Gag

[rhovhard]

> help gag

GAG

Syntax: gag <victim>

Thieves of Serin have learned a dirty trick suitable for dealing with mouthy targets and mages. The thief will jam a sticky, sap-covered swath of tarp into the sleeping victims mouth that prevents says, yells, and tells. Note that while this prevents casting spells for a short time, it has no effect on communing spells or telepathy.


Just to add something for dealing with mages and to force hard decisions on how to use blackjack time.

[Mr. Forgotten]

Thieves used to have this. I don't remember when it was removed, but it was a while ago.

[Davairus]

Did you write this helpfile yourself or paste it from somewhere? Because we still have a gag helpfile

[rhovhard]

I did write it myself. I wasn't sure if I remembered it from AR or another place. Thanks for the feedback.

[Davairus]

Well I'm not saying we shouldn't do it at all. Could just think about this idea a little more and see what other thoughts come up. Like, how would it be useful for anything other than basically backstab-gibbing a silenced mage and instant killing them. Illusionists will be quitting on thieves or very sad. It seems backward, as the mages have faerie fire to mess with thieves, and it isn't an easy counter to land. It requires a save check, and sacrifices damage to get it done. On the other hand, maybe if it only prevents quaff/eat (because mouth is gagged) but can a word of recall still be mumbled at a lesser success rate somehow, like 80% chance for the gag to fall off on casts? Seems like a thief thing that way? Could it interact with other thief skills in an interesting way, like if you gag someone that would mean you can uber-poison them without them being able to trivially drink a poison curing potion? There might be something good we can do here. Don't just give up on your whole idea because I said a silence was OP. Just thinking we could make it a bit more interesting. Trying to get patch work done is a lot easier when there's a cool idea to actually put in the game, so I say go for it. I'm sure we would all love to play a slightly more appealing thief class, as long as it isn't just toblerowning mages with silence w/ no save check. and they do still have pry/steal so its already irritating class, but currently we're not dealing with a thief that's as lethal as stacking silence with dual backstab.

[BlackWidow]

Bards used to have eye gouge (long before my time). I believe thieves also had the ability to create fake items with a counterfeit skill which fell apart once somebody else picked them up/wore them. Necromancers had power word: kill as part of their repertoire.

Some things get removed because they are either too powerful, too imbalanced, or simply not fun, and while the basic concept isn't bad, I'd like to see some sort of counter to it. Sack belt clips were added some time ago and globes turned into containers to make thieves less frustrating to deal with while not eliminating the class or their key abilities (Kalist once said, "Let's remove steal!" which was not a constructive suggestion). Thieves are already capable of causing great grief; I know this both from playing them and fighting them.

So, my opinion is like Dav's: some more ideas are required before gagging becomes a practical reality (though the idea itself isn't necessarily terrible).

[Olyn]

I like the idea of the gag being in the thief toolkit, but the version of gag we had about 20 years ago would be a bit much right now. I don't see a problem with thieves being able to gag a knocked out victim causing a forced eq wear that would look something like this:

[rhovhard]

Olyn's description sounds perfect.