Manacles Feedback

[Choofed]

Hey hey! This is to give some feedback on the new capture system.

2 things I've noticed so far:

• When you attempt to perform the red refuse, which is meant to turn you hostile, you do not actually flag yourself as hostile to the other person. I would assume the intention is that it !'s the person trying to manacle you.

• Presently, I'm not entirely sure how the spell failure is meant to work. Can we get elaboration how it's actually meant?

[DM Poppy]

I'll get back to you. This is being discussed.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

At #2: we're putting more detail on a wiki page.

https://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Capture

Very work in progress at the moment.

[neverwinternightly]

So these are merely some initial thoughts I've had on the system that has very recently been put into place! I've been sitting with them for a few hours now and figured I may as well write them and see what others think. I'm sure some of these thoughts may change as I get to interact with the system more. Some of these thoughts also aren't mine own, but taken from talks with other people that wanted to add to the discussion!

• Neat addition to keep players honest in certain cases where they might get subdued, pretend to go along with rp in bad faith, then just flee/fight the moment their debuffs wear off.

• I like the prisoner tag and also that the manacles show up in descriptions when they're on. Makes it really easy to tell what's going on at a glance as opposed to having to constantly type something about being in shackles.

• Nice that there are three options for when someone walks up and tries to shackle you.

• Most of the manacles are really easy to make. This is possibly a good and bad thing? With 1 point in smithing, I can easily make a pretty solid set of manacles to use as a RP tool. But this also means that they can become widespread fast. It seems pretty reasonable to me to expect nearly every character to have a set going forward if it's something they're interested in.

• Promotes builds and RP based around escaping from manacles. Again, this seems another good and bad thing to me. I've read that there's a lot of nuance to the DCs, but they seem quite high across the board in the initial testing and the cooldown to try and escape again is pretty long. I like the idea of characters having to try and work their way out of the shackles, especially if it involves getting help from others, but that also implies they'd have people willing to help them break out who can access wherever they're being held. Having a set that essentially individually applies -ward teleport to a person that any build can now access, toss on someone, then stuff them in a box that'll require a quarterbreaker to get them out seems a little much.

To build on the above point of everyone being able to access said tool, it seems - at least at a glance and through initial trials - that not everyone has access to the same degree of counterplay. A strength build is always going to be invested in strength to counterplay. Dex builds may now start feeling more obligated to take 33 open lock to try and deal with being shackled, which wasn't always something taken before. Casters having to take a feat tax (via still spell) for some of their potential counterplay seems especially rough.

Maybe some consumable skeleton key could exist that could be crafted, but then you'd probably start to wonder why this all exists in the first place.

• This point can be said about a number of things on Arelith, but leaving certain things to FOIG usually ends up amounting more to "Hope you have a friend who told you this easy, secret method OOC" than it does some amazing RP. I love that there are so many potential ways to get out of the manacles, but if there are a slew of them that are kept intentionally secret, it feels like they may as well not be there sometimes?

• Intent vs Impact of the addition. The intent to me feels like "This is an RP tool that will make people take crimes more seriously and allow for more in-depth conflict-based rp" but I worry the impact will be more akin to "I will now take death less seriously."

This thought for me primarily stems from how the options are laid out when a target is subdued and how easy they'll be to access. Not everyone wants to do prisoner/slave rp. Prior to this update, some people would end up feeling forced into it, despite the fact that it IS an OOC choice at the end of day, because the options presented would be "take the clamp or die." It's a pretty uncomfortable position to be in given it may mean days/weeks/months of throwing your character into a completely different situation, but if your character doesn't want to die then there's not even really an option there. But this was only ever a thing that came up with slavers before which aren't THAT widespread.

Now though? Guards, paladins, kidnappers, slavers, your cousin who didn't like the soup you cooked -- EVERYONE can put you into this position. A position where you as a player have to decide "do I want to do prisoner rp for an undefined amount of time that may ruin my enjoyment of my character? Or would I rather just die to my wounds/have my captor tell everyone I was executed?" And perhaps you can pause all RP to stop and try and OOC coordinate with your captor some terms for the prisoner RP that won't utterly ruin your fun, but having to devolve into a bunch of back-and-forth in tells to make sure you don't spend the next six RL days in a cell doesn't sound too enjoyable. And this could now happen with EVERY subdual. It just feels really oppressive and uncomfortable to consider.

