Am I insane? Probably. But let's make ranged combat even scarier.

[Doublepalli]

Allow arrows, bolts and throwing weapons to become <lodged> in hit locations.

Make it so that they don't heal the dmg they've done until removed.

Make them bleed for a certain amount over time based on hit location upon removal of the lodged ranged weapon so you want to have bandages on hand, or get to safety. (throwing weapons could do bleed dmg immediately to make up for potentially losing your wpn in your prey)

Make 'tending to the bleeding' something anyone can do, but increased chance of success for those with the bandage skill and or good bandages.

You could even get creative, make arrows that lodge in legs increase mv cost, or being shot in your arm/hand has a chance to drop a weapon. Being shot in the head could have a chance to temporarily blind.

Just some thoughts!

[Riev]

There IS a coded mechanic that can do damage on movement. However, for something like that to be in place I would want arrow damage tuned back a decent amount.

Archery (and maybe crossbows but lets be real, nobody will ever know) does a decent bit of damage already. To the point where anything human-ish can be dropped in under 5seconds with good rolls. If you want that to happen AND for someone trying to get away more than 4 rooms to die of bleeding, that is asking a lot.

You can either *BOOM* Headshot someone, or you can hamper their movement, but having both seems unnecessary. Not talking realism. Not talking cool factor. Just from a gameplay standpoint. Unless you want to finally retune parry/shield use to not be useless against a max-archery shot.

[Pariah]

Arrows are already super deadly.

I don't think adding a DOT to them would enhance their danger.

Maybe making it less likely to wing people.  I've had advanced archery and shot someone for hardly any damage, OR nailed them in the neck and dropped them.  It's so all over the place.

[Brytta Léofa]

1. Reduce damage for most hits.
   a. Non-vital shots should do MINIMAL hitpoint damage on impact...like, 1-5.
   b. Head and neck shots remain potentially deadly on impact.

2. Every shot has a chance of grazing, sticking, or (for high strength bows, unarmored victim, victim smaller than half-giant) punching through and exiting.
   a. A projectile that sticks has to be removed eventually. Inflicts small damage amount when moving.
   b. Removing a projectile inflicts damage. Damage reduced by bandage skill. Damage reduced by having someone else do it.
   c. Removing a projectile lodged in head or neck often kills the patient.

3. A projectile that is removed (or punches through) creates a blood loss affect.
   a. Periodic, randomized stun and hp damage.
   b. Will eventually clot on its own if you don't die; time depends on severity.
   c. Low-skill bandaging reduces or removes the affect.

5. Shields should be SUPER, SUPER EFFECTIVE against archery.
   a. Defense against archery should be much more a function of shield size than of shield use skill.
   b. A large shield and apprentice shield-use should soak up 75% of master archery shots at 1 room distance and 95% at 2 room distance.
   c. (Within the same room you're still toast, yajah.)

This makes archery not an uber-overwhelming, I-can-solo-your-Byn-unit skill (though I'm not sure it is today to be fair), but rather another tool in the paper-rock-scissors game. Countering big shields requires moving closer and probably shooting a lot. Damage over time adds a strategic aspect. Damage on removal adds bee-YOO-tiful drawn-out deaths.

[Windstorm]

I like Brytta's suggestions on the whole... though I don't know how much work that would require? Arrows sticking in you and needing to be removed and all would be a great addition to medical play, but it feels like it would involve the whole creation and development of new like, wound and bleeding systems or whatever.

On the more simplistic end I will say in particular, shields really aren't even nearly the level of effectiveness they should be against arrows in general, in my experience.

[Pariah]

I seem to remember shields being SUPER USEFUL, years ago, then I think I remember someone making a release notes thing going, "Made shields less good." (Paraphrasing).

Back in the day I would use shields on almost everyone but now they seem sorta nerfed.

[Patuk]

This is a terrible idea from a gameplay point of view. MUDs struggle with certain things because of their very genre: in particular, these things are group combat, stealth, and ranged combat. Leaving the first two aside..

Ranged combat on MUDs is a known issue. In a video game, things like distance, cover, aim, and mobility are easily quantified. That guy with a bow/rifle can shoot you, you can shoot back, you can (fail to) see him: it all works out.

In a MUD, the abstractions are an issue. Your character has bad peripheral vision. He can't just jump behind a big rock the way you could in a video game. Because the medium itself is the issue, most MUDs end up with ranged combat either really weak (any IRE MUD really) or really strong (we are here).

This is a deliberate design choice. It isn't that weird of one, and it isn't anyone's fault that it's hard to get right in a MUD..

.. But there is zero reason to make the disparate power even worse, and so I'd prefer we don't do any of these things.

