setting.  I don't see any reason to nerf it, however, as it can take quite some time of -believable- training for kick to become a good skill, this is true of many (most... all?) of Armageddon's skills.

Gith have never been that scary to me... most byn troopers can take one in one on one combat, and that seems pretty weak.  Heck, I don't think I've even had magickers who were killed by them in the fashion that some people describe.

[the halfling]

I posted a silly reply to a silly post.
Yet another complaint about how NPCs are too strong.
Not to mention, We've all been killed by NPCs at one point.. though I can never recall being killed by them because of kick..  Some do far worse things then that.

I want to know what these people who complain about the fact that when they say arm is suppose to be harsh that they mean it.
To be able to walk anywhere they want and be able to kill any NPC out there?

Some people make it sound like you step out the gate, and you instantly die from a gith attack.  There are many places you can go that you don't have to worry about super NPCs kicking your butt, that isn't in a city.  But those super NPCs need to be there.

Why I think it needs to be made more harsher?
Well, it isn't that.(I realize that some people don't want that, so I'll just leave it alone)  I just want more hidden npcs.  To give rangers another edge over warriors for traveling in the wild.

[Elven Mul]

Well you certainly posted a silly reply, let me tell you.

Tough NPCs exist. They don't need stupid things like super kicks to make life difficult. Super kicks (both on the PC and NPC side) are annoying for the reasons already exhaustively discussed. I trust that is simple enough even for someone as smug as you to understand?

Stop whining about keeping the world harsh, players not being able to handle being killed, and so forth. Those are colossal straw men, or perhaps you didn't understand the point in the first place.

[Swordsman]

So, you're basically saying that some races shouldn't be able to kick you hard because they're physically less strong, on average? Well, I always saw damage as including a big skill factor. In other words, someone very skilled but maybe not very strong can still do lots of damage to you if they hit, which I tend to agree with. Placement, speed, timing, etc. all have a lot of say in how much something hurts IRL, so I think it makes sense to have this in the game, too. If you're going to say that strength is the most important factor in determining how much HP damage an NPC does, then basically anyone with low strength can train for years and years and become incredibly skilled but they won't do as much damage as a strong but unskilled novice warrior, if he happens to hit. Doesn't seem right to me. (I'm not saying that's what you were saying, this is just an example for discussion.)

Anyway, two common things I see with elves, gith, and halflings: they always go on foot (no mounts), so it stands to reason that even if they're below human average on strength, their legs at least would be decent, and (except for city elves) they spend all/most of their time in the desert/forest, i.e. their natural environment, so it stands to reason that maybe they get some advantage from knowing the terrain better. If you're used to fighting on loose sand instead of a nice solid training floor (whether it's rock, packed earth, or whatever), I think you should get an advantage to your footing and positioning when you're fighting on loose sand. Obviously, these are just a couple of ideas to OOCly rationalise what we see happening in the game. If we're dead-set on seeing kick damage from some races as unrealistic, this couldn't and wouldn't convince us otherwise.

As for the actual messages you see ('the tiny halfling kicks the huge half-giant in the head') I guess we'll have to live with them until the imms get around to updating them or adding in code to check for heights. Just my take.

Swordsman

[Supreme Allah]

What is a circle kick anyway?

I ...agree that circle kicks are a little odd for the setting.

Time for a little martial arts lesson.

Circle kicks aren't what Tony described. That's a spinning heel kick (or possibly spinning back kick or something else, I'm not sure what he was thinking of), and is generally not used in practical combat - Tae Kwon Do in general isn't a very practical martial art, just a widely known and relatively simple one.

A circle kick doesn't involve spinning or anything like that. It's actually a very quick and effective kick. A circle kick assumes you have a rear leg and a front leg. The rear leg sweeps through the air in an inward circular motion, clockwise if it's your right or counterclockwise if it's your left. The wider the circle the better, usually (as long as you don't do it dumb and throw yourself off balance) because it adds to momentum. The kick's aim is to strike the side of an opponent's jaw with the outside edge of your foot - ideally with the spot just before the toes.

Circle kicks are appropriate for actual fighting.

If done in the opposite direction, by the way, the kick is called a crescent kick.

Huzzah! So that's a circle kick, we just call them inside or outside Crescent kicks depending on the direction.

What I was thinking with a circle kick was a really newbish roundhouse, where the kid doesn't chamber and just kind of puts his foot out and spins.

Though I'm afraid of Cresecent kicks now... I sprained my left knee doing spinning pump crescents (I landed badly on the left, was kicking with my right (Yes, flashy and useless, I was impressing my friends, go figure))

[Delirium]

Supreme Allah is correct.

Another martial arts lesson. Your strength does not matter nearly as much as your precision, timing, and the location you hit. You can put power into a kick without being super strong.

There are parts of the human body - the groin, for example - no, not the family jewels, a little higher - if you land a well-placed blow there, no matter what your opponent's size compared to yours, they will assuredly drop to the ground in agony.

Power comes from Strength, Strength comes from Speed, Speed comes from Technique. Or so I'm told.

