Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

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McPunchins
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Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by McPunchins » Sat Jan 15, 2022 7:11 am

Killbashing is pretty often caused by the person doing the bashing having been bashed in the past, lots of people have proved this through encounters where people have absolutely lost their heads over nothing and bashed them then used the excuse that they've been bashed and everyone does it. I think a fix to this toxic behavior at least as far as helping mitigate it might be finding some way to allow resurrection to be cast on bashed corpses to raise the character in question after their corpse has been bashed. It won't completely solve all of the vindictive behavior but it might help prevent some by allowing players to be picked up potentially if someone happens by them or one of their allies survives the fight and can do so.

Lore wise this makes sense also because Resurrection is supposed to be able to bring someone back with any amount of their corpse in any condition. It might also help prevent more conversations from erupting on Discord about the topic that just turn into people dug in on both sides arguing with no hope of ever swaying the other side.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by AstralUniverse » Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:52 am

There's nothing vindictive about kill bashing. If you think someone is acting maliciously towards you in their character's action and you think it's because of ooc grudge - report it. Let the DMs check the logs and see what led their character to do so. Kill bashing is not the problem. Kill bashing is when a character is simply not interested in having their enemies saved by their allies in character and there's no reason to not kill bash if you are not interested to question or torture the person you killed (if they even agree oocly to a raise, which they dont have to, then you are left with nothing to do BUT killbashing them).
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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by McPunchins » Sat Jan 15, 2022 9:41 am

AstralUniverse wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:52 am
There's nothing vindictive about kill bashing. If you think someone is acting maliciously towards you in their character's action and you think it's because of ooc grudge - report it. Let the DMs check the logs and see what led their character to do so. Kill bashing is not the problem. Kill bashing is when a character is simply not interested in having their enemies saved by their allies in character and there's no reason to not kill bash if you are not interested to question or torture the person you killed (if they even agree oocly to a raise, which they dont have to, then you are left with nothing to do BUT killbashing them).
I'm not gonna have this argument here, people have presented plenty of evidence to the contrary and basic human psychology proves that at least a sizable percentage of it is malicious behavior caused by previously being the victim of similar behavior. The purpose of this post is to point out that an easy way to mitigate some of this toxicity which does exist and is verifiable would be to provide a method to raise bashed corpses through the use of a lore based solution which is the spell "Resurrection" which in the sourcebook definition works regardless of the condition of the remains. Whether or not you personally think this is a problem is irrelevant because a big part of the community regularly expresses issues with it.

Seeing as you can't outright get rid of the ability to killbash because people will find ways around it this would provide at least some form of recovery if the players mangled corpse is discovered before they have soul gated or if their corpse is bashed during a fight on accident.

EDIT: Also yes I know the title is a bit clickbaity but it gets people to look and read the post which will help circulate and start a discussion on the topic in an appropriate place to actually build a dialog that can be used to plan possible changes to the system to improve it. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination calling for the removal of Killbashing or even going so far as to tell people to stop, do it if you feel you need to but what I would like to see is the chance for people who are the victims of it to be allowed to have their fun also. No one wants to wait around on death debuffs because they were the unfortunate victim of circumstance.

Also another idea that came to mind for resolving the "I need a skull for the bounty" issue would be a trinket that you receive when you pick up a corpse that has died recently (you are the first one to pick it up), you could tie it to the grabbing of the purse on the corpse and just put an item along with it that is the target corpses ear or finger or something. Then players won't need to killbash to get proof of a kill they just need to pick up the gold they already would have taken and be on their way. This won't stop people from doing it but it might save a few people from the "your corpse has been destroyed" message. Just more food for thought on ways to improve the death situation in regards to killbashing

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by AstralUniverse » Sat Jan 15, 2022 10:51 am

McPunchins wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 9:41 am
I'm not gonna have this argument here
You dont have to argue. You said your opinion, I answered with mine. We dont have to agree. This is a forum. If you're not looking for a discussion you can skip this forum and send the Admins a PM.
McPunchins wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 9:41 am
people have presented plenty of evidence
Where is this evidence? How does an evidence to this even look like? There will always be malicious players in every multiplayer community, on that I agree with you, as basic human psychology shows, but I fail to see how kill-bashing as a mechanic contributes to that any more than plenty other "one sided" mechanics in this game. Kill-bash is a legitimate IN CHARACTER outcome of conflicts sometimes. It's a tool that can be used to tell a story or to grief someone, like many many other tools we have here, like PVP itself to begin with. Should we also just remove pvp entirely because some players PK maliciously with ooc grudge? (plz no..)
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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by McPunchins » Sat Jan 15, 2022 12:04 pm

AstralUniverse wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 10:51 am
You dont have to argue. You said your opinion, I answered with mine. We dont have to agree. This is a forum. If you're not looking for a discussion you can skip this forum and send the Admins a PM.

