Halls of Mist 1.3.0

[ekolis]

Interesting, I've never heard of half-swording... I guess the sword's versatility must explain why heroes prefer swords!

edit: and I have now added a paragraph on half-swording to the Real Life section of that article!

[buzzkill]

Another random thought... recovery proficiency should take no time at all. You call upon your reserves in a moment of weakness, and continue the fight without skipping a beat. Ditto berserk, maybe escape as well.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Yes, of course.

If shields are in the game, they of course dominate over all other forms of parrying. What if I removed shields? Then I could give parry bonuses to weapons, gauntlets, and even cloaks.

It would be more realistic than the current system, and might possibly lead to more interesting equipment choices.

[half]

If you are going to have gauntlets and shields involved in parrying, do consider parrying with your weapon too. In Sil, swords and a few other weapons can do this. It is good for differentiating between weapon types. I would be shocked if in sword combat gauntlets were used in parrying as much as one's blade was.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Sorry, still rambling on about gauntlets & parrying. This started to intrigue me.

I found a nice essay on how longsword fighting differed from modern fencing. Here's two interesting paragraphs that demonstrate how important gauntlet was in both attack and defence:

"Another obvious element of fencing with a longsword is that because two hands are used, either hand is employed as needed. This means that as the primary-hand grips the weapon the second hand may let go to thereby knock aside threats, strike blows with the palm or fist, grip the opponent or seize his weapon. Aside from interfering with their freedom of action or even disarming them, the whole arm may be employed in this way to gain a leverage advantage. Such offensive and defensive techniques are integral and intrinsic to Medieval and Renaissance close combat in general. Made with quick and coordinated motions they lead to a diverse and sophisticated repertoire of grappling and disarming moves that make up a considerable component of overall martial prowess."

"Half-Swording: As a weapon, the longsword was never just held by the handle (as is so ubiquitous in modern depictions of historical sword combat within popular media and games.) A common technique with most all Medieval and Renaissance swords was that of “half-swording” --- the grasping of almost any portion of the blade with one or even both hands. Whether for a wide or a tapering blade, a considerable portion of longsword technique in both armored and unarmored fighting consisted of this. Blades were gripped in such a way as to prevent the palm or fingers being sliced open. In this manner the sword could be instantly shortened for quick forceful thrusts, ward with greater coverage, and held for increased leverage when close in. Managed in such a way the longsword could be easily manipulated as if it were a short staff to press, hit, and trap with either end as well as with the point. It could also be wielded as if it were a spear, a warhammer, or a polaxe, striking (or defending) with the pommel or cross. Quickly transitioning back and forth between such actions provided for a powerful and fluid form of fencing that permitted a dynamic use of leverage."

[half]

A bit like fizzix, I came to the conclusion that any actual injury in battle is most likely death.

Good point! Sil's system in still very much in the heroic tradition (common in fiction), where a character can take several wounds and keep fighting well, then recover for another encounter. My simulationist aim was for it to simulate the type of combat in Tolkien's works accurately, rather than simulating real combat accurately (e.g. characters should realistically fight worse when on low health, but this is very hard to make either epic or fun). Healing over time, especially as quickly as in roguelikes, is completely unrealistic for real wounds, so treating HP as modelling fatigue/endurance makes some sense. Especially when combined with a clean system for real wounds. Mist's wound system is neat, as is Ars Magica's.

If you want HP to be endurance/fatigue, then you might want to allow spending them for combat feats or sprinting or whatever, like fatigue in FPSs and Diablo II.

I think I implied in my previous post that Sil's system was actually realistic. It's not. It is just that it draws out a nice distinction between evasion and protection and health in a way that is a bit more complex than D&D, but uses this complexity to produce interesting and natural choices between different weapons and armour. There are probably several other ways to abstract combat that produce just as good tradeoffs of simulation/interest vs complexity, especially if they use their complexity to highlight a different interesting aspect of combat to Sil's (e.g. getting fatigue vs wounds right, or getting weapon reach right, or having a very simple system).

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Here's a link to a fencer's ramblings about parrying with off-hand. Parrying gauntlet is mentioned, too.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

At least in fencing your hands are always in danger. If you have gauntlets, I'd imagine you could use your hands as extensions of your weapon for parrying purposes.

EDIT: I think I found some proof for this. Medieval ("armored era") swords had very poor arm guards. You had to be very careful with this kind of a sword without a good gauntlet. Wearing a good gauntlet probably did make parrying easier.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

With a gauntlet you can take hold of your opponent's sword, for example. Or push a gauntlet into a wolf's mouth...