[Swordsman]

I've always thought of the circle kick in the game as a spinning heel kick, actually. I'd assumed the circle kick was a leftover from the original DIKU code, since it didn't seem practical to me for unstable terrain (i.e., loose sand). IMO the crescent kick isn't as widely known, but then again maybe one of the original DIKU programmers was a martial artist. I guess I'll have to go back and look at the kicking messages again, heh.

Tae Kwon Do: I have to ask, Supreme Allah, which Tae Kwon Do are you talking about? Are you talking about the WTF style that we see in the Olympics? I don't necessarily disagree (depending on what exactly you're talking about), but I do think you're making a very sweeping statement. I've met an elite-forces soldier IRL who trained in Tae Kwon Do, and I doubt he would mess around with anything impractical, but then I should add it wasn't WTF.

Swordsman

[John]

I've met an elite-forces soldier IRL who trained in Tae Kwon Do, and I doubt he would mess around with anything impractical, but then I should add it wasn't WTF.

I'll quote the WoT series and say "Anything is a weapon. A pitchfork can be just as deadly as a sword, it's all a matter of how you use it".

Same for karate techniques, some will be better weapons then others, but even WTF style could probably be used in a fight, just not as well as other styles.

[Rindan]

Probably a little late to ad, but I always thought of kick as being 'close combat maneuver not involving a weapon to do damage'.  I wouldn't be offended if someone kicked me, then emoted trying to elbow me.

Often times I think people are a little too caught up in the idea of standing face to face with someone slashing weapons, then all of a sudden one guy throwing out a kick.  I tend to picture combat as being faster and involving a lot more movement.  Whenever I had one of my characters do a kick, I generally liked to describe how he could possibly get his foot in without having a weapon hack it off.  For instance, if the person in question had a shield, then my normal kick maneuver would be to emote throwing my weight into their shield, and trying to lift a knee under their shield.   Is that a real combat maneuver?  No clue.  Seeing my character throw his weight into another person and try and snap up a kick knee to the groan looks nice to me though.  Further, if I was stopped, I would emote being pushed off the shield, or having my rising knee be caught by the shield.  Play around with it a little.  You don't have to just kick the person.

As to the actual balance of it, I too would like to see it tweaked.  In fact, I would like to see all combat maneuvers tweaked.  For instance, I think that kick should be less successful then it is now on a standing person.  However, I think that kick should be far more likely to succeed then it does now on person who has been knocked over.  If someone falls for one reason or another, kicking makes perfect sense.  I have found though that if there is a difference between kicking a person who is standing and a person who is not standing it is minimal.  Further, I would like to see kick leaving a person 'off balance' for a few rounds.  I would suggest having their defense temporarily being lowered after a kick.

Additionally, I would like to see more failure and success types to the different maneuvers.  I know that I fell down laughing the first time my bad ass mercenary grabbed a newbie kick spammer by his left and threw him onto his ass.  If someone wanted to get real fancy, the chance for a kick (or disarm) to succeed would drop the more it is used over a short period of time until the point where yields critical failures even against people who are not veteran warriors.

Armageddon has some neat quirks to its combat code.  Between two evenly matched warriors there actually is some level of strategy involved in terms of when you use your special moves.  Namely, if someone performs a special maneuver, depending upon their success or failure, there are ideal responses you can make.  I would very much like to see more quirks like this.  A little more strategy could be achieved by increasing the positive and/or negative effects of using a special move.  If you wanted to get real fancy, you could have special moves affect each other.

[X-D]

Kinda scary, I don't think I have ever disagreed with any or Rindan's posts...I must be getting old or something.

Anyway, I would also like to see almost all the same things allowing a bit more strategy in combat, I always think it is kinda odd when the opponent I am fighting falls to the ground and I really cannot land a kick on him any easier then normal, nor does it do any more damage if I do, yet I will be hitting him a lot easier with my weapons, specialy when you consider your feet are in a better position to strike a prone person then your weapons.

Some other messages would be nice too and oh, how about a chance on bash, based on skill of each person or something of both people going down, kinda like a partial fail, so and so slams into you knocking you both to the ground in a tangle of limbs and weapons, or knocks you down but loses his balance and falls, (should apply to mobs...eer npc's too) a chance that both people could lose a weapon on a disarm, a chance of maybe disarming more then one weapon at a time, things like that.

[Supreme Allah]

Tae Kwon Do: I have to ask, Supreme Allah, which Tae Kwon Do are you talking about? Are you talking about the WTF style that we see in the Olympics? I don't necessarily disagree (depending on what exactly you're talking about), but I do think you're making a very sweeping statement. I've met an elite-forces soldier IRL who trained in Tae Kwon Do, and I doubt he would mess around with anything impractical, but then I should add it wasn't WTF.

Well, the use an actual fighter has for Tae Kwon Do is a great deal different from the 'pure' form of the martial art itself. I didn't mean to say that Tae Kwon Do is completely worthless - that is not true. What a person like your friend (a soldier) does with Tae Kwon Do is incorporate its strong points into a more broad-based fighting style. Your friend may have taken Tae Kwon Do, but I'd wager that he also recieved a great deal of training in grappling and/or other martial arts.