[Brytta Léofa]

This is a terrible idea from a gameplay point of view. ... most MUDs end up with ranged combat either really weak (any IRE MUD really) or really strong (we are here). ... there is zero reason to make the disparate power even worse, and so I'd prefer we don't do any of these things.

I think my ideas for how this could be implemented...are beautiful and perfect, haha.

"More powerful" and "more scary" aren't always the same axis. I'd like to see archery be overall lower DPS and less effective against a prepared target--I'd call that "less powerful." I'd also like to see it cause more dread: consequences beyond immediate HP loss, stuff you have to stress about over a period of minutes rather than seconds.

Imagine you made only this one change (which I'm not suggesting per se): if a shot would kill you, it instead takes you down to 10 hp and lodges an arrow with a 90% chance of killing you on removal and a 100% chance of killing you in a couple days if you leave it in. This makes archery less powerful; that dude at 10 hp still might kill the shooter, whereas before he'd just be DEAD. But I'd argue you've made the experience significantly more scary and engaging at the same time.

[Triskelion]

A bleed effect would be an interesting alternative to the current state of ranged combat where arrows/bolts/whatever have such a wide range of damage potential that even a master archer can either tickle you or do the equivalent of a maxed backstab's damage depending solely on dice. Ranged damage is so wildly random, but the odds of doing serious damage with an arrow are quite low. Given the fact that simple movement makes you near-impervious to archery, it would be nice if there was a bit of a reminder associated with getting shot once.

Most of all, what I would like is something similar to the 'aim' feature of certain RPIs from the Shadows of Isildur engine. Instead of just 'shoot man e' you take aim, and even if they then move out of a cardinal direction, you can still type 'shoot' and launch an arrow if they're northeast of you. This would make ranged combat less slavishly beholden to the cardinal directions, and in doing so, it would be less of a skill-destroying nerf to lower its unreasonably high (but statistically improbable) maximum damage.

As it stands, ranged shots have a tiny chance to do obscene damage, but most of the time, they just do like 12 or so and the target just wanders off. It's kind of weird.

[Armaddict]

they just do like 12 or so and the target just wanders off. It's kind of weird.

So I'm not really for or against the proposal (if anything, I consider it more like stealth and crimcode where I think they serve their purpose now, but they are legitimately a vast potential expansion of engaging play vs the simplicity that they currently are), but I really wanted to point something out here.  Well.  2 things.

1) Master archery doing 12 damage is kind of nowhere near my experience.  Master archery pretty much always HURTS, but not in terms of 1-to-dead scenarios, because...

2) In PvP on arm, 'just' 12 damage is actually a tremendous deal.  12 damage without any chance to really retaliate is insane.  12 damage is enough on some people to make their tracks have blood.  12 damage is one step closer to the threshold where you are not close to dead, but you are incredibly hampered by other circumstances of movement speed of your mount, stamina levels, time of day, local fauna, and the thing that really makes you at their mercy...the regen cap.  12 damage is not a small deal in Arm PvP, and thinking of it in terms of 100% to 0% is a really bad habit in terms of when someone wants you dead.  70% is lower than you ever want to be until you have locked down where you want them.  This is what makes archery so deadly, particularly out away from cities, not necessarily the 'one shot' paradigm.

[Triskelion]

they just do like 12 or so and the target just wanders off. It's kind of weird.

So I'm not really for or against the proposal (if anything, I consider it more like stealth and crimcode where I think they serve their purpose now, but they are legitimately a vast potential expansion of engaging play vs the simplicity that they currently are), but I really wanted to point something out here.  Well.  2 things.

1) Master archery doing 12 damage is kind of nowhere near my experience.  Master archery pretty much always HURTS, but not in terms of 1-to-dead scenarios, because...

Archery damage is wildly inconsistent. No, master archery doesn't always hurt. You only hear about the shots that hurt because the rest are ignored. Nobody complains on Discord when they get shot for 14 damage, so you don't hear about it. That's the norm, though, statistically speaking. Then, once a year, someone gets shot for 90 damage and everyone's like "omfg archery!!!" without accounting for the fact that even the best archer that the game allows for has maybe a 5% chance per shot to do that sort of damage. The rest of the time, it's much less.

There's a chance to roll a 'critical hit,' and then there's a separate chance to hit the neck or head. If both rolls succeed, you get to do crazy damage. The chance of that happening is very, very low. But you don't hear about the fifteen times that Amos got shot fo 12 damage. You hear about the one time he got shot for 90. On a per-instance basis, it's exceedingly unlikely to happen.

