Quest Digest 20/2/95

From: ">>-Josh->" <J.P.Gallagher@durham.ac.uk>

Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 12:36:12 +0000

____________________________________________________________________
|                                                                    |
|                          THE QUEST DIGEST                          |
|             The forum for the E-mailing Quest-players              |
|       Compiled by Josh Gallagher: J.P.Gallagher@durham.ac.uk       |
|                       Date: 20 February 1995                       |
|____________________________________________________________________|

o This is not an automatically generated compilation, so if all
  contributions could be sent to me in a seperate e-mail with paragraphs
  initialled, I would appreciate it a lot.
o Please do not use this list for your own purposes; people do not
  appreciate thousands of pieces of mail arriving a day!
o If you ever want taking off the list, just say, and I will be happy to
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  be used elsewhere without their permission.

JPG> Another Quest Digest for the masses...  Keep coming up with
suggestions for subjects to vote on.  Chris Dickson will produce a voting
form sometime soon :-) which I will mail out to all but Steven
Fairbrother (bit silly letting the programmer vote on what to put in).

JPG> In the meanwhile, here are the various points of discussion today...
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From: The Hamster <godfrey2@coventry.ac.uk>

Quest Helpline service.
This helpline is chaired a by a panel of experienced Quest players, who
will be available to answer any queries or solve any problems to do with
Quest. Send e-mail to <godfrey2@cov.ac.uk> and give "Quest help" as the
subject line. Contact me if you want to join the panel.
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Date: Sat, 18 Feb 1995 00:33:16 +0000
From: tyler@europa.lif.icnet.uk (David Tyler)
Subject: What I want to see in Quest (for Digest)

DT> I think I'm not alone in my top three things to see in Quest, but
here's my thoughts on the matter anyway:

DT> Number One: Horsies! I think it vital, however that horsies are
implemented not just as a means for those groups who can afford them to get
from A to B more rapidly; more realism is required. Horsies must be quite a
tasty treat for most Kharnian monsters, and should be susceptible to being
eaten or bolting in terror in Kreourse country. That would make the Track
order more useful.... Eaten horses could leave groups stranded miles from
anywhere. In addition to monsters eating your horses, what about hungry
adventurers, when rations run out? I imagine Dobbin would look pretty
tasty. And it's alright for adventurers to sleep under hedges, but secure
stabling in towns is rare and expensive.

DT> Secondly, a greater risk element should be introduced into thievery.
This I know won't be popular with a lot of groups, but my party of
Garthrana followers who never steal because it's wrong would approve
heartily. The fact that crime does indeed pay, and handsomely, rankles with
those of incorruptible moral fibre. Seriously, there should be no reward
without risk; this is a common principle in any other roleplaying game I've
ever played in. Botched W orders should have at least a chance of resulting
in fines, an enforced banishment from a town, or even a fight with the
guards.

DT> Thirdly, the much discussed hit and run tactics. There *are* realistic
ways of limiting the damage done by cowardly mages, some of which I shall
now outline. It has been claimed by many folks on this list that there is
nothing stopping mages firing spells off from a distance and pegging it....
well I can think of several. Firstly there's the time taken to cast the
spell. All that powder mixing, incanting, finger wiggling and whatever else
would certainly give the opposing fighters some time to close on the
dastardly wizards. Secondly, perhaps these spells hava a maximum range;
perhaps some of the spells should require that the mage get close enough to
actually sprinkle powders on his target? Thirdly, this business of multiple
engage orders (or attitude generated combats) in a single turn is absurd;
surely if one party is hanging around all day close enough to initiate half
a dozen or more fights they're going to have a bit of trouble staying out
of swords' reach all that time? I don't know if the Quest programs would
easily allow a result like "We met such and such a group and fought them
AGAIN and this time we couldn't get away even though we'd taken more damage
than we'd have liked so we had to stick around and mix it for a couple of
turns", but if P orders can be counted then I don't see whether fights
can't be. So I say, enforce a few (two or three) rounds of melee combat
before the initiator of combat is allowed to check their flee factor, and
it can be easily rationalised in one of a number of ways.

