> > I think you are missing the general use of bashing and blinding by players - > it is (or should be) used to keep a MOB from casting spells at you and your > party during combat. As such, you run into exceptions - things that don't > have 'eyes', or which can't really be 'knocked down' by a human-sized > opponent. As MOB spellcasting needs to be "regulated" in some manner - MOBs > don't worry about mana, and in most code can do things that the 'help' says > they shouldn't - it needs also to have loopholes to just keep up the > 'realism' or the genre. Ok, here's my solution: (we have this imped): Mobs do keep track of mana when casting, bash requires that you have a shield held in your secondary hand, and you can still cast spells on yourself and whoever you're fighting when blinded. I believe all of these make sense. Plus, mobs don't wait two or three seconds to stand when bashed, and we take into account levels when you make your bash roll. > Sure, these flags could be left out, but most > flags can be called extraneous on one ground or another. Hell, the NICE_THIEF > flag might as well just be yanked - it's NEVER had a legitimate "justifiable" > use IMO. As far as I know, in the base code ONLY the Queen Spider in the dark > forest had this flag...and I don't even see the logic behind her having it. We've also made it impossible to steal from mobs that are much higher level than you (I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's some piecewise function). > [oh boy, now I'm off on a tangent!] Stealing objects from a mobs inventory > is easy enough as is - a 'machinegun' approach, as is often used with PICK, We require mana for almost all thief and fighter skills. No machine guns allowed, we're a medieval setting! ;-) > I believe (no, I don't KNOW :) what I'm trying to get across here is that > certain flags have more of a technical bearing on game play than others; I think what we have here is two different styles of fixing what we both see to be a problem. Things that you see as flags, I see more as coded fixes. (I think this goes for the MOB_MAGE and MOB_CLERIC flags as well... I see a much nicer (IMHO) coded fix rather than putting flags on mobs...) -Jeff PS - One other note for the "keeper of the list" - Is there any way to get people removed from the list who's email constantly bounces? I know I'm going to have two or three copies of this message sitting in my mailbox in a couple days...
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