They say the Winter Court plays at archery for fun. But in the Conclave, your skill with the bow could mean the difference between food on your plate and a hungry belly...
On this page, you'll learn more about using ranged weapons and attacks outside of MCombat.
The @ranged system controls all kinds of projectile attack abilities, including:
This system is not a fighting system as such - it's a way to handle a single ranged attack and determine the outcome. It functions around a consent check - you can never inflict a coded wound or death on another character in Castle Marrach without some kind of check enacted, or action taken by the target character to allow or cause that injury.
In Castle Marrach you must always give consent in order for your character to be wounded or killed. This is often done by using the @wound command, or through implied consent by taking certain actions on your character that suggest the risk of injury or death, e.g., engaging in combat or tampering with trapped doors in dangerous areas of the castle.
For @ranged combat this is no different. While @ranged and its associated commands are not a full combat system, what they aim to do is create a specially coded consent system that allows another player to attempt to attack and wound or kill your character outside of those combat systems. For example, Duel 2.0 is not designed for situations where ranged abilities are being used - the core of that system assumes two characters standing within striking distance at all times trying to hit one another, whereas the key component to any ranged fighting style is to remain outside of your opponent's striking distance in order to stay alive.
And so we have @ranged. When a character attempts to attack your character with any ranged attack ability, you will receive a notification on your screen and be prompted to enter one of several responses before that attack is permitted to take place. This check is always in place save for a couple rare exceptions. This check is separate from your @consent lists and will take place regardless of whether someone is on your @consent list or if you have @consent allow all enabled.
Use of the command @ranged will allow you to choose how you wish to defend against this attack - if you want to defend against it at all - as well as whether out-of-character you wish to permit or deny consent for this attack to be used against your character at all. The following options are enabled through @ranged:
Both @throw and @shoot function in the same manner, allowing you to initiate an attack against a target by prompting them to consent to the attack via @ranged (above).
All properly coded weapons should be recognized by @throw. The stats and variables associated with that @throw attempt will be determined by what kind of weapon it is (see attack balancing and comparisons below).
@shoot is used for bows and crossbows. These weapons must be loaded before firing, and can optionally be aimed at a target first, which grants an accuracy bonus over time.
Several categories of ranged attack exist within @ranged combat, and a number of traits are used to balance the pros and cons of different attack types, including attack speed, accuracy bonuses/penalties, wound level, and other special traits.
Archery covers bows and crossbows. While both of these weapons function similarly using the same commands, they roll from two different skills (bow skill or crossbow skill respectively) and both have different traits that affect what happens when you use them in combat.
To shoot a (cross)bow, use the command: @shoot my (cross)bow at [target]
Archery weapons have a unique trait that no other @ranged ability has: the ability to shoot through an exit into another room. A high enough skill level in your associated archery skill is required in order to do this, and an accuracy penalty is suffered when attempting it. The consent check through @ranged still applies here, so the victim will know out-of-character who they're being shot by when the @ranged consent message appears - this is not in-character knowledge unless there should be some way the victim knows for sure who fired an arrow at them, e.g., someone shot at your character through a dead-end exit and was the only one in that room.
To load a bow, use the command: load my (cross)bow with my [arrow/bolt]
Archery attacks are uniquely slow in that they are the only weapon that requires you to "load" it first - crossbow loading is drastically slower than loading regular bows. Bows require arrows and crossbows require bolts, their ammunition types are not interchangable. Numerous types of ammunition exists within these two categories however, both live and dummy ammo, but other possibilities may exist in a magic world: exploding dwarven crossbow bolts, venom-tipped arrows, who knows what you might find in Castle Marrach!
Ammunition is placed on the ground if the attack missed, or in the target's inventory if struck. You are expected not to keep firing and picking up the same arrow through the course of the same combat scene, as we assume the arrow is on the other side of the room after you shoot it. Some ammunition is destroyed entirely on use.
Throwing is the most readily accessible means of @ranged combat, because weapons are so widely available compared to bows, crossbows and magic attacks.
To throw an object, use the command: throw my [object] at [target]
Once you've thrown your object, your character will no longer have it: it will be on the ground near your target if it missed, or in their inventory if the attack hit. If a thrown weapon strikes an opponent and has a special effect that triggers when inflicting a wound (e.g., poisoning, magic enchantment), it will also trigger that react for @throw successful hits.
Any of the following weapons can be thrown:
In order to throw any wieldable weapon you require at least Novice (level 1) throwing skill. Throwing weapons are by default the least accurate ranged attack. However, using different kinds of throwing weapons can affect this:
In addition to the above, certain non-wieldable weapons designed specifically for throwing combat (such as alchemy grenades) can also be thrown. However no throwing skill is required to throw non-wieldable weapons designed for throwing like this.
Throwing attacks are the only attack type you can use while @charge'ing at an opponent. You can only throw one weapon each @charge attempt, per every 3 levels of the throwing skill you possess - so at level 3 throwing, you can throw and charge simultaneously; at level 6 throwing, you can use 2 throw attempts during a charge; at level 9, you can use 3. This simulates the equivalent of a bow's "load speed" or a spell's "cast speed". Regardless of skill level, there is always an accuracy penalty to using @throw while in the middle of an @charge.
It's difficult to sum up magic abilities the same way as throwing and archery, because they vary so wildly depending on the specific spell being used. No magic abilities have specific @commands coded from them; they all use whatever commands are required to trigger your spells. There are however some general traits that they all share in common.