DT> That's what I want to see from KJC in the near future, anyway. That and
free beers in the post.
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From: maximus@iaehv.IAEhv.nl (Frank Maximus)
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 1995 01:11:31 +0100 (MET)

- Reading through the quest postings I saw some 'stupid things a player did'.
I want to add another.
After a nice battle, I got some hides. When I went back to the city, I too
wanteed to sell the hides in the city. But... due to one of my characters
was hurt heavely, my movement rate dropped. So, I didn't reach the city,
but had still the sell order (H 0 464) Which in the wildernis is a complete
other order. The hides became burried under the sand! But when I wanted to
get  them back the next round, the text on the turnsheet said something in
the way of I had no spade an shovel! (But after all, how did I burry it?)

- Question: In which kind of shop can I sell a jar? (I'm walking with it,
  but it seems to be useless! There even isn't a blurb from!)

- My party casted a double find treasure spell in the wildernis (almost out
of the wildernis. (Find treasure I casted by both mages)). I got 7! treasure-
locations. While I was on my way to a city, I walked over two of them. The
first was 5 GP, not worth the spell, but the 2nd location revealed me 11(!!)
pieces of powder 9. (Acidpaste) SURE the effort of the spells!
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Date: Sun, 19 Feb 1995 01:46:44 +0100
From: magnuz.aemp@medstroms.se (Magnus Cassersj\v)

> SA> Mages should not wear armour above leather...
>PN> aren't you getting a bit AD&Dist?

MC> Why AD&D? I sort of agree with Stefan, and if I don't recall totally
wrong in The fantasywork, Lord of the Rings, Gandalf never wore metalarmour,
though he did carry an elvensword... Still, this stuff about mages seems to
quite heavily debated in QD and to me it seems like all (or allmost all)
fantasygames suffer from the same problem; to start with mages are very weak
and don't do to much to help the party/group/team :) survive but as they
gain more spells/XPs they become the *real* slayers of the group. Perhaps
that is just The reson why they shouldn't be able to carry metalarmour, but
then again - we all know how sad it is to loose a good character, eh?

MC> Is there anyone out there who knows if a Mirror is effective against
monsters with a killing eye (like (I think) the basilisk)? I've tried to get
Andy (GM of Crasimofs Q) to reveal this but he would not... If it doesn't
help against such creatures, I certainly think it should do so!
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From: editor@elbon.demon.co.uk (Paul Noble)

> AH>Once a theif has reached 99sk does training raise his awareness like it
> used to raise his skill ?
PN> if the thief xp is over 300 then his awareness will go up by
three, this is the maximum, so if your thief is at 99 skill then
you'll have to waste 250gp on just awareness once he's got 300xp

> AH>How does thief skill raise awareness , for non-theif characters , is it
> like strength skill raises strength ?

PN> it works for any char with over 300xp.

> AH>What sort of flee % should be used to make a party stay through a magic
> barrage but not get totally kebabed in melee combat ?

PN> I'm not sure about this but 30% is what my groups normally
run on and everybody has run from me and I'm only throwing 4 CM
an acid blast and a poison cloud/ black void and I've never had
any group stick around for combat. One group that I fought which
received only 3 CMs and an acid blast had 1 killed in missile
and then ran off. I'd guess most players in a war zone don't go
for char kills otherwise they would stick around for longer.

> members that could be killed. I think a minimum of 4 characters alive for
> parties with less than 12 members would be all right, and 2/3 max of the
> number of characters on the group for parties with more than 12. So, a

PN> Nope I don't agree at all, if there was every a minimum char
lost in a battle it would always be the case that some loser
would run with the minimum lose number (4) and just strength
them to 200+ knowing full well that they can't be touched. A lot
of the problem is that at the mo some groups can't be killed,
The best solution would be for a situation in all games that a
group could be wiped out. The Aligned cities would solve so many
problems:- You want bother then you go to an evil city, you want
to be free from hurt then stay in a 'Good' city. Half the
trouble that I come across is that some new player will arrive
not knowing how hard a group can be and starts shouting and
mouthing off at enemies, not *ever* leaving the city so the
insulted can never get there own back, the present rules allow
and actually encourage asses to shout about themselves and they
can nevere be touched, 0% flee does this prefectly.

> Magic Armour(+1,+2,+3) should count somehow against magic...any comments??

