I have written this exact same thread three times before, to general assent and an ambivalent response by whoever was Pentharian at the time.

Guards should not respond with lethal force to a gentle attack by a player. If attacks are repetitive in a short period of time, indicating that perhaps the player does in fact want to harm the guards, they should then respond. This is particularly the case when it involved high-ranking members of the guards' city, who should be recognizable faces.

This is a longstanding problem with puppet force. The fact that it only comes up when people are using puppets is testament to the stupid nature of that ability. Nevertheless, it is both an inconsistency with RP and a skill that really adds nothing of combat value to the game.

As usual, the current puppet user in question and his IC allies' responses should be ignored.

I can kill a guard stack with kick if I am not enemied to the city?

Didn't know you could do that..may use that line later!

Also, yeah forcing someone to kick a guard with a puppet only to have the guard attack and kill you is silly. I mean, I used to get beat up more hanging out with people in Ashtan that were friends..I'd imagine a guard would just laugh off a random kick, or punch you back. Doesn't make a lot of sense.

It's agreed upon that vodun/puppet command should be changed to area only, at least I think so. It's also quite easy to make the target do a class specific bashing attack, rather than newbie kick.

Also: consider the possibility of a lolalt logging in when there are little to no citizens around.

Normal attacks like that can be managed the same way. Two or so is fine, but if they don't know to move by the time they are being forced to do the third...

And that's really only endemic to threads about puppetry, Boz. Generally people seem to be okay no matter which side they are on, but as soon as puppets or dolls get involved they go stupid in the head. Falgorn and his supporters opposed version one of this thread, and Daje and his supporters opposed another version. Anyone who isn't being a moron at the time can agree both that it has little combat value, adds nothing to the game's fun factor, and makes no RP sense.

Or, a novel idea, you could just simply not sit on a guard stack when you know there is a doll of you. Ta da.

Lol'd

over the knee!

Bolded is so false, I laughed harder than when I read Tahquil's quite humorous guard scenario.

Uh, seriously. Name one instance in which puppet command could be used in combat..I dare you. /sarcasm

Nevermind.

I would suggest a slight alteration to this scheme.
Citizens of a city cannot harm their own guards. If they attempt to the guard knocks them flat/stuns them for 4 seconds.

Citizens will be safe from their own guards in case of puppet force, or if they are a bit of an idiot novice.

Allies and visitors still run the guantlet.

Rephrased: THE PEOPLE I DON'T LIKE CAN'T COMMENT. THIS IS AN EXCLUSIVE CLUB.

Why, who forced you to kick guards?

Anyway, it's not like you can't, you know, man up and learn to fight and kill the owner of the doll. I mean like, gawd, it's not like it's hard to go from a non-com group ganker to a reasonable combatant. It's Mhaldor's and your own fault you don't know how to deal with combat situations on your own, you can just order them to train to one on one and stuff. </familiar generic solution>

Let the horrible downwards spiral begin once again!

I'll be over there (----->) filling out paperwork.

That said, puppetry/vodun is one of the few skillsets than has the greatest range. So long as you possess a puppet/doll, there are many ways for a shaman/jester to affect someone from across a continent. Wasn't funeral mass once continent-wide?

Mocking Des aside, I actually do still agree that Vodun/Puppetry need tweaking, however this is pretty backburner. I'd rather have something useful done, like deleting Divertimento and the Reel or whatever the hell it's called.

Realize that even if Penth lists this, the odds that this change goes in quickly are abysmal. You're -going- to have to adapt and just assume the change will never come anyway. It's amazing how well "touch shield; stand firm (or mass, whatevs); sit" works at keeping you alive in your own city. I've learned this the hard way from people like Kiet, Ovid and co, Santar, and most recently Jaiko.

Change around here happens slowly. No real harm in discussing it, though. I believe that Pentharian stated, once upon a time, that combat changes would be discussed and tested by the ACC. We'd still be able to chat about it, of course. The original idea and variations proposed was sort of non-combat, but changes a bit as we meander. My only real gripe with puppetry/vodun is the sheer range and longevity(?) of the skill. A good deal of abilities that target another player directly require the attacker to be in the same location, line of sight, or the same area. Some things that could be left lying around (vibrations, harmonics, gravehands, rites, etc.) merely require an enemy list and usually expire in around twenty minutes, maybe around forty minutes if one is in possession of a silver tuning fork. Puppets/Dolls last a considerably longer time, but usually aren't a problem in 1v1 combat. All skills become a bit more effective/dangerous when people work together. I'll leave that discussion to the ACC, though. I don't have a good grasp of how abilities interact all the time.

With that said, there are currently defenses to practically every ability. As noted by others before me, not standing in guards is one alternative. Each attempt to use puppet/vodun command consumes fashions and if you're not AFK, you could probably keep yourself out of trouble. Forcing people to sing OOC lyrics over the city channel is irksome, but that sort of falls under Help Insanity in some cases. Most forced commands that involve citytells are sort of okay at keeping things somewhat sane, though. No examples come to mind at the moment.

Slightly off topic - changes to the Harmonics skill, especially the removal of two harmonics, would have to have some sort of compensation as six of the abilities in the Harmonics skill are simply allowing the bard to have more harmonics out there. I'm not part of the ACC/Tecton, though.

Puppets Attacks should be area only.

What do you think they would force you to do if kick didn't work? Forcing you to sidekick would be just as easy.

