Shattered Kingdoms

As in real life, where a master can restrain himself to fight a pupil, what about a spar mechanic in SK?

This could be used to offer experience with RP focus, give an alternative RP way to increase skills, and give a motivation to RP rather than, or in addition to, player kill.

Experience with an RP focus: Your master can nerf his or her skills using the Spar command. He or she may give some experience (with a cap, of course, if that is how you would chose to do it), and the student could gain it (in the event of a successful spar), OR the IMMS could decide how they would like to, otherwise, award EXP.

RP to increase skills: A trainer may say, “Prove your worth, and I will train you,” or many other scenarios, giving variety over spamming “Train (skill)” or emoting while training.

Motivate RP during PVP: This would allow a variety of RP options. E.g….
- A Champion system: Evil1: “Hey! Just you and me. Whoever loses, their band surrenders and goes into custody” (likely the evil party would lie, and the groups would fight it out, even if they did lose, and the good party would go into custody if they lost)
- It would allow the “I will spare you this time, but next time you will not be so fortunate.” Still with EXP exchanged.
- Whatever one might come up with to do it.

Other details:
- This could appear IC as magic/spiritual characters praying or casting some type of spell reducing their power and fighters could appear as practicing physical restraint. There could be text indicating when each person is ready to spar so 1) you don’t accidentally attack, and 2) an evil character can’t say he is going to spar, and not.

- Wimpy could be set to disengage at a certain percentage, with 100% flee success (if that is possible). The one left standing wins (and gains EXP, if applicable)

- To prevent a third party from taking advantage of a sparring match, 1) If attacked, participants auto group and counter attack together, or 2)Don’t spar where you would be vulnerable (This option would just make it difficult for PVP sparring RP, since evil Alignments wouldn’t have an issue with jumping someone they convinced to spar)

Most of what you're talking about is already covered by the dueling system. I also don't like all the "safeguards" you've added.

I just checked the help file on dualing, and I see there is a contest format, but does it allow for a master to fight a novice, without mutilating them in one blow?

As in dueling, outside interference would cause it to end. What else would you suggest to prevent sparrers, if there were such a mechanic, from being taken advantage of while their stats are reduced?

Nope, and there shouldn't be. A master-level fighter engaging in mechanical combat with a novice-level character should be mutilating them in one hit because all a master has to teach a novice about mechanically-enforced combat is "This is how you die in one hit."

For anything else there's emotes.




Nothing should prevent that, just like nothing actively prevents people from getting jumped while they're dueling. There's very few parts of this game that encode a protect-yourself-from-yourself aspect, and that's how it should stay.

I just wanted to be clear that I was not meaning to imply that there was an issue with the current system. This has been one of the most RP friendly MUDs to which I have had the pleasure of being introduced.

I was throwing this idea out here, thinking that this was the appropriate thread.

I highly respect your role-playing, by the way, ObjectivistActivist. I guess that should go under a different thread. =]