2) In PvP on arm, 'just' 12 damage is actually a tremendous deal.  12 damage without any chance to really retaliate is insane.  12 damage is enough on some people to make their tracks have blood.  12 damage is one step closer to the threshold where you are not close to dead, but you are incredibly hampered by other circumstances of movement speed of your mount, stamina levels, time of day, local fauna, and the thing that really makes you at their mercy...the regen cap.  12 damage is not a small deal in Arm PvP, and thinking of it in terms of 100% to 0% is a really bad habit in terms of when someone wants you dead.  70% is lower than you ever want to be until you have locked down where you want them.  This is what makes archery so deadly, particularly out away from cities, not necessarily the 'one shot' paradigm.

No it isn't. 12 damage (just to stick with that figure) is typically about 10-15% of a character's total health, not counting half-giants. Twelve points of damage are irrelevant. It's what an average-strength human hits you on the head for with a sparring weapon. It's not all a bad habit to think of it in terms of percentages--that's how games are designed and balanced. Dismissing that leads to poor game balance. It's blinkered and senseless to call numbers irrelevant.

There's a big difference between archery and melee damage. For one thing, when you shoot someone, they have the option of simply... walking off. Unless they're very inept, you're never getting a shot off on them again once they've started moving. You don't shoot automatically every three seconds, you don't get to try and bash or charge them, archery (unlike throwing) has no chance to knock the target prone; and unless you're shooting at somebody who was already engaged in melee combat with someone else, it's very unlikely that they had invoked any skill delay that prevents them from instantaneously reacting to your shot with an input of 's.'

And then that removes them almost entirely from the risk of any further harm. In nearly all cases, anything short of the perfect 5% bulls-eye megacrit was meaningless because the target just leaves after one shot. In nearly all cases, you get to shoot the guy once and then he's five rooms away before you get to do anything. If that one shot did 12 damage, as is the case probably 80% of the time, how dangerous were you really? You had a miniscule chance to do much more damage, but that didn't matter at all if you didn't highroll on that occasion.

This is why archery, despite its potentially (if wildly improbable) high damage ceiling, is a piss-poor way of actually going about killing anything. Setting aside NPCs who react in a very predictable way to getting shot, players know that they can just leave and feel almost entirely certain that they will not be an eligible target for any further ranged attacks until they stop moving. And they won't stop until they've reached a place where there is no conceivable risk of further harm.

It's hard enough to just follow a moving target who's one room away in this game. Shooting them is essentially impossible. When you get shot, you can just input a directional command and then the person who shot you has no real chance to do so again. Outside of unusual scenarios like battles, you only ever get to shoot someone once. The vast majority of the time, it did trivial damage, even if you're a master archer. You just pray for that tiny chance to roll both double damage and a neck/head-shot. If you didn't, your shot pretty much didn't matter. That's the reality of archery.

[Armaddict]

We clearly have wildly different experiences with archery in the game, and with the general flow of heavy PvP engagements.  I'm fine with that.  I will just say that most of that is anecdotally untrue to me and other players can read that and figure it out for themselves.

I would strongly suggest a vastly different take on how you(all readers, not directed at Triskelion because I'm not really willing to devolve this into a pointless debate) view hitpoints in PvP engagements, though.  In the absence of safety nearby, whether because of criminality status or proximity or diplomatic concerns, getting hit as little as possible is a prime directive of the Raider, raidee, and all things in-between, and I've punished people numerous, NUMEROUS times over the years for considering them an easily expended resource.

Just food for thought, PvP is far more in-depth than people give it credit for, and the relative 'problem' with the lack of roleplay involved has to do more with increased safety options and overall hostility of the world towards antagonism/lowbrow violence than anything else.   I'm always in favor of code changes that will make that 'I need to one shot' feeling go away.  Skirmishes and strife or bust!

[Pariah]

I've died to random arrows and I've also been hit by arrows multiple times and it hardly took down my HP, it's so wildly different I think is what people don't like.

That said, if there was some mechanic for various levels of wounding and or arrows sticking outta ya, that made you less combat efficient that would a nice welcome change.

I've got lucky and neckshot someone, chased them down, fought them and nearly died because dude with ten hp still fights as good as dude with 120hp.

If being shot by arrows gave you some type of nerf, it would be a wise action to soften them up then go in for the kill, but I think that's why people just spam arrows, hoping that someone isn't paying attention while they do, pull quiver, shoot homie e, pull quiver, shoot homie e, DING
because the guy is looking at another screen or working.

Lots of dying outdoors I've seen is either poison, or fucking up AFK people unfortunately.

[Inks]

Arrows and bullets and bolts oh my!

They are pretty lethal. I think lethal enough. I once took 120 damage to the neck through horror plate on a fluke critical which was the end of that 100 days played guy. Although I do appreciate the idea.

I'd like arrows and bolts sticking into you to apply a minor off/def debuff until removed though, that's cool.

The reason I never shoot at victims on raiders is because shooting people randomly down is lame.