Where is this evidence? How does an evidence to this even look like? There will always be malicious players in every multiplayer community, on that I agree with you, as basic human psychology shows, but I fail to see how kill-bashing as a mechanic contributes to that any more than plenty other "one sided" mechanics in this game. Kill-bash is a legitimate IN CHARACTER outcome of conflicts sometimes. It's a tool that can be used to tell a story or to grief someone, like many many other tools we have here, like PVP itself to begin with. Should we also just remove pvp entirely because some players PK maliciously with ooc grudge? (plz no..)
You are correct, this is a discussion so lets break it down into a few pieces. First we will start with the evidence I have personally seen and have heard anecdotally from others in our local community of Arelith.

Arelith Based Evidence:

About a year ago, I was playing with a friend in the underdark, helping them level a bit just minding my own business. At the time I was level 21 they were level 16 or 17 and we were off in Burning Shore just killing mobs to get experience near the portal at the dock. We'd been there literally minutes and multiple people from an opposing faction of players of the group I RPed with regularly showed up, said literally one line of dialog to us then immediately attacked and killbashed both of us. So the two of us were attacked and killed by multiple people who were level 30, showed up full buffed like they knew what they were looking for and basically one line slapped us for being there, in an area we were hiding away in. We were evil characters pretty commonly seen around Andunor, so IC sure justified in killing us.

I will look past the lack of time to respond, and I am not looking to resend this to the DMs it was already resolved at the time but the important part is what happened after the fight occurred. So we're in the fugue waiting on the soul gate and I casually in a non aggressive way sent a tell to one of the group that killed us because I'd interacted with them in the past and I was authentically curious why they felt the need to killbash people upwards of and more than ten levels below them. I didn't ask aggressively, I actually asked politely and what proceeded to happen ended with me sending literally fifteen screenshots of nonstop abusive verbal assault levels of response from the player over me being curious why I was killbashed that can basically be summed up in the following sentence "I was kill bashed by your friends so now you get to pay for it". I'd never once attacked this person prior to this event, and what little interaction we'd had was at Shadowovar and was light banter, yeah my character was a mouthy little jerk and sarcastic but I'd done nothing to actively harm this person or punish them in any way and they decided because I was associated with a group of people who had killbashed them I was the one who had to pay for it. And not only was I the one who got to pay the bill my friend who wasn't even involved did also and I got to deal with over an hour of being verbally assaulted long after I'd stopped responding to their tells. I don't know whether this person was just having an exceptionally bad day or what was going on with them other than what I could get from response they provided to a simple question.

This isn't the only instance of this kind of behavior that I've heard of in the Arelith community, I don't know if any others were this aggressive or vitriolic or not but the general theme remains the same across many of them "I was killbashed, so you get killbashed"


Modern Psychology:

Now, as I said, other peoples experiences are obviously anecdotal, I can't prove they happened exactly as being told take everything with a grain of salt, people have bad days and for the lack of a better way of putting it "shit happens". But we can also break this down and analyze it from a position that leverages modern psychology and the study of patterns of behavior. Modern psychology has shown that the abused often become abusers. This is because of the way power dynamics work and the way the human brain works. If a person feels powerless they will seek to balance that with something that gives them a sense of power or control. When you lose a fight in PvP it sucks, we've all been there (well a lot of us have, not sure I can say all because some people don't PvP at all but moot).

So you lost a fight, then when you're already down the person you lost the fight to who already has proven themselves the stronger of the two and is already on the top in this situation in the dominant position takes what little control you have left of the situation and throws it out the window by bashing your corpse. Before you'd just died to another player, no experience penalty, you are just in the fugue, you could wait there all day in hopes that someone finds your body and brings you back, that is something you had control over. Now though you are forced to use the soul gate, this means you are forced to take an experience penalty and death debuffs for an extended period of time.

Most people when they see the message "your corpse has been destroyed" don't react with indifference or happiness, they usually react with varying degrees of disappointment or even anger in some cases. This is where the problem originates is in that step from "well I lost a fight but maybe next time" to "oh great I get to take death debuffs". Modern psychology has shown that people who are subjected to negative situations eventually emulate those situations in attempts to regain the perceived loss of control. This is why abused children often grow up to be abusers. It's why gang violence leads to further gang violence. It's literally how our animal brain works. In some people this takes hundreds of situations while in others it may take only one or two, people are very different across the board, but there are some things that are the same about how humans operate.

This is why there are people whos reason for killbashing is that they have been killbashed themselves, it's a form of rationalizing the behavior to make it feel less toxic. But it is inherently toxic at it's core, the behavior is literally a last step effort to remove all control from another person over their situation by forcing them to take the soul gate. Now I'm not saying that everyone is doing this consciously even, for many people they probably don't even realize they are doing it to the degree they are. Most people if openly aware of malicious behavior seem to not act in such ways, but people also tend to try and rationalize bad behavior to protect themselves from accepting they are part of a problem if they did not see it as one already.

