Specifically, this request was sparked by that silly AP thread in Gameplay, where Zodrimauk was known in the eyes of the public as a coward. Still, he was doing what works, or in other words, what consistently got him kills versus dying.

Now I'll present a situation that isn't already officially mandated. Say I'm a bard that wants an AP dead. On my judgement of my own skills, the risk of getting deafened is too nasty to go toe to toe with the AP. So I'm either going to a) Become a prep/save vs spell whore, and try to use things like energy drain scrolls and staffs because I know I'm going to get deafened one way or the other. Or b) Gang him down. Any time I'm summoned, I'm fleeing and quaffing, or otherwise running away in a straight up fight. Since songs aren't targetted, they are a bit more difficult to sneak back and land than his sleep or deafen spell. Say I do this to the AP and repeatedly land kills on him, refusing to bite the bullet and try to bust sleep or fiend on him on the risk that he's spamming bash or c deafen. He's normally pretty confident, but I'll never fight him on terms that risk me being disabled in any fashion, because let's face it, bloodlust is pretty nasty and fairly easy to cast if he can see me coming, which will be the case most of the time.

Yet, because of the lack of duration on tiger claw and the real likelihood of assassinate ever landing, I'll just laugh, wear a shield and toy with them in a melee, or hold out until my throat stops hurting (Two ticks isn't all that bad if they aren't getting you to the point they can land owaza very quickly, IMHO.) and start singing again. All without quaffing a single flight potion. Assassins scare me very little as a bard personally, since they are easy to get away from if I pick the right moment to flee. Missed or failed assassinate is often easy dirt/disarm lag for me since most won't bother to wear a spear.

Now, instead of that, I gang assassins too.

And then, back to AP's specifically, does the way their unholy weapons are a big enhancement to their class and how easily they are lost once they die give them more license to act like pussies than a decked shaman, healer or mage? Some people say that the axe is integral to the class, that it's hours worth of work to mow down the people to make it give you the damage and HP and that to lose it permanently is a huge disadvantage. Given their skill sets and how often they get to be choosy about their targets anyway, I'm not inclined to believe this, but then again I've not had the patience to play an AP long enough to drool over a weapon and delete once the realization of the overwhelming task of charging it again hits me. I would much rather prefer to play classes that have as much or more versatility than that and not nearly as much dependency on 'inherent haste spell' and such.

Oh yeah, and don't forget to muse over the tactic of enlarge, get rafts and bash, thieves cheap shot or other 'permalag' and how they aren't nearly the best option to kill someone as often as people would think, (though Nepenthe himself has admitted it's an effective tactic a good bit of the time).

To sum up, where is the line between coward, cheap bastard, one trick pony and *true tactician* crossed? Exclude moral discussions of looting and/or saccing, at least until after everything else. Can you usually tell from watching ten or so fights on a player, whether they are just total pussies, or really know their own limits on who they can and can't fight? And one more thing, talk a little about players you see who would be really kick ass at a certain class, if they weren't so reckless (or were more reckless) and their concept of the immediate best solution wasn't always a bigger gang. I've especially seen this happen to Ragers repeatedly, when a warrior, ap or thief, usually an Imperial, wants them F'ing dead, they are going to gank and permalag hard and fast in the hopes they carve them up faster than their deathblows go off. Yes, role being tossed into all of these equations is a factor, probably more often for other aspects than looting...

It depends.

Obviously a guy who doesn't back away from any character-appropriate fight and somehow manages through skill or sheer chutzpah to keep winning is going to be a lot of fun for me to watch. There's a reason NBA basketball is televised and, say, me playing a pickup game at the Y is not. Excellence is, as a general trend, more fun to watch than mediocrity.

That sad, I neither expect nor desire all of CF's players to be like that.

I wouldn't think less of a player for ganging some people, unless it was anathema to their role. I think, however, we can agree that a player who gangs sometimes and a player who always, always, always gangs are in different piles.