To expand on the point further - I really feel like this'll only improve RP in fewer cases than one might initially expect. If someone thinks you've done conflict well and wants to continue rping with you, they would already come along and do captive RP with you after a subdual. If they didn't want to continue down that road? They'd -giveup, try to run, or it'd lead to an execution. So the situations this changes seem mostly to be the ones where someone is amiable to captive RP, but wouldn't do it before because there was technically no mechanic forcing them to sit still? This might be an oversimplification, but hopefully people can see where the thought is coming from.

I'd be curious what people think about adding some kind of option when subdued that essentially pings OOC saying "Hey! I'm open to further RP, but I'm not interested in days/weeks/months of being a prisoner!" Though at that point, again, it kind of makes you wonder if some in-depth mechanical system was needed for this?

---

All in all, really not sure what I think of the update! Curious what others are thinking too. I'll be interested to see how it unfolds and probably have another five thoughts on it by the end of the day.

[The GrumpyCat]

Hey hey! This is to give some feedback on the new capture system.

2 things I've noticed so far:

• When you attempt to perform the red refuse, which is meant to turn you hostile, you do not actually flag yourself as hostile to the other person. I would assume the intention is that it !'s the person trying to manacle you.

• Presently, I'm not entirely sure how the spell failure is meant to work. Can we get elaboration how it's actually meant?

I believe the first point is a bug, and will be looked at. It worked in testing!

[Skibbles]

Cool update! Will there be more to follow that are similar to this, as a sort of wide and encompassing amount of tools and methods for players to interact with?

I think it's just cool. Neverwinternightly has lots of angles summed up pretty well I think.

This point can be said about a number of things on Arelith, but leaving certain things to FOIG usually ends up amounting more to "Hope you have a friend who told you this easy, secret method OOC" than it does some amazing RP.

FOIG rears it's ugly head again. It's hard enough to track and know everything we are allowed to know, but then we have this ancient in-group elite mechanic still floating around because it's not hard enough to be a new or returning player.

My only feedback is please can we just remove the FOIG tag from interactive mechanics? Are we really supposed to accept that it's fun to be a prisoner, knowing you have a host of tools available to you, but because you're OOC out of the loop you just... don't get the same tools others will have in the exact same situation? The metagame should be a bug, not a feature.

Edit: sorry poppy I didn't realize it would look like that. Should be better now.

[Eyeliner]

I agree on the FOIG. It's a cool idea but difficult in practice. It's just going to lead to getting the info from Discord or in this case using "optout" instead of creativity because you don't have time/connections/the people skills to get info from the gatekeepers.

Second biggest problem with FOIG is it can be hard to tell if something is broken and equally difficult to report. You have to be vague on the forums for example which is not what you want in bug reports, and you don't know if you're just doing it wrong because there's no wiki article to back you up or anything.

[DM Poppy]

So. Before this turns into a topic debating FOIG. Let me nip it in the bud.

The FOIG aspects of the manacles are not hidden features and mechanisms that will have power dynamics massively swayed. It's simply that SK has introduced such a vast amount of utilities and interactive means to use them and their tiers. To escape, to capture etc etc.

So rather than list all 100 things, SK would like people to discover themselves and have that fun moment to figure bits out.

[Choofed]

Following up from a request by the big SK themselves to put this in this thread:

• I suggest adding the manacle ID to the descriptions of people effected by manacles so you can remember what key to use.

[The GrumpyCat]

Touching on a few points.

*The vast majority of options to escape manicles are not FOIG, a few smaller options exist as tidbits to help. These are honestly relitivly intuative anyway.

*

To build on the above point of everyone being able to access said tool, it seems - at least at a glance and through initial trials - that not everyone has access to the same degree of counterplay. A strength build is always going to be invested in strength to counterplay. Dex builds may now start feeling more obligated to take 33 open lock to try and deal with being shackled, which wasn't always something taken before. Casters having to take a feat tax (via still spell) for some of their potential counterplay seems especially rough.