The thing about Tae Kwon Do is that it is competely centered around the use of kicks. If someone were trying to learn how to kick better in general, then Tae Kwon Do may be a good class to take. But I doubt many of its techniques - such as a spinning heel kick - could really be used effectively against a trained fighter in combat.

If a green beret, a marine, or a man like your friend encountered an enemy in the battlefield that happened to be a WTF-style, Olympic-class Tae Kwon Do martial artist, he'd probably take the guy to the ground (after taking a kick or two at most) and snap him in two.

[Twilight]

Tae Kwon Do is essentially a sport.  70% kicks 30% punches or so.  No grappling (that I know of at least in the pure form).

Tang So Do is closely related, but is a combat martial art.

As for circle kicks, I always thought they were basically a very quick roundhouse, although crescent kicks make sense.  But when I emote, I pretty much always ignore that the code is always going to give me one kind of message in favor of what is realistic for the fight.

As for crescent kicks, I had a girl, 5'4" 130 pounds, black belt accidentally kick me (5'11", 210 pounds, green belt) in the jaw once, sorta in a roughish, hard full out sparring session.  We weren't supposed to do head shots, so it was surprising.  It basically turned me all the way around so that I was facing the other direction from her, and put me to my knees.  I couldn't physically close my jaw all the way for three hours.

Yeah, kicks can be effective, my Shihan, she's like.. 5'3", amazing at kicks, and when she sparred with one of the students from another class (The kid was testing for his black) She could always keep the kid away with her kicks, and since she really never needs to put her foot down during the time a sparring session takes, it was really tough for the kid to get close to her, and since she was so quick with the kicks, he couldn't grab them either, just had to block and hope to push in.

She says our style is Kempo Tae Kwon Do, but she's studied under about five more styles, so I get to use my fists more, good thing since my kicks are bad. Well, not bad, but I can't get them past stomach height (On someone my size, that being  6'4")

Agreed with Rindan, a 'kick' doesn't always have to be a kick, I've emoted elbows, and lots of knees. With the knees I emoted that I was striking at their weapons with mine, just trying to tangle them up enough to get a knee in. For the elbow, it was if I missed a string of weapon attacks, so I would emote dragging my elbow back across on a really unbalanced miss.

Maybe we should rename 'kick' to 'strike' and depending on where you hit, it gives a different message. Still, it should be harder to land a hit to the head, just like combat.

[elven mul]

OK guys, every time one of these issues comes up some experts end up debating incredibly detailed points about the merits and disadvantages of the combat manouvre in question in real life terms. We have people tell us about their martial arts experience, their Society for Creative Anachronism experience, etc., etc. That's great, but it's always in the kind of detail that will NEVER be applicable to Armageddon, so why bother? The issue was pretty simple; it wasn't a call to total realism or to ask for the coding of complex advanced martial arts in the game.

Kick. Way too much damage currently. That's it. No need to discuss how you can kill someone with a single kick and so forth, that's all moot. In case you haven't noticed, we're playing a game where characters can get slashed, gored, stabbed, bitten, clubbed, etc., several times over and over, so if a two-handed sword slash to the neck isn't going to kill them, please don't give me the elaborate details about kicks in real life. It's a game, not the same thing as real life.

If you don't think that 15-20 points damage through good solid armour (!)is too much damage for an elf kick (that practically never misses), please do discuss, but I honestly can't understand how the combat system is helped by something that unbalanced.

I say this playing a character who has a well-developed kick skill by the way, so I'm not saying this because I think "other" classes have an unfair advantage (although I'm fairly sure my character has never kicked as hard as certain elves/halflings/raptors etc.).

[John]

OK guys, every time one of these issues comes up some experts end up debating incredibly detailed points about the merits and disadvantages of the combat manouvre in question in real life terms. why bother?

I think they were enjoying talking about it, and how they imagine certain things in Armageddon and all of the other points they raised. Sure it's a bit off topic and has nothing to do with Arm, but I know nothing about martial arts and I found it quite interesting.

So I say continue talking about that strange thing called RL. I might play it sometime.

[Twilight]

Ok, RL aside, I think kick damage is ok as it is.  Could you please elaborate on what you would consider appropriate damage, Elven Mul?  I'm just wondering how toned down you would want it.  Having played a warrior at the time when most races kicks did 1-3 damage, no matter what your skill, I think that more damage for kick is nice.  When a kick does that low a damage, but you still have to deal with wait state, etc, one gets to ask what is the point of the skill?  At least with the potential to do as much damage as a sword hit, or a couple of sword hits, kick as some value.  Now, perhaps these kinds of damages should be reserved for those skilled at kick, and that kick damage should scale more, with low levels of kick maxing out damage at the 4-5 range, and scaling up to a max of 15 damage or so, as you skill improves.

