Non-Lethal Combat: Sparring, Duels, and Yielding

The topic title says it all pretty much.

From the perspective of combat training and practice: it would be nice if trainer and student or student and student could practice skills through sparring.

From a Bandit/Outlaw perspective: it could give bandits the opportunity to beat up on folks, demand money for the life of the victim, or even allow a bandit to be captured to be judged for crimes.

From a Guild politics perspective: any sort of challenge or disagreement internal or otherwise could be decided by dueling.

I'm not sure how it should be implemented. Should there be a command to invite a person to a duel or would it be better if prior to a killing blow a pop window appears to ask the player to offer mercy to his/her opponent? I realize that death would be meaningless but instead of inviting the wrath of NPC guards or unintentionally being flagged as a criminal or PK, a non-lethal option would be welcome if not to simply imply that an attribute of humanity is its capacity for mercy regardless of intent.

 

i'm sure duels will be in there somewhere

 

Personally I'm a fan of a system that would utilize multiple "downed" states.

Specifically, something like:

Stunned
Prone
Unconscious
Critically Injured
Dead
Dismembered

Or some combination of those, with varying .. consequences and opportunities for the target and attacker. Things like while stunned, a particular type of attack might be attempted, which has a much higher chance of success if the target is Prone, or Unconscious.

However, for the attacker, there would be faction, reputation, karma, or similar consequences for attacking an innocent intelligent target that is Unconscious or Critically Injured, given they are almost helpless in these states. On the other hand, there might be opposite consequences, that is, incentives, for quickly killing possessed, elemental, golems, undead, chaotic, or demonic creatures, in line with compassion, justice, or honor.

Kinetic energy transfers of considerably magnitude might be responsible for naturally progressing a player directly to Dismembered, that is, things like falling from a great height, being thrown a great distance by a giant, struck by a stone weighing several tons, things like that. However, it may also be that particularly vicious creatures or other players may be able to desecrate a dead body in this fashion to prevent on-site resurrection.

Multiple downed states could also be used for betting on tavern brawls or other non-lethal combat. Higher stakes betting might be only possible if both contestants agree that the fight proceed to Unconscious or Critically Injured, for example, while Illegal Fights (or monster taverns) might permit fights to the death.

I have more details, but that's some of the highlights I'd like to see in SotA, on this topic.

 

This would be neat, especially if people want to organize bar-room fight-clubs and bet on each other without killing each other.

WoW has that dueling option where you can duel people and not actually die.



It always sucked in UO when you wanted to just spar with someone and then one of you would accidentally die because you didn't tell the other person you give up quick enough.

 

These are interesting aspects really... not every duel / fight ends up with someone dying. This could lead into capturing your enemies, perhaps selling people you've knocked out, to a slave trader