Guard Skill

[Penryn]

Greetings all,

I dont know if this idea was posted before, but perhaps the addition of a skill called guard. It would work to let the character have a chance to stand in front of another and protect that character. Make it available to paladins and fighters and perhaps select religions (Helm, Torm, Tyr, Red Knight, Tempus, Corellon, war faiths, etc...)

Give it a percent chance to work and take place...

Just an idea to toss about,
Jeffery

[Sindava]

I think this one is already available

Syntax: rescue <character>

Once you start a fight, you can't just walk away from it. If the fight
is not going well, you can attempt to FLEE, or another character can
RESCUE you.

If you lose your link during a fight, then your character will keep
fighting, and will attempt to flee.

Rescue places you in front of the character you want to rescue, taking
the brunt of their attacks. In order to RESCUE successfully, you must
practice the appropriate skill.

Taken with this command;

Syntax: Formation [front|middle|back]

Formations allow groups to rank their members from front to back.
Members further back in the formation are less likely to be attacked,
but members in the back rank are unable to attack hand to hand.
The leader of the group must be in the front rank.

I would say that this should cover your needs adequately

[Stayne]

Rescue is a great skill, but I think what Penryn was more getting at is a way to turn rescue onto an automatic setting.

If two fighters go exploring with a mage. It can be easily said that the fighters will protect the mage (please assume this is all agreed upon before hand). Even in the back rank, I have been attacked in the majority of cases (I would suggest the code actually picks based on order of entrance into a room than the formation - IMHO) when exploring sometimes. Unfortunately RL intereferes and lag etc can slow down us typing rescue, when normally the char would have.
Many a mage or newbie charecter has died becuase of this. If we could set rescuse to auto rescue a char if they need it (The skill can still fail based on its skill level of course) it would be a nice feature that would bring I think some more realism to the game (encouraging the whole bodyguard, or protector RP), as well as make people feel a little bit safer.

-Stayne

[Andreas]

I'd LOVE to see something like this come into the game!

As for rescue and formation: Rescue is dependent upon both your connection and typing speed. I've had my connection hang up in the middle of battle a few times and then wound up with a dead party member on my hands. Not fun

Formation seems to bug out when moving from room to room. While those in the front rank generally tend to stay put, those in the middle and back ranks shift around, sometimes even winding up in the front rank! I don't know if this is intentional or an actual game bug, but it destroys any chance of trying to protect those weaker mages in the back when you move from one room to another and suddenly they're in the front rank and being attacked.

NWN allows you to set NPCs to guard your PC or to set your party to guard a certain area. I think it's a great idea. It doesn't make it IMPOSSIBLE to attack the guarded character/area, but it does give the guards bonuses against being surprised and defense bonuses.

[Sindava]

Hmmm, some interesting development on this idea.... but I still tend to think that what is already available is sufficient.

Auto rescue would fall down when you found another member of your party required your assistance and you were busy rescuing someone else

It would also be open to abuse in several ways;
Taking low-level characters through high-level areas, knowing that they would not get hurt but would gain the higher experience rewards
And spamming favour from a skill which otherwise takes effort on the part of the player

My own personal opinion on this is that the skill should remain one which requires a conscious action.

In IC terms... you are in the middle of a melee, there will be a great deal of confusion and distraction. 'Bad' code tends to play nicely to this concept...

'oops we've been flanked and my frail colleague has been smacked in the head'
'ack, I'm trying to guide this party of youngsters along a bandit infested trail and reinforcements have arrived. Who do I protect first?'

OOCly it's not too difficult to create aliases to speed up the input, or even to do as I do - create an alias or aliases for the specific travelling companions at that time.