I personally don't mind kick the way it is.  Its survivable.  Its getting hit on my waist and going from 100+ to zero stun in one hit I don't like  

Yes, I was having a good time discussing it, but it also did have something to do with the game. Specifically, the probability of a kick getting through in armed combat, knowing what the hell the game is telling us when it says Circle Kick, the probability of kicking someone in the head.

I know it wasn't what you wanted to hear Elven Mul, because it seems you're concerned solely about the damage and NPC skill levels. Then again.. you haven't been the -nicest- guy throughout this thread when people differ from the topic a bit.

[Vositus]

...Tae Kwon Do in general isn't a very practical martial art, just a widely known and relatively simple one...

No offesnse but I believe Tae Kwon Do is a pratical martial art.  I've been at the sport of just about 5 years and think im pretty good at it. TKD's fighting style , while not the most offensive, can teach some pretty rough kicks.

[krelin]

I think in this respect the term "practicality" has something to do with the length of time required to master the art well enough to use it in a fight.  I don't think anyone would question the ability of a master in TKD (or a number of other somewhat extravagant martial arts) to kick ass in a bar-fight.  The real question is, how well does the 1-2 month range of students do at defending themselves?  With respect to what TKD I've studied, my guess is not that well.  Being able to throw a kick your opponent can't read/block/counterstrike takes a great deal of study, and a lot of the TKD I've seen taught focuses heavily on kicking strikes.  A few other arts focusing on hand-strikes, chin na (holds and grappling techniques), and very limited kicks (knee-strikes, sweeps), seem more practical in that sense.

*plink*plink* The two 'sid I stole from that templar over there.

[Carnage]

It teaches you how to beat the crap out of someone in self defense. How to hurt them and minimize damage to yourself.

It's practical.

[Elven Mul]

cry me a river for sticking to the topic instead of heading down lengthy tangents that have no applicability whatsoever to the discussion and that, on these boards, typically derail the topic in an egregious manner no matter how interesting. It's been said before: the messages you see when kicking are not necessarily accurate in terms of location, so why should they be accurate in terms of explicit message? If you pay attention, you'll see you can get kicked in any location, including the feet. But the kick message doesn't say so, of course. QED as far as my objections to date go.

But no, here we are in the Code Discussion forum waffling on about martial arts needlessly. Open another discussion in another section of the boards if you must, but don't derail my OP please.

The kick I'd like to see is one that is more balanced in terms of the actual combat system as a whole. Right now you can be very skilled at combat but still get killed or seriously hurt by a couple of lowly raptors in the mood for kicking (or any other kicking NPCs really) if you don't kill them fast enough. The critters wouldn't be able to land a blow on you, but when it comes to their kicks it's a completely different story--and for more damage (through armour) than their actual blows would deliver, were they able to connect.

So the damage factor is way too high, because kick becomes an arbitrary attack. I don't know what it takes to avoid a kick in the game, obviously I am not familiar with the code details ( I know if your kick skill is sufficiently higher than your opponent's you can trip them up, but this is only once the kick attack has succeeded). But it shouldn't come to the point where you get kicked to oblivion by one or two NPCs (or PCs for that matter) who are so far below you in terms of prowess that they never land a blow on you in combat.

If kick is to be such an arbitrary attack then it very simply needs to be toned down. 15-20 (or even more) damage through armour is way too arbitrary for me. It's hardly acceptable when facing one kicker who can put you out of commission with three or four kicks, but when facing two this arbitrariness can cost you your character (plus, it's difficult to notice that you have been kicked if there is a lot of combat spam).

Obviously I'm not talking about scrab kicks here--they are pathetic kickers. But others are, shall we say, a little too good. I agree the days of kicks doing 1-3 damage were not good enough. However 20 damage through armour today seems to me as ridiculous as 1 damage back then. I explained why in an earlier message.

[X-D]

Well, We now know that any discussion of realism is a tangent to elven mul, Hmmm, wonder if he thinks so in the game, Must never have seen the parts in the desc or docs that say we strive for a high level of realism, oh well, maybe he will start a string where that is the title, but then we will not be able to talk about the game.

Anyway, except for the very limited messages that go along with kick I find it to be nearly perfect, myself almost all of my chars are rangers and rarely do they have the kick skill, I have never even come close to getting killed by something by kick, not by beetles, scrab, gith, halflings, duskhorn, tandu, raptor or pc's. Now for another tangent, kinda to annoy somebody I admit, I think Bash needs a little tweaking, I think it needs to take into account the Total Weight of a pc/npc, not just the naked weight, nothing worse then a 10 tenstone dwarf (short, low center of gravity) Wearing another 150 stone of gear and a backpack weighing 50 stone...lets see here, 250lbs+325+125=700lbs gross, getting knocked down 2-3 times in a row by a 12 tenstone (say 300lbs) critter.

But, I like kick the way it is, damage/skill wise weather I am playing a kicker or not.