Magic armour? not so much magic armour but particular items
which protect against magic attack, like an instant deflect
magic 23! The resurect Ring is supposed to stop deaths but the
only person I've talked to who had a ring of such never had him
killed to be resurrected.
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From: "C.H.E.B." <ctc@coventry.ac.uk>
To: Cyrille Blaise <Cyrille.Blaise@scinfo.u-nancy.fr>

CB> Question is (from a friend, so I don't have all the material at hand)

CC> You should see me doing Quest turns - it's like a paper factory exploded.

CB> He's exploring a dungeon...
CB> He found a room with a large chest,
CB> when he tries to enter the room/open the chest, (one of these I don't
CB> really know) a "fireball" appears and he's teleported in another room.

CC> Probably enter the room, in which case how did he find the chest.

CB> What can be done to avoid this trap ???
CB> (first thing was Deflect Magic 3, no success)

CC> Good question. I remember a friend of mine had the same problem. I
wonder if Reveal Traps (91 in KJC Quest 1-16) would work? Maybe.

JPG> I haven't encountered this before... anyone else any clues or
solutions? Bit of a nasty trap that one. :-) Sounds good... can we get
these installed in HQ's?
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Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 11:45:39 +0000 (GMT)
From: Allan Hooper <A.O.Hooper@herts.ac.uk>

> From: editor@elbon.demon.co.uk (Paul Noble)
> PN> Yep they certainly should but how to do it? Two fighter
> strikes per round is a bit over the top, perhaps the fighters
> should have more of an advantage

AH> Perhaps a reduction in all damage (melee and spells) would allow
melee to happen more and for longer . For example in a ruck via a S order
one of my parties fought another undamaged party - my weapon skills
were about as half as good as they are now - it lasted a mesly 4 rounds .
Also the next turn I got magic blasted which did more damage than the
entire of the last turns melee !
To make fighters better than other classes why not divide their skill by
10 and add it to their damage done ?

> PN> where is the warzone in G3, my 8 turn old 3 strong party
> fancies a rumble! =)

AH> Try going to Kemilworth with the words RegulatoR tatooed on your
forehead or alternatively Moriton and Blockboro <BEG> .

> PN> yeh, I think the 3rd opposite miricle should be excluded for
> +15 followers of the opposite Dog.

AH> I would like to see alot more emphasis on Gods and so would be more
extreme with limiting miracles .
 What I would like to see is - devoted followers of a God could get together
and do a mass ritual which would effect the whole of Kharne . The result
would appear on the Between Turns bit for all groups with something like
this:
	Black clouds covered the sun , lightning arcs across the sky ,
the heavens opened and it rained blood . It makes you feel very mortal .

AH> This could be the result of a Ythcal ritual and would give all devoted
followers an advantage in combat or to miracles or something.

> From: Rogerio Fung <l41186@alfa.ist.utl.pt>

AH> I agree with everything you said ! To me it makes sense that in an
open ended game you cant 'lose' .
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Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 12:10:02 +0000 (GMT)
From: "C.H.E.B." <ctc@coventry.ac.uk>

> BTH> It odd to think that my identity on the Internet originated from a
> subtle hint that I should go on a diet.

CC> Commentus nictus, commentus nictus.

> PN> whats wrong with teams? I get bored calling them groups and
> parties all the time.

CC> It sounds like something out of It's a Crime. I met a party the other
week called Scumbashers! Agghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

> PN> Bang outta line, all the characters should have the
> oppitunity (uh?) to shoot somebody in missile, and the bit about
> mages and priests not having a 1st round is out as well it would
> result in so many 1st round deaths it would be rediculous.

CC> Sometimes, I find my mages doing more work than my fighters. Maybe
it's because there's so few monsters compared to party members.

CC> Oh and MORE monsters. I know the map only shows up some, but who can be
bothered doing map wilderness all over the place to find more. And
dungeons are boring!

CC> Speaking of dungeons, I'm down one in G7 (not before time, I hear you
all
cry) and I did jaunt II 99 and it came back "You can only jaunt 0-12".
Fair enough, I was only testing the depth. So next turn I did Jaunt II
12. And spent 57 power points staying on level 1. The order was inputted
correctly. Any ideas??? It also appears from my Map Dungeon Level, that
there are no stairs down; but can I still Jaunt down to the lower levels?
I'm trying it this turn and I'll let you know Thurday/Friday what
happened. In the meantime, has anyone got any ideas?????

