Telnet vs Telnet fights are fun.

...if you have more passive effects.

He was complaining about having to take time to diagnose and cure afflictions. That's a system issue that could be easily rectified. And the dropping like a fly can be partially remedied by levels, along with karma blessings and the like.

You really can't complain if you're a non-dedicated fighter and you get dropped like a bad habit.

But yes, I'll agree that Rune is awesome. Especially in village defence. I used to alternate stupidity and rad runes in Estelbar when Alger used to raid, so he'd be getting flung into totems with an extra passive stupidity. He never stuck around too often when I had it demesned, and it makes it practically impossible to steal furrikin when you're stuck in a pinball machine.

Don't worry.
If i wouldnt like to die i wouldnt go there.

It was fun.
Just typing clot every time you want to clot is just crazy, i was bleeding for 700 there in few seconds.

You cant imagine how good bleeding is if you dont have system

I've almost died a few times because warriors took one swing at me and scalped or sliced my gut.

How would you take 3 decent fighters: one warrior trying to brainbash you, one mage staffcasting or mindblasting you, one guardian masked afflicting you in one turn and still use smudge regularly?

Your reasoning is just theories but its hard to put into action.

Lets say the fight is 3v3.

Paladin, Aquamancer, Celestine vs Serenguard, Harstone, Moondancer

Hartstone drops the smudge and all three Celestians target him.
The warrior, who is going for the head is simple - parry head and stance legs. That does a pretty good number on that tactic.
Mage fires off a staff or mindblast - you touch your medicine bag, eat a sparkleberry, and read the scroll.
Also, if the Seren are the defenders, they should also have a StagTotem summoned, which would also take care of the Celestine's masked afflictions.
If you were attacking, you could have set it up before dropping the smudge, and even if you didn't, how exactly does a Celestine deliver fully masked afflictions? They get Tarot, Astrology, and Healing.. none of which are 100% masked if you know what you're up against. And Angel attacks are also discernable with experience. Or am I blanking on something due to the fact that its 2am?

And to further finish the fight, if you've got a Moon Serenguard, both the Serenguard and the Moondancer and use waning to aeon the Paladin and Aquamancer, thus negating all the damage being dealt to you until the smudge fires, causing massive bleeding and thus draining there mana, at which point both can begin to lash and prepare the Moondancer for a toadcurse. Or, if you used valley, it fires and the group is torn apart, allowing you to clean up.

Obviously, its based on "theory", but in response to the scenario you gave, it would actually be pretty easy to survive a couple rounds if you were a High Elfen Hartstoner.

There is no way I would ever defend on telnet. I would just quit if combat came up.

Props, Ekard, But you're totally insane.

EDIT: Man, reminds me of that time Eiru jumped Laysus on Astral, I astroglided up and ported in to help, we almost scared Eiru off, I lost connection and came back on telnet, Laysus died to Eiru in the meantime, Eiru noticed I'd lost connection and just left () and...

I almost got pwned by the demon and nil grim ANYWAY.

Your theory is based on 1) an incompetent warrior, 2) a defensive position with feats up and running, 3) a Celestine who either doesn't have Tarot or has no idea how smudges work , 4) all six combatants staying in one room--with a smudge and totem, the Celestine should correct that. I think you're also overestimating the power of the desert smudge. It's not something that's going to drain away mana at an appreciable rate. It's a nice touch in combination with other bleeding abilities, but if they want the druid dead, the druid will die if caught out-of-demesne.

If the warrior opens the fight with jabs at the head, he's a noob. It probably would look like this:

The warrior lunges at the legs and pinlegs in 2-3 hits or crushes the legs and knockdowns in 1-2 hits, other people totally destroy the Hartstoner.

Warriors are useless when it gets to stopping enemy from running away, but they're great at hindering in group combat if the enemy's not trying to run away.

1) If its not the exact opening of the fight when it happens, you might not get crushes to the head. Especially if you've still got 2 more opponents to fight.

2) Actually, the only part that relied on a defensive position was the StagTotem, which can be summoned on the spot. And that wasn't a requirement. It was something that "maybe." and "it would be nice"

3) Tarot is 100% masked, but its also incredibly limited in what it can deal out. A good fighter/system should be able to figure out what happened fairly quickly.