I don't have the problem with the coward A-P or coward whatever role, honestly. I'd probably enjoy the hell out of a cowardly character with a well written role, and/or one played to comic effect. Imagine a paladin who really was all about hiding in the kitchen eating soup, but due to other things going on in their life still managed to be very virtuous and good overall. That's an interesting character.

What I would say I have a problem with (which doesn't imply everyone should) are players (not characters) who labor under the delusion they're something they're not.

To take Zodrimauk as an example (since he's been topical lately), if at any point I looked at the list of the last 20 people he killed, at least 18 of them would be the same 3 or 4 people. We're not talking about really tough people here, either. We're talking about Heralds that are so foofy, other Heralds make fun of their PK ability. In one of the non-Herald cases, it was a fairly cool character at the time that had, for role reasons, given up a lot of their major class features.

You tell me: Would it be fun to watch someone kill the same terrible PKers again and again and again, running from anyone who might put up some kind of real fight? #### no. That said, is it something we disallow? Also no. Was Zodrimauk crippled in terms of class abilities, etc. in any way? Still no. All he got was a somewhat demeaning title, which, whether anyone would like to admit it or not, completely fit the character and his typical style of play. If the character had been an intentional coward, that kind of title would really be a reward.

I'd say my bar for a true tactitian as far as CF is concerned would be that they can take any situation and turn it to their advantage rather than merely shining when the situation happens to favor them. This can, depending on your point of view, include engineering situations that are to your advantage, but it's hard to say where to draw the line there.

> This can, depending on your point of view, include
> engineering situations that are to your advantage,
> but it's hard to say where to draw the line there.

..using rescue to kill a lich crosses this line, even
though rescue was "by design".

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."
- Albert Einstein

There's a difference between engineering situations that are to your advantage, and gloriously in the creative sense, abusing a minor balancing aspect of an ability to cause a death that was never intended for the skill to cause in the first place. I've mod-died to that aspect of rescue by my own well-meaning groupmates before norescue even came in a few years ago. If I were a lich and died to something as retarded and stinking of abuse as that, I'd be validly pissed too.

Post something relevant, I don't give a damn about rescue at all for a PK discussion, let alone as a strategy because it wasn't meant to be one in the first place.

Carrion Fields is not a court of law. Immortals on rules duty are not there to quibble over technicalities. They are there to make sure a fair game is provided.

If you can't honestly see the difference between what you tried to pull and a "clever tactic", I don't know what to tell you, Zhar. In addition, given that the situation was set up OOC between you and your pal, the decision you reference was very easy.

We're fair, but we're not stricken with amnesia. You and your pal have a long history of cheating, and we are neither obligated nor expected to pretend otherwise.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I honestly cannot see the difference. That may or may not be a reflection of how truly ignorant I am. As Scrimbul pointed out, we took something that was not meant to be used in a PK situation (outside of its intended use) and made it lethal, I'd call that thinking outside the square, you wouldn't. Personally, I just don't think you like being impressed by people who admit to have cheated about five years ago. I respect that fact that it's your game and not mine. If I saw someone playing with my toy and doing things with it that I hadn't have thought possible, I'd be in denial too and throw "hate rays" at them. Don't bother replying, I'm just a cheating douchebag.

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."
- Albert Einstein

I'm not going to go into all the other silly aspects of the situation and just point out one aspect. We're expecting your commands in a PK to be what your character would do, just as they are expected in any other situation in the game. You can design your role so that your character will know the best PK tactics, but "rescuing" someone repeatedly in order to get them killed during the fight isn't something that can make sense as an IN CHARACTER tactic. You weren't just thinking outside the square, you were thinking outside anything your character would contemplate. And then you abused the bug you found instead of reporting it.

>Personally, I just don't think you like being impressed by
>people who admit to have cheated about five years ago.

Speaking for myself, it's not like I haven't ever been impressed by you as a player a number of times. That just wouldn't have been one of the times.