[Malek]

POST 2, NONCOMBAT BOOGALOO
Fun Fact! The original post is at least 7500 words, I really like typing.


Alright, I've talked a bit about the various tools at your disposal when playing a noncombat character, I've talked a bit about schticks and I've alluded to some concepts such as dev items being better than uniques. I'll expand on this and give you ways to actually deal with problems and affect the world as a noncombat character. Just because you're noncombat doesn't mean you can't defeat your enemies. 

Here is a general overview of your playstyle. The point of noncombat is that you are SACRIFICING combat potential (Possibly accepting a low win rate, going for less combat hiddens like stances and auras in favor of fluff, preferring dev items over uniques) for more OUTER combat capabilities. 

Why does this sacrifice need to be made? It's because everything you want to achieve, you are USUALLY sacrificing something else to achieve it. Let's say if a known super high winrate flashsword blademaster user wanted to delve into some noncombat progression, do you think if they out of nowhere apped for a ritual that'll buff them or their friends permanently, they'd just get the ability to perform those kinds of rituals? Probably not. 

If your character's main schtick is the development of rituals, and preparation of social navigation tools? They'll have a much easier time apping for something like this in my opinion, because there's sacrifices to achieve that. 

This philosophy applies to my claim, DEV ITEMS ARE BETTER THAN UNIQUES. and it's probably time I explain that. Currently, people only think of dev items as "Oh these are ingredient rocks for certain potions or my uniques. Also, if it's attuned to my element, I can really quickly rp messing around with it to finally get thunderking! Otherwise they're useless". Sure, SOME dev items function that way, but generally you can make ANYTHING out of dev items, and you can ask for things that are WAY crazier through them. When you go for high tier dev items (A to SS, ones that explicitly require dev item ingredients), you make it clear that you're SACRIFICING things that you could instead put into a unique that essentially permanently buffs your stats. When I made my quill, I don't think contract binding would've really come about if I also asked for it to be a permanent +60 pow I can rely on as well. By not asking for it, I could do A LOT more with the creative process of creating a magic item, and now thanks to it, I have a viable method to "fight through RP" (Getting people to sign contracts).

The less you ask for in terms of clear and defined mechanical power level increase, the more you can ask for in terms of creativity, and in my opinion enough creativity and build up can beat characters of any power level so long as you're fun and smart about it. 

This idea applies to any sacrifice, I've done "Risky Artifice" 3 times now, basically in the process of making my dev items, I announce in looc that I'm going to roll. 1-2 gives me a perm injury, 2-4 gives me a temp, and 5-6 lets me get out completely fine. So far I've rolled 5 twice (bless) and 1 once, which is the reason behind Taipan's cane. Self imposed sacrifice also counts (At least I believe it does). For one, I've also refused to heal my character's injuries conventionally which I think helped me create a method of transferring injuries through contracts. It helps to also rp your injuries FULLY, My leg doesn't let me move normally? I'm mentioning that almost every other rp. My arm is no longer functioning on -10 perm? That's cool, I'll rp being armless and finding creative ways around it for years until I can get it fixed. I feel like a lot of people aren't fans of the emphasis I put on perms and expect them to not be treated as big deals since mechanically they're just some -vit that everyone has, and you can just for the most part fix them with a visit to the doctor, but getting crippled and risking that SHOULD mean something for your character, and it's why perms count for so much in terms of being significant dev. Basically, never underestimate sacrifice when you try to expand upon your schtick. 

That's the playstyle, the tl;dr is this noncombat characters SACRIFICE combat minmaxing for the sake of empowering their dev for creative noncombat solutions and benefits. The rest of the guide is going to focus on leadership and antagonism tips, you can benefit from reading them, but it's those roles I'm focusing on.

Be creative! Create fun items and systems! Create interesting scenarios! Make the game more fun for other players and yourself. 

Before I get into ANYTHING else, there's some things you need to know about enemy management. These are just some very basic principles you need to understand. The more you're willing to affect the lives of others, the more enemies you are willing to accept. As a noncombat character, you can't (and really shouldn't even if you can) beat your enemies consistently in just... 1 on 1 no preparation honorable pvp. As I'll explain later, noncombat characters win their fights through preparation, alliance management, and planning. Here's a few factors to consider to make sure you're not biting off more than you can chew. 

