<<Frustrated, I attempted to kick him, without disengaging BRAWL like a dummy. I missed completely and ended up on my arse. and it gave me shock.>>

To all of my friends and loved ones,

This is the reason why I refuse to learn to brawl! It's like my worst nightmare come to life ;) I haven't had a reason presented to me yet that was good enough for me to learn this skill.

So leave me alone about it? Please???

Mysty


Dragons love you...

...Dipped in chocolate!

I have to weigh the dangers vs. the benefits and the dangers far outweigh the benefits to my reckoning.

But that's just me. I know lots of Empaths who constantly nag me about not learning the skill. I had 2 ranks of brawling before there WAS brawling in the Realms but I've never used them. I'm now up to 10 ranks of brawling and they were all from classes being forced on me!

Mysty


Dragons love you...

...Dipped in chocolate!

Just as an FYI, we're looking into the possibility of getting some kind of notation added into your login (you know, the area in your initial room description that lets you know if you are sitting, or prone, or whatever...) to indicate if you are in brawling mode. No guarantees on if it can happen, but the inquiry has been made. Hopefully that will help in some cases.

But if you try to slap or kick someone and you get the message that you aren't close enough to do that, that's a big red flag that you are in Brawl mode. Be sure to stop and check before proceeding.

GM Reexa


______________________________________
The monkey flew down and stole my cracker.

<<slapped someone once. But even given that, I think brawling is very useful, especially if you go in the fields to manipulate.>>

Ouch. That sounds like a harsh lesson, Farman. ::rubs::

Oh, please have some saftey measure such as "Are you sure you want to slap him??" before we do that. I like to brawl. I've never slapped or kicked someone but if I ever had to, I'd hate to get shock for something like that. I'd hate for any empath to get shock for such a reason.

Amo

>Freedom isn't Free -- Please Pray for the Troops.

---

Get shifted at Amori's Place--> http://home.sprintmail.com/~hopebuilt

and also, the Empathic Alliance--> http://www.geocities.com/saerhyn/ESC/Coalition.html

>I have to weigh the dangers vs. the benefits and the dangers far outweigh the benefits to my reckoning.

I think it's a good mentality to have...I know for me, parry has been my 'no way!' action for what...a loooong time. I think about six months ago was when I finally typed PARRY IG, I just always associated PARRY with an offensive manuever, and no matter how much folks would tell me otherwise, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I finally decided after watching my LE creeeeep along that I'd give it a shot, and woo hoo...no shock! I still don't like using it though...:)

Speaking of which, any thoughts on ways we may be able to learn weapons faster...other than a class of course? I am not thinking we need to be master of all that is a weapon, but once you get over I'd say 50 lessons in your parry weapon skill, it just slows down to a painful crawl...at least for me it did. Passive parry learning bites!
:P

Anyhow, with the brawling, there are a few reasons I think it's not just a fun thing, but a useful thing, to know how to use. If you want to assist your hunters in battle, you can advance and grapple the target and CIRCLE, it will throw them off balance and make them easier to kill.

I've heard of folks using brawling to get unresponsive people laying down to they can be tended, although I've never been in this situation myself.

Also, if your hunting partner can't or doesn't want to retreat, by advancing and SHOVEing the critter, you can buy some time for a breather, get fatigue up, cast a spell, etc.

And finally, I haven't heard anything about this for ages so it might just be moot now, but there was a time where it was talked about making it so you couldn't DRAG folks if they were at melee with something (ie. no dragging when stunned kind of thing). If this is ever implemented, then the above SHOVE manuever will be very very very important to helping get your patient out of there...put a Heart Link on them to stablize them, advance critter, tend patients wounds, get into good position with the critter and SHOVE them back to pole or missle, then drag your patient away to saftey.

Kythryn

Putting up a warning about being in brawling mode will help avoid some mistakes, but innocent mistakes will still be made, and the owners of empaths will suffer for it. To me, as a customer, having an OOC physical mistake severely damage your character is something I have a major problem with.

The brawling/rp verbs pose a huge threat, and the truncation of those verbs make them extremely dangerous. "K" and "L" keys are next to each other. You are in combat, working brawling, grappled with a critter go to 'L'ook, and instead hit 'K'nee, and you have shock. A simply missed keystroke can severely damage a character that you have put a lot of time and money into. For those of us who do brawl a lot, this is not a far fetched scenario.

