Sleep, for the purposes of this post, is any "knockout" effect, including but not limited to: sleep, cold be sleep, blackjack, weapon butt blackjack, knockout poison, knockout trap, strangle, choke, cranial, strangle, and stun.

1) These effects are generally shorter in duration across the board by a tick or two (or more), though not all have been touched.

2) Using offensive/harmful spells/powers/communes/etc. on someone who has been slept by someone who isn't you has a small (~5%) chance to wake them.

As it is now you have maybe one or two ticks before a jacked victim wakes. Reciting a scroll takes a god-awful 2 rounds of lag as does steal. Maybe make steal one round for city ties or something. Reduce scrolls to 1 round? After all casting a spell (most) is only one round.

My 0.02

Ekirhal

I'm going to respond to this and tie up all of my remaining thief thoughts in one fell swoop.

Scrolls aren't going to change at this time. Yes, casting a spell is often one round, but scrolls are up to three spells in one shot. Additionally, this would make a lot of characters that aren't thieves tougher as well.

I don't really see steal getting shorter. A city thief shouldn't need to knock out their victim to rob them blind. If they do, I'd rather address that.

And, in a general sense, let it be noted that I'm aware thieves have some issues. Some of the fixes I have in mind for that are, like recent changes to A-Ps, relatively quick things to implement that you'll probably see sooner rather than later. Others are much more ambitious and scope and far-reaching. You may not see some of those for a long time, but some things I'd just rather do right.

That's all I have to say on that issue for the moment. Have fun!

Not trying to bash you or anything, Nep (Being a fervent member of the Neppy for President club), and I'll say I haven't dealt with any of the thief issues myself, but it seems like all this happened with the sleep-effect changes...so, why not just have left that be and having that done right? I sorta figure it was probably a mixture of 20/20 hindsight, and staff opinion that the sleep changes were a bigger +fix than the smaller -fix thieves got out of it. Just curious as it's sorta been sounding like thieves incidentally got kicked in the junk, and the fix'll be...sometime. Anyways, I've rambled enough.

Neppy for President!
(Straklaw for VP? Wohoo!)

I started to write a long rant in response to this, but the short version is, while tinkering with sleep affects, it just made sense to do them all together.

A lot of the bitching is just that, bitching. There are still thieves with 3 (4 if counting 0-tick) blackjack effects. Blackjack still has an enormously high success rate for any skill, much less one so capable of incapacitating an enemy or turning a raid around.

One of those things, coming in next reboot or perhaps the one after that, depending on how things time out:

Bindings fall off slower/less likely in combat than the current rate for solo binders attacking a bound victim. They fall off faster/more likely for a binder and his twelve best friends attacking a bound victim.

As of now scrolls and thieves dont mix well because of:

1. Thieves suffer a HUGE penalty when using scrolls.
Approx. 75% failure rate on recite (with scrolls 100%) by my estimate.
2. There are not enough maledicting scrolls for hero level (in fact only edit: some scrolls).

Could you lower 1. and insert some high level scrolls in various areas to fix 2.?

Thanks,

-NNNick-

I'm pretty sure (1) only exists in your cracked-out imagination. No offense.

When I get home I'll doublecheck to make sure this hasn't changed in the last year or two while I wasn't paying attention.\

Really, there's a lot more to scrolls than maledicting a slept person. I'm sure you'll see more scrolls as areas are added but really, thieves aren't meant to be necromancers with hide, even on their best day.

I've always felt int plays a roll in success rate. Thieves not having as high an int as mages could perceive a class-penalty exists.

(1) is something I put in a year or two back. Thieves aren't as good at scrolls as true mages are. They're still good enough to not ever need to complain about having the skill.

That being the case, I owe NNNick an apology.

"Thieves suffer a HUGE penalty when using scrolls. Approx. 75% failure rate on recite (with scrolls 100%) by my estimate" still isn't remotely correct. If he meant "75% success rate", he's in the ballpark.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

No time to rob, to poisoner no any chances to
reconcotion.
Normal blackjack fails too often about 4 on 1 successfull (have it 96 %)

>Normal blackjack fails too often about 4 on 1 successfull
>(have it 96 %)

I'm aware of the numbers on blackjack success. You're amazingly far off. It's easily the most reliable skill of its type in the game.

Not wasting any time messing around, I landed gag and blindfold on a blackjacked victim. He woke up during my third binding. I can send you the log if you like.

I don't see how binders are going to be able to land tie, let alone truss.

made some allowances for dedicated binders.

If they prove to not be enough, I'll probably redress them in some fashion which does not equate to making blackjack longer down the road.

My feeling right now is that binders are too good with a gang and too weak without. I aim to reduce the former and improve the latter.

.

I already have some ideas in mind for that, but you can feel free to send me an e-mail if you have ideas of your own more complicated than "make skill X work more."

Straklaw and Abernyte would be the folks to talk to about coming up with ideas re: binders, as I mentioned in the email.

Chime in, guys.

Well... with reduction of blackjack time I dont have time to bind now.

Couple ideas:
1) Let binders stay in shadows while they bind.
2) Make bind_legs/bind_hands last longer in combat.
As of now they are typically gone within first round of combat.

Also while you addressed problem with spells-ups, how about fixing gang problem (http://www.qhcf.net/cforum/logs/vpost.pl?50702).
Kimberly had no chance to escape here. Because of the truss.

I have a couple ideas in mind for binders when I get a little more time to make them more effective solo and less or equally effective in a gang.

Also, note that not all thieves have a shorter (or, depending, as much shorter) blackjack timer...

nt