I took the L when I made this character a Void Elf. So yes!
But I don’t think I can add much more than what has been said, losing can be just as fun if not more than winning sometimes.
It usually comes with the prize of character progression, since your character will always have to get over a loss, while a win you forget quickly about.
I think the rule of thumb is that if you’re willing to initiate a situation, you’re willing to have a reasonable chance at failing the thing that you initiated, whether that’s starting a fight, building a thing or threatening the stability of world peace.
In a situation where I wouldn’t want my character to take a loss, I would excuse myself from the situation before it starts when it’s thrust onto me. While organic development in random roleplay is amazing and fun, sometimes I like to have a little control about what situations develop my characters.
I feel like it’s easier to sell the idea of a character having great martial prowess if they get into fewer fights with other player characters, and that’s what I’ve been going for with Cathy.
I’ve seen something like this first-hand and it was excellent.
A few years ago I was sitting in Stormwind, minding my own business when it happened. Some guy in a master’s hat waltzed on over with his pal and spat out a wave of orange text into the chat. It was a huge, nine paragraph long macro that went into excruciating, gory detail about how my character was being eviscerated and had their soul energy taken. I was roleplaying as a character that invalidated most of the emote (Sister of Steel with stoneform, effectively. Couldn’t be cut effectively with a non-magical blade or something) so my response was pretty much pulling out the uno reverse card. They seemed surprised that I actually read it. Of course I did, I live for this.
The worst part of that pseudonovel shonen death macro was that they kept getting my character’s pronoun wrong!
I generally try to avoid IC fights. The main reason is lack of a clear set of rules, or established power levels, or even physics… For exampled, I would argue a warrior in full metal armor would be cooked to a crisp by any mage’s fire spell, and the fact mages are portrayed as so powerful in general seems to support that; on the other hand, someone playing a Warrior might argue their armor is enchanted or made of special metals to protect from just that, which also seems very justified; it’s not like most armor is simple steel.
I’m generally open to the idea of my character being overpowered or subdued by multiple assailants, or if surprised, that makes more sense. But I try to avoid one on one fights unless we establish some OOC rules for how to resolve them first; which means in spontaneous RPs they never happen.
I am curious about this TRP function that’s meant to help with this though, anyone use it?
In the end that’s a key thing about Traut in a combat situation. He is a considerably powerful warlock capable of inventing fearsome creations which fuse legion tech and fel magic with Goblin engineering and old Blackfuse technology. In a fight at a range or a fight between two spellcasters, Traut can and probably will manage to deflect a lot of attacks because naturally that’s what he’s good at.
His Succubus Hellissa is the one who handles fighting at close range, when she’s around she’s very good at distracting people from hitting Traut with her whip and her shadow magic; and although her frame is frail she’s very good at dodging around and predicting her opponents attack patterns.
However I think sometimes people are a bit surprised that if Hellissa isn’t around and they go straight up to Traut and start wailing on him with their blade, Traut will likely be able to block maybe one or two attacks out of sheer luck but ultimately he’s a slightly overweight scholar of a Goblin and it’s not hard to strike him down at close range. As you said, that surprise can also sometimes be shock, some people actually don’t expect Traut to get destroyed by them, especially if they’ve seen him fighting other spellcasters and being able to take them apart pretty easily. It shines a lot in events, too, I’ll automatically handicap my characters rolls if he’s attacked in melee range as I know he’s not really made for hand to hand fighting unless it’s a rare occurrence where he’s carrying his blade and focus instead of his staff.
I guess it’s just a matter of giving your character strengths and weaknesses, and I’m quite pleased that even in my guild I’ve seen people very good at melee combat getting blasted down by spells and marksmen understanding that they might be given a run for their money if they’re ambushed on their perch.
Absolutely not. As a scrawny engineer with expertise only in the field of explosives, a duel against someone either physically able or more potently equipped would be downright dumb. Bombs hardly do a duel anyhow, or atleast without endangering everyone in the valley at the same time.
the latter. Please treat medical and overall injury rp more seriously.
Talking out of it usually does it. If it doesn’t, hide behind the big comfortable wall of your comrades in hopes that it’s enough to fend off the big nasty brute looking for a brawl.
and finally; while not masochistically looking to get my rear beat nor actively looking for a fight, I’m quite fine with it. As long as the edgyillidarigrimwing 2.0 doesn’t wish to automatically decapitate me because I said his horns look silly.
While Arlux is a pretty uncannily powerful mage when it comes to sheer destructive powers, she’s often foiled by either overconfidence, or spending all her reserves too quickly, not to mention incompetence in melee combat. She’s weak to shadow magic due to how strained and overworked her mind is, and her mana addiction means she’s easily incapacitated by draining it.