Other methods of counterplay also exist. For example, (and I'm not sure if this has been implemented yet) keys can be pickpocketed from guards. So if you've a friend with a high Slight of Hand score, THEY can maybe retrieve the key and free you with it.
Further more there's plans to add some npcs who will, for a price, remove shackles. These arn't in yet though, but hopefully will be soon.
Ultimatly if someone wants to shackle you, and you've no counterplay to being shackled, and you really don't want to get shackled because of it - don't be shackled! It's all opt in.

Now though? Guards, paladins, kidnappers, slavers, your cousin who didn't like the soup you cooked -- EVERYONE can put you into this position. A position where you as a player have to decide "do I want to do prisoner rp for an undefined amount of time that may ruin my enjoyment of my character?

To an extent this was already the case. Anyone can walk up to you and emote Grabs you and tries to tie you up to kidnap you And then its up to you whether or not to go along with it, and if you don't they may well pvp you. And if you die to pvp, they can grab your corpse, take you to their jail cell/secret lair and ask 'Hay, do you want to waver the 48 hour rule and be raised for some capture rp?@ Now there's a level of commitment true, if you do, but there's still the 'optout' command if things get really hairy.

Also

Or would I rather just die to my wounds/have my captor tell everyone I was executed?" And perhaps you can pause all RP to stop and try and OOC coordinate with your captor some terms for the prisoner RP that won't utterly ruin your fun, but having to devolve into a bunch of back-and-forth in tells to make sure you don't spend the next six RL days in a cell doesn't sound too enjoyable. And this could now happen with EVERY subdual. It just feels really oppressive and uncomfortable to consider.

To be clear, no one should be imprisoning your character without possiblity of escape (e.g. locked in a no-teleport room) and without rp for more than a few hours. If you're left in such a situation for more than a few hours, contact the DM team and we'll release you. This has pretty much always been the rule.*

You are right however that there is a possiblity that this will cheepen death. The problem especially with changes like these, is we really don't know exactly how the player base will react to it. We hope that it's used well and responsibly, and as a team we've decided to take the chance that it will be. We'll be watching it carefully over the next few months to see how it pans out. I'm hopeful, but I'm not blind to the risks that adding other essentially pvp adjacent systems can bring.

*well ok, the length of time has fluxuated, and may do again in future, but generally 'a few rl hours' is a good benchline,

[perseid]

Since I already made the other thread for a specific case I'll keep most of my thoughts on its topic over there. That said, I think it's sort of unintuitive that resisting is a hostile action but attempting to manacle someone isn't.

[Yvesza]

Attempting to manacle absolutely is a hostile action, I'm not really sure where the idea comes from that it isn't? It's an action taken with the understanding that you'll negatively impact another person. It's like casting Bigby's grasping hand on someone, you're physically (Or magically) attempting to restrain someone.

With that said, I love the implementation of manacles. I'm going to test them out a bit more when I have the chance but they fill a much needed gap, and really do faciliate something that already existed, but now has mechanics to fill in the gaps where otherwise players had to take a lot of liberties and relatively, ignore presented options.

Being kidnapped before generally involved the person being stolen away to accept not to use a lens / attunement potion / accept yoinks, but now you're pretty free to accept consequences and not have people throw arguments like "But they didn't ever leave you alone and you didn't try to struggle free? John Cordor even tried to conjure you and you didn't accept..."

While I'm sure that didn't happen often, mechanics that can reinforce what we already want can be pretty great. Good work!

[perseid]

Attempting to manacle absolutely is a hostile action, I'm not really sure where the idea comes from that it isn't? It's an action taken with the understanding that you'll negatively impact another person. It's like casting Bigby's grasping hand on someone, you're physically (Or magically) attempting to restrain someone.

With that said, I love the implementation of manacles. I'm going to test them out a bit more when I have the chance but they fill a much needed gap, and really do faciliate something that already existed, but now has mechanics to fill in the gaps where otherwise players had to take a lot of liberties and relatively, ignore presented options.

Being kidnapped before generally involved the person being stolen away to accept not to use a lens / attunement potion / accept yoinks, but now you're pretty free to accept consequences and not have people throw arguments like "But they didn't ever leave you alone and you didn't try to struggle free? John Cordor even tried to conjure you and you didn't accept..."

While I'm sure that didn't happen often, mechanics that can reinforce what we already want can be pretty great. Good work!

