PvP-mechanics for beginners
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I oversaw that fight as a DM, and was baffled at how soundly Team Talona was beat down, despite outnumbering the attacker 3 to 1, -and- having higher level.
Then let me explain it…
CB dropped out of hiding onto an unbuffed group and went for the spell caster he of course chased the cleric around until it was beaten down,then he reduced the badly equipped warriors ab by ten and attacked the rogue again until beaten down then spent ten mins fighting the warrior type killing the cleric when the warrior refused to surrender.
He even said sorry to myself for the stealth no rp attack but i didn't mind as I wanted the character gone and finished,maybe if a DM had not told the group that they didn't do enough to earn the attention they had asked about I would of made an effort to carry on but as it was none of us wanted to win we were just looking for an ending.Again thanks to Garder for the ending.
As a side note we defeated a higher level warrior and wizard (the mid level cleric ran :) )from unbuffed states by use of consumables much of the same was used against us at our end and we killed them very quickly due to that reason(and the fact they ignored the cleric that countered there actions and killed one of them).
So i will say surprise makes a huge difference but consumables makes the most that and the will to use them as most people presume they won't die to PvP and don't use them. -
there many ways to deal in PvP but the best is the one your oponents dosent expect…
If you know your opponents gone be buffed . then you can think of dispell hime.. if you think he gone dispel you then better keep couple of spells in reserve....
keep a speed and invisibility potions always in your quickslot...and dont esitate to use it..
All the magic stuff you find with some spell on, or unique abillity in quests....with charges..can be a good surprise agains someone who dosent expecte you to be able to do such magic things...
there two kind of PvP.. the one you expect agains thos you expect... and the PvP coming from no where agains some one you dont know befor 15 minutes ago...
learne about your enemies (IC) in RP ...Quest with them befor they become your enemies..spy them. ask questions about them..and you gone have good chance to survive and some time win in PvP... h
aving enemies dosent mean you dosent want to RP ..and play with them.. or there no reason to get enemies and do PvP...That why maybe it hard to talk about PvP whitout taking of Rp a litle...but i understand what you doing.. it can help peoples who raly not aware of the mechanic of NWN. -
Even on EFU, knowing your stuff can permit high level players to loose devastatingly to the underdog. Knowing what consumables to use is key.
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@Undead:
And really, if you are going to invest hundreds of hours into playing characters over the course of years, why not take the hour or two it would take to become proficient with pvp, and as a result find your range of options for creating stories and rp ingame have multiplied several times.
Because firstly, it would probably take well over two hours and most certainly more than any of my characters could afford to throw at actual goals yet alone training, but more importantly because those characters who have tried to learn have been systematically ignored.
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Your mixing IC with OOC there Ikul. Ponies means for the player to take a couple hours to learn, not the character.
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wtf are you talking about? Me and CB have spent -hours- on you in particular, helping you out with tips on irc on how to do well mechanically with your pc.
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I did say the characters. I've heard a lot about the theory (and yes, that is thanks to your explanation), but the practice is lacking.
Because, honestly, everything I've read here was no news to me. I could have come to it myself. When caught in PvP, I'd be dead before I remembered any of it.
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I learned from spending a day on a arena server. CoA was down, Howland had killed my character 11 times in a row, and I was tired of losing.
I learned that AC+HP+Saves is what keeps you alive, and clever thinking is what kills your opponent. If it is a spellcaster, best way to kill him is in melee, rushing him. If a wizard gets two or three spells up, you are dead unless you can dispel him.
And I learned that 9 times out of 10, the initiator wins.
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The best way to learn PvP is to be in it. I am more than happy to host a server and teach people how to rumble. KNOWING HOW TO PVP IS A GOOD THING, THERE IS NO "DRAW BACK" TO BEING GOOD IN PVP, IF YOU THINK THIS WAY YOU ARE WRONG.
How is being able to tell the story of a HERO a bad thing when a HERO is obviously proficient in a fight? A LOOSER gets stomped every time he stands up for himself. There is no ifs, buts, and ors about it. If you want to play a political sleazeball, that's fine, but if you want to play a Cleric of Torm who triumphs over evil, knowing how to PvP will be key and dismissing knowledge of how to triumph over players is short sighted and foolish. Don't play "I can get others to PvP for me, I don't need to learn" card. That is like saying, "Others can feed me, I don't need to learn how to cook." You'll be eating ramen for the rest of your days, or in this case, the proverbial dirt upon the ground.