Aside from the new reqs and letting the empaths that have been waiting for 100th+ circles advance, I think rewriting the shock system should be THE priority.

Purehand is dead and in no condition to continue teaching you.

~Purehand

>There should be zero overlap between combat verbs and RP verbs.

This is why the only, only time I use any of the combat verbs that have RP equivalents is when I mean to cause harm, with one of my hunter characters. Its also why my primary parry weapon is a quarterstaff, where you can't use active combat verbs, brawling or otherwise, while you have a shield down. On top of that, there's another safeguard in place, where if you don't specify a target, with an empath you just get a warning, so I never, ever use one of the aggressive brawling moves with a named target and generally don't name a target at all, but rather face x critter, then give the command without a specified target, even with my hunters.

Stacked, it gives a lot of buffer in case of typos.

Really, smile is your friend as an empath if you want to get aggressive toward another character or even critter. It is typo proof, unlike RP verbs.

Personally, given my druthers, I'd love to see a squelch from the FE where you could set a number of words that even if you type them, will either a) be translated into another word or b) never be sent to Simu at all. This way it would be impossible to typo words you really didn't want sent anyways.

>Personally, given my druthers, I'd love to see a squelch from the FE where you could set a number of words that even if you type them, will either a) be translated into another word or b) never be sent to Simu at all. This way it would be impossible to typo words you really didn't want sent anyways.

Well if you are a Genie FE user there is. For those that have Genie FE and don't know, 'Aliases' work just like that. I can setup so anytime I type the word attack it automatically does this...

>dance happy

You do a happy little dance of joy!

You can set it up for any word, thrust and you dance, lunge and you sing instead. You'll never even actually see the word 'attack|thrust|lunge|ect' enter into the game window. Whatever command you want. Just another buffer for those that want it.
Or preferrably in my case, if I typed the words 'wave rod at <person>' it would slap myself instead.

D K
Empathic Shock 24/7 for 18 days and counting.

>Changes/updates to icons in SF would be something that would need to be fielded via the onsite folks that maintain SF, so would be something I'd recommend suggesting in a folder where they'd see it (isn't there a folder specifically for SotrmFront?--I'd suggest there if so.)

There are like three folders for Stormfront/DR2, which makes it a bit confusing to keep up. But adding a status icon would actually be under the purview of the DR game people since it would involve a change in the data the game sends to the front end. It would undoubtedly involve adding another bit or byte to the 'heartbeat' information that the game server sends to the front end howevermany times each second, and then yeah, the front end people would have to add graphics and code to support it as appropriate. In other words, given the pace at which such updates occur, and the reluctance to add any features which increase server load even by the tiniest amount, on the unofficial DR timeline I would expect this to occur shortly before the heat death of the universe. I'm not going to hold my breath ;)

But I still think it's a good idea.

<<There should be zero overlap between combat verbs and RP verbs. Actually, now that I think of it, for consistency's sake I think that using violent RP verbs such as kick or slap should give empaths shock. But either we get shock for hurting people or we don't, there should be no middle ground.>>

You know, another thing I'd like to see changed with shock (besides that shock should only be for harm done)... is that, yes, perhaps a slap should 'cause a little bit of shock...something that takes your empathy down a few notches, depending on what harm was done.

See, if you are savant in empathy, why would something like a kick that did little damage erase all your empathic skill at once? I see it more as it eats away at your empathy...getting lower and lower...and the roundtime would be comparably shorter for the little damage versus a lot.


And Reexa, sorry, I didn't realize that you had to be at melee... I guess if you take the type to engage in combat, you'd be more cautious about your stances. That makes sense. Thanks for repeating the explanation for forgetful folks like me.

Amo





>Freedom isn't Free -- Please Pray for the Troops.

---

Get shifted at Amori's Place--> http://home.sprintmail.com/~hopebuilt

and also, the Empathic Alliance--> http://www.geocities.com/saerhyn/ESC/Coalition.html

>>But if you try to slap or kick someone and you get the message that you aren't close enough to do that, that's a big red flag that you are in Brawl mode. Be sure to stop and check before proceeding.<<

The best advance in brawling ever made...