Conclusion:

I am not advocating for the removal of pvp, or even the removal of killbashing despite that I feel it has no place in a cohesive community I get that people sometimes want to send a statement. What I am advocating for is a way for both parties to get what they want essentially. The people who want to killbash can still do so but don't completely remove the ability for the party who lost the fight to at least have some choice in what they do afterward. In sourcebook material the spell Resurrection which is a 9th circle cleric spell can revive the dead regardless of the condition of their remains. This means they could be reduced to ash and still be Resurrected. That is the actual difference between Raise Dead and Resurrection. All I am advocating for is a change to the system that allows bashed corpses to be Resurrected so that if an individual is bashed they can decide to wait around all day if they want for someone who happens to have the ability to do so to wander by. This also would allow group pvp situations where one side wins but half their forces were bashed when the losing side realized they were going to lose (which does happen) to be Resurrected. Does it need to be free? Not particularly, it could be expensive even, the idea is to allow both parties involved to have their fight and then have a decision they get to make in regards to their own character during the immediate aftermath. This also helps resolve situations where mishaps happen with AoE spells that end up bashing a bunch of corpses unintentionally. This happens less and less as spells are made to not hit corpses and I'm honestly not even sure it's still an issue as I've not PvPed recently so I can't say for sure.

I'm not trying to say anyone is being intentionally malicious, it's an unintentional cycle of aggression that just happens naturally with people. Hell even I am guilty of thinking in the immediate aftermath of being corpse bashed by someone that I wish someone would just corpse bash them and I'm completely against the entire concept as a whole personally under normal circumstances. I'm also guilty of watching other people bash entire groups of players after group pvp without saying "hey maybe we shouldn't act that way". I get it, heat of the moment as I stated earlier in this post "shit happens". The key is that we let it happen but that we don't leave anyone completely out in the rain.

This post also comes with me thinking of ideas in ways to improve the systems that make use of killbashing such as player placed bounties. One solution to the idea that people need the skull for a bounty would be to attach a trinket to the player purse for the first player to pick up a corpse when it was killed by another player. The attached item could be an ear or finger that is identifiable as belonging to the player in question to be presented as proof of their demise. This would eliminate the need to killbash players over someone putting a bounty on them because of a disagreement between the two, political differences in their settlement, etc. It does this without requiring OOC intervention and can help to reduce the need to killbash other players which may lead to toxic or vitriolic behavior or feelings toward the aggressor.

People don't like to look at Arelith and accept that there is a good deal of toxicity between groups, but it is there and whatever we can do to reduce or mitigate the effects of it can only lead to a stronger server community overall. We are all people, we all make mistakes, we all are here to have fun and play together on Arelith even if our characters don't get along that doesn't mean we shouldn't as players.

The first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one.



TLDR:

Things I'm proposing to help reduce pvp toxicity:

Resurrection works on "bashed" corpses. This is actually more lore accurate to sourcebook materials than current Resurrection (double win)

Ear or Finger or "whatever" trinket when you take a purse off a corpse killed by a player the first time it is picked up. This will help reduce the need to killbash simply for bounties/trophies.

Things I am not proposing:

Removal of PvP

Removal of Corpse Bashing

Removal of Purse theft from corpses

PvP serves a valuable purpose in the shared narrative hell scape we all inhabit known as Arelith and we should be improving it in ways that make everyone involved enjoy their time on the server even if it is only just a little bit.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Biolab00 » Sat Jan 15, 2022 12:51 pm

--
Last edited by Biolab00 on Sat Jan 15, 2022 6:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Skibbles » Sat Jan 15, 2022 12:57 pm

Killbashing is just the period at the end of a sentence when there is nothing further to roleplay.

It is only natural that this is circular, because it means everyone is out of ideas but still trying to play out the consequences of no permanent death mixed with perpetual conflict.

There's nothing toxic about that, at its core, and even in your example at the burning shores it was about verbal vitriol - that is toxic behavior.

If we implement bash recovery nothing will change. Players doing it in a non-toxic fashion will carry on as normal, but toxic players will just stash your body in a barrel and move on.

As always the solution is to report toxic behavior; there is no greater method of community cleanup than a simple pm to the DMs.
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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by AstralUniverse » Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:43 pm

@Biolab00
Your quotation marks are messed up and I have nothing to do with the story from a year ago.
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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by The GrumpyCat » Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:00 pm

Resurrection works on "bashed" corpses. This is actually more lore accurate to sourcebook materials than current Resurrection (double win)

Ear or Finger or "whatever" trinket when you take a purse off a corpse killed by a player the first time it is picked up. This will help reduce the need to killbash simply for bounties/trophies.
Reguarding giving corpses giving Ear/Finger - YES. YES. YES. I personally want this SO much. YES! It has been discussed and I really, really hope it happens. YES.

Wierdly enough though - I'm not so sure about your first point.

The reason I say this is the following:

Sometimes you absolutly positivly completely and utterly want a charcter /gone/. Finito. Over. This isn't neccesarly griefy, it can just really be the only line a character would take.

If I'm faced with say Grimbar Doomface, who has killed, tortured and mutilated myslelf and dozens of my friends/loved ones I won't be like 'oh let's leave his bashed corpse here so it can be ressurected.'