That said, she tends to avoid random conflicts or brawls and doesn’t want to get in trouble by using offensive magics in inappropriate places, so she prefers to either talk people down, or, in the worst cases, poof out of sight 
I’m absolutely fine with taking a loss, it usually leads to more interesting RP and character reactions postfactum, but I hate when that goodwill is exploited by folk actively seeking brawls to raise their win tally, so I prefer any character conflict to be somewhat agreed upon and/or happen with people I’m on the same page with, tone and trust-wise.
Personally, I feel the issue with emote fighting isnt down to just knowing ones strengths or weaknesses, but the extent of those weaknesses. For example even in this post you have the mage archetypes explaining how in a ranged fight with magic they would “take them apart pretty easily” yet most likely destroyed close range - this is fine, however the issue starts when its two mages. You planned your character out to be an OP mage and bad with melee (Every mage does this, unless a spellblade) So the issue lies with when two spellcasters, are you willing to lose and admit one spell caster is better than the other?
This also works with Melee. You have those who think because they stayed awake through a john wick movie they become masters of the martial arts OOC, and portray that through their emotes which most of the times end up in a far to over the top anime scene. What happens when two people like this fight. Its okay to say, “He is a good mage and a bad swordsman” - the question is how good a mage, and how bad a swordsman are we talking. Defining the strengths and weaknesses will result in a better outcome in my personal opinion.
Furthermore, in order to define the strengths and weaknesses means the player will have to put more research into what his character can and can not do, resulting in a better understand for each OOC player of what their IC character is actually capable of.
I always think about two things if I for some reason end up in a 1v1 fight IC. First I think about “Which option is logical?” which is is pretty straight forward. Like if I am facing up against a 90 year old hobo with no eyes or legs, I am probably going to win.
But if the fight is more even than that I always think “Which option would be more interesting?”. Because sometimes losing can be more intriguing for a character than winning.
That’s the inherent issue with emote fights, isn’t it? There’s no single, objective scale of power in the numberless “system” of emote fights. It’s good to have specific strengths and weaknesses defined, but you also should take care to communicate them cleverly through the character’s design / appearance / demeanor, or it can feel jarring and contrived for your opponent. And for two opponents of theoretically equal power it all comes down to goodwill (we omit roll combat here, which is its own can of worms), and I think that particular decisionmaking is interesting and different for everyone.
If it’s a random/unplanned fight, I find myself being more agreeable with losses if I communicated with the opponent before (OOC or long-term IC), or had a previous fight that my character won. In a nutshell, “would this person also agree to a loss, or would they continue pushing for their win no matter what” greatly affects my decision. Not saying it’s essentially good, just the way it is for me.
(PRO TIP: coming up with a simple, yet functional roll combat system in your guild / group will make for both more exciting fights, fleshed-out character strengths and weaknesses, and more agreeableness and cooperation on the outcomes! ;P)
TBH, I find rolling eliminates character weakness and strengths, because no matter how good the system, the fight still depends more on Luck than anything else, and luck is a minimal factor to a trained fighter, more so ‘fantasy’ warriors. Even if the rolls are fully in a characters favor in terms of how the system is made, a giant tauren warrior could be beat in a arm wrestle by a murloc with rolls. Which to some might sound interesting, but to me robs the immersion and progression of a character. Emote fighting is a way in my opinion to express what your character has gained and or learned through events and casual RP. So to rid them of this by chalking it down to luck is a bit iffy, in my opinion.
Ofcourse, I believe this only for a 1v1 or at most 3v3 fight. Events that hold multiple character I think rolling is a good idea. Purely on an OOC basis of it keeps the flow of the event at a good pace, the GM not having to specifically answer to each persons emote as the roll determines failure or success.
Yeah I’ve lost fights before. It is just not fun for me, to be some allmighty god that can’t lose no matter what.
Losing a fight can be more fun in RP than winning at times.
This is definetely interesting topic.
Personaly I don’t mind that much for winning in some sparring or duels even if it feels nice to win. I try to focus more on the rp itself than who wins or lose (unless life of my character depends on it). I have bumped in so many people that just outright emote to win and it got tiresome so often I just go with rolls, it helps to decide without worry of it being unfair. I know it is not perfect solution as you sometimes end up with ridiculous outcomes but it has been the best way to deal with overly poweremoting people. I always likes rp that occured after the fight or before fight itself and as long as it brings good rp I don’t mind lossing in the slightest, or take lose just to unfold stories.
Is it good to win on occassion? Yes, it would be nice for characters to have a reason to back up all their stutter and swagger.
