Combat Module B: Wild items and weapons.

[Burzuk]

Some clarifications in case the change/helpfile isn't clear.

Wild items are chaotic-only items. You can also think of them as anti-lawful anti-neutral items if that helps. Lawful and neutral ethos will NOT be receiving their own item flags.

We are in the process of making ethos more relevant to the game. This means we have plans to expand the interactions between lawfuls and Justices, and also to make chaotics more prone to conflict with Justices in a variety of ways. You can already see this starting to take shape by chaotics not being able to end a wanted flag prematurely by paying it off (i.e. they must settle the conflict through combat), and now we've added chaotics not being able to use autopeace (so they're more likely to be flagged for autoassist in town). Before any of you bunch your panties up into a wad, remember that players learned to toggle autoassist on and off manually long before we added in the concept of autopeace (which is essentially an automation tool to reduce how much you need to toggle your autoassist). Chaotics lack the finer self-control of autopeace and will have to toggle full autoassist on and off manually. Those of you playing chaotic characters will manage, just like everyone did before we added autopeace.

As you can see, playing chaotics will generally lead to more conflict, which is why chaotics get the bonus of having their own ethos-restricted equipment in the form of wild items. More interesting than ordinary wild items are wild weapons. Attacks with wild weapons have a small chance of being wild attacks, which means that the attack has a multiplier of anywhere between (approximately) half and (approximately) double its normal damage. Those of you reasonably competent at math can see that this averages out to a sizable bonus for wild attacks overall. Even more interesting is that for those wielding wild weapons, overcoming an opponent's parry via weapon type advantage will automatically make that attack a wild attack. Therefore, while all chaotics can deliver wild attacks with wild weapons, only those who can adapt quickly enough in combat to maintain weapon advantage will be able to use wild attacks to their full potential.

Those of you who have been experimenting with the changes from the current combat module will already know that rogue classes (thieves, ninjas, and bards) are the ones who have the most incentive to pay close attention to weapon type advantage, since their new combat skills (sidestep, clobber, and uncanny attack) are type-based. It's no concidence that wild attacks are also type-based, since we want to encourage rogues to choose the chaotic ethos. This is another example of how we're using our planned changes to integrate both roleplaying incentives and gameplay balance under a single internally consistent system. Those of you who are playing non-chaotic rogues won't be able to reap the rewards of stacking weapon type skills with wild attacks.

This is the thread for feedback and commentary both about wild items/weapons/attacks and also about the direction which the Imm staff intends to take the ethos system.

[divsky]

[Burzuk]

I made it that way. Your point being?

[divsky]

Just pointing that out. The way you wrote it made me think that you thought all 3 of the rogue classes got all 3.

[Mathewcaps]

Does Wild weapons do extra damage to those that follow law?

[Davairus]

Well they do extra damage to everybody.