Instead my character will work to try and ensure that there is as little chance as possible he will be ressurected. Which means putting the corpse in a barrel, hiding it in the woods, carrying it with me - anything to make sure that Grimbar Doomface cannot return to this world on an iC level.

This creates problems for the player - or at least does in my opinion, as they're left waiting in limbo, to see if they'll be raised or not. I don't have a huge amount of time to play personally and honestly I'd much rather respawn and get on with some form of activity/rp, after five min. Than wait for ages with no knowledge of if there's any rp coming or not.

Of course this can be done though tells... 'Hay mate, are you going to ressurect me?' - but often such things can go south quickly. especialy if tempers are already hot. If you've had a pvp experience which is already poor, do you really want to engage your attackers in dialogue? Especially if they say 'No mate sorry, we've no reason to drop your corpse off somewhere to be raised.'

So whilst I'm absolutly in agreement that some other form of trophy would be great - sadly bashing does actually serve a purpose.
This too shall pass.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Ork » Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:34 pm

The only person within your control is yourself. If you are bashed, attributing OOC animosity for the act is entirely on you.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Paint » Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:35 pm

I've once seen a dwarf lop the head off of a PC Orog as a trophy to bring back to brag about their victory in a large skirmish. I didn't think twice about it -- it seemed the natural thing for the dwarf to do ICly, and I doubt it came from a place of player shaming. If I, a brave warrior, slayed a monster and wanted to brag and regale to all of my friends about my courageous exploits, a big, gory, brutal trophy would be the perfect punctuation. In fact, I know of at least one in-game faction that requires such a gory trophy as a proof of competence. Anyways, that's just an example that sticks out to me. I've had my corpses bashed before, and most of the time it felt understandable.

I guess it's pretty easy to see bashing corpses as a full stop -- an end to roleplay -- rather than as a roleplay opportunity but uh. I... kind of think that whether or not a character decides to destroy a corpse and for what -reason- they destroy that corpse to be a pretty big indicator of their moral compass. I think for those witnessing it, it can make the world feel more immersive. I've seen some heated arguments back and forth on corpse bashing, though. Because I'm not blind to the obvious potential for griefing it has. (I don't want to point out anything specific so I can entirely avoid accidentally shaming anyone.) I just think it's a pretty visceral, if unpleasant roleplay tool. Being used as a prop for someone's RP can feel pretty insulting and dehumanizing sometimes, but whether you're a good guy or a bad guy, it's pretty essential to internalize OOCly that your character might be seen as a monster, cattle, prey, or less than human -- for lack of a better term -- by your opposition icly. I would hope that people would try to make conflict RP interesting, but sometimes it boils down to actions having consequences. Sometimes, you lose.

It does help that I tend to loiter on characters in high-epics and enjoy tavern roleplay, loitering around, and RP that isn't essentially conflict-focused, though. When I get rinsed, I can usually find something to do, and maybe that makes my temperament more suited for these kinds of things.

I've never really considered resurrection sickness as a penalty inflicted on me by other players so much as a nice, mechanical reminder that I should take death seriously in Arelith, as it has consequences. The alternative being permadeath -- I'll take the resurrection sickness. The encouraged cooling-off period helps wind down from a high-adrenaline situation, too.

That being said, I'm not opposed to changing the rules around resurrection. I just uh, honestly think there's roleplay value in bashing corpses.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by The Rambling Midget » Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:39 pm

Skibbles wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 12:57 pm
Killbashing is just the period at the end of a sentence when there is nothing further to roleplay.
This is the real problem. The pervasive belief that killbashing is the only possible punctuation.

In extremely rare cases, it is the best option. In most others, it's lazy writing. Just because your part of the story is over doesn't mean theirs is, and by attempting to end it for them, you're more likely to extricate yourself than leave a lasting and meaningful impression.
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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Naghast » Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:57 pm

most of the killbashing i've witnessed was either people randomly ganking someone and bashing them
or people ganking someone and then deiciding to bash their corpse in front of a portal to publically humiliate them in front of everyone.
as for heads, i've seen player head being used to give proof of assassination and then discarded... once.
most other times i've seen + heard of people who literally keep a private chest full of player heads, for reasons that are either unknown to me, or reasons i genuinely fail to comprehend.

emphasis on *MOST* in this post. i know there can be positive uses of both bashing and player heads. simply stating my observations here.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by MissEvelyn » Sat Jan 15, 2022 3:00 pm

I believe that Raise Dead shouldn't revive kill-bashed corpses, but Resurrection most certainly should.
Resurrection in 3.5 wrote:This spell functions like raise dead, except that you are able to restore life and complete strength to any deceased creature.

The condition of the remains is not a factor. So long as some small portion of the creature’s body still exists, it can be resurrected, but the portion receiving the spell must have been part of the creature’s body at the time of death. (The remains of a creature hit by a disintegrate spell count as a small portion of its body.) The creature can have been dead no longer than 10 years per caster level.
Having the resurrected character lose a lot of piety (like 75%) for being raised in this way is a small but good price to pay.