> > SA> Mages should not wear armour above leather...

CC> Great idea, if you like dead mages. Personally, I'd rather stuff them
into Ring. And +x armour once I can be bothered to go and buy some.

> PN> I think that if a TEAM was completely outgunned I think
> they'd realise before the magic was even exchanged and would run
> away before any conflict or exchange of blows. This way a total
> mage group would be frightened by a bunch of fighters waving
> axes, this I'm sure could be calculated from the group size and
> the toughness.

CC> Members aren't everything. A well developed younger group can easily
take on an older group which hasn't been pushed. And aren't you
forgetting the flee factor?

> PN> The healing IV I don't know about but perhaps certain races
> should be more suseptable to different castings and there should
> be items which repulse certain attacks.

CC> I have a magic ring which is a ring of invisibility. I think it
works, but part of me thinks it hasn't been programmed. Does anyone have
a list of what is/isn't programmed yet?

CC> On the bottom of the turnsheet there was an explanation about these
new specific/general attitudes. It said hostile to monsters would be a
general. But it's come up as specific on my turn. Was that an error on
the bottom of the turnsheet.

CC> Does anyone have any plans to do a Midlands meet in the near future?

> KH> There has been a lot of discussion on how to make the game more
> interesting for groups that have been playing 100 and more turns.
> As I'm far "younger", I'd like to see more hints for the beginning of
> the game. How DID you get so powerful?

CC> Have you read my FAQ, plug, plug ....

> KH> .. way to get spell powders is to hire a mage for 50 gold. He will

CC> If you can be bothered to hand them over. Personally, I'm lazy. And
correct me if I'm wrong, but when I first started I seem to remember
getting five of each reagent which the mage could cast, but now only get
three or so. I can steal enough cash to buy the reagents with the orders
used. But that was so long ago I can hardly remember.

CC> At Blackpool last year I met quite a lot of guys who had been playing
for around 15 turns or so. I couldn't believe how short their results
were! My group stats/equipment/spells take up about three pages!

> PN> I always find my more aware blood
> fighter is scoring more xp than my df, surely skill should count
> for more than awareness. I myself am getting pretty sick of
> finding out that awareness is the most important stat a
> character can have. PN>

CC> I'm not sure this is true. My thief doesn't do much fighting and
neither does my elf mage (second highest awareness in the group). But my
crappy HF do tend to go charging in leaving my 55+ sk DF's lumbering
behind. This holds true for all three of my active groups.

> PN> highest awareness casts first, but I've had less aware chars

CC> Interesting. I thought it was the order on your turns with modifications
made for the ASL.

> > AH> Just a quick note,
> > The recruiting restrictions for new parties go after turn 5 as I just
> > offered 1500gp's for an elf mage .
> PN> I recruited a 1001gp thief on turn 4

CC> You all hate me, don't you? Stop giving me conflicting advice. BTW
the FAQ is being delayed due to an inordinate amount of coursework. I
hate being a Law student.

> PN> Yeh this seems more realistic, every settlement wouldn't
> have their own resident magi mage, a say half the cities
> shouldn't half magic skill in them, G3 is a bit extreme, I know

CC> Brilliant! Then you get what you have now, older groups congruating
in the few cities which do sell magic skill and refusing to move to
another city in case it doesn't sell magic skill.

CC> BTW does anyone know if Grouther (4) [G7] has magic skill? Or
anywhere which does except Nolich, Jishir and the other one which escapes
me at the mo (Bakerson?).

> AH>Once a theif has reached 99sk does training raise his awareness like it
> used to raise his skill ?

CC> Dunno, can't be bothered to waste 250 gps :)

> AH>How does thief skill raise awareness , for non-theif characters , is it
> like strength skill raises strength ?

CC> Awareness goes up, but obviously skill doesn't. Personally I can only
see buying (614) for a non-thief if you have two members which are very
close awareness wise and perhaps you want to switch the lookout from one
mage to another.