Oh, I would love to be able to use the kick skill with a location arguement, IE 'kick elven mul head' With a modifier too skill depending on where you aim, maybe elven mul would like it as long as you gave it a damage mod too, say kicking somebody leg/arm/shoulder pretty easy but lower damage, torso/waist harder but higher damage, head/neck hardest, best damage.....hhhmmm, and should maybe be easier to kick a prone person...by a lot.


oh well, I think I mentioned all this before, as well as adjacent room combat sound echos:) oops, Tangent. :twisted:

[creeper386]

Well, I'd have to say that just because Elven Mul would rather the topic stay alittle more closer to the coded mud part of "kicks" rather then a whole flow of posts about how good Tae Kwan Doe is and rather it is or isn't a useful fightstyle. Even for me thats alittle off topic.  :twisted:

But I must say that I think their should be a lower cap of damage, not much, I'm thinking having it about 10-15 points of damage for highly skilled people, but for the most part right now, if someones good at kick but the rest of their offensive skills are crap, as long as they have the defense to keep them alive kick does some mean damage, and it's rather unrealistic I think, they can't get anywhere near you with anything but they can be the shit out of you with kicks.

But I don't a lower limit cap would do much to help things out, because even know you can make a kick and continue on going without any problems, you still attack just as good, still defend just as good.

I think what would balance skills out that there should be penelties during the lag of skills, Like with bash you fall down, but it doesn't seem to eaffect anything, I've seen people that fight from their ass better then their feet, and it makes it so the only good bashing does is to stop the other person from using skills and fleeing.

So, what I'm saying is I think it'd balance things alittle better to have penelties after some of the skills such as bash and kick, disarm I'd say maybe some, but only offensive penelty as opposed to both offensive and defensive.

I'm sure it'd take some coding to do, but I'd suggest some sort of penalties for some of the combat skills and making max kick damage about 15hp(Still rather high I think). Sure noone ever talks about anything I suggest because noone reads my posts, but oh well, thats what I suggest.

Creeper who is sure he could have written this post better but each paragraph talks about something "*alittle*" different or trying to clear anything up. If you don't like it oh well!

[Elven Mul]

creeper, I might rise to take your bait if only I understood your posts. As it is, I'll ignore your jibes, and note that making fun of someone is not the same thing as disproving their points, no matter how good it makes you feel.

By the way, I completely agree that bash ought to be based on mass/density rather than size as it currently is. I always burst out laughing when I see a dwarf bash an elf and be sent sprawling, or similar situation. But this discussion is about how kicks are coded.

[X-D]

Ok, I must figure out what somebody put in my food cause I did understand creeper's post and have no real arguement  with anything except I think the -penalties- from using a skill only should happen when you fail, disarm and bash already have that in small ways, But I have never noticed it with kick, I still do not think the max damage should be lowered, just made more rare in any number of ways.

and I always wander off on tangents in my posts, cept I do make sure that at least part of it is on subject :wink:

[John]

I think Sydney water (which is notoriously dirty) has been getting to me cause I also understand creeper's post. I agree with creeper and think failed kicks should have give the opening a bigger chance at counter-attacking with a pretty good blow. IMO that makes complete perfect IC sense.

[Elven Mul]

I must apologize to Creeper, who in fact wrote a clear post. The one I was referring to was X-D's, and specifically his jibes, not Creeper's.

[X-D]

Well, I figured that a few jibes was better then an all out attack for a reply to a post that I myself found mildly offensive, elven mul posted in a forum called code discussion which means that other people are going to post opinions as well as facts and those peoples opinions are as valid as anybody elses and they happened to think that these were valid points on the -realism- of the kick skill in this mud, And so, I found the manner in which elven mul went about trying to get the string onto the track that in his opinion (somehow more valid then others) it should be on rude.

This is all IMO of course.

[Delerak]

Kicks are way too high.  I remember someone who could do kicks for 30+ damage.  A while back when the armor didn't absorb.  And my friend got kicked for 22 damage the other day by a newbie warrior.  Well anyways, I think it does way too much, and I also think that the skill 'kick' should be taken out and replaced with something along the lines of a skill called pugilism.  Which would be an array of warrior skills, including trip, elbow, shield punchs, headbutts, and the list can go on.  Each would have its ups and downs, such as trip taking them to the ground like a bash, but doing more damage then a bash, but also being extremely hard to land on anyone.  Anyways thats what I THINK about it.

[Elven Mul]

bah, X-D, you make my point for me, if these are the kind of feeble justifications you are going to use. Stick to the actual discussion please.

[Glowworm]

Ok, after some consideration, I'm jumping on the bandwagon that kick _does_ need some tweaking.

I wouldn't say that the problem with kick has to do with the relative damage it does to weapon-based attacks, as many of my character have been damaged for upwards of 40 damage in one regular hit (not subdued, asleep, backstabbed, and it wasn't some super strong NPC).  I think that the problem is it seems to do near maximum damage every time it lands, varying little on body location and armor.  I think the damage range should be more variable, like weapon-based attacks, though not necessarily less powerful.

Another main concern raised by Elven Mul, as I see it, was that many NPC's seem to be much more adept at killing with kicks and bashes than killing with their teeth, claws, beaks, etc.  I see this as a very legitimate concern.  If this is indeed the case, why would they have teeth/claws/beaks anyway...they'd just kick their prey to death.