At any rate, this would damper the kill-bash culture

But that said, I have to admit that there was one instance where I wish I had kill-bashed a corpse. A PC confronted mine in the middle of the village of Skaljard. My PC came out on top, and the other died. I left the body as is, so that their friends could collect it. What I didn't count on was them doing it immediately, going to the altar (which my character was standing right in front of) and praying for a raise. It felt so bizarre that they would casually raise their friend after watching their friend get cut down. In my opinion it was bad form.

The above scenario could have been prevented if I had kill-bashed them. But, the above scenario could also have been prevented if we put a 10 minute timer on being able to be raised after dying to PvP.

Such a timer, I believe, would also put a small damper on kill-bash culture.


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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Skibbles » Sat Jan 15, 2022 3:48 pm

The Rambling Midget wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:39 pm
Skibbles wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 12:57 pm
Killbashing is just the period at the end of a sentence when there is nothing further to roleplay.
This is the real problem. The pervasive belief that killbashing is the only possible punctuation.

In extremely rare cases, it is the best option. In most others, it's lazy writing. Just because your part of the story is over doesn't mean theirs is, and by attempting to end it for them, you're more likely to extricate yourself than leave a lasting and meaningful impression.
I honestly can't tell if you're disagreeing or adding on?

I tried to contextualize that by saying it's more often done out of a lack of ideas on how else to proceed other than finalizing the encounter.
Irongron wrote: [...] the super-secret Arelith development roadmap is a post apocalyptic wasteland populated with competing tribes of hand-bombard wielding techno-giants, and strewn with the bones of long dead elves.

So we're very much on track.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Biolab00 » Sat Jan 15, 2022 6:07 pm

AstralUniverse wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:43 pm
@Biolab00
Your quotation marks are messed up and I have nothing to do with the story from a year ago.
Oh my goodness, i apologise. I've no idea why the quotation marks become like this. Tried editing but seems to make it worse. I've deleted the post actually.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by AstralUniverse » Sat Jan 15, 2022 6:08 pm

Biolab00 wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 6:07 pm
AstralUniverse wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:43 pm
@Biolab00
Your quotation marks are messed up and I have nothing to do with the story from a year ago.
Oh my goodness, i apologise. I've no idea why the quotation marks become like this. Tried editing but seems to make it worse. I've deleted the post actually.
When I tried to quote your comment, same happened to me and I gave up on trying to quote lol. No idea.
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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Sat Jan 15, 2022 7:02 pm

Griefy behavior is a rule violation, and should be reported. If you believe, with all your heart and soul, that someone has killbashed you purely out of OOC vindictiveness, and that the narrative that led up to the fight where you died has absolutely zero percent to do with it (including the actions of all the others involved), then report it.

For everything else, we're (99% of us, anyway) playing a population of adventurers that go out and commit genocide as a way of life every day- not just against monsters, but against human/oid bandits (they're 'people', we could spare them and imprison/redeem them, but we casually slay and loot them). Killing your enemies is not a mark of OOC rancor, but a mark of IC consistency.

If you're fighting to the death, there is no reasonable IC expectation of having your body left alone to be revived with ease. Presuming that the other person shouldn't bash your corpse to keep you from being revived for narrative purposes is assuming they must waive their agency for yours - just because in your story you might have 'spared their body' doesn't mean there isn't a good reason in theirs to keep you from getting back up.

You can do it- sometimes, you can even find a way to bend your character to do it, so that the other side 'has more fun,' but this decision cannot happen in a vacuum- bending your character to be nice has limits. If bending your character to be nice unreasonably impacts many others who also don't want the dead person raised, there can't be any reasonable expectation that the person who killed you does anything other than killbash you, otherwise they're being inconsiderate to the other players whose characters wouldn't want to see yours revived.

Respawning from death comes with some seriously inconvenient penalties- sort of. They're temporary. I get it, it sucks. But it's part of the package you (and your character who heroically/vindictively fights o the death) signed up for.

Personally, I think all PvP deaths should result in at least a 10 minute fugue screen, and that killing someone should automatically bash their corpse - unless you're in subdue mode, which I believe should be default. This lends weight to the gravity of the decision to kill someone's character, and makes it a more active, narrative process. YMMV.

Edit: I also believe my personal preference would have people claiming even harder that it was a personal attack rather than an IC narrative. But, the only way to eliminate that perception is to automatically make all PvP result in a bashed corpse so that it's a non-decision and no one can assign blame to the killer, because they have no other choice- and I think that's a far worse option with farther reaching game-play consequences.
Last edited by Aelryn Bloodmoon on Sat Jan 15, 2022 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by McPunchins » Sat Jan 15, 2022 7:04 pm

Warning this here, it be a long one:


@Biolab00 in regards to the sentence you mentioned

This was poor sentence structure on my part, I had not RPed with this person or group more than a couple times, they happened to be part of a group that directly opposed people I regularly RPed with.

Essentially I was in Group A, RPed with Group A, had a little interaction with Group B here and there but nothing violent and then Group B showed up with a hit squad and bashed me because they'd been bashed presumably by people from Group A.