I took it from the announcement text which listed "[Flee: Hostile Action]" which would be a redundant statement if attempting to manacle someone was already a hostile action since hostilities would already have been initiated then.

[Ork]

I took it from the announcement text which listed "[Flee: Hostile Action]" which would be a redundant statement if attempting to manacle someone was already a hostile action since hostilities would already have been initiated then.

̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶u̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶l̶a̶b̶e̶l̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶c̶l̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶"̶f̶l̶e̶e̶i̶n̶g̶"̶ ̶s̶a̶t̶i̶s̶f̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶P̶v̶P̶ ̶r̶e̶q̶u̶i̶r̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶s̶i̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶o̶p̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶v̶a̶i̶l̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶v̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶l̶r̶e̶a̶d̶y̶ ̶e̶n̶g̶a̶g̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶P̶v̶P̶.̶

I'm wrong. Make sure you roleplay further instigators and instigatee's.

[Eyeliner]

Attempting to manacle absolutely is a hostile action, I'm not really sure where the idea comes from that it isn't? It's an action taken with the understanding that you'll negatively impact another person. It's like casting Bigby's grasping hand on someone, you're physically (Or magically) attempting to restrain someone.

It seems like a "soft hostile" to me. I'm still not quite clear if it's okay to manacle someone by surprise from stealth or without lines of dialogue immediately before like a typical PVP encounter. RP seems encouraged of course, which is great and I hope so, but there will always be those who want to butt up as close to the letter of the law as they can. If it's not pvp until they flee and if you can manacle-by-surprise someone today that you had an issue with yesterday then it seems like we're in some uncharted territory.

[Choofed]

To expand on the point further - I really feel like this'll only improve RP in fewer cases than one might initially expect. If someone thinks you've done conflict well and wants to continue rping with you, they would already come along and do captive RP with you after a subdual. If they didn't want to continue down that road? They'd -giveup, try to run, or it'd lead to an execution. So the situations this changes seem mostly to be the ones where someone is amiable to captive RP, but wouldn't do it before because there was technically no mechanic forcing them to sit still? This might be an oversimplification, but hopefully people can see where the thought is coming from.

Being kidnapped before generally involved the person being stolen away to accept not to use a lens / attunement potion / accept yoinks, but now you're pretty free to accept consequences and not have people throw arguments like "But they didn't ever leave you alone and you didn't try to struggle free? John Cordor even tried to conjure you and you didn't accept..."

While I'm sure that didn't happen often, mechanics that can reinforce what we already want can be pretty great. Good work!

So speaking from my own player experience to you Neverwinternightly, this "Why didn't they accept my yoink, they're a willing prisoner, traitor!" angle has been so frequent in so many different areas of the community. We've had people kicked out of factions, we've had a load of stuff just like this because the mechanics wouldn't permit a captive being out of reach and people will, not matter what we do, break things down to a what you see is what you get angle.

This mechanic, which if you dislike the RP you can optout for being uncomfortable and unfun and you can always ping the DM channel and ask permission to optout with your reasons if unsure, is a good one.

It means capture RP will be taken seriously at face value by characters & players.

[Baron Saturday]

Some version of the manacle rules should be included in manacle descriptions so that they are right in the face of anyone who owns a set. Having rulings that only live on specific wiki pages or buried deep in announcement threads is an excellent way to end up with a large percentage of players who are ignorant of said rulings.

[Amateur Hour]

Attempting to manacle absolutely is a hostile action, I'm not really sure where the idea comes from that it isn't? It's an action taken with the understanding that you'll negatively impact another person. It's like casting Bigby's grasping hand on someone, you're physically (Or magically) attempting to restrain someone.

It seems like a "soft hostile" to me. I'm still not quite clear if it's okay to manacle someone by surprise from stealth or without lines of dialogue immediately before like a typical PVP encounter. RP seems encouraged of course, which is great and I hope so, but there will always be those who want to butt up as close to the letter of the law as they can. If it's not pvp until they flee and if you can manacle-by-surprise someone today that you had an issue with yesterday then it seems like we're in some uncharted territory.

I could see a character putting manacles on a willing character for the purposes of an elaborate stunt (I'm pretty sure we've all seen a few of these situations in media, using the captured character as a ticket to get access to somewhere) where the mechanical hostile would be unnecessary, even though that's probably going to be a small minority of cases.

