Shattered Kingdoms

Yes.

So, a quick question about Holy Word.

Holy word will still only cast cancellation, right? This is actually a plus, since before this change, charmies in your group may end up getting cancelled if you cast a holy word, although in this new case, it seems that won't be a problem anymore.

Actually, you'll note that cancellation can still affect compulsion effects, it just has a severely reduced chance of doing so. That is, of course, if I'm interpreting the help file correctly.

* Aggressive - bonuses to hit and damage

Does this include magic attacks?

Yes, it affectcs non-combat spells. No, it shouldn't only take longer if you are in combat. Defensive stance means that you are focussing your attention on watching for incoming attacks, dodging and shield use. This slows down all spell casting, not just combat spells. It affects you at all times, because you are constantly scanning the environment, watching for incoming arrows from several rooms away.

Stances are not like mood which was set and forget. You are not intended to live your life in defensive stance. Unless you always want to be slower, you will want to stay in neutral stance most of the time.

Yes, holy word still casts cancellation, not remove compulsion. And yes, cancellation can still affect compulsion effects, it just has a moderate to severely reduced chance of doing so. (Each compulsion spell has a different modifier for how hard it is for cancellation to affect it.)

This refers to bonuses to hit rolls and damage rolls, which are used for melee and ranged combat, not for magical spells.

This seems to be a misunderstanding of how mode stun and the bodypart system works. I've explained this several times on the forums, but it's been a few years since it last came up.

When you are on mode stun, you aren't trying to sever bodyparts, so after beating them down to a certain level, they are irrelevant to the process. When on mode stun, you are only interested in attacking the opponent's overall pool of hit points. You always do damage to this pool with every attack, regardless of what bodypart you hit and it's current status.

If you are testing this against some other player, it may appear that you are not doing damage, but that is not the case. The opponent's life percentage always shows the percentage of either your lowest vital bodypart or your overall pool if lower. So often you will beat down one of their vital areas first, since they have less hit points, and then their HP meter will hover at 25% until the damage on the overall pool catches up.

So why don't I just show the percentage to the overall pool in a stun battle? It's usually not that simple. There could be a multiple opponents attacking both in melee or ranged, with different kill/stun settings. It's important that the opponent to always know their lowest total, because then they know that they are only a few kill hits away from death.

An update that addresses the players' concerns of the game -- thanks Dulrik.

Wait, wait - does aim still matter when stunning, then? More specifically, is anything beyond overall AC (as opposed to the AC of the part being struck) considered at all?

Great update, btw - very elegant solutions to a lot of player concerns.