Combat Module B: Hide, camo, blackjack, strangle.

[Burzuk]

A little late on my end writing up the explanations for what went in. First is the concept of adrenaline, which was explained in this earlier thread. As a quick review, adrenaline comes in 3 types:

offensive
defensive
mob

And now on to the changes:


HIDE/CAMO

Hide and camo have the following penalties, based on your character's adrenaline type:

BLINDED: extremely high penalty
OFF. ADREN.: high penalty
DEF. ADREN.: low penalty
MOB. ADREN: medium penalty
NO ADREN.: no penalty

What this means is that as long as you're not adrenalined (no recent fights), your hide/camo skill is the same as it always has been, which means you can almost always count on it to work if your skill is mastered and you're in an appropriate terrain type. Defensive adrenaline has the lowest penalty, to allow people to have a very good chance at using hide/camo to stay out of a fight they're not ready for. However, as soon as one re-engages by attacking (this includes autoassist), the penalty jumps up to a high penalty to discourage the "rambo" attack/flee/hide/repeat type of tactics. Note that trying to blackjack or strangle someone is considered an attack, and thus it automatically places offensive adrenaline on the thief/ninja making the attempt.

Two other changes related to hide and camo. First, sleeping automatically makes one step out of hide/camo (resting is fine). This ensures a lowered level of regeneration while hiding/camoing compared to people out in the open, making the hide/camo skills more useful for stalking rather than an "always" type of skill. Also, you no longer receive inappropriate terrain messages with hide/camo if you try doing it in an inappropriate terrain. Instead, you'll attempt to hide/camo anyway, with the result being an automatic failure. This prevents the "run around spamming hide/camo until allowed to" tactic for hiding/camoing; now, since you're always "allowed" to, you'll have to pay more attention to the terrain instead to know whether you're in a hide/camo friendly terrain or not.


BLACKJACK/STRANGLE

A little more complicated, blackjack and strangle takes into account the adrenaline level of BOTH the attacker and the target to determine the final penalty:

ATTACKER OFF. ADREN.: high penalty
ATTACKER DEF. ADREN.: low penalty
ATTACKER MOB. ADREN.: low penalty
ATTACKER NO ADREN.: no penalty
DEFENDER OFF. ADREN.: low penalty
DEFENDER DEF. ADREN: high penalty
DEFENDER MOB. ADREN: low penalty
DEFENDER NO. ADREN.: no penalty

Note that the attacker/defender adrenaline penalties STACK.

Here it's immediately obvious that the worst case scenario, by far, is an offensively adrenalined attacker (i.e. has already attacked recently) attempting against a defensively adrenalined attacker (i.e. has been attacked recently without attacking back, a fully wary defender). Also you'll notice that using the skill as originally intended, as a surprise attack against an unwary opponent, incurs no penalties whatsoever. It's the intermediate cases that are interesting: for example, if someone attacks your thief/ninja, you can immediately flee and attempt to blackjack/strangle your attacker defensively (you: def adren, target: off adren) with almost the same chances as if neither one of you had fought at all (i.e. low and low penalties). However, if you've attacked already (earlier blackjack/strangle attempt, autoassist, etc), then you'll be eating at the very least a high penalty regardless of what adrenaline your target is. To ensure a good chance of successfully blackjacking/strangling someone, be sure to use it either out of a fight or only defensively. Since you'll be placed with offensive adrenaline upon making a blackjack/strangle attempt, you'll have only one good chance on your target unless you give them an opportunity to rest up. Make it count.

Just like hide/camo, blackjack/strangle now also will allow you to attempt to blackjack/strangle a target even if they're "too dazed" to allow for another successful attempt (resulting in an automatic failure). Again, this negates the "spam blackjack/strangle until allowed to" tactic -- if you want to chain-blackjack/strangle someone, you'll have to carefully count ticks yourself. But with the adrenaline changes anyway, your chances of successfully landing two blackjacks on the same target without letting your adrenaline wear off first will be very low indeed. My advice for thieves: don't try to clean out your target's inventory -- just take the one or two shiniest items and backstab/dual bs to wake them up. If you take too long and they wake up on their own, you're not going to get another good chance to either steal from them OR to land a sleeping backstab/dual bs them for a while.

How much these changes affect your thief/ninja depends largely on your playing style. If you've played the patient, stalking, fight only when you have a good opportunity, etc style of thief/ninja, you literally may not notice any changes at all. If you have the "warrior with sleep/hide" mentalty for your thief/ninja (i.e. the "rambo" mentality), however, you're going to run into some problems with your skills failing when you're using them at inappropriate times. Remember that very few classes can see hidden/camo to begin with, and with counterbalance/combat skills and new bow skills, open combat with stealth classes is definitely much more viable than they used to be, which means that we have to ensure that their stealth skills are being used for stealth -- and not for cheese.

[Olethros]

As far as I know, backstabs from a hidden position do more damage. If I blackjack someone and want to go straight back to hidden and backstab. My chances for successfully hiding are lessened due to a high adrenaline level?