DON"T BE A VICTIM OF IGNORANCE
LEARN TO PVP TODAY
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@SpiffyHas:
The best way to learn PvP is to be in it. I am more than happy to host a server and teach people how to rumble. KNOWING HOW TO PVP IS A GOOD THING, THERE IS NO "DRAW BACK" TO BEING GOOD IN PVP, IF YOU THINK THIS WAY YOU ARE WRONG.
How is being able to tell the story of a HERO a bad thing when a HERO is obviously proficient in a fight? A LOOSER gets stomped every time he stands up for himself. There is no ifs, buts, and ors about it. If you want to play a political sleazeball, that's fine, but if you want to play a Cleric of Torm who triumphs over evil, knowing how to PvP will be key and dismissing knowledge of how to triumph over players is short sighted and foolish. Don't play "I can get others to PvP for me, I don't need to learn" card. That is like saying, "Others can feed me, I don't need to learn how to cook." You'll be eating ramen for the rest of your days, or in this case, the proverbial dirt upon the ground.
DON"T BE A VICTIM OF IGNORANCE
LEARN TO PVP TODAY
all very true….
...but getting others to do the PvP (and taking the blame)is not always a bad thing
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Nor is going to a restaurant. You shouldn't have to rely on goons 90% of the times to cook for you.
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@SpiffyHas:
The best way to learn PvP is to be in it. I am more than happy to host a server and teach people how to rumble. KNOWING HOW TO PVP IS A GOOD THING, THERE IS NO "DRAW BACK" TO BEING GOOD IN PVP, IF YOU THINK THIS WAY YOU ARE WRONG.
How is being able to tell the story of a HERO a bad thing when a HERO is obviously proficient in a fight? A LOOSER gets stomped every time he stands up for himself. There is no ifs, buts, and ors about it. If you want to play a political sleazeball, that's fine, but if you want to play a Cleric of Torm who triumphs over evil, knowing how to PvP will be key and dismissing knowledge of how to triumph over players is short sighted and foolish. Don't play "I can get others to PvP for me, I don't need to learn" card. That is like saying, "Others can feed me, I don't need to learn how to cook." You'll be eating ramen for the rest of your days, or in this case, the proverbial dirt upon the ground.
DON"T BE A VICTIM OF IGNORANCE
LEARN TO PVP TODAY
I like this idea a lot
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Bump bump
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pvp style combat is not the only way people live or die in real life, in medieval times, or now.
There are all sorts of ways to resolve conflicts to get the advantage.
some people avoid them, run and hide.
others have powerful allies.
some will use deceit, and possibly kill people when they are vulnerable. For instance, trojan horses, disease covered blankets, poisoning someone, not necessarily with a weapon, but sometimes their water supply, in their food, etc.
genghis khan was an expert at having his allies/enemies turned against one another, rather than focussing all their energies on him.other ways include the 'siege' - cut off someone's supplies until they can no longer function. This could include allies, weapons, magic, food, water, air/ blood flow (drowning, garotte) in more advanced forms of combat this might involve nerve or 'energy point' disruption… but in general combat, breaking someone's foot, weapon, blinding them, tripping them up in a moat while in heavy armour, collapsing a castle wall from underneath them etc.
There are lots of forms of combat or conflict resolution other than optimized pvp combat.
Some people (like me) are interested in exploring some of these, perhaps some of us have tried violence, and would like to practice other ways as well, to increase our options in real life, too.So in short, I would like to learn the mechanics better, but there are some ways that pvp'ing seems to gimp the storyline. The point of the matter is, you have a certain amount of resources - character stats, equipment, allies, the player's time... and you have to decide how you want to spend them... and being told you can't spend them a certain way, because other people want to pvp you, and you will be no good at it, in some ways doesn't seem really fair... or realistic, to me, in a sense, because mechanicially winning in the game means exploiting features that break immersion and reality - like the fact that lots of your allies that you might be with most of the time, may not always be in the same time zone, or available to be present when certain events happen, or that players can have an intimate knowledge of terrain that their characters might not have, so they might be able to get the advantage when fighting somewhere where there could otherwise be things hidden, traps made, etc.
I don't think people should HAVE to focus on PVP based characters if they don't want to, and my understanding is that pvp, especially character deaths, have to be EARNED in game, ie you don't just gimp people's stories because you spent a day building up inventory, you've quickslotted your arsenal, and your vacation is over soon so you want some thrills ASAP. I don't really think anyone is disagreeing with this, although what people seem to be missing, is that by saying people 'need to be good at pvp to be heroes', is that you are straitjacketing people's play styles, which seems to be what is frustrating H?