Also situationally it makes no sense for a couple paladins from Group B to murder and maim the corpse of anyone over basic insults and especially not a random person they've never seen or met for fighting monsters with another person. But yes I worded that poorly as far as sentence structure


Ork wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:34 pm
The only person within your control is yourself. If you are bashed, attributing OOC animosity for the act is entirely on you.
Ork I like you but this is a verifiable situation a lot of the time otherwise a plethora of people wouldn't constantly be given the excuses like "I killbash because I get killbashed" which does happen. I do go as far as to state most of this is likely not done in an intentionally malicious manner, but people are people and a cycle of aggression will continue. But that is beside the point I'm not calling for the removal of killbashing.

That being said I have no doubt that there are people who authentically think this improves the storytelling and I'm not going to try to tell them otherwise because everyone has their own viewpoints on things. I am simply putting forward the idea that perhaps everyone should simply have the option to wait regardless of vitriol or RP intent by the winning party. The option to wait for potential rescue should always exist, even if it may be entirely futile to do so at least give the option.


Skibbles wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 12:57 pm
Killbashing is just the period at the end of a sentence when there is nothing further to roleplay.

It is only natural that this is circular, because it means everyone is out of ideas but still trying to play out the consequences of no permanent death mixed with perpetual conflict.

There's nothing toxic about that, at its core, and even in your example at the burning shores it was about verbal vitriol - that is toxic behavior.

If we implement bash recovery nothing will change. Players doing it in a non-toxic fashion will carry on as normal, but toxic players will just stash your body in a barrel and move on.

As always the solution is to report toxic behavior; there is no greater method of community cleanup than a simple pm to the DMs.

And I am in no way saying to remove Killbashing, people repeatedly seem to misunderstand that, Killbashing is the product of a flawed system. That doesn't mean it is entirely without place, I am simply saying we should provide the person at the losing end of the stick with more options that are based in lore. Resurrection according to the Sourcebook definition:
This spell functions like raise dead, except that you are able to restore life and complete strength to any deceased creature.

The condition of the remains is not a factor. So long as some small portion of the creature’s body still exists, it can be resurrected, but the portion receiving the spell must have been part of the creature’s body at the time of death. (The remains of a creature hit by a disintegrate spell count as a small portion of its body.) The creature can have been dead no longer than 10 years per caster level.

Upon completion of the spell, the creature is immediately restored to full hit points, vigor, and health, with no loss of prepared spells. However, the subject loses one level, or 2 points of Constitution if the subject was 1st level. (If this reduction would bring its Con to 0 or lower, it can’t be resurrected). This level loss or Constitution loss cannot be repaired by any means.

You can resurrect someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed. You cannot resurrect someone who has died of old age. Constructs, elementals, outsiders, and undead creatures can’t be resurrected.


As stated in every sourcebook materials as far back as at least 3rd Edition possibly earlier (though I couldn't find any 2nd edition sourcebooks to verify this)

The GrumpyCat wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:00 pm
Resurrection works on "bashed" corpses. This is actually more lore accurate to sourcebook materials than current Resurrection (double win)

Ear or Finger or "whatever" trinket when you take a purse off a corpse killed by a player the first time it is picked up. This will help reduce the need to killbash simply for bounties/trophies.
Reguarding giving corpses giving Ear/Finger - YES. YES. YES. I personally want this SO much. YES! It has been discussed and I really, really hope it happens. YES.

Wierdly enough though - I'm not so sure about your first point.

The reason I say this is the following:

Sometimes you absolutly positivly completely and utterly want a charcter /gone/. Finito. Over. This isn't neccesarly griefy, it can just really be the only line a character would take.

If I'm faced with say Grimbar Doomface, who has killed, tortured and mutilated myslelf and dozens of my friends/loved ones I won't be like 'oh let's leave his bashed corpse here so it can be ressurected.'

Instead my character will work to try and ensure that there is as little chance as possible he will be ressurected. Which means putting the corpse in a barrel, hiding it in the woods, carrying it with me - anything to make sure that Grimbar Doomface cannot return to this world on an iC level.

This creates problems for the player - or at least does in my opinion, as they're left waiting in limbo, to see if they'll be raised or not. I don't have a huge amount of time to play personally and honestly I'd much rather respawn and get on with some form of activity/rp, after five min. Than wait for ages with no knowledge of if there's any rp coming or not.

Of course this can be done though tells... 'Hay mate, are you going to ressurect me?' - but often such things can go south quickly. especialy if tempers are already hot. If you've had a pvp experience which is already poor, do you really want to engage your attackers in dialogue? Especially if they say 'No mate sorry, we've no reason to drop your corpse off somewhere to be raised.'

So whilst I'm absolutly in agreement that some other form of trophy would be great - sadly bashing does actually serve a purpose.
The practical applications of this fall more commonly in situations where an ally has survived a group conflict or an enemy who was to be captured is instead accidentally blown up in a conflict and their corpse is the mishap of well game engine from 2004.

