I agree that even with the edge nerve is kind of a marginal skill and I'm open to ideas to improve it a bit, but I don't really love this (and it's definitely way too complicated to be in-scope for an edge).

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Perhaps with a (very expensive?) edge the nerve skill has a fair chance of landing a 0 tick knockout. This would basically be just long enough for an assassin to bind wounds, quaff something, maybe toss a blindness dust.

Anyways, I think this is consistent with the skill without necessarily being overpowered if it's not terribly reliable.

I would rather a short paralyze affect.

I was thinking on this a while back. I think you can do a few different things to the skill itself instead of adding edges.

1. Random chance for bigger dex/str/con maldict (would need an echo).
2. Random special nerve strike give a chance to make the opponent drop weapon in combat (like grease).
3. Random chance feint because they "cant get their arms up to swing".
4. (like Rade said) a chance to knock out.
5. Chance to do damage w/o the edge, would do more damage with the edge.
6. Random 0 tick paralyze chance.

If the skill does something useful most of the time but it is random that could be cool.

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Alternatively, you could make the skill be more controlable (having certain nerve points you could choose to strike) EX: nerve shoulder

You would have the basic strike which does a maldict, lets say
Shoulder: STR damage always (but does not stack) and has a big hit chance for more STR, Damage, or Feint.
Wrist: Dex damage always (does not stack) and has a big hit chance for more STR, Damage, or grease like effect (they lose grip on their weapon).
Back: Con damage always (does not stack) and has a big hit chance for more Con, Damage, internal bleeding, or KO effect or 0 tick paralyze.

I realize this mostly depends on what direction you want to go with the skill.
I hope this helps get the ideas flowing. ^_^

Edit: formatting, added paralyze

But what if a fight could be **gasp** started with nerve?

Just think, an assassin that could open a fight with something other than murder, assassinate, trip or dust?

And if the lag were one round instead of two, then we could see nerve-spam on par with paladins spamming wrath.

Long ago implemented but perhaps forgotten in this discussion:
- Master of Kyusho-Jitsu does improve nerve beyond the base.

NCR:

- Nerve can initiate combat.
- Nerve is about 1 1/2 rounds of lag to use. (Exploit Vitals cuts this a bit further.)
- Damage dealt by Exploit Vitals reduced (it's now on top of a less sad skill)
- Even without Exploit Vitals, nerve deals a very small amount of damage. (Think on the order of Lash.)
- Repeated strikes to the same location (still random) can inflict some greater and/or longer duration penalties. For example, repeatedly kicking someone in the knee will sap some movement in addition to -DEX.
- Spamming nerve in PK still probably a dubious choice 90%+ of the time but might shine a bit in long enough fights.

Obviously you're playing an assassin and will insta-kill six of Aether's characters with bracers of Silent Tower cheatcode as you spam nerve and run him out of con. I demand you acquiesce to a formal lie-detector test that will involve tequila and copious amounts of Melrose Place episodes.

Have at thee, thy nave!

Dude, that is like.. ban worthy. No one in the history of this mud
EVER cheated... or dealt opium... or broke the law.. Banzaii is a myth.
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Luv me some Lo and Verilious. (=()_)-(?)==|
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I've always had a quiet laugh when two assassins squared off, and there is that hesitation to see who is going to suck it up and type murder first so the other guy can kote or kans. Nerve to open is great.

I hadn't forgotten exploit vitals/master of kyusho, but the first time I took it was so I had SOMETHING I could do against a flyto-murder gnome, but the eviscerate and -4 stat was so underwhelming compared to rake damage. Sometimes, you just can't win.

Enlarge self.

Strangle, Blind dust, Poison smoke, Dart slow assassin

Charm assassin, persuade assassin pray "Thats all I got for my role?"

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Not every skill has to be good. If you think nerve is less useful than 1 or 2 practices, don't practice it. Assassins are not underpowered. If you make nerve a better choice than some other skill, then you are making assassins more powerful (by however much better nerve is than the alternative in that situation). Can you suggest a reason they need more power?

First, I would suggest a survey of the top assassins would reveal that nerve is relatively unused in pk. If that bears out, I would posit its relative unuse due to
- 2 rounds lag (1.5 with edge)
- minimal maladiction granted
- maladiction is random, thereby not necessarily targeting desired stat


Second, I would say that an enhanced nerve skill would help assassins fight shapeshifters, whom are largely protected against assassins by hard-coded arbitrary conditions (You can apply kotegaeshi to a fire giant but not a gorilla, but good luck assassinating a komodo dragon); other classes can be hampered far more efficiently using the other tools in the assassin toolkit.


Third, my proposal would NOT make nerve combinations an effective strategy against melee classes, whom can both lag and evade attacks and thus disrupt the combinations.

I practiced nerve and spammed it up solely in order to take the exploit vulnerability edge. Or whichever edge it is that depends on nerve.