Your gauntleted hands are doing all sorts of defense-related things all the time in combat. That's why associate gauntlets more with active Parry than passive Armour score.

Gauntlets and bracers go to the same slot. I could rename all gauntlets to bracers if it feels more natural.

[Scatha]

Is there a word that combines dodge and parry?

Sil uses evasion for this concept. You could go more abstract with something like defence.

In my new system everybody could start with a dodge/parry skill that shield and gauntlets boosted. (Other pieces of armour would reduce damage.)

Shield helping you parry seems a very natural system, but I'm a bit bemused by how gauntlets do this?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I noticed that you cannot drop ego torches on a temple - I had hoped that would work - and if it doesn't, it should be listed along with arrows as not working.

Sorry, I had actually misunderstood the question. I fixed the bug that Templars and Priests were not able to sacrifice ego torches. Ego torches don't really count as ego items -- confusing, I know. That's why I'm adding the Rare prefix to all items that you can sacrifice. (Like in Diablo, as Derakon told me.)

(Edited to target the link to the post, not Derakon's profile. )

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Ok, then I didn't fix the ego torch sacrifice bug after all. Should have tested.

It's likely that in a real life threatening situation you would feel much less pain from the same hits than in a "play" fight because of higher adrenaline levels.

Is there a word that combines dodge and parry? In my new system everybody could start with a dodge/parry skill that shield and gauntlets boosted. (Other pieces of armour would reduce damage.)

[sethos]

Just a few Comments (sorry, I don't do quotes well!)

re: ego torches not being good enough for the gods - version 1.31 (downloaded 10/16)

Combat being lethal:

My friends and I used to enjoy sparring with Bokken (wooden swords, OUCH!) and later shinai (bamboo swords, much less ouch.) and I can tell you that "Blunt force" can be very hard without being lethal, though a couple of us ended up in the emergency room! Also, in combat, dodging is used all the time, and even if you don't get completely away from the "blade", dodging properly still makes a huge difference in how deeply you are cut (well, tapped with a bamboo sword, anyways.)

well, I deleted the rest of the rant I was going to post, but the short idea is that you can certainly be injured in battle (many times!) without going down.
someone with great instinct and some training should be able to at least partially avoid damage from most blows by deflecting most of the force and/or dodging all but the tip of the blade. it should be fairly rare to take a dead on serious hit, especially if you are fully armored and able to move well in said armor.

dangit, still ended up being a rant. Hopefully that's useful and not just confusing.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

A bit like fizzix, I came to the conclusion that any actual injury in battle is most likely death.

Real life studies on gang violence in some American town show that people often take many gunshot wounds and still keep shooting back. IIRC one example street warrior was still fighting after 12 gunshot wounds. Adrenaline is a powerful, powerful thing.

(They studied street fighting with pistols. A single hit by a rifle will take you instantly out of combat and probably kill.)

The shock and adverse effects of injuries often kick in after the combat. Without medical aid, you may well die to bleeding.

In the medieval times, people used to die to infections days or weeks after the combat. The body count in actual combat might have been surprisingly small.

With magical healing available wounds probably wouldn't be that scary after all.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

! just toggles the view. It doesn't actually allow you to designate something as "squelched" which is the functionality I'm looking for... without entering the option menu, without the RNG determining on my behalf what is worthy of squelching (auto-squelch).

Ok, I thought you just wanted to destroy items marked 'squelch'. I'll look into this.

For novice townies, how about "This shady stranger currently inhabits the town" rather than "He lives in the town". Gives more of a hint of danger.

Yes. I think I'll add a message when you start the game that agents of The Duke are after you.

Bumping into a statue should probably say "there is a statue in the way", not "wall in the way".

Yes.

When you receive a blessing, a message could be given a stating the blessing "Foo, the foo, has bestowed a blessing of foo". I know to look at the character sheet, but I imagine a lot of people might wonder.

Right. I'll see how much I can fit in the message line.

Maybe magic circles could rarely start out intact, maybe 10% chance.
And if that... then maybe there could be a rare scroll that would break a completed circle.

They were often intact when I first added them. Based on playtesting, I made them all broken. But yes, maybe they could be intact very rarely.

I don't think that scroll would work. It's too much of an niche item.

Maybe a chance for a mortal wound (death) every time you die. I find myself playing too fast and loose with my first death because it doesn't seem to matter all that much. As a result, I usually die for the first time within the first five dungeon levels. I know it boils down to playstyle... but knowing that the first one is (relatively) free makes me push the envelope often.

I don't think this is a problem. Is pushing the envelope fun?

Almost forgot... I can't attack ghosts in walls. I thought this was fixed? Is there a command?

Intentional.