Hey everyone. Just brainstorming here a bit and wanted some feedback...

What would you think about allowing hangback to work as follows?

- Selectable ranges (pole-range versus missile)
- Auto-retreat every few seconds to maintain this distance
- No RT
- The fatigue hit per retreat would be nominal, really just to prevent exhausted people from using it.
- There is a skillcheck involved with each retreat to succeed.
- If your athletics is on par with the enemy skill, you'd generally do well (>70% success).
- If a player or boss monster engages with you, Hangback would break and force use of RETREAT as normal.

This essentially lets you hunt at-level, without being at melee the entire time. You would occasionally critical fail the hangback, and be unable to retreat for a few seconds (cooldown, not RT) allowing the enemies a chance to hit you. But then it would pulse and you'd re-position yourself once more.

With a mechanic like this PvP is not affected, and ranged users that have become used to staying entirely at ranged, can now fight mostly from ranged. You'll still get attacked occasionally, which is not a bad thing. But it prevents retreat SPAM and allows players to avoid the penalty associated with it.

It also opens up POLE ranged combat for people with pole ranged weapons. Again, you won't be able to stay at pole-ranged indefinately. But it will make those weapons much more appealing, especially when fighting hordes of enemies.

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

That sounds really cool -- So the offensive penalty associated with RETREAT wouldn't be applicable to hangback, as hangback is tailored to PvE. I like it!

Question, would HANGBACK train the Athletics skill?

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg

>- The fatigue hit per retreat would be nominal, really just to prevent exhausted people from using it.

I'd suggest you would automatically HANGBACK STOP when hitting a certain fatigue level (exhausted). This is generally what gets you killed. Okay granted, its the RT in the current vers. that gets you killed, but still...

I like this idea a lot.

>>Kodius's hangback idea

Love it.

>>I like this idea too. Any chance of tying it in to tactics instead of or in addition to athletics?

This makes a lot of sense. I think the attacker and defender should use the higher of the two skills.

Looks good to me. I like the idea of the Tactics skill playing a part in it.

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Individuals, families, countries, continents are destroyed at the heavy hand of Vinjince.

-GM Abasha

I like it, I like it a lot.

I'm cool with Tactics playing a roll.

I'd like something down the line, maybe as some type of pole-arm weapon feat that allowed a player to press back people into polearm range (not that I'm a big Pole-arm user, but its something I see a polearm weapon expert being rather adapt at keeping an opponent at distance from him). This is in regards to fighting PvP and Monster (and is also just something I wanted to throw out there for back of the mind, things to add to lists for after 3.0 being released).

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

Since it takes 7 seconds to advance from missile to pole, but only 3 seconds to get from pole to melee, that means that someone using hangback to stay at pole is going to be making a skill check over twice as often as someone using it to stay at missile. So if the check is the same for staying at missile and staying at pole, this means the inevitable snake-eyes which keeps you temporarily at melee will be coming up over twice as often for pole users.

Since I don't think there's any reason why staying at pole should be harder than staying at missile (and in fact, I can think of a bunch of reasons it should be easier), I hope the check difficulty is adjusted to compensate for this. Basically, the check for staying at pole should be easier than the check for staying at missile.

>Not really, I don't see how it would take a master strategist to keep your distance from something.

Current tactics moves (circle, weave, etc.) are about positioning yourself vs. your opponent. Hangback is the same thing - positioning yourself and moving so that you stay at a distance.

>Since I don't think there's any reason why staying at pole should be harder than staying at missile (and in fact, I can think of a bunch of reasons it should be easier)

Really? I think it would be harder to keep 4 enemies between 5-8 feet away than 20-40+ feet away. I can see there being a bigger fatigue hit for hangback missile than hangback pole, though.

Tactics makes WAY more sense for a hangback skillcheck than Athletics. I suppose having a combo check isn't bad, but pure tactics definitely makes more sense. I'd probably vote for a combo check of Tactics + Evasion over anything

On a related note, I don't see why Athletics would be trained by breaking armadillo webs instead of having this contest and train Evasion.

