AVATAR: Increasing Imm-teraction

[Neonin]

This is an old idea I had kicking around back in the day that came to mind as I was reading through various threads on this board (hey I've been gone a long time and I'm bored, there's lots of interesting stuff here to read!) that I thought I'd put out there to see how other people felt about it.

Everyone likes Imm-teraction. It lets the players know the staff are there, and it can greatly increase the level of RP visible on the game. However, there's a limit to how much interacting an Imm can do. If you've ever been an Imm, you're probably aware of something that may come as a surprise to some of you: Being an Imm, especially a "visible" one, can be rather... boring. Think about never being able to PK with your character again and just sitting at North/South Square roleplaying for the rest of that characters life. Dull eh? Especially for "Cabal" Imms. Of course, there's good reason they can't get involved in a fight, because with their set stats and the fact you can't kill them it would be extremely unfair... but what if it wasn't?

New Imm Skill - AVATAR
AVATAR allows an Immortal to limit their powers and participate in game events in a meaningful way. Only used during titanic events or times of extreme duress for cabals who are suffering a drought of active players, the use of this skill brings a strong character to the playing field, but importantly NOT an invincible one.

An Imm who uses AVATAR would lose access to ALL Immortal skills while in their "mortal" form. Their skill and spell list would be limited to that provided by their class, although all would be at 100%. Their equipment could be customised but should be no better than a decent set of rares. Health/mana/move would be set to something like twice what could be expected, on average, for that race/class combo at 50 (that number may need to be adjusted in case it's too low/high). Their stats (str/dex/etc) would be the max available for their race/class but no higher.

If killed, the Immortal leaves no corpse or equipment but is prevented from using the AVATAR skill again for a certain length. This should be a rule rather than something hard-coded as Imm judgement is probably a better arbiter of when it should be used again, and would allow Imms to pre-plan the effects of their death and circumstances when they could use the skill again during an event.

When an Imm is visible in the who list and isn't using this skill, they would have an (Ethereal) flag and their short description is set to "The spirit of <immname>" to help distinguish between an AVATAR and a normal Imm. This also means Imms can still be visible and affect events without getting physically involved.

Why Do This?
Well, imagine this situation: Knights are in full swing, with six active members dominating cabal warfare. Legion has one player. That player is going to get bored pretty fast because getting their cabal item is going to be a huge struggle against such a disadvantage. The Legion Imm could use AVATAR to put themselves into battle against the six Knights and help even up the disadvantage, and other players seeing an AVATAR fighting in Legion might feel more like joining up when they know they're not just going to get steamrolled by Knights every single time they log on (it'll still happen but at least there's a possibility of some backup).

Or how about Resatimm, bored of his duties, decides to descend and take control of Seringale and begin a reign of terror (I'm sure that would appeal to him lol) that the players have to stop by killing his AVATAR. Who wouldn't want the chance to gangbang Resatimm? (Love you Res)

Knight and Legion Imms AVATAR and send out a clarion call for all of like-minded alignment to join them in a glorious battle, with the Justice Imm AVATARing to help keep the peace in Seringale and stop the fight from spilling into the city, deputising lawful people who want to help.

And of course, when the really big RP events happen, like the Taekir invasion and the whole Zaikkra thing I read about, Imms could be involved directly if it would make sense. There are a lot of possibilities here. One of the interesting things will be that an Imms race/class combo will actually mean more than just a visual/rp thing, so will require more thought too, and their skills as a PK'er with that race/class will be put to the test.

Coding
From what I can see it wouldn't be a huge amount of effort from a coding perspective:
- Insert check to all Imm skills to stop them working when AVATAR is in effect.
- Modify combat code to remove IS_IMMORTAL check that stops them dying at 1hp if using AVATAR.
- Modify death code to ensure no corpse or equipment is left behind from AVATARs.
- Add (Ethereal) flag for WHO list and default visible Imm short description to "The spirit of <immname>" when not using AVATAR.

The rest would involve using the SET command to ensure current Imm characters have the right stats and skills set and no more, and making sure current Imm equipment isn't godly using OLC, which may take some time but doesn't require coding skills.

Conclusion
Not only would this increase the possibilities of Imm-teraction, but from a players perspective it was always something I wanted to see myself and from an Immortal perspective it was something I always wanted to be able to do. It could not only help with RP on the game but give Immortals more of an incentive to play their characters, at least in my mind. Be interesting to see what you guys think!

[Smotpoker]

it sounds well thought out for the most part and very interesting.
Having the Imm's have more influence besides do what I say or I slay with godly power.

It would provide some more game roleplay and player roleplay.

[Dogran]

This idea seems really cool. That would be badass but Im doubtful to it happening.

[divsky]

[Neonin]

Interesting idea divsky. In fact, Imms have/had a command called "switch" which allowed them to take control of any mob in the game. The problem there is the lack of class skills and the ability to spam skills/spells without the usual delay. Actually, that might be a problem even going the way I suggested, so that would need looking at too. You'd also still have to check the code on Imm skills to disable their Imm commands while switched/mindlinked.

The other problem of course is that even if using the switch or mindlink thing, the Imm is still controlling a mob. Skills and spells differ in their effects based on whether the user/target is a PC or NPC, so that might make my way easier. It might not though, depends on what checks need to be modified!