Magic for @ranged combat exists in both offensive and defensive forms; don't assume that a magic wielder is relegated to using martial skills with @ranged 'dodge or @ranged 'block as their only means of defending themself from a ranged attack. Magic abilities, primarily sorcery, are balanced to be stronger than other ranged attacks - because that's essentially all the caster has to fight with. Once caught or disarmed, they cannot reasonably be expected to survive a duel or other means of melee combat the way an archer can drop his bow and take out a sword.
That is not to say, however, that a mage should be a one trick pony. Magic can be countered as well, and though there are very few examples of existing items or methods a non-magic-user can use to counteract a specific spell, the code exists for such objects to find their way in-game. Magic is much like a game of rock-paper-scissors on a larger scale, trying to find what methods counter what magic abilities. But it can be done!
All spells and magic abilities have an inherent 'cast speed', typically ranked as Slow, Normal, Fast or Immediate. The cast speed of a spell impacts its performance with @ranged in two significant ways:
1. It affects how much @charge distance is closed on you when casting a spell, something to bear in mind when an opponent is closing in.
2. When casting a spell or using an item with a coded magic effect, if you are currently being targeted by an @ranged attack when you do this, the attack will automatically be triggered and the speed of your spell or effect will be weighted against the speed of the projectile flying towards your character. If an ability's speed is 'Immediate', it will always trigger before the projectile, otherwise, there is a chance the projectile will land before you can finish casting your ability - if this happens, you will be struck and take a wound if applicable, and your ability's cast/effect will be interrupted and cancelled. All defensive spells and abilities intended for the purpose of defending against ranged attacks are set to Immediate speed to ensure they will always go off before the projectile reaches you (though that doesn't mean your defensive roll will succeed) but outside of that very few things are.
Charging allows close-range and long-distance combatants to conflict with each other with some form of system-determined outcome. Again, this is not a combat system so much as a simple command intended to simulate what happens when melee character engages in combat with a ranged character.
One of the chief obstacles with roleplaying fighting scenes in a text-based environment is that there is no effective way to determine distance. How long does it take my character to cross the courtyard to attack yours? How many arrows can you shoot in that time?
In reality it takes 2 seconds for my character to reach yours if I type stab X with my sword (2 seconds being the real-time delay between approaching an object and carrying out the verb you entered without already being in proximity) but in a text-based roleplaying environment we can't always use actual real world time to determine how long it takes to complete an action, because it takes more time for us to read or type something into text than it does to do or say it in real life. A coded real-world 10 second delay to load my bow with my arrow is an ineffective way to determine whether your character can reach my character before they shoot, because it penalizes you for actually roleplaying running across the room and taking time to type and roleplay that action as opposed to just typing stab X, which is considered poor form in any fight scene.
@charge attempts to address this conundrum. The command @charge allows you to have your character charge at another character. Using this command on another character sets you to a "list" of characters currently set to "charge at" that character. Whenever that character uses any ability recognized by @ranged combat, your character will "advance" towards the target, tracking distance from the target in what is called "distance points" (which can be checked at any time to see how far away everyone is).
What this does, in essence, is make ranged combat almost "turn based" - you CANNOT advance on your enemy without them using some kind of @ranged ability. This not only gives you time to roleplay out the scene, but it gives the ranged combatant the ability to control the "speed" of the scene, so that he or she has time to react and roleplay to everyone else's emits as well.
The amount by which you advance when a coded @ranged ability is used varies by the speed of that ability. This speed is determined by a script that detects and matches the amount of distance points to the real-time coded delay that ability requires to use it. For example, it takes 30 seconds to load a crossbow, that 30 seconds is reduced by an amount determined by your crossbow skill. If my final delay time to load a crossbow is 24 seconds, then loading my crossbow while being charged at will reduce my charger's distance by 24 distance points. So! The higher your ranged combat skills, the faster you prepare your attack, the less distance points people gain per ranged action, and thus the more shots you can fire before someone reaches you.
@charge recognizes the following abilities as a ranged ability (and will thus deduct distance points if these actions are taken):
So how does this end?
If a charging character is struck by any @ranged attack, even from someone they're not currently charging at, their @charge attempt ends. If they're still alive, they can get up and try to charge again, but their distance is reset and they have to race down the barrage of ranged attacks once more.
However, if the remaining distance between the ranged attacker and any of his charging opponents reaches 0, the charging character "catches" the ranged opponent and will tackle him or her to the ground, interrupting whatever ranged ability was being used, knock his/her ranged weapon from his/her hands, and end all current @charge attempts against him/her. If @charge was used with the injure parameter instead of the tackle parameter (see commands below) and the charging character is wielding a sharp weapon, a wound will additionally be inflicted on the ranged combatant when caught.
At this point the ranged combat portion of that scene is considered concluded. If the ranged combatant is still alive, he/she can roleplay continuing the struggle, either by getting up and engaging with a melee combat system or using some other trick up their sleeve to fight back if they have one.
The commands to use and manage charging are:
Like any other combat system, @charge expects both the attacker and defender actually wish to fight. Charging is not intended to be done against characters who are not using ranged attacks or used to simulate tackling fleeing characters (since you're never going to "advance" towards the target unless they use an attack).
Ranged attacks can be used while charging but they cannot be 'prepared', e.g., you cannot load or aim a ranged weapon, or cast a spell while charging at someone. You can throw a carried weapon while running at your target, however there are penalties and limitations to doing this.