Is it more fun to watch my haughty, self-righteous, angery Elf get smacked when she’s clearly out-classed, out-matched and underprepared? HECK YEAH IT IS.
Take for an example, her current non-Sisterhood teacher. She called his tea, and I quote, “Terrible Pisswater.” Summarily, being a now depowered and ill-prepared spellblade, she got whomped into the ground like an idiot. However, in doing so, she and her new tutor approached each other from a place of neutral ground. Getting thrashed cooled off her raging temperament and opened up the option to her getting trained.
However, consequently, when she WASN’T depowered, she was unsettleable. Why would she need to be, when she can kill you with a spell? Conflict is good, and fighting is the most DIRECT method of it, but sometimes it’s easier to subvert that conflict with one of ideals instead.
I’m sorry… what? Non-sisterhood teacher? What is this treachery?
I have a general rule that says that I won’t engage in that sort of RP, or preferably any RP, if I don’t trust the person on the other side is willing to go as far as I’m willing to. As frankly it just creates an imbalance and so easily leads to arguments etc.
So no I don’t go into conflicts with the aim to ‘win’, I go into them with the aim to tell a story – good or bad it’s a story. My character recently took a massive lose that actually cost her a position because the story, and the characters within its reactions and handling of the fallout were far, far more important then some nebulous ‘win’. Though that does now put her in an awkward position where anything I have her do outside of one route betrays her character, but that’s neither here nor there.
What creates more/interesting rp? Drawn out big ol’ brawls or the post-beatdown rp?
The fallout, the post stuff. The actual fight itself is really just a series of /roll /e /roll /e or just /e /s /e /s /e – after years of that I don’t find it very interesting, however it does lead to the more interesting post fight stuff.
How do you prefer to settle physical conflicts IC?
As to settling them, in the OOC sense I’m happy to just emote if I trust the person, rolls if I don’t fully and if I don’t trust them at all I just don’t engage in it, simply won’t let it happen.
IC mith’cha prefers to just be blunt and hit the thing, though she often shows a remarkable amount of restraint given the above self imposed rules.
How willing are you to have your character lose ?
I’m very willing to lose. If the fight goes that way it goes that way, if it goes the other way it goes the other way. I don’t -care-.
I never take L’s.
Expect the time in that one IE, I gave you big L
…IEL?
…EIL?
It’s spelled “Eel”, dang it!
Taking it can be fun, provided its not too excessive.
‘Roleplaying’ to win isn’t roleplay. It just turns into competition.
But no this character is an invincible divine being nothing can land a scratch on Lyn she’s too flexible :kappa:
no, but my character does
the fighting, injury rp is boring
usually just free emoting no rolls but if someone starts to bs me i just bs them back easily
if its fair, believable (aka their char is stronger than mine or has some sort of upperhand due to circumstance) and i think the other player received probably as many hits as they dished out, like i said previously, if someone is taking me for a mongoose i’ll just start doing it back in a really powerful trolling attempt
Not personally no, but my characters generally do. This doesn’t mean that victory is realistic or even possible for them to achieve, but they will generally make a solid attempt regardless.
It honestly depends on the situation and the people I’m RPing with at the time. I’m actually having a hard time conveying my sentiment on this, but it comes down to chemistry in writing and expectations. Fighting can absolutely be the highlight to me, but so can the post-fight RP. On average I’d say the latter is more often the case than the former (to me at least), but there’s really no definite answer either way.
So it boils down to mood, chemistry, expectations and the writing of those involved - which sounds complex, but is something I believe most 'Dawners can probably relate to from experience.
I tend to prefer free-form emotes or /rolls when called for during events, and a combination of either is usually my go-to method. It’s also tied fairly closely to context, as the IC odds are sometimes too uneven for /rolls to make much sense - at least absent a modifier to account for those odds.
I’m not a huge fan of unrestricted PvP as a tool in this regard, as it has no bearing on the IC circumstance so much as an OOC skill level, which is an awkward overlap to my mind.
Quite willing, and Vakosh here has lost several fights so far - usually to his mate. #JustOrcThings
I am less inclined to have my character take an IC fall if someone begins to emote on behalf of my character. Thankfully I haven’t experienced either for a long time, but one particular incident still haunts me whenever this topic is brought up.
tl;dr version is that rolling a flat 100 was, the other party insisted, perfectly good grounds for them to assume control of how my character did/didn’t behave during those stages of the confrontation - through the by far longest emote I have yet seen.
Thankfully, by far most players approach this in a mature manner, which is also why I generally don’t shy away from IC fights as much as I did years ago.