Combat, the Bad and the Ugly

By Patch with advice and examples from QBsuperstar03, Skallagrim and Lysander.

Presented by the RolePlayGateway Mentors Team

The Bad
The Bad consists of those who break the rules to win their fights, especially when losing. These are common trends that have been observed in combat.

Calling For Help
The Crime
Your character is losing! This is terrible! Your skill set doesn't top your opponents, your character is not on the same strength level and your weapons have been disabled or disarmed. Time to call in the help who has a different skill set, is stronger and has a bunch of new weapons. This is incredibly annoying, as any player who is winning a fight, and has done so fairly, does not want to suddenly have the situation reset by a new entrance.

To Avoid
State before a fight, IC or OOC, that you have backup and will call on it for help if the situation arises. It's much more fair to do so and will stop a lot of people from rolling their eyes at you as you 'call for backup'.

The Punishment
Next person to do this to me, faction or no, gets a face full of infinite dragons.


Forced Actions (Autohitting Plus)
The Crime
You're getting frustrated, so you force the action of your opponent! It's like an autohit, but worse. The example in my case was, Your character walks right past my character, as they were cloaked.That made me outright stop and stare, offended. How could you possibly know whether or not my character could tell you there? This also includes autohitting (as it is a forced action), but writing any thing that your opponents character does is a no go and out right offensive to the player.

To Avoid
Keep your cool! Don't autohit! Alternatively, say that they 'probably would', instead of 'absolutely did'. It's much more of a suggestion that such a thing occured then a direct forcing it to happen.

The Punishment
Next person to do this to me will be called out for an autohit. You have been warned.


Only One Way To Die
The Crime
Your character only has one specific way to die. All other forms of death just result in the body being reset. This is very limited thinking and just a way to keep your character alive forever, unless its something obvious like water. People who do it are just trying to keep their characters alive in a really dull fashion, which grates on peoples nerves if you start picking fights. Often goes hand in hand with Mary Sue's/Gary Stu's.

To Avoid
Don't do it! If you have only one way to die have it obvious, something that actually has an influence on their life and not just some obscure thing hidden in some far off location that you don't tell anyone about. Have it as a major problem for them rather then a convenience.

The Punishment
Next person to do this to me will have their characters soul locked in a stone casket dropped to the bottom of the ocean while their body is cryogenically frozen and launched into space.


One Round Instant Unstoppable Teleport
The Crime
The character has a teleport that can be used in one round that gaurantees them a transport to safety. You don't want to lose, and you know that this is a losing battle, so you have your character teleport in one turn to safety with no preparation time. This is utterly infuriating for a person, as they will fight to win and when you suddenly, in one turn, disappear without giving them a chance to intervene its just unfair to your opponent. Likewise, setting it up one turn and not having it able to be interrupted is just as bad. Double annoying if you do it to someone elses characters,

To Avoid
Have one round prep at least, for the love of all things good and fair, and have your teleport interruptable.

The Punishment
My Assassin character had a spell that would grab onto a teleporting persons shadow. It would feel like a needle was being inserted into them for every meter they moved away. Going more then a kilometer resulted in the shadow snapping in two, causing the victims body to tear in two likewise. The body could be re-attached, but the Assassin was keeping their shadow half for his own purposes. This is how much I hate this.


Science Breakers
The Crime
Physics! It works despite how much magic you use! Know that there 'are' limits to physics, like a maximum negative temperature, and what conducts electricity. Surprisingly, water isn't that great a conductor. Sound is actually a deadly killer and move faster through solids then liquids, and through liquids faster then air. The Umbra is a part of the shadow that light does not reach. Black holes are a field of massive gravity. Stars are only powerful based off their size and heat.

To Avoid
Do your research, or state that it is strictly your magic causing the effect (for the stars gravity problem)

The Punishment
Being told off and being asked to either A. Never do it again and/or B. Inform those around you that science doesn't work that way, and that you were wrong.


Witholding Information (In a fair fight where information is meant to be shared)
The Crime
In a fight I once saw, one fighter graciously took a hit their character probably could have avoided to be fair, only for their opponent to inform them that their character would be dead in five minutes due to a fatal poison on the blade. There was no reference in their profile or in the chat log of the poison.

To Avoid
Label it in your profile.

The Punishment
The next person who does this will face the wrath of that attack/power or whatever being ignored. Especially those who I have repeatedly told to update their profiles so its not so obscure and vague.



The Ugly
These are combat exploits and broken tricks to help you win in T1 combat. These are completely unfair and I do not promote using them, but I had to have gotten them from somewhere. If anyone disproves these as exploits or has an exploit to suggest, then please PM me, or post a reply. Keep in mind, exploits are the legitimate cheaters. You're no better then the bad if you intentionally use these knowing what they are.

Gauranteed Dodge
A dodge that under no circumstances can be worked around or stopped, like an instant one round phase to a place where you can't be hit and phase back. (Ethereal phasing does not count as that only stops physical attacks).

