At this point, the last six villagers I've killed have all been worth zero charges, four of them berserkers. I'm sure it's come up in discussions on this that berserkers are such high risk but that's offset by high reward. Would it be possible to make villagers, or at least berserkers, worth at least one charge by default? Deathblow and spellbane makes for a sad bashable a-p otherwise

Is possibly tying charges to total number of mage kills, or pks,
for villagers in general. I'd say most villagers do not have the
massive ratios that people with easy access to word, healer, teleport
do but may have a fair amount of kills and be plenty deathly. FWIW,
I don't know how tough such a thing would be to code or change but it
seems like a fairly valid approach.

The thing about a villager for an AP is that you can usually be pretty safe outside raids. Assuming you have a/b/s/stoneskin, of course. Without those things, don't go anywhere near them if you care about keeping a weapon. If you have a/b/s then you're the one with the unfair lucky kill skill (sleep) in most situations. If you get a berserker slept you should be able to kill them in most areas with plague/energy drain/summon and hit n' run. If you have enough protections you can try for that sleep with very little risk.

Really, there should be some kind of adjustment for DR. If you kill a with-head berserker without any a/b/s then you deserve a reward.

Since their ally can just wake them up, and apparently that is okay, just like standing in the room so I can't use aoe skills.

Tactics man, tactics.

Just like anyone can run from an imperial gank on eastern in to a city and thumb their chin at the imperials.

Same goes for running from any Tribunal.

In fact, you can make Tribunal's of opposite alignment guard over you while you TROLL the hell out of them - this one always amuses me.

You can run to Udgaard if a paladin is chasing you

You can run to Darsylon if an Orc/Drow are after you

And finally, villagers can limit your ability to use AOE by standing in the room, and kicking your ass if you bring them into combat - that was your action/choice.

none of these things are especially awesome, or fair from a gameplay perspective...but all of them are completely Kosher

Even with full a/b/s, fighting a berzerker is almost not worth the gamble - I've had god gear, full a/b/s, thirsted/etc, and I couldn't hit a thirsting villager for the life of me. Risking a sleep is almost never worth it unless you have the head or they're just really dumb at wearing zero saves or underleveled.

Unless you're a hilariously bad berserker build, you can destroy most APs unless they're already rolling with fire/lightning control and lots of charges with full a/b/s. It is *not* worth risking everything for RNG when you get deathblowed twice or more in a single round.

>Risking a sleep is almost never worth it

You just have to survive three rounds. Anyone with a/b/s/stoneskin can do that. It should be hard or impossible to bash you if you're expecting them, so you can word out. The point isn't that you're going to succeed much this way, just that if you do, it's a pretty certain kill, where the berserker doesn't have that.

Enjoy trying to survive 8-10 rounds instead of 3.

nt

1: And this is the overwhelmingly most likely scenario, rager gets woken up by other villager, and you get raped.

2: You kill the rager and get 0 charges. Woo.

I don't have easy access to barrier (far from a given especially pre-hero) nor do I often use stoneskin due to the drawbacks, this all done with a weapon of less than 10 charges. It can't be assumed a mage always, or ever, has full ABS. It can be assumed that a berserker with the head has resist,spellbane, and deathblow. It would have been nice to get some charges from it.

As for sleep - I'll save that for when I'm no longer active

Example of how sleep and parity played out. Had about a 6 charge weapon during this:

Berserker 1 attacks me on eastern, gets beat up and runs away. Berserker 2, also on eastern immediately jumps in. We go a few rounds, I flee and land sleep - have taken a lot of damage at this point. Berserker 1 jumps back in while I'm attempting a spell down, dies. Have to cut short the spelldown owing to low mana and time spent finishing off berserker 1, berserker 2 proceeds to begin kicking my ass again. Run around a bit, make it to a healer, midway through healing berserker 3 jumps in. I flee, prep a little, still wounded from all 3 fights, kill berserker 3 for 0 charges.

One of the berserkers I killed for 0 charges actually sent me a tell afterwards during conversation that he'd taken 'precautions' against me getting any charges out of killing him - suiciding prior to the fight I believe.

All of the above seems a bit off.

Which is probably a better use of your time. I also think everyone forgets that not every barrier source is easy to get as an AP, especially pre-hero.

*Worth one charge when they have the head.

Without the head they should leech charges when you kill them. :p

Hutto, the Sleepy

nt