Unfamiliar

There was an ongoing chat about making Dispel Force resistable and giving it echos for success and failure. I agree with these things.

However, there is one skill I think needs closer looking at….and that is Unfamiliar. In the past three eras (including this one), I have used this skill a lot. I have never once seen it resisted unless the victim didn’t have a greet or dub. Since we’re basically dealing with a mind trick here, I think Unfamiliar should have a chance to be resisted based on either your Int or Wis scores. Now this could, of course, lead into the whole argument about coding innate resistance to Unfamiliar to races that are Immune to mind tricks (Hutts, Toydarians, etc.). Would that really be a bad thing? The other problem brought up was that since Unfamiliar has no delay, it can just be spammed until it hits. I do see this as a problem too, but I do not know how you could balance a cast delay with the stun delay of Unfamiliar.

Anyway, this is my suggestion. I’m all for hearing your thoughts.

Unfamiliar feels like a powerful skill and should probably be looked at. Given that you aren’t supposed to use it for the free stun, I don’t really think it needs a cast delay if being used properly…but I like the idea of resisting it. And maybe you could put a timer on unfamiliar that won’t let you unfamiliar the target again for a few ticks in order to stop the whole ‘spam until it works’ issue.

Devil’s advocate here, if unfamiliar is nerfed you’re opening up a whole new realm of reasons for forcers to perm people. “I didn’t want them to get away knowing who I was, so I permed them”, etc.

Is that a valid reason to perm? I feel like that’s less of a balance issue and more of something that should be handled by RPC when it happens. You don’t need to fail an unfamiliar or even have the spell to feel like you might need to kill a witness.

with what mlodk said, it wouldn’t take much to code a debuff on the victim’s affect list/score. so long as that debuff is there, the person have unfamiliar used on them until it wears off.

can’t have unfamiliar used on them* (can’t edit from my phone -.-)

Resistance to ‘mind’ based force spells for hutts and such is actually what I’m working on atm. Quite happy to also expand the success and fail messages for dispel force, but I won’t be making it resistable as that would make it a pointless combat option. As anyone who’s actually been in combat as a forcer knows you have to pick your options carefully due to high mana cost and low to mid level chances of any spells and buffs hitting anyway.

Also, using unfamiliar as a ‘free stun’ has always been frowned on. I believe its still an autorestore if you use it to perm, and I can’t remember that happening in the entire time I’ve been an imm.

With regards to this I’m also happy to take suggestions on how it would play out – an echo to the hutt/toydarian victim saying someone tried and failed to mess with their mind, forcing them to chortle and say OH HOH HOH, etc…

i don’t think that echo messages for victims would really be viable. jabba and watto, for instance, didn’t have the presence of mind to “feel” a mind trick, but instead had common knowledge to recognize attempts and react accordingly.

Im actually rather certain when in the movies when the Obi tried to Mind trick the Toydarian for Anakin that he made a comment about knowing he was using the ability.

My knowledge about the movies is shitty, but that was the one movie I saw as a kid, and I’m almost a -hundred- percent sure it was like Qui-Gon being like, “You’ll give us a better deal” and waves his hand and the Toydarian’s like, “What’s your problem? Waving your hand and demanding shit? You think you some kinda Jedi o’ somethin’?! Even if you were, mind tricks don’t work on Toydarians.”

You know. Verbatim. >_>;;

Anyway… Unfamiliar minus stun seems like a good idea. There’s plenty of good times where the skill has perfectly legitimate use, but then there’s also people who are extremely paranoid for one reason or another and unfamiliar every single person they meet. o_O But the stun aspect of it seems kinda pointless. Either you abide by the RP set forth and follow the rules orrrr you don’t and get in trouble for it. And I mean, like, if someone walks into a room, you look at them, they look at you, you dub them, they unfamiliar you and walk away during the lag (or just have the command stacked, should stun go bye-bye), that’s always gonna be way over the line anyway. You ought to report that. And it’s not like you freaking knew who that person was anyway if you had -just- dubbed them. But taking away a skill just because one or two asshats might not know how to use it doesn’t solve any problems. Better solution: remove asshat’s(asshats’?) ability to use the skill, and voila.

Or, you know, just stop letting people who don’t know how to RP be Jedi or Sith. Just because you rolled it/bought it and got dem skillz doesn’t mean you can swing them around all willy-nilly and fuck up people’s day and abuse the skillset that’s been opened to you just because you can.

Everybody knows that’s what CGs are for, anyway. >_______>;

(PS: Hiiiii~ :3)
(PPS: I have no idea how much sense this made. I just got on here to tool around for a few minutes and somehow manage to stay awake so I can go see las Fallas get lit here in Valencia. I’m so sreepy. x_x;)
PPPS: Unfamiliar having a chance to fail sounds like an interesting idea– but only on force-resistant races, or awakened forcers. Otherwise, it’s like.. well, it pretty much kills the skill if you’re taking out the stun thing anyway.

that’s why i suggested basing it off int or wis or maybe some combination of both.

The stun wasn’t always there. If I recall correctly, it was added due to people just redubbing the forcer because the player wanted to remember said person. The stun allows the forcer to remove their dub, and gtfo.

I think it should actually be based more of Charisma than Int or Wis, though it would make sense to be relevant to those as well. As I’ve understood people being immune to Jedi Mind Tricks, it’s usually a matter of “sheer bloody-mindedness” or something, which is really just a matter of having a stronger force of personality/will, which falls squarely into what Charisma is supposed to represent. Then again for some reason it determines how attractive you are here so maybe with that considered, it shouldn’t be the case at all.

To quote Kirash: i don’t think that echo messages for victims would really be viable. jabba and watto, for instance, didn’t have the presence of mind to “feel” a mind trick, but instead had common knowledge to recognize attempts and react accordingly.

There is absolutely NO other way to tell, unless you are a forcer, when someone is casting the spell on you unless there is an echo. I don’t even know what you’re trying to counter-suggest to this.

(OOC) A being in jedi robes says ‘did it work?’
(OOC) You say ‘did what work?’
(OOC) A being in jedi robes says ‘I unfamiliarized you’
(OOC) You say ‘oh lawl’