Group Combat

[Lolok Frozencrow]

I got to thinking on how this is supposed to be a "group" mud and how solo exp and stuff was for when you could not get groups etc...But the solo exp from level 1-30 is so good.

Idea #1 adding exp for in group combat.this would make sense because it would be a lot harder to fight in a group of people and manage not to smack them or have a bolt of lightning not hit them. I am not a coder and have no idea how this would work , but maybe it could give you say a dice roll of exp every rl hour of grouped combat.

Idea #2 Have a new skill "group combat" and have it increase while in group combat and as it raises it would increase the dice roll of your "group combat" exp.

Idea #3 The "group combat" skill could also give you bonus hit or dam rolls while in group combat. or if you are a "support" class it could give you higher success rate in another skill.

These ideas are not perfect and might require some modifications , but I think they would make a good topic for discussion.
Problems I see would be the fact that at high levels , most of the non-hitter classes don't actually assist in combat but cast without assisting.
Maybe it could make a check off of the split of exp at kill time and divide the "group combat" exp up at the same time. It could also increase as the amount of people in the group increases(harder not to hit someone when 11 people are in the group then when only 3 people are in the group).

To me another way to get exp here is a good thing. For some players at mid levels it is frustrating being in a group for say 2 hours and not getting as much exp as you could while solo.

these are just my random thoughts , add to them if you will

L L K

[kiryan]

On exp:
wouldnt it be alot simpler and easy to balance and accomplish the same thing if it was just a multiplier or a table of multipliers? like 2 people = 30% bonus exp, 3 people = 45% bonus exp, 4 people 100%?

on group combat skill:
Your group combat skill is interesting, but I'd see it being a warrior/subclass skill adding hit/dam cumulative with other warriors/ranger/paladin/anti/bard/bc in the group. I dont think rogues should get it (though everyone in the group would be affected by it). I going to stereotype rogues and say that they work alone. Bards and BCs should get the highest overall bonuses, warriors get hitroll damroll and ac, Paladins hitroll and ac, antis damroll and ac, rangers hitroll and damroll.

While your logical approach makes sense for everyone to have the skill and it being very important to have a coordinated attack, each persons skill would have to be so minute that it would be inconsequential unless you were in a 15 man group. Giving it to warriors/subclasses could make zoning groups heavy in melee possible again while at the same time giving smaller groups some benefit from the skill.

Making it apply to skill failure rates is going to be pretty tough since some skills are supposed to fail often and others always succeed (bash vs dodge vs garrote... do you really want !fail garrote or to improve existing tanking ability?). Not only that skill failure is kinda hard to quantify, hit and dam and ac would be much more visible and easier to balance. Improved rescue or decreased switch would also make sense but hit/dam and ac would be nice enough.

Im not so sure it should be a skill or an innate, or just a always active class feature. It should only confer bonuses to those that are in the room. You could take race into account to add flavor. The skill could work backwards in other words at lower level the skill is more effective (bigger bonuses) and at higher levels the skill awards smaller bonuses. The reasoning for this is that novices have more to gain from organization where as experts though more skilled, are also facing highly skilled opponents.

This addition will allow newbies to gain stats that generally only eq can provide as well as foster grouping (especially if the skill confers its highest bonuses at low levels). If it was introduced as a backwards skill, you would start out with nice hit/dam/ac and have to slowly supplment it with eq as you level. It could introduce some variety to group composition in that maybe melee heavy groups could be viable again.