Faction: Associating with a faction can give you a lot of benefits! Territory, allies, markets, artificers & alchemists... but to accept those benefits you need to accept the baggage. As mentioned previously, a lot of characters are zealots and openly supporting one single faction can cause you to have ALL of the enemy zealots on your back. You need to accept that, loyalty and security of one faction means accepting their enemies as well. Of course, you can try and play a manipulator character that tries to appease all the factions, but that comes with its own difficulties (having something all the factions want enough to tolerate you, and no single faction that will fully support your endeavors.)

Leadership: If you've found yourself in the position of leadership, you're going to have enemies. Not only the enemies of your faction, but probably the occasional person that will want to capture you and ransom you back to your own faction. Leadership demands a big amount of responsibility, and most players assume this responsibility begins and ends at "verb good". I disagree, clearly, since I'm writing this guide and most of that will be described in the leadership section. 

Antagonism: The most obvious source of enemy creation. A lot of people assume antagonism means "Playing a witch or nethradin", but it's my opinion that an osronan knight is as much of an antagonist as a witch, or they can be. Antagonism isn't a measure of "how evil aligned" your character is, and this isn't space station 13 where it's entirely 'role' reliant. Antagonism to me, is exactly what the word means. How much your character is willing to be antagonistic, picking fights, capping characters, putting up bounties and turning people against each other. The more you're willing to mess with the lives of others, the more willing you need to be to accept them messing with yours.

As a noncombat character you need to balance these three aspects. For one, you don't have to seek any of these to play a good noncombat character or a world shaker. You can just play a hermit druid that constantly perfects their nature arts, offering guidance and therapy to any weary souls that stop by that weird ass cave with the giant butterfly, remaining completely neutral to people's factions and conflicts and purely be a source of good for other people's lives. This doesn't make you IMMUNE to enemy generation, mind you, ogres don't tend to care that you're nice when they attack you (though there are exceptions.) but you shouldn't expect to be faced with much risk of death if you avoid appealing too heavily to any of the three factors listed. 

Even if you want to heavily play into one faction/start your own, even if you want to take a leadership position and guide a faction to raids and wars, even if you want to be ultra antagonistic and have /players function as a pretty accurate list of your enemies... as a noncombat character you can't impulsively rush into things. Even as a good verber/not noncombat character, you need to keep this all in mind. Actions have consequences, your allegiances matter, the strength you've built up matters. Solo antagonism can be fun! But it does not protect you from any GROUPS you anger, just because you want to go solo doesn't mean other characters can't rely on their ties to take you down. If you want to play a noncombat character, you benefit from your early game focus on building your own social power and creation of things that make people want your character on their side, as well as forming alliances before delving into leadership and antagonism. 

Just play smart, or don't! But keep in mind that if you don't, you might die, but we don't need to play for maximum character longevity, just maximum character fun both for ourselves and others.

Note, you don't have to play a 'manipulator' type character when going for a noncombat! This section only describes tips and tricks for dealing with factions. Generally, individuals are cool, but you're not going to be able to avoid developing a faction-wide reputation so it is useful to tailor that. 

Getting factions on your side is simple. 

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1. You need to appeal to their culture and standards, Osrona is going to try and take you down for being an occultist so you should recognize that you need to hide that. Generally you also should treat faction leaders with respect if you don't want to be banished from their lands. 

2. You need something they want, this can either be something they SPECIFICALLY want that you seek out for bargaining power (a holy relic to get Osrona's attention, etc.) or a schtick they can make use of. New Tannen might be happy to help you out if you peddle a recipe for a new drug to them, for example. 

3. You need to not be helping their enemies, at least as far as they know. This can be the hardest part for some, but generally if a faction believes you to be way too big of a benefit to their enemies they'll want you out of the picture. You can still do it, either publicly maintain FULL neutrality (which'll likely prevent the factions from supporting you more than dealing with you when necessary) or just hide your affiliations with other factions (please don't do this by just being vaguely nonthreatening, if you plan to betray or manipulate a group you should actually integrate yourself with them somewhat so they recognize you).

Like I said, you don't need to play a super smart behind the scenes manipulator, just keep these in mind if you wanna befriend a faction, and keeping them in mind helps you not be surprised when the ebonblooded start attacking you because you've been so gung ho about rebuilding the bridge for Osrona. 

