Playing an assassin and I wanna know if you could make it possible for an assassin to designate which vitals he wants to strike. Find it hard to believe a trained assassin couldn't decide which place on his opponents body he wants to strike.

Now, as a balancing factor, I say that if you choose to designate a spot, it means you've premeditated your attack, and there's a less chance of success, whereas if you don't choose a place, you randomly pick the next opening to strike, with a higher chance for success. Just though it would be a good addition to the assassin class.

Who cares dude? It's just nerve.

You will almost always have something you should rather be doing than...nerve. No point loosing sleep over it.

Rom.

I think that's his point. Why have a skill if there's almost no effective use for it. He's giving an idea to make it useful in certain situations. It's no skin off your back for him to give his suggestions, and maybe the Imms will like the idea and change it. No point busting on him for it.

This would make it too easy to kill people with low constitutions.

Thus, the lower chance of success. You could even say certain parts (via the part that lowers constitution) are harder to strike because they're always more closely guarded, so the premeditated attackh as, like I said, a lower chance of success. The tradeoff, you know what you want, you just have to be able to get it. Dex and such could play into the working of the targeted attacks, in which case, why the hell would you try to con kill a giant?

I'm just trying to find uses for this skill which is most situations is damn near pointless to use because of its unpredictability. The way I see it, and maybe I'm just not using it right, it's one of those skills you use when the fight is going nowhere and you need something to turn the tide, but I mean, the change I propose would actually make it a skill worth using in crunch time.

If nerve were to ever get tweaked towards what you are describing, I'd prefer eliminating the possibility of CON-killing a low CON character altogether by using it in combat. If it were focused strictly on STR and DEX I would be more comfortable. However, this is almost a total overlap of hurl, which I do not like. A few factors could be introduced to the skill to make it less similar to hurl. For instance, nerve could only work on opponents who are at 70%hp or lower (the rationale being that the assassin is able to get in closer due to the victim being somewhat battle-worn at that point), and the close proximity on certain opponents (other assassins, dagger specs, hand specs, ANY orc) could make the assassin susceptible to counterattacks or extra punishment on a failure.

Anyhow, I do like the general idea. I am just trying to hammer it out a bit with you.

While I understand why you'd associate the two together, I really don't think there's any comparison. Hurl is infinitely stronger, to either current, or this proposed version. Hurl has five different aim spots, which vary between strength loss, dex loss, a combination of both, and each aiming point has varying other side effects. Additionally, the stat loss amount of nerve is much lower than any hurl location. As a rough estimate, if I recall the -amounts for nerve, it would take three nerve hits to equalize the sheer stat loss.

Though, one idea to make it noticably different than hurl, perhaps you could make it (in a fashion), an exceedingly finesse-like skill for assassins. You could make it so that more nerve landings have an exponentially increased effect compared to only one or two, or what I think would be cooler, would be to have each differently aimed nerve strike have a small obvious effect, and a slight to moderate more subtle effect. Possibly even combining the two, where combining the right nerve strikes, creates much more significant affects. Aim for the knee, they get -dex. Hit the shoulder, -str. Hit shoulder then knee, they collapse in pain a round and lose an attack. Fun stuff like that.

Random thoughts, and of course I'm more of a strategist style player, so I like having insane amount of (overly complex) options of things to do to people *grin*

While I understand why you'd associate the two together, I really don't think there's any comparison. Hurl is infinitely stronger, to either current, or this proposed version. Hurl has five different aim spots, which vary between strength loss, dex loss, a combination of both, and each aiming point has varying other side effects. Additionally, the stat loss amount of nerve is much lower than any hurl location. As a rough estimate, if I recall the -amounts for nerve, it would take three nerve hits to equalize the sheer stat loss.



The comparison was, as you seem to have noticed, based purely on the basic function and syntax of the skills, which would be identical if nerve were changed. I'm also an exceptionally picky bastard, so what may seem mucky to me may not be that way for everyone.



-Mek

Also, something to take into affect of nerve vs hurl.

To my understanding, nerve is done by your fist - fingers poised to strike, while hurl is obviously done with a dagger. I don't know about you, but the increased stat loss seems perfectly valid. Let's assume you go up against a fire giant warrior in full plate, and you hit him inbetween the joints with your fingers...versus throwing a dagger that punctures his skin and stays there (it's a throwing dagger afterall) for the time of the effect.

Seems valid to me...

Despite the fact that my weapons and armor are in desperate need of repair, I blow the entire king's reward on Ale and Whores!

Nerve can never be like hurl ebcause of the simple fact it doesn't do damage, regardless of how minimal the hurl damage is. Also, I've never played a dagger spec, but I don't think hurling a dagger puts you in the way of an attack if you fail. I love the assassin class, and I was looking for a way to "flashify" this otherwise... I wont say useless, but I'll say unreliable skill. As it is, it's one of those skills I don't even bother practicing.]

Now, as for those suggestions, yea, I think that would be cool. Like how many times can you kick a man in his knee before it buckles? Or how many times do you strike someone's kidneys before they piss blood? The last one was extreme, but you get my point.

Now, I was gonna suggest assassin paths kinda like thieves, but I couldn't figure out a reason why or how (thought a branch between sword/dagger/hand <weapon strikes and nerve strikes, the assassin's assassin / and spear/staff/hand <kicks and finesse, a monk's assassin), so I decided to post on nerve, which has been bugging me for a while. Hope it was worth the time asking.