Post Order Abuse
When fighting multiple opponents you'll usually find people cover for each other, protecting one-another from attacks. A way to get past this is to attack the person who posts immediately after you in the post order, forcing them to take the hit or come up with their own defence rather then having others step in to protect them.

Infinite Weapons
Having a blade of infinite sharpness will cut through anything. There is no protection from this other then moving away. Unless you have magical shielding, these swords will cut through any armour or other weapon. Likewise, infinite ammunition is wholly unfair.

Mid Fight Healing
In a fight a reasonable fighter will take damage, because its an inevitability. Some people counter act this attrition in combat by healing during the fight without any penalties, for example, having a convenient healing potion. Often it will reset the fighter, putting them back onto the top of their form no matter how much damage they previously took.

Note: Once called an opponent out on this who assured me it wouldn't have this affect, but did anyway. Was not amused.

Telepathy/Mind Reading/Prediction/Pre-Cognitives
Being able to tell what your opponent does before they do it is really unfair, as they will never be able to use something you're unprepared for. It's legitimate metagaming.

Obscure Language
Using intetionally confusing posts with hard to understand language and rampart amounts of purple prose to disguise what is going on is a cheap way to force your opponents into a trap. Usually the text is so vague that it is up to your opponents interpretation, which is inevitably wrong.

Time Manipulation
Like teleportation and mind reading, this is an unfair ability which allows the user to simply avoid attacks without effort, while throwing in several unblockable ones due to being able to manipulate the flow of time. This can be used fairly, but only in the sense where it is cast on yourself or your opponent (haste and slow respectively) and only when done by someone who knows what is and isn't fair. Time manipulation should never allow you to dodge bullets. Speaking of which...

Bullet Dodging/Moves as Fast as a Bullet (Walks the Line of Bad)
I did some quick maths. A bullet travels at over 60 meters a second. The average person is less then 2m tall, to give you perspective. The average person takes around 0.15-0.30 seconds to react to something. In that time, the bullet has already travelled 10-20 meters. As for moving as fast as a bullet, a car at 100 kilometers an hour (60 something miles per hour) only makes 4 meters a second. To travel as fast as a bullet you would have to be able to outrun a racing car.

Note: This is sometimes tier dependent (look at Saiyans for example) but as a general rule its a big no.



Things that Didn't Make the List

Instant Lose Moves
Attacks that result in an instant fight over without a chance for retalliation. In all fairness, an opponent can just evade said attacks, and if there's a trap based off of this system, then its good planning for the player.

Area Effects
Using massive and ongoing area effect attacks like changing the temperature to something drastic or generating a magnetic field can't be dodged and thus give an immediate combat advantage against most opponents, but these do not reach the level of unfair that others do.



Examples
Here's a delightful example from Skallagrim on people not understanding how science works.

In a rather absurd multiple combatant high tier fight I was involved in, the opponent I was directly engaged with decided to soar into a low Earth orbit to confront the other two fighters who were getting ready to duke it out betwixt Earth and the Moon. Now being a high tier fight I am fine with that, so I continue to prep my powers ramping up my levels so I can unleash a pretty powerful attack. In the very next post, after getting in the LEO, my original opponent decides to invoke an ability which...turns his character the size of the Earth.

That's right the size of the earth, in a low earth orbit. He was about 250 miles above the earth when this change occurred. The post detailed how after completing this massive change he turned his attention towards the other entities and decided to unleash some vortex type black hole power to “suck away” the incoming attacks.

At first I had to read the post several times, and so did the other two fighters. I believe we exchanged pms to make sure we all had read the same thing. Since it was my turn in the post order, I decided to write the event that occurred and how it would affect the earth. I unleashed my attack on the now planet-sized being, which he complained how could I have hit him. Yes he asked how I could have hit a creature the size of a planet.

After unleashing my attack I used various powers to protect myself as I described the ripping apart of the earth by having another massive gravitational body a mere 250 miles above the planet. The rising tides that washed over the coastal cities destroying them. The rending of the earth, the large black hole vortex that swirled in the upper atmosphere. You can see where I am going with this. In the end the Earth died rather quickly.

Anyway I get a PM from the person asking why I destroyed the earth. I explained that I didn't destroy the earth, he had when he changed and created a black hole above it. After a heated argument where he steadfastly claimed that he could change sizes and it would not affect the earth because he had seen it in an anime the fight ended.

Lysander gives us this clever story of how he beat someone who could teleport.

...I dealt with a guy who used instant transportation via psionic teleportation.

Guy was using it to run around, saying he was running so fast it was instant. So, I just traced the patterns, and the backtrail of his movements, up till the point my character adjusted to the speed, and then I just stuck out my foot as he ran by. Tripped him and he slid face-first for all of a hundred feet of glass-covered ground. Instant-win.