I think teaching basics of pvp is good, and sometimes I think it breaks my 'immersion' when someone can best a sort of 'whole faction', represented by a few pc's, by knowing a few tricks and a few items to get...
I think it's a matter of trying to feel out he situation of who you are with at the time, and keeping the focus on 'fun', not 'teh win' ... when groups develop enmity, developing pvp and battles will make more sense as well.
I get anxious about pvp, but part of it is that I can be full killed or looted, and some of this stuff is for 'story' stuff, which i have a hard time moving forward... as a crafter, for instance, i would probably keep my materials somewhere, or find a useful way to transport them, rather than carrying a huge arsenal and all my crafting tools and supplies with me, everywhere I go. I've had situations where my stats got dropped, from some kind of server error, and because it seemed like there was going to be a big hunt on for elves, and pvp'ing, etc, I DUMPED a significant amount of items, including personal ones, things i couldn't sell in stores that were special, seeds, etc etc etc in the charity chest or whereever, so I could get back 'under weight' so I could run again, to evade or attack, and wouldn't go ridiculously slow while in stealth.
Pruning inventory, and organizing my inventory, is not the most fun for me... i probably need to do it more... but for me, they are often things that are reminds of things in game, quests items, hints, secrets, character goals like planting trees or crafting things, a gift from other players or dm rewards that mean something...
So I could 'prune' my character down, to be a fighting machine... heck i could go druid monk or something, and do it with barely any items... but it would sacrifice, for me, my ability to do the 'stories' i want to have and do, in the game... and after enough pvp'ing, even if I got good at it, EVEN IF I always WON, I would lose the fun of it, and would stop coming on here to play eventually.The potential of a story which reacts to exactly what I am interested in, or where I am a part of it... has a lot of potential... but my goals in game, as in life, are more than to just 'not die' , or 'to kill enemy x'. And I like it that way, and I think that should be ok, and I think other people can focus on their pvp more, and still let me focus on my story more, and somewhere, sometimes, we'll meet in the middle, and that seems ok?
Some things I am interested, are some skills related to combat, some of which relate to pvp.
Some of these include parry, discipline, taunt, concentration, and tumble.
I'm not sure how some of these work in game, and it can be quite the investment in levels and skill points to increase these skills... so yeah, I think learning a little more how these work, so I could better use skills like
disarm, called shot, etcother things i'm interested in are... tactics, equipment-wise or other, like... say
using tanglefoot bags or caltrops
setting traps, evading traps
sniping as an archer or similar
using animal companions or summonswhat works on ai that doesn't work on players, and vice versa; and what works on both, or neither.
sorry to make such a long post, i will save it just to make sure the whole things post...
so i'm glad the philosophy thing came up, pvp vs rp, but i would also like to learn a bit about pvp; and i think there are ways to ... work on making flexible boundaries that allow... people to get the best of pvp or rp for themselves in coa, and hopefully players will respect each others needs, and balance these things, rather than let a somewhat irrelevant to life ideology get in the way of real life digital community and fun.
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I am extremely bored and void of computer games that I read that entire essay void of all punctuation and capitalizatio; on my phone.
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How do people not know how play a decade-old game…
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I only started playing this game about two years ago.
I can say, having experienced it, that there's definitely a wall between a lot of players and mechanical competence. A refusal to change the way they play? A stark refusal to see it as anything but an RP game? It doesn't really matter. People can play the game however they want, that's up to them. If they wanna play the hero of Trom that kills baddies and doesn't afraid of anything without some of these lessons though, they're going to have some trouble.
There's nothing wrong with mechanical competency, and there's nothing wrong with RP. But as has been said multiple times in this thread, they don't have to be separate. I've been working really hard to get better at playing this game, and I would think it shows a bit. Because I want to eventually play this big bad guy, or the guy who saves the day.
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rp and pvp aren't separate things.
There is no way to completely avoid PVP on this server.
Bandits exist, for one thing, though luckily, we have a lot of really awesome players who play such concepts, and don't just go around beating people up and stealing their stuff, they actually tell a story, a part of which involves violent interactions with other player characters. In general, and there are exceptions, but in general, such character will give you a choice. Fight, or give them something. If you really don't want to fight, give them something. If you dont want to fight, and dont want to give them something.
Then tough luck.
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Or offer to perform a service for the bandit.
If the bandit can't enter the Citadel they are likely to want a potion fetcher. Do a small task avoid the mugging. -
Sometimes you can talk your way of conflict!