[The GrumpyCat]

Attempting to manacle absolutely is a hostile action, I'm not really sure where the idea comes from that it isn't? It's an action taken with the understanding that you'll negatively impact another person. It's like casting Bigby's grasping hand on someone, you're physically (Or magically) attempting to restrain someone.

It seems like a "soft hostile" to me. I'm still not quite clear if it's okay to manacle someone by surprise from stealth or without lines of dialogue immediately before like a typical PVP encounter. RP seems encouraged of course, which is great and I hope so, but there will always be those who want to butt up as close to the letter of the law as they can. If it's not pvp until they flee and if you can manacle-by-surprise someone today that you had an issue with yesterday then it seems like we're in some uncharted territory.

1) Attempting to use the cuffs on a person is considered a hostile action and as such requires rp before hand, ESPECIALLY if you're planning on PvP if the manicles are refused/resisted. Obviously if the rp has already happened due to pvp you don't need to worry about this too much.

Give someone the same amount of rp you'd give as if you wer about to pvp them.

Simple.

As for setting hostile - it honestly depends if you expect the sitaution to have pvp in it?
If you think there will be pvp? Go on hostile before hand.
If you are sure there won't be - Don't use hostile.
If you didn't think that the sitaution would break into pvp but it has? Quickly put the person on hostile before initiating pvp, as usual.

[HeyLadyOfDecay]

Hi, Andunors Slaver here,

I hope that this tool isn't going to set a "You must use this", For we rather not use it. Capture RP has always been about consent with us, OOC agreement, and keeping the fun of the player whose character is captured as our primary target.

To me, this mutual respect is in danger, Communication is important and not to be replaced with a mechanic.

I do not see the whole picture, I know there are some players that have different mentalities than others, but I don't think you can just make a tool and force a certain RP with it. I'm sure the people behind the curtain have their reasons. (and I am as ever curious).

So, I hope this is an optional tool, Not an expected tool.

[Glaucozilla]

From my point of view, Manacles are completely useless.

Not many people won't spend\farm a lot to use an item to someone that can (and probably will) just opt out to avoid it. The DCs are way too high, requiring only some specialized lock picker\sleight of hander to escape, but if you are not opting out, it means you are fine with that OOCly so you won't break free.

People that before them would have played along with captivity\slavery would still play it even without any mechanic on top of it.

Of course i'm not complaining about the 'ooc consent' of this. Of course it's mandatory for healthy rp. It just makes no sense to have them, if not for pure (and costly) flavor.

[Eira]

Choofed sums it up well. Manacles are a way to ensure other characters (and their players) respect when someone is captured, as the mechanics reflect what the player has agreed to, that the character has not.

There are also players who actually find it fun when their character undergoes some sort of effect for the sake of roleplay, and they are forced to find way to go around it.

[HeyLadyOfDecay]

Choofed sums it up well. Manacles are a way to ensure other characters (and their players) respect when someone is captured, as the mechanics reflect what the player has agreed to, that the character has not.

There are also players who actually find it fun when their character undergoes some sort of effect for the sake of roleplay, and they are forced to find way to go around it.

I'm just saying; along it's not expected to use this, Go wild. If I can still just role play without "But do you have chackles else it doesn't count" I'm happy.

[Eira]

It is always optional to use.

There is no danger of nonconsent from this tool; it can only be used by people consenting to it. You cannot force certain rp with it, because they agree to that rp. And if they do not agree to how the rp has turned, they can -optout of it. I recommend you read up on the wiki page of how exactly it works.

No one will force you to use manacles on others, your characters can easily choose to use them or not.

EDIT: I feel like I must stress that the player is not the character. The player may choose to let the dice, the mechanics, the roleplay determine how something plays out. They may decide that their character, if not shackled, would run, but if they are shackled, then would go along with it. So even if someone before manacles existed would go along with it, now maybe they'd allow a bit of luck or randomness to it, to make the rp even more natural. Stranger things have happened.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

The DCs are way too high, requiring only some specialized lock picker\sleight of hander to escape

I will be observing DCs, but know that during my tests, I used a level 5 rogue. They were able to get out of steel and mithril manacles fairly consistently.