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• Range
• CombatInterface
• CombatDamageSeverity
• WoundHealing
• CriticalHits
• LimbDamage
• Design.TheDeath

Range

• If you have weapons of different range, this implies that personas can have a varying amount of space between them, or the idea of range would be of little use.
• If you allow tactics such as flanking and protection, you need a way to figure where the characters are in relation to eachother.

To simulate this you could:

1. create a full square based battlefield, what talks against this, is that it might be complex, and some would argue that the battlefield should be fully displayed to the player instead of in text. Giving us a slow nethack...
2. keep simpler data like general positions/ranges, ie, 5 'units' behind.
3. generate a simplified battlefield consisting of each parties ranks, those in the front ranks clash at eachother, those in the back use ranged weaponry, both this and the prior becomes complex if there are more than two parties battling.
4. Add your ideas here...

No matter the kind of the battlefield there is the question on movement through rooms.

• In a square-based system, how many squares do you walk before you enter the next one...?
  
• If you are to do longer range combat (archery and magic), do you not start the combat several rooms away from eachother?
• If another entity enters the vicinity of the battle, where do they enter the battle?

--

FantoM - I'd like to have range or fired weapons, just for the variety, but simulating them is very hard. How do you depict close range combat between a guy using a bow against an opponent using a sword, or a wild boar. In reality he'd never get anything fired. Until we get a viable suggestion I don't see how we can incorporate range.
PumaN - The rulebook suggests that a archer can only fire unhindered up until the point that any enemy reaches him with melee weapons. Firing a bow/casting a spell while an enemy is threatening you, would raise an 'attack of opportunity', not to mention he wouldnt be quite capable of blocking incoming attacks.
FantoM - In other words it's not possible with the current room based combat we have at the moment.
PumaN - With protectors it could work, as long as attackers could not penetrate defenses, the archer/spellcaster could work unhindered. FantoM - Good point - I think this "protector" or "party layout" idea should make it out of this ponder into serious design - it opens up a whole extra set of reasons to party.
FreD - Haven't you seen LOTR? you can easily fight a sword vs bow combat. The player with the bow has to be very good to be able to fight without heavy penalties. If players would keep a sword by their side in combat (strongly recomended) a fast "switch" command could swap weapons and enter closecombat.
I think the battlefield should only be within the "room". It would be very hard to get an overview of the combat otherwise. If not a "combat area" is genererated within the room which allow larger distances. Java-nethack seems like a good idea.

TopenD - Started a discussion in TopendRangedCombat

CombatInterface

Situations might also occur that requires the users direct input, in the middle of a combat round, do we halt the battle to wait for that users input? For how long? Or do we use that users combat-settings to find a default response to the situation? Or do we wait, and if there is no response, use the default action?

--

A nethack style interface is an interesting idea. Very prone to lag which would annoy people. Some people would not like it. I'd suggest an option to enter such an interface and also suggest alterations to the normal nethack. Make it turn based, like nethack, with a default command of stand still and fire range weapon or close and hit if no command is received in suitable time.

Such an interface would require a specialised program on the client side - preferably java - so that they can run it beside zmud and it kicks in whenever they enter combat. Java is nice because we can embed it in the web page for those that use such a logon technique.

This form of use interface, and thus this form of combat, requires a bit of work to get in place and working so I'd suggest it should be considered to the point of is it desirable for the long term and left as a side issue for most of the combat revamp.

-- FantoM - 19 Jan 2003

CombatDamageSeverity?

WoundHealing?

-- Somewhere else on the twiki someone suggested we simply remove the idea of requiring healing outside combat. You leave combat, you camp somewhere and you are fully healed.

Of course that implies that NPCs should be full healed as well, otherwise you get the problem that arose in Never Winter Nights. Players would go into battle, run, close the door, camp, go back in fully healed 2 seconds later.

This became painful when the monsters were capable of opening the doors! - PumaN

-- FantoM - 19 Jan 2003

FreD - Then magical healing and potions should still heal to some extent. Some players might even train themselves as medics or rangers(masters of leaf and lore = healing).

CriticalHits?

In Ad&d criticals occur when you get the best possible roll on an attack dice (a 20 on a 1d20). Perhaps players should critical when they do the most possible damage with their attack. Monsters too, I guess. -- DonaldKincannon - 07 Nov 2003

LimbDamage?

-- I'm not overly in favour of loosing limbs/etc - I've played muds where you loose a leg and you get stuck in the middle of nowhere and die.. realistic? yes. not worth playing? yes.

Damage to a body part decreasing your ability to fight - I'd be interested in that. Perhaps we could only have body part damage effect you in terms of carrying capacity and combat ability and skill bonuses, not in terms of the ability to move.

-- FantoM - 19 Jan 2003

FreD - If I'm alowed to add my 2 cents I would really like to see a system where it is very leathal to enticipate in combat. Strong commanders and battlemasters would naturally don't look so nice after a few battles(read many). Damages and loss of limbs should be mid-permanent. A (plastic surgery) doctor could fix those things again for players who want to change their looks again back to normal.
Damages such as loss of legs and limbs would be very rare, but not impossible, without aid of medics they lead to death.
Came to think of something; as Puma say, would this really be fun? Loosing an eye and get scars and scratches = good. Die from a chopped limb = not fun.

If I lose a limb, I'd hobble like mad for the surgeon. On a serious note, people would suddenly want to party with a healer, rathar than carrying potions. Another cool idea, is if they lose a limb they get a passout counter, once the counter drops to 0, they fall unconcious and die if they are in combat. If they don't die, they could perhaps wake up in a hospital, robbed of everything they had. (heh) -- DonaldKincannon - 07 Nov 2003

• FreD - note below

TheDeath

-- PumaN - 13 Jan 2003