[X-D]

Elven Mul Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2002 5:34 am    Post subject:  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

bah, X-D, you make my point for me, if these are the kind of feeble justifications you are going to use. Stick to the actual discussion please.

Grin, My point exactly, and it is just that type of rude and in this case rather um, oh yes, Feeble comment that will make me continue to post completly off subject...And prove what point for you, that you are rude and belittle other peoples opinions for no other reason then they do not fit in with what in your opinion is the correct way to go about things on -YOUR- thread?

cry me a river for sticking to the topic instead of heading down lengthy tangents that have no applicability whatsoever to the discussion and that, on these boards, typically derail the topic in an egregious manner no matter how interesting.

OOh, lookie, big words too

But no, here we are in the Code Discussion forum waffling on about martial arts needlessly. Open another discussion in another section of the boards if you must, but don't derail my OP please.

any of this look familier to you elven mul? I will re-state these things are also YOUR opinion, it also has nothing to do with PROVING (I know, not a big word, But you used it, maybe you should look it up then look up opinion then print them both out and stick em someplace where you can see them while posting) any points what-so-ever. I would really like to know what makes you think your opinion is any more valid then anybody elses, and if yours is the only one that counts, why did you post in the first place?

Tony wrote

I know it wasn't what you wanted to hear Elven Mul, because it seems you're concerned solely about the damage and NPC skill levels. Then again.. you haven't been the -nicest- guy throughout this thread when people differ from the topic a bit.

Seems I am not the only one that feels this way

And I still think the posts on martial arts and such has everything to do with the subject name of this thread, considering most of it was about martial arts kicks, But of course FACTS don't prove anything I suppose.

The Fact is, kick in the game, compared to RL is horribly under powered
but myself I think to raise it more would hurt playability, which for the most part is what the martial arts posts were about, that and some clarifications here and there.....Oh, and Elven mul made a comment on SCA too, so I have to add this, being in the SCA myself I can tell you that in combat kicks are not allowed, anybody wanna guess why? Too bad, gonna tell you anyway, because a person in armor  finds it very hard to dodge...well, anything and it only takes one sweep of an armored boot to a persons knee when they are wearing 100-200lbs of armor to do real and horrible damage to that knee. Don't believe me, Find someone who is a fighting member and ask em.
Don't believe them, put on some armor and find somebody dumb enough to join you and try it.

Oh, don't remember who said it on this thread, But I truly love the change kick to pugilism idea, goes along well with the kick person location idea and diff damage for diff areas and so forth.

And see, in the end I did get back on subject.

X-D, Who is starting to feel unloved...and loving it

[krelin]

My inclination would be to make kicks parryable like any other strike.  (perhaps with a slightly more convoluted equation, if necessary)

[Elven Mul]

And again with your whining, X-D. No wonder many of these discussions never get anywhere. Stick to the topic, don't waffle. And don't post sentence-by-sentence responses that are composed of your delicate offended sensitivities and mocking repartees, no one is really interested in that crap.

This is a game, a realistic one albeit a game. if you want to continue whining about realism and putting armour on and kicking people in RL, you need to get one. A real life I mean. It's a game, a simulation at best, and to approach it with the kind of realism you feel so indignant about being challenged is pretty much impossible (and, frankly, geeky).

I'm glad to see though that other people do feel a real discussion is warranted.

[kiddgoth]

Well I just wanted to comment on the discussion, but I think it might be fun to word-fight too, naw its not my style..

Well just to let everyone know I play a d-elf warrior, just over 12 days old and I can kick the shit out of npc's easily, even two gith on me trying to kick me is futile on their part, I grab their leg and down they go, so maybe its a stat thing that is keeping your warrior from being a bad-ass kicker or dodger, you will just have to find other means to dispatch the vile beasts that like to kick you, but I do believe damage should be varible on strength which I am sure it is, now I know my elf kicks hit almost all the time but I am sure they do average damage at best and I have exceptional stregth for an elf. But the kick should stay the way it is for now until they change the code for armored beast also, cause let me tell you something if you come face to face with a silt-horror or bahamet, the only thing thats going to hit it is your kicks. I saw a whole party of byn fight a silt-horror not one blade hit, they killed it kicking it to death just food for thought.....peace out

[X-D]

Elven Mul Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2002 11:16 am    Post subject:  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And again with your whining, X-D.  

anybody can scroll back to read the rest of that rather funny post


Now, that has to be the funniest one yet, as the only whining I see is elven mul about "staying on topic"

And I am happy to that elven mul noticed the "mocking repartee" since he is the one that started that when he first started 'whining' about people getting off topic.

Maybe I will start a poll on who's posts sound indignant:)
And to cover the sentence by sentence responses, well, it's fun and annoys you which, makes it even more fun.

Yup, just a game, and if you don't approach it with that kind of realism then it will rapidly degrade in quality like anything else you only do in a halfassed manner, Get a real life, chuckle, I flew my Navajo to dayton and back 2 days ago, What did YOU do?