If an ally attacks a guard, only four respond I'm pretty sure. Unless you're afk on guard stack with an enemy puppeteer running around, you shouldn't die. If you do, it's your oowwwwwn fault!

It's in the classlead.

I never understood why kick was forced..I'd go for the best bashing attack and hope to get a WSC.

Announce News #2364

- CITY GUARDS are no longer vulnerable to critical hits.

Bah. Oh well, another genius plan bites the dust.

Prone/stunned for 4 seconds is not a good idea for combat.

Guards should respond to kick, there are a million ways you can stop it. 98% of the time if someone has a puppet of you, or hates you enough to use mind force/action, you are a combatant and should know the million ways to stop it. (stay off balance/remain sitting/etc.)

Edit: Or just don't afk on guard stacks.

This and several other ideas suggested in this thread are Good Ideas.

If doing the OP's idea would take too much coding, could you just add attacking guards to the list of things that are unforceable? Or make puppet attacks area wide.

No, they shouldn't. Command is an exception.

what benefit do they have being out of area? honestly?

They have benefit, that's all you need to know.

There are major benefits.
Especially when jumping someone/stopping them from running away.

the jester/shaman class will not lose any combat effectiveness if they only have area attacks.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

I disagree, but I do agree that puppetry/vodun needs reworking.

After you have got the doll to a level where you can kill people (15 fashions or more was usually the minimum when I was Shaman and 23 when I was Jester) If they run away, they run away, like any other class, if they stay, I will kill them like any other class.Making them Area only doesn't reduce my individual combat effectiveness in a spar or a duel, but it will of course reduce their effectiveness in group combat, but at least it won't make one person on the opponents team a detriment just because I have a doll of him. It will not make Jesters or Shaman less than the best killing classes in the game.

From what I can tell, dolls take some of the longest prep times to get up to full. The longer the prep time, the longer the effectiveness and greater the range. I don't really see it needed to change the skill to area only when half the point of vodun seems to be surprise attacking your enemy from afar. Yes the skills can be useful up close in combat, but in general, especially with the travel skills, it seems like Vodun was designed as a ranged primary with uses in close combat skill set.

Simplest solution of all, don't afk on guards, especially when you know there are puppets of you. If you do afk on guards, a simple alias to autosit would solve all your problems and require no coding on the part of the Divine. Or you could work out something similar to what Firey posted in a thread about his reflexes to autopassify angry guards.

Just counting some of the simple fixes and solutions you could manage on your own part, and having seen other ideas get rejected when the same level of work on your part could solve the 'idea', I'm not surprised you've needed to make several threads about it. Perhaps it would be good to take a hint, or the several that many people have offered to you, and make your own work around to a simple problem.

For the record, I've never died to this, so this isn't a personal problem. I also know how to stop it and auto-pacify my guards. But the fact remains that it is not something that should need to be worked around in-client; it isn't a matter of convenience, like most other proposed ability tweaks.

There are so many other things, like class balancing issues, that need to go through before 'convenience issues.'

If this got any priority I think I would cry.

It almost never happens, and on those rare occurrences it can be stopped client-side.

Edit: How is this not a matter of convenience if it can be stopped client-side?

Honestly, I remember when Daje got a doll of me up to 35 or so. I would sit in an indoor room on a mono, tell anyone who entered to leave, web myself and sit. Again, this falls under one of those things that has a solution beyond hard-coding. I had plenty of people offer me gold in exchange for dolls of them when I was Shaman, or other deals similar to that. I don't think Shamans/Jesters require a nerf just because people need to die to guards 8 times before figuring out that they shouldn't sit on a stack.

My point was that it is not a matter of convenience precisely because it doesn't deal with issues like displaying lists or anything like that. This is along the lines of the fix where Maya said, "Ok, no more catapults from clouds." You could stop that with constant mass, another client-side solution, but that nevertheless got pretty high priority, and probably with good reason. So should this.

Catapult is an ability that requires absolutely no player interaction. Enemy someone, catapault them into guards. No previous fighting, they were just infamous!

If someone has a doll of you to the point where they can make you attack guards, you have some level of previous hostile interaction with them. If you jumped them, they make a doll of you, and order you to attack your guards for retaliation - I see absolutely no problem this.

There was a reason for this tidbit. As you can see, normally sane people go completely crazy. Sorry, Otha, I don't think "making people kick guards is valuable player interaction" is a valid statement.

I am not friends with anyone who has ever done this. In fact, I have no friends who are currently shaman or jester.

The only person I can think of in-game who would do this is Mhaldorian, so I would expect it to be done to myself rather than someone else.

So, that statement really does not apply to me. Just because you don't like my opinion does not mean that I cannot give it.

Edit: You cannot deny that making a doll is an IC interaction. Making someone kick a guard is an IC way to use up cause. I fail to see how this cannot be handled with the current issue system.

Depends on what level you are. All of them attack me.

To the OP: yes this skill is dumb. It's been suggested for change over and over again, in and out of the ACC. When Manifest and Micaelis were trying to doll me, Micaelis forced me to kick guards a lot. I brought it up and was told to quit crying on the ACC.

Watch out for these things as well: recklessness while bashing, leg mangle, binding while in groups, etc.

All of them attack if you're not a citizen. If you are a citizen, it's capped at like 6 or something.

The scaling of the number of guards should be changed, 4 being max 1 being minimum. This I could see being a legitimate solution.

What if they make you attack the city guardian instead, like Tali does? Does it make all guards attack?

A guard is a guard.