>assess

"You are brawling!"


Souv

Don't nit-pick me about my quotes, I'm not in game to get the exact text

manipulate friendship maid
>
A bar maid is not interested in your manipulations at this time. Perhaps later...

>>>assess
>>"You are brawling!" --Souv

Yeah, ya beat me to it..when Ssra rolled out that change in assess showing your last maneuver, I noticed this starting to appear. I don't know if it happened at the same time (it wasn't in the release details on Ssra's post) because I rarely brawl with my other characters, but I noticed that a while back when brawling with my barb.


~Brady, player of I'm a Lover Not a Fighter Elavin Rismel.

"Congratulations! You've won DragonRealms!"

>It still requires the onsite people to say "yes, let's add that" before someone on the DR side of things would be alotted the project to code unless and until such a time that they do a large scale update of the FE and ask for suggestions from the staff.

Heh, this sounds like the kind of catch-22 I figured it might be. I know from previous experience in making suggestions for Stormfront that Myke et al. don't have jurisdiction over anything that involves a change in what information the game is sending the front end. So I feel pretty confident this would have to begin life as an idea for a change in the game itself. But the fact that all the front ends would have to be updated to support it make me feel it's pretty unlikely to occur.

>So again, if you truly like the idea, please make sure to suggest it in the appropriate place where those who can make such a choice will be able to see it.

Yes, I do still think it would be a good feature ;) I posted about it on the discussions - suggestions board soon after my previous post here, FWIW.

Although it goes against my self preservation instinct, I'm going to have to agree with Threephi. By definition of empathy, the more attuned you are to it, the more it hurts to do something that clashes with it. I compare this to light sensitivity. I spent 9 months on an aircraft carrier working the night shift. If you've never been out on the ocean at night... it's FRIGGIN DARK. During those 9 months I probably saw sunlight a grand total of twice, and both times for less than 5 minutes. So what happens when we pull into port and we all suddenly have days off. Well... The first time I walked outside in the daylight it took me an hour and a half to be able to see clearly. Now my buddy next to me that worked the day shift the whole time... he didn't even flinch. So by that logic, Threephi is right, the more sensitive you are to the dark (which in this example is empathy) the more the light (in this case causing harm) will hurt you


Souv

manipulate friendship maid
>
A bar maid is not interested in your manipulations at this time. Perhaps later...

small correction to your logic Myrensa...

"Until you learn to put them asleep and stay awake"

That's where the real power lies


Souv

manipulate friendship maid
>
A bar maid is not interested in your manipulations at this time. Perhaps later...

Ah, thank you for correcting me there Souv! I'll have to ask Purehand for some advice :snicker:


~Myrensa~
>when
You are fairly confident that it will be sometime after now.

How about we just have an option that allows empath to totally disable the attack verbs altogether, which totally removes the possibility of a mistake being made? It seems a simple solution to the problem of empaths making mistakes that give them grave repercussions. It seems silly to not do it.

I remember when I was a young empath and it was like that....you tried to do something menacing and it told you something like "are you sure?? That could hurt someone!"...maybe it just wears off over time or after a certain circle. Would be nice if it didn't. I don't want a lifetime of shock to be caused by a stupid mis-type.

I do know that as empaths we have to carve branches *three times* before they will actually carve...tells us something about changing its form into a weapon and no longer a mundane object, so it exists, just needs to be tweaked a bit.

This sound like something possible, oh wonderful and mighty GMs? ::grin::

And, thank you Reexa for the RPA for Frop...the guy was quite excited he got it...had been his first one. Now if only I could hand these out myself...


~Brady, player of I'm a Lover Not a Fighter Elavin Rismel.

You hug Farman who wraps his arms around you with a warm smile. He smells like clouds of sulphur mixed with ozone and melted toad intestines.

"Congratulations! You've won DragonRealms!"

Hmm...mus is, just tried it with my Cleric. Must have changed since I last carved branches...it's been a vera long time.

Learn something new every day ::grin::


~Brady, player of I'm a Lover Not a Fighter Elavin Rismel.

You hug Farman who wraps his arms around you with a warm smile. He smells like clouds of sulphur mixed with ozone and melted toad intestines.

"Congratulations! You've won DragonRealms!"