[Carnage]

I'm on the degrade kick bandwagon.

Zalanthas isn't full of martial arts experts. Sorry to burst bubbles here, but there aren't any Bruce Lees around here. Nobody's taught the proper way to do that Spinerooni 9000 kick that dislodges your opponent's jaw and makes their head explode while you do triple backflips. Not to mention the fact of armor. If anything, an armored opponent should have a penalty to kick. I have a hard enough time trying to reach my leg up high in jeans. How the hell are Zalanthians able to kick people in the head while wearing layers of armor?

[Carnage]

Yup, just a game, and if you don't approach it with that kind of realism

When was the last time you and your buddies lynched a magicker who spun webs of deceit? Or you stepped outside and were jumped by a six sword-wielding mantis? Or had your mind invaded by a psionicist?

[Supreme Allah]

Aww, Carnage, I generally tend to agree with your posts.

This game is based on realism in a fantasy setting. I know, I know, you're gonna say that that's a contradiction. But it really isn't because kicking exists in real life and thus -is- comparable on this medium. Me kicking you has little or nothing to do with magickers or templars or the lack of steel.

Now if I started saying, "Whoa, those Krathians do too much damage with their fireballs. REAL fireballs don't do that much!" then that would be a viable argument.

Martial arts don't exist in Zalanthas? How do you know that? Just because there isn't specific documentation of it doesn't mean that no one in the world's out there experimenting with a specific style of unarmed combat, possibly more effective than the ones we know today due to the greater need for them as well as the generally superior level of physical fitness.

But I do agree that certain forms of equipment would likely keep you from kicking effectively. Virtually all forms of greaves and some of the heavier plated boots especially. I imagine that looser-fitting sandcloth or leather pants would allow for it, though. But I'd try and roleplay around that myself.

[Carnage]

Martial arts don't exist in Zalanthas? How do you know that? Just because there isn't specific documentation of it doesn't mean that no one in the world's out there experimenting with a specific style of unarmed combat, possibly more effective than the ones we know today due to the greater need for them as well as the generally superior level of physical fitness.

Because the code nerfs unarmed so fast it ain't funny.

Honestly, though, I don't think there's any sorts of martial arts in Zalanthas. I think there's types of unarmed fighting, but mostly "Blind Sandstorm", where you go nuts and kick at the crotch as hard as you can while poking out your opponent's eyes.

Realistically, though, I couldn't see the martial arts coming together because people don't have enough time for it. I'm not an expert or whatever on feudal Japan and how the Shinto-tuji or whatever clan made money where they could hang around and meditate and train all the time, but I just can't see it in Zalanthas. Everyone has to work or do something to make money.

[John]

I agree that the damage that's being done at the moment by most NPCs should be reserved for master kickers and it should take a long time to get to be a master kicker.

As for there are no martial arts in zalanthas, I'd like to think kicking is a step towards unarmed combat, but I'd like to see tutors going around teaching their combat styles, with some martial arts. But that could just be me.

[Rindan]

Just nit picking on a single point, elves and raptors can and should kick hard.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you had to pick two humanoid sized creatures to NOT get into a kicking match with, elves and a raptors would be near the top.  Raptors are specifically described as having claws in their feet designed to gut its' pray.  As far as descriptions implies, the raptors kick (and accompanying claws on its feet) is potentially its most devastating attack.  On the issue of elves, you are talking about a species that can outrun and out distance most mounts.  While elves are physically not strong in the upper body, hence the poor strength and inability to swing a weapon hard, I think it is fairly safe to assume that a kick from a creature that can whisk its body through the desert at lightening speeds for long distances is something one should avoid.

[Elven Mul]

Sorry X-D, but as much as you obviously crave this kind of self-validating exercise, I don't waste my precious time arguing with people who have one standard supercilious zero-content reply type to everything (we've seen yours what, five times so far?). Go ahead and feel superior, have the last word if you want, but I think the only person who will believe in that kind of crap will be you. I'm here to discuss, something that I hope to continue doing in spite of deliberate roadblocks and derailments by people who love to see their self-affirming output on screen.

Rindan: good point about raptors and kick. However my thinking is that a raptor already attacks with his deadly slashing claws (my understanding is a raptor's "arms" are fairly useless), and if he can't connect on an opponent like that, why would he be able to do so with a kick attack? But yes, I guess a raptor kick could be fairly vicious if it connected, you are right in that respect.

As for elves, I believe the speed and endurance of elves is more a function of very low weight, long muscles/legs, and various sundry adaptations rather than just raw leg muscle power. That is not to say elves don't have very strong leg muscles, of course (it says so in the documentation), just that it seems to me an elf is the way he is because of a whole-body adaptation rather than specific leg strength only. For example, when you think about the difference in strength between a dwarf and an elf, the dwarf will probably have stronger legs than the elf, by quite a margin. Carrying a heavier body, and MUCH heavier loads requires that kind of extreme strength (for which, in this example, dwarves are supposedly known for). A dwarf would just not go as fast or as far, because of the difference in mass, body shape, leg length, differring physical adaptations, etc. But in terms of raw body strength, I doubt very much an elf would be as fearsome as suggested, and a dwarf would certainly be stronger (let alone a mul or half-giant).

