I think there’s some revision needed around combat rules and their regard to powergaming. In the past there’ve been instances with players engaging in conflict and leaning too heavily upon our rule that it’s always a player’s discretion as to whether their character is injured or harmed. Consequently, I think more strict rules that levvies that ability a bit more away from players
in certain situations.
What this would mean is that any character that is partaking in combat roleplay at least caused at least partially of their own volition should
expect their character to be injured or harmed during said roleplay. Far too often it’s the case in which a
player enters their character into combat roleplay willfully and then proceeds to stretch the boundaries of realism or more aptly
“What they can get away with,”. A character that enters combat willingly should suffer consequence for it - exactly in the same vein as the clause covering IC Death in which a character that kills another character automatically opens up permissions to be killed themselves. This means any character that willingly participates combat, engenders violence (Such as specifically provoking combat or begatting it in a violent crime that isn’t specifically considered ‘combat roleplay’) should have one foot in the grave (or medical clinic, more aptly) when it comes to combat permissioning.
Keeping that in mind, the rule change I would like to propose is intended to have
no effect on characters that are being thrust into hostile situations against their intentions. They would still maintain all rights to deny injury to their character as reasonable.
With this all being explained, I’d like to propose we add a rule as follows:
Quote:3. Players that willingly engage their characters into violence-oriented roleplay and refuse to allow injury to their characters will be considered to be powergaming.
Any character that is willingly engaging in violence in a current conflict or relevant one has permissions for injury opened on them. The character may still struggle or defend themselves and avoid injury within reason, but the right to deny injury is no longer forthright. Staff are the final deciders on what is reasonable.
It might be believed that this rule is similar to rule number two, or even the same, so that the addition of both would be redundant. I disagree, as it is not. There are many situations where the right to deny injury is abused without breaking the second rule. I give you the example of the archer, which is most likely hurt the most by this abuse.
To begin with, I should state that a trained archer utilizing the heaviest of warbows is stated in historical record to maintain a firing rate of a wopping six or seven arrows
per minute. Granted, this is with bows that are meant to punch through wrought iron plate from distances over 200 meters, but they’re the most extreme example in the spectrum.
Taking a lower draw weight of hunting bow, an archer can realistically expect -- in the heat of full on close quarters combat (Where virtually all of combat in Mesalia takes place) an archer can expect to loose an arrow roughly every 3-5 seconds.
Now there tends to be an occurrence in roleplay that players want their characters to at least put up a fight in a battle. Bare minimum - that’s what they want to see most of the time. This is an incredibly unfortunate thing for an archer when combined with a player’s right to deny injury to their characters. This is because an archer can loose a single arrow, and then when the other character’s player denies the injury so that their character can at least ‘get a few swings in before they get injured’ (most commonly in the form of ‘moving’ just before or after it’s released, that archer is royally fucked.
The slow attack rate of their weapon combined with the other roleplayer’s wish to “put up a fight” means that the first shot from their bow (which is almost invariably made to miss) is both
crucial to their survival and their ability to be viable at all in a combat situation, as after missing that first shot in the close ranges that mesalia’s combat takes place in, a sword wielder or any melee weapon user has full ability to attack, injure, disrupt their bow or anything else under the sun.
It’s for this reason that playing an archer in a character versus character conflict is just bending over and asking for it with things as they are now, even if you're roleplaying with very experienced and competent roleplayers. This is because archers
need that first shot, and having your character escape from that first shot isn't really playing an overpowered character -- it's denying one injury. There are subpar solutions for the archer, granted. They can take up a secondary combat skill with a melee weapon that can more readily satisfy another roleplayer’s desire for their character to be ‘putting up a fight’ or engaged in dramatic action, but this puts them at an acute disadvantage as the possible skills they have available at their character’s age is divvied up between archery and another weapon that likely isn’t as trained or as effective as a bow or conventional sword, such as a shortsword or dagger.
But due to the right to deny injury being universal, archers will continue to be abused in combat roleplay. Being forced to miss shots at distances of ten or twenty meters against a target that is stationary at the time of the arrow being released, and then having no recourse when the unscathed opponent rushes forwards to attack.
Granted, this may be a ‘small’ change in rules, but it’s one that is, in my mind completely necessary for healthy combat roleplay.
Combat roleplayers should find consequence for putting their characters in the situations they’re in -- and combat must be played out more realistically for it to be fair to the characters themselves. Take for instance Zarkaylia the character. A
master of swordsmanship. A
literal master in that there is no one else in the world who can be said to be of greater skill than her - only comparable, as two masters fighting against each other are so skilled that differences in skill become negligible. Yet in encounters against other characters she’s often wounded by characters of much, much less skill than her. This is in part due to her roleplayer’s wish to be fair to other characters and their players, but I would venture so far to guess that in some circumstances it’s probably also due to other roleplayers abusing their right to deny injury against an opponent so titanic in measure.
Give it some thought. Maybe post what you think, I’m curious.
