[Slydria]

Well, I think I should respond to a lot of the points made here.

But first, I'd like to try and explain what I think the goals of the flee rules should be:

1. To be a system players can use in times when things cannot be mutually resolved in regards to players fleeing.
2. To offer a 'fair but justified' system between pursuers and runners. Fleeing should be the right amount of difficult in the right circumstances.
3. To improve how conflict is handled by cutting down on factors that exacerbate the conflict.



I'm just going to condense a bunch of points because there's a lot of stuff here to dig through.

Large opposition has little to no impact

This is gonna be a struggle to balance for.

On one hand, it doesn't necessarily make sense for people to essentially stop being able to contribute after the up to 8 fighting members and it does result in people getting left out.

On the other, if everyone got a shot, things would just take far too long to resolve and could easily lead to things being totally unfair on the other side.

The trick here is figuring out a way to make large numbers matter without them being so significant that being able to successfully flee is too difficult. Unfortunately, I don't have an idea on how this could be accomplished yet.


Cellsvich needs it's own rules

Currently Cellsvich has two rules in regards to fleeing.

First, fleeing parties have a penalty of -5 to their flee roll in Cellsvich. This is to represent outside factors while trying to flee, mostly in the form of interference coming from NPCs in this case.

Second, the rule of having to last 5 Rounds as opposed to the current 2 Round cooldown. This is so there's actually a fight and not just a game of ring around the rosies.

I don't mind hearing additional ideas for Cellsvich specifically.


No additional flee checks are necessary after two fights are done

The reason we decided to limit this is mostly an effort to expedite things and to avoid dogpiling. While I understand it doesn't make necessarily make logical sense when there are more people in the background, going through too many hoops is something I think we want to avoid. I'm not against more measures necessarily but I don't want things getting out of hand either.


Downed party members shouldn't always be capable of fleeing along with the runner

I agree with this. So I think one of the adjustments made will be in regards to handling downed members. Even if it is something simple like downed members have to make an additional flee roll or risk being left behind.


Individual fleeing

While this is mostly a mechanical idea... The problem with having to go through with things on an individual basis has it's own problems, I'm mainly concerned here about overcomplicating things with say several rolls for group vs group fights.


Anyone arriving to the scene after combat shouldn't count for flee rules

Hard maybe. Part of the reason for why there's a cap on how many fights can occur against fleeing parties is because of concerns about people suddenly appearing on the scene where there's just potentially back-to-back waves of newcomers to prevent escapes.

That said, determining who should and shouldn't count is tricky and I don't necessarily agree with everyone who comes later should be out.

Should back-up guards not be able to assist despite not being on the scene at the time? Should someone who was in a different part of Cellsvich be excluded? How far away is too far before they get excluded?


Fleeing always needs a chance of success

I agree. There should be that avenue, even when the odds are stacked against you, otherwise that's not fair.


Fleeing should be weighted in the runner's favour

I don't agree, particularly in the case of Cellsvich. Logically speaking, the odds should absolutely be against criminals. They're in the largest city in the game both in terms of the world's population and usually the player population, guard interference would be highly likely which is why the idea of roll penalties came to be to represent this interference instead of them being strictly meaningless in these scenarios.


NPCs factoring into the flee rules

Currently NPCs only have influence in the form of being a contributing factor to the roll penalty in certain regions. Unsure if they should hold much more sway than that, aside from some logical things like Guards closing the front gates during a fuss or the Mage's Guild not serving criminals so other avenues of escape will need to be considered.


Only guards should get flee chase bonuses in cities

Well, it's moreso that runners are penalized depending on where it's happening than attackers getting a bonus.

However I don't think the effects should be mutually exclusive to guard players. It's intended that the flee rules could be used by anyone as a fallback to resolve fleeing, making it so only meaningful interference only can be offered by a player guard seems silly to me.


The impact of mechanical fleeing

It's hard to balance around this. I don't want to go too far on the mechanical fleeing, I think the 5 Round Rule at least ensures some blows occur. More should be done but I think it's something that should be solved by mechanical tweaks than adding more rulings against how people can mechanically flee.


People using the flee rules in spite of roleplay

The idea with the flee rules is that they are mainly meant to serve a fallback, in times where people can't or don't want to arrange something mutual. If both parties are willing, you can eschew these rules.

However just because the fleeing rules themselves are worded in a particular way doesn't mean they should be divorced from what's going on. The results of what occurs should have basis in roleplay, people should be offering decent explanations to go along with their results.

The opposing rolls themselves are at least in my mind intended to represent a chase sequence. Sure, "they rolled 20 and I got 14 so they just win" but that doesn't mean you didn't try or that you were just rendered braindead by the result.

I'd like to hear more feedback about how to make this seem less detached from roleplay.