[creeper386]

But the kick should stay the way it is for now until they change the code for armored beast also, cause let me tell you something if you come face to face with a silt-horror or bahamet, the only thing thats going to hit it is your kicks. I saw a whole party of byn fight a silt-horror not one blade hit, they killed it kicking it to death just food for thought...

I must say... This shouldn't be the reason it should stay the same, this is the reason it should change! If skilled warriors trained in sword fighting(Or club, or spear or whatever) can't hurt some sort of creature I don't think their feet should be able to hurt them. These are SUPPOSED to be massive creatures that are powerful, but they are taking down by kicks. I know I had about a 3-4 day warrior in a byn group that ran into a silt-horror, he rarely landed a hit with his weapons and hit with his kicks more often, it's just silly.

And the same goes for everything else, if a raptor or gith can't hit someone with their weapons(Even though with a raptor I well agree I would think his attacks are ALREADY with his feet or biting or something) how in the hell should they be able to get their feet past the defenses? It make NO SENSE WHAT SO EVER.

Like I said I don't think just toning down the damage done by kicks well do it, making kicks harder to land due to defensive skills should be fixed. I'm sure parry or shield works is including in defensive of a kick, when it should. And also I think on top of that, there should be a penalty to kicks and other skills that effect offensive and defensive stats, even if they succeed, because even if you hit someone your going to have to take the time to catch your balance and everything, but if you land the kick the SAME penalty should be giving to the person that was kicked as well as the damage.

In a world where weapons are primarily used, martial arts and such tend to go down the drain, from what I've seen Zalanthans have used weapons for a long time, because weapons tend to provide a quick way for anyone with little to no skill to kill, on the other hands, martial arts may be more effective against another un armed person they aren't that great against armed people, and it takes ALONG time to develop the skill for it, and I must add that this whole paragraph is why I'd say there isn't any major forms of martial arts, sure some good brawling techniques and such, but nothing greatly developed.

Sure, kicks are strong when against untrained people, but ussually, two highly trained martial artists can kick the shit out of each other, and still be up for continuing, because their bodies are hardened to take it also with skills they MOVE with the kicks. Then if you include armour, most damage from kicks would be from falling and bounding around inside of it specially with chitin and bone thats common in Zalanthas, but even hardened leather would take a good blow.

Kicks are strong yes, but they aren't really that strong unless wielded by someone thats really good at it, and even hardened leather much less anything greater then that, wouldn't allow the movement for kicks. And you see people running about in full bone armour, probably about similar coverage as platemail, and yet they still are doing fancy kicks? They'd hurt themselves more then anyone else, they'd end up on the ground, getting hit by their opponent.

Kicks are meant for skilled versus unskilled, and ussually not meant for dealing death blows, sure claws or spiked boots would do more damage, but kicks aren't as clean as weapons when it comes to one person killing another.

Now this is all a really long post, I don't care, deal with it. Oh and Elven Mul, I was on yourside that previous post comment was downing you but the person for ridiculing you, but now your just letting whats his name make an ass out of you.

Creeper wondering now if the great martial artists that play Arm are going to say how they got their jaw dislodged and knocked out for 5 hours from one brutal kick that five foot tall asian chick hit them with.

[Delirium]

I just finished sparring with this Asian chick...

:shock:

Generally, I agree. Unless you have years of martial training and are wearing clothes that you can easily maneuver in, you're not going to be doing tons of damage with a kick.

Perhaps we could compromise and add in good stun damage if you hit them in the right place, but little in the way of actual HP damage. That way you have the opportunity to knock the wind out of someone, *then* take them down with your weapons?

[Twilight]

Hmmm, all of a sudden, I'm seeing this as two distinct arguments which people have tried to mend into one.

PC vs NPC or PC kick - If its a PC kicking, its a function of their skill in kick, really.  People have noted that there are some anomalies at the low end of the kick range.

NPC vs PC kick - Ok, this is where I think part of this derails.  This is not so much a function of the kick skill, IMO, but rather how skills were set on the NPC.  Having created on other MUDs before, I could totally understand and see a creator here putting an NPCs regular skills -lower than they would normally- and making up this lower power by increasing the kick skill, with the -intention- that the kick skill should be the primary damage.  I think if you start talking about specific NPCs, a general argument breaks down.  Except in an overall sense, a mek is harder than a tregil, I don't know exactly how difficult a particular creature should be.  Thats the perogative of the creator, as is the ways in which they wish that creature to damage you.  If you have problems with specific creature, I'd say email the mud, or log an idea that they check X skill on Y creature.  For example, what if the base template has a skill of 90%?  And this was intended?  No wonder it is kicking you do death.  Or, it could also be something left over from the legacy environment of kicking doing 1-3 damage a hit, when it wasn't a big deal.  Best way to deal with that is addressing the mobs, imho, rather than the kick skill.