[MECHANIC] Descriptive AC in Combat

[Jarngron]

Instead of ducking under attacks over and over,
I suggest describing the attack type being repelled by an armored spot.
Depending on the damage type there would be some onomatopoeia, for instance:

You duck under a hobgoblin warrior's slashing attack.

could be:

A hobgoblin warrior's slash clangs against your chest.

Or even:

A hobgoblin warrior's slash clangs against a giant dire polar bearskin.


This emphasizes actually dodging which would result in traditional duck and dodge messages.

It's my hope to make combat a little less repetitive and a little more detailed for roleplaying.

I've opened a poll to exact opinions, thoughts?

[Alitar]

I suspect this would involve a great deal of coding that there is little availability to see done at this time.

[Areia]

It'd be a ton of work for something ultimately very small.

As far as RPing combat and hit locations, etc. I often smote swinging for a particular area and just having the blow glance off whatever armor that area is, or that it was dodged, if I see a lot of miss echoes. Example because I'm exhausted right now and I don't think that made a lot of sense.

This part round

Your pierce cuts Alitar's chest.
Alitar sidesteps your piercing attack.
Alitar sidesteps your piercing attack.

Might be followed with the smote

Tsara drives forward in an explosion of motion, both blades a blur as they stab right for Alitar's midsection. But the ring of steel on steel sounds across the field as the knight's blackened plate harness easily deflects the brunt of her strikes!

Or something like that. No need to change any game echoes with this kind of smote use.

As for the repetition of duck, duck, duck... echoes, I use the gag config option to cut down on all that. I find that option extremely helpful with combat spam.

[Yemin]

Indeed. I generally gag combat and my whole playstyle plus point of 70% of my soundpack is literally to replace every melee report whether hit or miss with a sound so for myself I'm not too concerned.

Besides, even in full plate a warrior still does not want to get hit with a direct blow like that. Far as I've read,, correct me if i'm wrong,, full plate was powerful on the battlefield because it blocked things like arrows and glancing blows so cavalry etc could close to melee with less casualties. The soldier still had to parry direct hits with his weapon /shield or try and get out of range and dodge, stepping back etc. A direct blow to your chestplate could crack ribs and ones to leg and foot armor could make it unmanageable to move around as you've now lost what's holding your armor up.

Granted goblins are usually weak but when you get hit by the average orc let alone a hill giant.

Anyway that was mostly rambling. I think this is a good idea but I don't think enough people would appreciate it vs the work it would take. Plus once you open this gate there's a whole discussion on what is accurate to the fantasy setting vs realistic armor and what it should look like. Should it not then not say

Bob gashes you with his sword

And instead say

Bob slams a blow into your puldron, denting it severely and breaking your shoulder.

Not only coding, it would take a lot of planning as well so it could be accurate to what people would like to see.

I feel fo the limited responses in combat would allow you to write a script that acts like a combat skin. Gagging what the mud outputs and instead lets the client output something different in its place. In this way you could completely replace what you see in combat and still offer it to people here for those that use the same client.

[Jarngron]

I agree with the opinions thus far, and I think this poll has been an interesting way to gauge response to the idea. Areia's suggestion is similar to what I enjoy in sparmode, which is similar to rolling each round for an actual game at the table.

Thank you for taking the time to consider this. Obviously my first thought was that this was extraneous, though I am glad to see the discussion it has started.

[Andreas]

I think it'd take a lot of work to overhaul the combat code.