Is it really the intended design for Athletics to just be a skill that is automatically learned passively by being in combat hanging back and breaking webs, allowing everyone to climb and swim everything in the game? That really doesn't make sense to me.

Apu
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http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Apu

>>It doesn't make sense that origami experience now makes a character a master weapon forger either, but eh.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that origami will no longer help forge weapons after 3.0? Confirm/deny?

You can't use "well other stupid stuff used to exist but was eliminated because it made no sense" as the justification for introducing NEW stupid stuff that makes no sense.

Apu
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http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Apu

<<
Top Tier
Thieves (Survival Primary + Lore Secondary)
Empaths (Lore Primary + Survival Secondary)
Necromancers (Survival Primary + Lore Secondary)

Middle Tier
Rangers (Survival Primary + Lore Tertiary)
Moon Mages (Survival Secondary + Lore Secondary)
Bards (Lore Primary + Survival Tertiary)
Traders (Lore Primary + Survival Tertiary)

Bottom Tier
Barbarians (Survival Secondary + Lore Tertiary)
Warrior Mages (Lore Secondary + Survival Tertiary)
Clerics (Lore Secondary + Survival Tertiary)
Paladins (Lore Secondary + Survival Tertiary)>>

This looks good to me. Given this is a PvE/Non-Boss thing this seems pretty well balanced.

TraderPro says "Hey that thing looks dangerous"
>
TraderPro begins to analyze a Zombie King
BarbarianMan says "So what?"
>
A Zombie King begins to advance on TraderPro
>
TraderPro exclaims "Oh no..its coming at me!"
>
TraderPro begins to throw platinum at a confused Zombie King while maintaining his distance
Zombie King stops to collect a platinum Kronar!
>
BarbarianMan sighs

<<Makes sense imo, Traders should be pretty good at running away scared>>

Only hangback is a function of engaged combat (albeit to a specific range), it's not flee.

I think there's room to argue that a whole bunch of skills could claim a piece of the calculation (evasion, tactics, armor, defending, athletics, melee mastery, missile mastery). I would prefer to keep the numbers within combat ranks, not something that is trained outside of combat (athletics).

Again, this isn't FLEE, the characters that should excel at maintaining specific ranges SHOULD be those heavily invested in COMBAT, not traders and necros.

I'd prefer a Melee mastery calc for maintaining pole ranged/with missile mastery used to determine missile range, used with Defending.

Barbs and Paladins should be the best at maintaining ranges IMO.

Excuse me if I find the image of a Barbarian backpedaling funny :P

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg

>>Why are people conflating "hangback", with flee, or retreat?

Because the main use of hangback is staying at Missile range, which will involve constantly retreating away from the advancing enemies.

You have a valid point when it comes to maintaining pole range, but for the main use of hanging back, it IS constant retreating.

Apu
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http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Apu

Bottom Tier
Barbarians (Survival Secondary + Lore Tertiary)

Ahh, this seems to be combat related. Why would barbarians be bottom tier? If we are, then there is something wrong on what is being taught and contended against. How abuot vs. parry?

______
Kertig Heart Magdar Bluefletch, Mechanical Lore Grand Master of M'Riss

>>It's constant retreating in name because of the mechanical limitations of the game (although I'm sure it will have a separate code than retreat).

No, it is not constant retreating "in name". It is actually constant retreating.

If someone is running at you and you want to keep the same distance between you and them, the only way to achieve this (excluding teleportation) is by running at the same speed in the opposite direction. This is known as retreating.

Apu
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http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Apu

<It feels a little off to me that Rangers haven't been mentioned as a guild that would often want to be at missile or pole ranged. Quite a few of them are bow primary.

Perhaps you missed my post a while back where I said that Rangers should be among the best, if not the best guild at maintaining distance. At least missle range that is.

At any rate this isn't a pvp ability or anything and its mostly meant to alleviate concerns with training range while hunting and such. I would assume since that is the case that maybe it should just go along with Defending since most people would probably have a good deal of defending, at least at level with that which they are hunting.