The odds that someone who just killbashed you is going to waste a resurrection scroll or spellslot on you are pretty slim to none, which I don't expect. But the option to wait in the fugue till someone happens across your corpse or an ally who was also present brings you back should be an option.

As I've said repeatedly which people still don't seem to get I don't want Killbashing removed, removing the easy access to this would just lead to the truely vindictive being more creative in ways to destroy corpses, at least with being bashed you know you were bashed but you don't if someone takes your corpse and dumps it in a monster corpse and destroys that or puts it in a trash barrel etc.

The idea is more that Resurrection is technically not lore/sourcebook accurate at the moment because according to the material it can be used regardless of condition of remains. Meaning you could be a single flake of skin or bone and still be resurrected by it. No amount of damage a random warrior or wizard could do to you would completely destroy you in all ways preventing any possibility of Resurrection. The only things that prevent Resurrection according to sourcebooks is having died of natural old age or having been deceased for more than ten years.

As for your mention of a "Definite end" situation this is D&D in the Forgotten Realms, the idea that gods exist isn't just a concept in peoples heads it's a verifiable fact in the world and at no point should a mortal ever feel safe to assume they've put a complete end to their enemies, that is kind of how gods work.

Easiest way to think about it is with an example of Evil being destroyed. Lets say you absolutely obliterated the entire Zhentarim presence on Arelith, you've gone to war and "won" that war. You've cornered the Dread Templar of the church of Bane and in his final moments he declares that Bane will have his prize and you cannot put a stop to that no matter how much you wish you could. Then you proceed to kill him and destroy his corpse as much as possible. Can you say for certain that Bane as a Greater Deity wouldn't see this and go "you know what, I'd rather see more fighting" and decide to intervene? No, you can't say that with absolute certainty, in the world this takes place in Bane could just be like "Man it's Tuesday, you think you're done fighting? nah... Bam Everyone Alive." Would he? Probably not because weakness isn't something he canonically appreciates but that doesn't mean that he couldn't.

Casting Resurrection as a cleric is literally the cleric asking their deity to reach from whatever realm they reside in and return the intended individual to the mortal plane in their entirety so that they can yet again serve to further the deities aspirations and goals. It is a prayer only heard from the strongest of the clergies of the world but it is not something that just gets flat out denied because some barbarian took an axe to a corpse and mutilated it in anger or other similar situations.

Resurrection when compared to Raise Dead doesn't have anywhere near as much use on Arelith because it's just a fancy Raise Dead mechanically that gives the heal that people usually follow Raise Dead with automatically. This isn't accurate to the lore and it can serve an entirely different purpose more closely tied to what it is as a spell which is the ability to completely restore any being to life from any condition of death other than natural age. It can even UN Undead people in lore. You could literally cast it on a zombie that was made from a corpse who had died in the last ten years and that person would return as they were before they originally died if the request of the deity in question was granted. Obviously this being D&D there is that assumption that anything clerics do if they have the piety is "accepted" by their god since clerics don't cast magic as much as they make requests of their deity in the form of casting but we already take that assumption when it comes to anything else they do.

Topic of Dialog Specifically

As for engaging in dialog with would be attackers or attackees I understand that people get heated, but there should always be room for dialog even between in character enemies. We as a community should be able to trust that those we share the server with are not inherently bad people, even if they play bad people. We're all actors on a stage essentially and Arelith is that stage, we're here to play our roles and tell our stories not create some kind of hate fueled murderfest for out of story reasons. We should always be willing to listen to and speak with our fellow server members, most of all our in character enemies because the best criticisms in life often come from the eyes of those you actively compete with. Now does that mean that people should just flat out be like "Man you could be better at this yada yada blah blah" nah probably not because people like you said get heated and when tempers are high a civil discussion is often harder to maintain. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be attempting to have conversations with the other parties involved ever.

If we find ourselves in situations where we have gotten heated then that means some conflict outside of the story is present and I openly encourage people to seek resolution to that conflict. Not particularly in that exact moment but there should be a dialog at some point between concerned parties so that people don't just bottle up heated situation after heated situation and start viewing it as a requirement of their character to absolutely destroy another character from an outside perspective. Because that just leads to poor story telling and bad behavior usually from both parties. Every time we see a group of players getting aggressive with another group of players constantly no one ever seems to think about the fact that the aggression involved there probably started somewhere smaller, probably between two people who hold some influence in their respective groups. If those two people had just taken a breath and then had a conversation outside their characters could that have been prevented from escalating?

Enemy isn't a word that belongs behind the curtain, if your immediate reaction to the mention of another party among the community is "They are the enemy" then that means you should probably have a conversation to resolve that. All of us are just as much a part of the story in our own ways regardless of the characters we play in it. Respect among the playerbase should be maintained from the outside, that doesn't mean your characters need to be friends or even that players outside need to be but no one here is "the enemy". But that is probably a long drawn out discussion for another thread. This thread is about Resurrection as a spell and the reasons it should be usable to bring back even a bashed corpse.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Kalthariam » Sun Jan 16, 2022 11:41 am

I just kinda find kill-bashing to be pointless.

