Deafness is really annoying.

I don't see that there's any need for this to be the case. You can cure it reflexively fairly easily, but if you don't, or if you're too young to know how (and get it from seagulls and whatnot) it can be really irritating since it's a pain to notice and you miss SOO many things. I can understand that there might be a need to make it more than just a def against barghests, but the way it blocks so many important modes of communication is unnecessary. In combat you can always cure it quickly enough not to miss anything, so the only issue is when people forget/don't know how, and then it's totally irritating.

Is there something else this affliction can do?

Lipread ftw.

Won't work for novices, of course... but useful otherwise... and I might add that it's super easy to cure... health-to-head,myrtle,faeleaf....

Lipread doesn't work on channels, and yes, it doesn't work on young people, and it's sometimes hard to tell if they're ignoring you or whatnot. I can't really see any need to keep it this way so I think it should be changed to avoid that sort of irritating scenario.

Some channels already go through deafness, or at least they used to. GNT and NEWBIE both should, if they don't already. I don't see any problems with limiting their ability to hear other channels and tells.

Make grace of innocence protect against deafness then?

In my experience, few novices find their way somewhere where they can end up deaf. The deaf problems are usually with near-novices, who should know better... and will pick up on the MSGs being sent them/clan-tells and cure themselves.

When you're deaf, you don't get a notice about receiving a message.

Interesting. I didn't know that.

How about, just remove it as an affliction. Change it so that it doesn't stop communications except for says, and other than that, it becomes a defense like insomnia?

Bards still need it for that sort of thing, but yeah...I think it should just not stop channels. In that respect it's a lot like the gold-dropping thing; you can say it's realistic, but it doesn't add to the game in any way. It's not even like some kind of challenge you have to contend with - it's just annoying.

I'd argue the realistic thing, actually. Private aethers / public aethers aren't actually going into your ears, they are more of a mental hearing-- having your eardrums burst probably shouldn't affect channels at all. Now, if the deafness was more something that stopped you from being able to decipher any form of external communication, sure-- but not all deafness is like that. (Like the seagulls in Toronada-- their caw doesn't destroy part of your mind, just your eardrums)

It wasn't instituted to be realistic, afaik-- it was instituted to make the deafness affliction mean something and not be a defence.

I think deafness should be like stun. You can't be made permanently deaf, but you can have your hearing damaged for a short time, after which it wears off naturally. Say about 10-15 seconds.

Oh, and then dominate/barghest can have a different counter. *nod me*

I suggest doing it as it was proposed before, that when you're deaf and someone's saying something you get a message; something along the lines of "Mrnoob opens his mouth but you do not hear anything", which would obviously point to you that you're deaf. A similiar thing could work for channels.

What about if you were deaf you just got a notice when people sent you tells or say things but not actually hear what they say until they cure it.

That seems reasonable. I remember a while ago when they changed amnesia to give a message sometimes to prevent n00b frustration when they had concussions.

This removes some of the nuisance, without watering down its actual effects.

deafness is a vital defence ... for married men ...

I like to consider insomnia as what I'd like deafness to be. It is both an affliction, and a defense at the same time. Insomnia stops you from sleeping when you want to (which is annoying), and when you don't want to (which is good).

Why not do the same for deafness? You can't hear what is spoken (which is annoying), but defends against bards/barghest/dominate (which is good).

Deafness is not SUPPOSED to be a good defense against bards. They want to make it MORE of an affliction, not less of one.

If Deafness is watered down, we really need to just totally scrap it. It is supposed to be an affliction, not a defense. Of course, then Bards came out and royally screwed that idea, but we can deal with that. I like the idea of just giving a message when someone says something that you can't hear. In exchange, remove 'd' (and 'b' and 'k' for that matter) from the prompt, so it's not one of the absolute easiest afflictions to detect.

With the advent of bards, it was intended to become a defence with downsides once again-- it actually *is* intended to be a good defence against bards. Bard envoys have been working on reducing its defence value, but they have the constraint that music can never, never be heard while deaf.

Actually, we've been told that deafness is supposed to be an affliction you really don't want to have and not something you think of an an essential defence, but as a side note, it is also supposed to defend against 100% of bardic skills and always will. Reconciling this discrepency is very difficult for the envoys