As I mentioned before, people expect the responsibility of leadership to begin and end at "be a good verber, win your raid fight". I gotta ask though, why? Not just why the responsibility ends there to most, but why it even needs to be a responsibility to begin with. Don't get me wrong, this is a fantasy game where every player is assumed to be a mage by default, so of course we're going to have plenty of King Arthurs that charge into battle with their Excaliburs, but does every leader need to be a King Arthur?

I don't think so! In fact a lot of Arthurian legend ends in tragedy! I don't understand the concept that the leader of a faction needs to be the strongest personally, I have a different set of responsibilities for faction leaders, and since they don't require combat capabilities they benefit the noncombat guide very well! Still, I generally think good faction leaders should abide by these responsibilities regardless of whether or not they wanna go noncombat. 

1. A good leader needs to bring people together, this makes sense and generally describes what a leader is. You need to be able to inspire and enforce some level of loyalty in others, or someone that can do that better has every right to depose you. Additionally you also need to be able to recruit more people. So many leaders completely ignore this and just hope that out of the blue, people will flock to their faction purely because it IS a faction. Put up some emporium projects to recruit fresh blood, make your faction's culture accepting of visitors and show them the benefits of joining, host public events to drum up support. People ignore this because the current assumption is that a leader's responsibility is JUST winning their raid fight, and their faction ends up outnumbered by their enemies and they have less breathing room to develop and grow. 

2. A good leader needs to empower those that follow them, rather than focusing purely on your own character's strength as a leader, your focus should be on the strength of your whole faction in my opinion. Acquire assets, make sure all your allies have reliable access to potions and enchanted armor, help them out with their dev, fund their events to make sure they return safe. Why invest so much of your nation's resources into your own unique when you can either make one for your strongest verber and accomplished soldier, or work on projects that are going to benefit your whole faction?

3. A good leader needs to set good goals, you are the leader. An entire civilization could be at your beck and call, and this is a magical fantasy realm. Why have your goals be "Acquire the hiddens I want for my build, and crush my enemies", which is something EVERY character passively works towards? You set your goals for the entire faction, you reasonably have more resources at your disposal than the active player and can generate significantly more project dev by rping "Put a national focus on the research of x" than them. Think of interesting things your faction can work towards! Build some cool pillar that generates power! Summon a god your faction worships into the world! Create an Esshar wide drug network with the backing of your faction!

4. A good leader needs to know how to pick their battles, yes this applies individually, but more importantly I'm talking on a FACTION level. I think people are way too eager to declare war and decide enemies, they don't think in terms of alliances at all, and they're fine with any conflict at any time. I think this is because people tend to have a verb centric way of thinking. "Verb decides all. Whether our faction has a right to exist will be determined through the verb. Factions are simply raid after raid, we accept all raids and we win our rpbs, if we do not, we die. Such is the circle of life.". You need to realize the ramifications of making and having enemies, for one, anyone associated with your faction becomes a target for the enemy faction. If your faction consists of various sub 200 rpl teens, then you are dooming them to contending with the established adults when you go to war with their factions. There is nothing wrong with relying on diplomacy and choosing WHEN to pick fights. You also need to realize and accept when you just can't beat an enemy faction, I've noticed everyone rping a constant belief that they are the strongest... but if the enemy faction consistently beats you and your people, then you have ample IC reason to attempt a change of course, there is no need to suicide an entire nation. Generally, when you play a leader, think of all the npcs your decisions kill, if you're willing to throw away your city for an IC grudge you are dooming hundreds and thousands of your civilians to death, not just your faction's magi. For some character's that's a sacrifice they're willing to make, but for others you need to ask yourself if swallowing your pride for the preservation of your settlement is something your character would do. 

5. A good leader needs to be able to stay safe, "Wait, so they need to verb good?" yes and no. I still don't think a leader necessary has to be 'verb master extraordinaire' with the most powerful ebuild out there, but they need to at least keep themselves safe. If they're captured or die, their entire faction can end up in disarray and become absolved completely. If you're not confident in your fighting abilities, keep verb monkeys around, don't constantly pick wilderness cap 3 fights when no allies are around for some personal grudges if they've got nothing to do with your faction and everyone in your care. If you're going to take risk, make sure to use proper planning to mitigate those risks a bit, so that if something happens to you your faction doesn't have to deal with "Oh uh... king's gone. An ogre took em. Who's in charge while we try and get em back?". Again this doesn't necessarily rely on YOUR verbing capabilities, just your ability to be SAFE. This doesn't mean complete risk avoidance, dreamline bombs and relying on allies to roam are all valid methods of risk mitigation. 