Especially seeing how most of the kill bashing I see done, is people dragging bodies around the underdark portal and bashing the corpses there to leave the remains there with the intention of shaming them.

Which is really kinda awkward when said person walks by their own corpse, because it's the hub and it's right next to the portal and that person revived anyways and continued on. (As you do no matter if your bashed or not)

I get it's just to stop people from raising the corpses. But it's also a bloody eye sore when people decide to bash a buncha corpses in a public place, and there's nothing you can do to make the corpses go away.

Not to mention ICly it's gross as hell to have 1-4 headless corpses just laying around a portal, and there's nothing you can do about it.

this could easily just be made to where you hit a body and the body just disappears completely. instead of leaving a broken remains perpetually stuck in place until the server resets.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by McPunchins » Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:15 pm

Kalthariam wrote:
Sun Jan 16, 2022 11:41 am
I just kinda find kill-bashing to be pointless.

Especially seeing how most of the kill bashing I see done, is people dragging bodies around the underdark portal and bashing the corpses there to leave the remains there with the intention of shaming them.

Which is really kinda awkward when said person walks by their own corpse, because it's the hub and it's right next to the portal and that person revived anyways and continued on. (As you do no matter if your bashed or not)

I get it's just to stop people from raising the corpses. But it's also a bloody eye sore when people decide to bash a buncha corpses in a public place, and there's nothing you can do to make the corpses go away.

Not to mention ICly it's gross as hell to have 1-4 headless corpses just laying around a portal, and there's nothing you can do about it.

this could easily just be made to where you hit a body and the body just disappears completely. instead of leaving a broken remains perpetually stuck in place until the server resets.
This thread isn't about removing killbashing, read the posts. It is about providing an option for killbashed characters through applying actual sourcebook definition to the spell Resurrection and making it usable on bashed corpses. Also the suggestion of "trophy" items added to the coin purse interaction when you pick a corpse up the first time. Although I don't disagree that bashing a bunch of corpses right next to the Hub portal doesn't really make much sense in character a lot of the time and is just an inconvenient eyesore for most people. I think that could be resolved by giving corpses a "decay" timer but that is a different discussion really.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by RedGiant » Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:51 pm

Yes, from me, to any mechanic that disrupts all the death discontinuity.
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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Watchful Glare » Sun Jan 16, 2022 5:01 pm

Naghast wrote:
Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:57 pm
most of the killbashing i've witnessed was either people randomly ganking someone and bashing them
or people ganking someone and then deiciding to bash their corpse in front of a portal to publically humiliate them in front of everyone.
as for heads, i've seen player head being used to give proof of assassination and then discarded... once.
most other times i've seen + heard of people who literally keep a private chest full of player heads, for reasons that are either unknown to me, or reasons i genuinely fail to comprehend.

emphasis on *MOST* in this post. i know there can be positive uses of both bashing and player heads. simply stating my observations here.
Can confirm both of this. In the latter scenario I actually purchased a house in-game once, and did open the chest to find it riddled with heads.

Giving the option for resurrection scrolls/spells to be used on bashed corpses is something I'd fully get behind.

I think McPunchins hit the nail in the head. Skibbles has a point too, and perhaps that is how things work sometimes. However I've had my characters defeat others with whom there was no interest to further any roleplay, and yet did not bash them. And I do not think that is what McPunchins was getting at.

My personal opinion on bashed corpses is... I'm torn. On one hand I can see it's function being making another player (and others) acknowledge that they have been killed, whereas the respawn system would allow them to ignore it otherwise, and say 'no, never happened'. And unleash another whole can of worms. I understand it.

On the other hand, it has always been jarring to see corpses bashed next to a portal. See bashed corpses become a fixed landmark that cannot be removed even by 10th level epic spells. And see the bashed person walk about soon because obviously they were bashed in a public place because the purpose was for it to be seen that they were, indeed, dead, killed and bashed... But that's usually the place where they do play.

Sometimes people RP their deaths by not logging into the character for days. Other times they ignore it and respawn right away. I've seen people that always respawn right away have a change of heart suddenly and decide to go the RP route recently. And I've seen the opposite just as well.

Either way the bashed corpse remains.
Last edited by Watchful Glare on Sun Jan 16, 2022 5:55 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Arienette » Sun Jan 16, 2022 5:30 pm

I don’t understand the hard feelings about bashing a corpse IN GENERAL. I know it can be used as an uncalled for FU.

Sometimes in PvP I subdue, sometimes I kill, sometimes I kill bash. It depends on the context.

I’ve once or twice PvPed people in the middle of nowhere and KBed them due to the intensity/context of the encounter.

Then gotten a Tell from the player complaining about the bash. Like, what does it matter? You got killed in the middle of nowhere . The chances of some friendly person coming by, seeing your corpse, picking it up, assuming you are still online, dropping what they are doing, walking all the way back to a shrine to res you are… close to nil.

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Re: Killbashing is toxic vindictive behavior - A Solution

Post by Curve » Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:23 pm

Assume that every PvP you get into your character will get bashed and when it does not happen you will feel better.

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