Posted by Cethern on October 13, 1999 at 08:38:44:
In Reply to: My farewell note. As an aside, I didn't spend any time beforehand on it, just wrote it on the spot when I deleted. So pardon the rambling, sometimes incoherrent nature of it. posted by Diarmuid on October 12, 1999 at 21:36:08:
Diarmuid,
I'm curious how many times you died one on one to a warrior,
battle or otherwise? Things like pugil, lash and pincer don't
seem to delay fleeing long enough that you would die from them
if you were trying to flee and word, and even if you only had
700hp or so, with shields and a sanc that's not an easy amount
to do in a few rounds. My experience is if I pincer someone, I
get two rounds of attacks after that before they can flee, and
it takes three rounds to recover. Having four attacks mastered
and dual wielding gives you about 4 attacks a round on average,
if that.
Bloodthirst is a very dangerous thing to use, less so at hero, but
the fact that you'll attack anything, including some things in town
like shopkeepers that are invoulnerable, isn't a small price to pay
for area spellbane. Fighting a dwarf with lots of pwent, I see why
every spell you cast comes back at you. But I know arials don't have
very good magical resistance, and I know they don't bane nearly as
well as I do. Last check, we weren't all berserkers in battle, and
masters are not all invokers. Should invokers be special, able to
consistently defeat any race/class/cabal you could think of? There
isn't a single race/class/cabal combo that can boast that.
I don't think you could contend that a powerless battlerager has a
better chance of recovering powers than any other cabal.
And I do mean any other. Ragers cannot word, so if I'm at masters
and get beaten, it comes down to if I can outrun you, which is
doubtful, especially if I get blinded by a scourage or fall in
quicksand.
I asked about warriors before, but I suspect you've almost never died
to any single battlerager. You can complain, but having a good 90% or
higher chance of surviving any attack you're losing is pretty appealing.
Maybe the price for this is not being able to beat most people by yourself
either. But I think if you had the head and a single rager came to get it,
you would have a much better chance of killing him than he would in the
opposite situation.
A warrior battlerager can't hide from anyone, likely can't walk far enough
to be in an area where he won't be found, and in the case of a dwarf can
be bashed and tripped by just about anyone with slim chances of escaping.
If the odds are well against a villager when he logs on, I find it very
uncommon to survive.
You yourself admit you would not try for the orb if you knew it was hopeless,
and I can think of several times not long ago you were the only master in the
hero range, and none of the villagers even caught sight of you. There are some
areas most of us can't fly or swim to, some others that we wouldn't be able to get out of,
and then if we took the time to walk someplace very far away and found you, a word
of recall puts you on the other side of the world.
All in all, I can't commend deleting because things are against you.
I would be shocked if anyone who remebers battleragers right after
the purge could say they had it good. Truesight didn't keep you out
of noexit rooms, spellbane didn't do good damage anymore or even make
you attack the caster. All it did was maul at best, and the caster
didn't get lagged for the spell. So someone could spam c blind at you,
take a few hp of damage and finally get the spell through. Clerics had
about 1900hp, haste, protective shield, sanc, cure critical, enhanced
damage... There wasn't a single way for ragers to keep a master from
fleeing. Lash and pugil showed up a bit later.
We had some success blackjacking people inside the cabal repeatedly until
protective shields wore off, so it was changed so you couldn't do it several
times in a row. Trannies could come inside duo'd, pop into existance and get
the orb off the ground. There was no such thing as save paralysis, and hold
person wasn't shy about working. Shadow hated us, knights sucked.
My only point is, ragers (including me) stuck it out through all that, and
even had the policy of not fighting mages in groups and returning equipment.
Things stayed like that for a LONG time, but I still enjoyed playing a rager
because it was a challenge. You lasted a couple of weeks being outnumbered
as leader and decided to let Agorinth have the last laugh. It would be more
excusable if it wasn't a bug that made Agorinth a bit extra-powerful without
his item. Bugs get fixed eventually.
It seems a bad time to bring it up, considering battle is at a high point, but
if Nepenthe (or anyone) bothered to read down to this, is there any reason, other
than finding time to code it, that warrior specs can't have deadly force? I can't
see a logical reason that something like pincer or impale shouldn't be, but I realize
there are more pressing matters.
Cethern
(On a side note, my computer is dead and midterms are coming, so I'm not sure when
exactly I'll be back next.)