Re: DM: Kill-Less Dueling

From: Ben 'Critical' Hitz

Date: Wed, 02 Feb 1994 16:45:31 +0000

>:Specifically, don't attack the head.  As I stated in a previous post,
>:about 90% of my deaths and kills have come from head shots.

This reminds me...
Have I posted the 'death subroutine theory'?  This was actually posed to
me by Swift (in person), so it may have some 'official RSI reality' it in
somewhere.  Or perhaps not.

Here it is, the Death Subroutine Theory:
(If I've already posted this, sorry.  Bandwidth is a terrible thing to
waste)

You will notice, in reading your fights in which 'kills' have occurred,
that most, if not all, carry the statement 'FOOBAR is going for the
kill!!!' (There are other analogous phrases, including ...fights with a
deadly bloodlust, etc...)  For the sake of brevity, I will call this a
'kill comment'.

In the olden days, so the story goes, (Mike Lee, are you there?) A kill
might look something like this:

FOOBAR (20-2-10)            CHALLENGES       AB VICTIM #788 (0-0-0)

.. FOOBAR pounds on AB VICTIM #788.,,
FOOBAR fights with deadly bloodlust in his eyes!!!
AB VICTIM #788 is SLAIN!!!
The audience yawns, another AB bites the dust..

The concept here is that when a kill comment came up, the program would
decide whether or not the 'target' would die, right then and there.  This
is presumably some sort of WL roll.  But I don't know whether high WL is
bad or good in this case (presuming you want to stay alive).

Now, apparently people complained that this wasn't entertaining enough, so
RSI did something about it (Hey, it was a long time ago...).

What they put in is called the 'Death Subroutine'.  The essentials of the
program haven't changed, but instead of just saying 'You're Dead!', it
"runs down your hit points", and then says 'You're Dead!'.  This 'running
down of hit points' correspond to all those NORMAL attacks to the head and
chest at the end of the 'kill fight'.  Note that they are always _non_
critical attacks, don't do extra damage (?? that's a guess), aren't
parryed or dodged, and hit the vital locations.

So when a 'kill comment' comes up, there are basically three possibilites.
1) You die.  Your hit points are run down.
2) You live, but give up.
3) You live, and continue the fight normally.

Chances are, if you parry an attack after the kill comment, or if it's a
_critical_ attack, you've survived, at least temporarily.
Note that you can survive, even if you get a 'normal hit to the head'
after a kill comment.  But it sure is nerve racking.

This is just a theory.  It makes a few predictions:  No one-shot kills.
No kills on a crit attack.  No kills on hits to limbs.
It is supposed to mesh with previous ideas on killing in the following
way: (these are sort of my embellishments...)
High KD makes you more likely to get 'kill comments', but may make you
more suseptible to dieing when they 'happen' _to_ you.
Aiming for head/body makes you more likely to kill someone, but by a
hidden mechanism.  Perhaps if your abdomen is damaged, you are more likely
to die than if your leg is damaged.

Notes:  You can still get 'kill comments' at low kill desires.
        This does NOT cover 'infirmary' kills.  Those, apparently, do not
obey the above rules very well.  (i.e., you _can_ get one shot, crit
kills, but only by sending your opponent to the infirm).

Well, that's that.
Ben
PUG
--
"With humor Comrade, always with a bit of Humor"
         From 'The Manchurian Candidate'

References

Re: DM: Kill-Less Dueling
ez007195@dale.ucdavis.edu (Yeon Choi)
Wed, 02 Feb 1994 01:54:23 +0000

Referenced By

Re: DM: Kill-Less Dueling
ez007195@dale.ucdavis.edu (Yeon Choi)
Wed, 02 Feb 1994 01:54:23 +0000