Subdual

To conquer and bring into subjection.

What is it

Subdual is a tool that allows non-lethal combat. A character that activates this mode attempts actively to end the fight destabilizing and knocking down his opponent, instead of aiming to kill. Note that all of this only works for player characters on player characters.

How does it work

After activating -subdual, a character will subdue player characters instead of killing them. This includes spells they cast and any summons, animal companions, or familiars they create.

A character that falls 'subdued' remain unconscious for 60 seconds.

Subdued characters also drop all gold in a radius around themselves. Due to limitations this will be capped at 50,000 per gold pile, so you may see quite a few piles if someone is carrying a lot of gold. Any form of Death or Subdual will now drop all fixtures in your inventory in a 1.5m radius around you. They will NOT be dropped as fixtures but instead as an item you can pick up that represents it, this is to stop fixture bombing. Fixtures dropped as loot bags will now be flagged as not to be cleaned up. This means you will be able to leave items dropped by others and not feel guilt. Furthermore, you can return and acquire dropped fixtures as a result, given sufficient and reasonable time has passed if it was PvP related. Alternatively, you could seek others to help retrieve your fixtures and in doing so make RP.

The Following fixtures are exempt from this:

• The two runic circles
• Playing cards
• All candles
• All seeds
• Bedrolls

Upon regaining consciousness, revived characters the following penalties for 5 minutes:

• 100% Spell failure
• Dexterity: Drops to 6.
• Strength: A damage penalty is applied to drop the characters Strength damage to -2 rather than dropping Strength to 6 to allow the character to still move.
• A penalty is applied to Dodge AC of -20.
• Attack bonus reduction of -20 to -40. The range of the malus is dependant on any secondary positive increases to the characters AB.
  • Note: The character sheet will not reflect this but it is there and it will be reflected in the combat log

Giveup

If a player would rather die and pass on to the Fugue Plane as normal, they can enter the `-giveup` command while downed. That will cause them to die.

Unrelent and Lassoing

A character may try to use a lasso on a subdued PC to tie them for up to five minutes. The time decreases in relativity to the subdued character's Use Rope skill.

Players that don't wish to participate in capture RP may enable the -unrelent command to die in struggle against the ropes; though there is a 5% chance of surviving and successfully escaping the ropes. Note that this has to be activated before their character is roped, not after.

On the RP, rules and courtesy

Subdual is a form of combat on Arelith which is enabled by default. It's often used to represent friendly sparring, practice and training outside of an arena. Contextually, these friendly fights may indicate that the injuries received from -subdual aren't very serious as two friends who are practicing are not actually beating each other to near death to practice their sword skills.

However, for most encounters unexpected and with obvious violence intended, subdual is intended to represent potentially fatal damage that leaves someone just shy of death (the -giveup command is never to be used as a representation of the defeated character choosing to die, it is always because the attacker hit them so hard they succumbed to their injuries after the fact, suicide is not acceptable to roleplay).

In a bar brawl, a drunk might hit someone over the head and leave them wounded. It would be appropriate in this case to treat the injuries very seriously and with respect, just as if you were ambushed by bandits who left you on the brink of death. Context is very important when determining how to respond to the injuries after losing a fight with -subdual. It's far easier to ask everyone to be respectful of the narrative and contextual clues when deciding how seriously to take that they were beaten up.

Losing a fight via subdual does not activate the 48hr rules. It is not until someone uses -giveup that the timer is activated.