> AH>What sort of flee % should be used to make a party stay through a magic
> barrage but not get totally kebabed in melee combat ?

CC> I used to use 35% and I lost about 280 health over a 15 member group.
I suspect the guy I beat was using 30%. I did a few sums and I think that
I lost just over 30% of my initial health (already down 40 hp at the
start). Some members weren't in great shape and I wouldn't have liked to
take them into combat again, but four healing miracles put everything
right. I guess it depends on how you define kebabed? DF from 70 health to
15? Or 70 health to 5?

> AH>I would say that offering the extra money in recruiting is always worth
> it as a way of saving in mage/strength/thief skills afterwards.

CC> I've had 48 sk EM and 55/56 sk DF's for 1072 or 1005 gps. Extra
money, yes, but there's no need to go overboard!

> RF>Just have some Ideas I would like to have a comment on..
>
> A nice improvement, as already told in here, was the following:
>  Hostile attitude-> Min Flee Factor 20%

CC> 20% is nothing. Make it 50/60% and I'm interested.

RF> Now, for Engage orders, every time you make one, your Flee Factor,
> it be increased to 15%, but if it was higher, then no problem...so, a
> Friendly or Neutral party would have the Flee factor increased to 15% in

CC> But what about Engaging monsters? That's hardly anti-social.

RF>  beginner party with 6 members could only lose (die) 2 members in one
> turn, but a 10 member party could lose max 6 characters, now if the party
> had 14, it would lose a max of 14*2/3=9(rounding up)and a 15 member party
> would lose a max of 10, leaving 5 (battered, probably) ... combats
> against party who had reached the limit would have the same effect as if
> the party had 0% FF, only that no spells or missile fire could be cast at
> the fleeing party...
> hostile attitude, or made engage orders) then all the blame was to the
> player, and more losses could still be taken...
> This idea needs more improvement, perhaps regarding to the min number of
> characters, but I think this to be a better alternative to the new no
> attack orders..
> a very good element of play:weaker parties get beaten by the bad powerful
> parties, and then the powerful good parties go rescue and avenge the weak
> ones!!!

CC> The simplist way would be to just set your flee factor, wouldn't it?
The above way would be hideously complex. And what if there are no powerful
good parties?

> RF> Another thing!!If presently, we can have as much as 10(20?-I dont
> know for sure) armor, why isnt there a Shild that acts against Magic?the
> way I see it, waht good is huge armor, if all it takes is a death spell,
> or fire Ball, or whatever to kill you??
> Magic Armour(+1,+2,+3) should count somehow against magic...any comments??

CC> As far as I know, the best armour rating is 22 (+3 Armour, Large
Shield, Helmet). +armour can be destroyed by Acid Blast as easily as any
other. I think what you may be looking for is Deflect Magic. I've no idea
how effective it is, but when you're about to lose 6000 gps worth of
armour, it has to be worth a try.

> EKM> Why doesn't Total Death work every time? According to the
> blurb it is supposed to. Is it too much to ask that the blurbs accurately
> reflect the spells effects??? Same winge about Deflect Magic III, why
> have it if it doesn't work properly??

CC> You haven't been playing long, have you ;) What you have to remember
is that the blurbs, like the rulebook etc are there to add *atmosphere*.
Some of them maybe based on fact but most will seem wildly inaccurate
because they are trying to add flavour. I think the blurbs over-estimate
(especially with monsters on the surface). I remember being terrified
because an 8 strong group with rubbish skills took on a sleech. I beat
the crap out of it. It was the blurb I was scared of.

> EKM> Regarding the strategies for avoidance of hit and run
> groups..the new attitudes for groups, NPCs and Monsters should help
> that particular problem

CC> Yeah, but taking a note of their name and number and sticking a
specific hostile doesn't hurt. Neither doesn multiple steal orders to
take them into hand to hand.
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JPG> That's the lot for today...  keep stuff coming in.  I am in the
process of chasing up alliance members for a bit of money for an HQ
atm... *sigh*  like trying to get blood out of a stone.  Not that any
have *refused* as yet... just none have replied!  (Bar Paul obviously.. :-)

Happy Questing folks...

>>-Josh->
"Dreamer...  Nothing but a dreamer..."