6. A good leader needs to be a good antagonist, might not apply to perfectly neutral factions, but those are preeetty rare. Even if you go for neutrality yourself, your followers are bound to pick fights on their own which might force you to act. This is explained better in the next section! 

These guidelines are best suited to helping a noncombat character, but I don't see why combat oriented leaders can't pick them up and try to follow through with them as well. If you break these rules, I don't fault you or anything by the way! Sometimes it fits character, these don't necessarily apply to Elysia for example, but I think they were a very fun addition to the game regardless and it makes sense to ignore some of these rules considering they were a hyper militant fascist nation. Once again, prioritize your own fun and the fun of others, I just think following these can create a successful and happy faction.

Probably (hopefully, but knowing me it won't) a short section. Antagonism has always been in the game, you guys probably know how to create your own grudges and interesting character dynamics, I don't gotta teach you how to do that. The thing is, like leadership, people assume you can't antag if you're a noncombat character. I don't think this is true, but if you want to effectively antag while sacrificing your combat capabilities, you need to plan. 

If you're a good verber and you're planning to make a verb centric character, then who cares? You can start picking fights as soon as you get rid of your brown starting shirt (before, even). Or you can just start as a monster and antagonize through consistent verbing and fighting. If you're going to make a noncombat character... then that doesn't really make much sense does it? So you're going to need to dedicate your early game to building up your noncombat abilities, and building alliances with people that can fight for you. 

Here's a fun fact! If you manage to get magibane on someone, even if you're not good at verbing, you can PROOOBABLY beat them. Unless this character can consistently beat you with over 50% of their health, magibane should turn the fight in your favor. So think of interesting ways to magibane them! Get someone they trust to hand them magibane laced food, or do what I do and share a cup of tea from the same kettle, magibaning both yourself and the enemy, weakening you, but also making it so that any allies you have in the area have a better chance at victory! (Please, I beg, just because I included this in this guide doesn't mean your character should just assume that they're dealing with people that are willing to literally poison themselves. Don't suddenly be wise to this possibility because I mentioned it, or I'll just be unable to share fun tricks with other people. Follow your IC.)

Gain allies. You need them as a noncombat antagonist, you can't win fights and it's really hard to ever disable people without them, and other people are how you defend yourself. Put up bounties, but accept that by putting them up you accept the risk of retaliation. Turn people against your enemies, make use of invisibility potions to surprise them, come up with interesting magic items and rituals that can turn enemy strengths into weaknesses. Focus a majority of your efforts on buffing your allied verbers that you know are better counters than you are. If you KNOW a character has defeated your enemy once, then seek them out and ask for their specific help, you have the knowledge IC that they are capable of beating them, why throw yourself at enemies you know you can't beat when you can play smart?

Essentially, you need to get creative and abandon the mindset that "a fight = the verb". I've said this multiple times in character, and it's just generally true imo, but a fight isn't even half of a fight. A fight is majority the circumstances surrounding it, THEN the fight itself. 

Despite this, you're only after risk mitigation, not risk prevention. You can't ruin people's lives and expect no ramifications. You can't perm or cap people and expect players to "either verb you for revenge or just let it slide". You can't create magic items that insta-kill your specific enemy from the safety of your own territory. 

The thing about the plans I suggested is that they still offer counterplay, players can still hunt you down, you still generally put yourself in the line of fire, you just delegate the responsibility of the verb itself on others since you are playing a character that is ready and willing to lose when truly cornered. empower your friends, plan properly, and delegate. 

That's how you do successful noncombat antagonism, you're still prone to death seeing as you're sacrificing combat power, but that doesn't mean you can't fight back. If you plan well enough you can be on even footing with established verbers, maybe even beating some, but don't expect all your plans to go off without a hitch. Like any character, expect to eventually lose them. 

I think that's all for now! I can't think of much else to share in regards to the noncombat playstyle, but I hope more people go to pick it up. I personally think it's fun, and remember that everything I stated is just the point of view and opinion of a relatively inexperienced player!

Fun fact! Only 3800 words this time, slowly but surely I am beating my typing and overexplaining addiction.