4) The druid could set up the totem in the room they enter. Not only that, but I said that even if you didn't have the totem up, its possible. The totem was not a necessity, just a niceity. As for Desert smudge, it can stack, what, 300 bleeding? Land a couple of those, mixed with cudgels and lashes.. and your mana is going to be severely lacking pretty quickly.

I'm wasn't putting it up as a definitive defense. I don't know why you guys are treating it like that. He said he couldn't survive 3 rounds against 3 attackers doing those specific things (they were his choices, not mine) and I was simply showing how said things could be protected against in a single situation. Nothing more, nothing less.

Smudges take a while to fire... so stacking them is a waste of time... by the time the second desert fires, the bleeding from the first is gone.

Next, the argument that desert can have the bleeding stacks is true, if you are hitting one target... If the Tarot user Aeon's the druid... then his healing is disrupted, and sucks to be druid...

This translates to one smudge, which oh noes, desert blinds and while it causes major bleeding, anyone with kingdom, clot, and can sip health (don't need sparkles or scroll for bleeding) is fine. Bleeding only hurts when it gets stacked up. (Which is why Thornlash got nerfed into non-usefulness.. it was to good at this stacking.)

Forest: Oh noes... fire!
Valley: Oh noes, get thrown up into the air, and most come back to the exact same spot... this is actually one of the more useful ones as it drops them on head, and slows down an offense the most... but there is a chance of being flung into another room.
Swamp: Oh noes... what does it do?
Mountain: THis one can hurt... but still... easily cured and not very disuptive in the long run.

Smudges, while I love them... are not very useful. They are a great example fo an RP skill, but they need to fire a little faster, maybe gust of a percent chance of getting rid of them, and hit in trees, and a lot of us will stop whining... until something else gets nerfed, or renerfed, or doiuble nerfed... which being that smudges are a druids skill is very likely.

No offense Nementh, but you aren't exactly a combat expert. Smudges can be stacked such that they fire about every 2-3 seconds (at least it was possible for Munsia as a Furrikin). This means 250 bleeding + blindness CONSTANTLY. If you think about this group tactic wise, that's a lot of mana to be burning clotting, which means Guardians/Wiccans have an easy setup for killing.

Smudges also can hit up to three targets (I believe), which means you can more or less keep up to 3 targets blinded constantly and bleeding like crazy. If you use valley, you can easily keep 3 people out of the fight by just keeping them in the air the whole time (valley is my favorite smudge).

I've seen smudges work well. The argument that consist of, "but I can't stack smudges because I can't heal aeon" is just not a valid argument... and really the root of your misery. It isn't any fun because you can't heal... if you could heal, those smudges would be far better.

Excuse me... do not mistake doesn't run down and beat everything that moves whenever he has a chance as not good at fighting. I never claimed to be the best, but I am quite good at healing aeon. However, aeon by its nature gives the other person time to recoup. So please. leave attacks of my abilities and such out of this.

Secondly, obviously you didn't look at what Munsia was doing, or you are making crap up. It takes about 8-9 seconds for a smusge to fire. If you START a new smudge while one is already burning, that smudge will NOT fire.

In otherwords, you can only use one smudge about every 10 seconds. Your 2-3 second thing is bullshit.

And my aeon example was not about messing smudges, it was about messing up healing. One or two seconds deley in healing with a mage, guardian, and warrior hiting you chances are means dead druid.

Well then they nerfed smudges at some point. Munsia used to be able to stack smudges. Or does it only restart if its the same type of smudge?

...no, no it isn't. You have to bundle the smudge, then burn it, then wait for it to fire, then bundle another one.

EDIT: Note to self, don't forget to hit submit.

Heh, this turned into "omg, they nerfed telepathy" into "omg smudges suck, and everyone knows how to fight like a pro"

Alger (if you can find him) can testify that smudges used to be stackable because I specifically remember a duel where Munsia killed him using nothing but desert.

This would be the reason they were nerfed, more than likely.

Or bugged, since that's contrary to how the ABs have read since day one.

Well, I think smudges should be stackable if you burn different smudges. So.... you could just rotate through the set or something, which would be far more useful than it currently is but not as bad as desert hitting every 3 seconds.