Armor, Blocking and dynamic DR messages:

[The Crazy Animal]

While watching some of the alpha tests, I though about how bland the message for DR is. I then began to think maybe there should be a way of doing this dynamically based on the armor that you have on.

Typical message:
Monster swings at you, but its attack is deflected!
Monster swings at (player), but the attack is deflected!

I was thinking that it could be easily set up to be dynamic by setting items with an ability flag called block then when the game engine calls for a DR deflect message it would substitute the name of that item into the message from your equipped items at random. By giving the ability flag, multiple values you could have it handle both the message type for block or deflects.

Examples of the dynamic messages as seen by player:
Monster swings at you, but you block with your vambrace!
Monster swings at you, but you block with your buckler shield!
Monster swings at you, but you block with your broadsword!
Monster swings at you, but your full plate armor deflects the attack!
Monster swings at you, but your steel spaulders deflects the attack!

Examples of the dynamic messages as they would be seen in a room:
Monster swings at (player), but (he or she) blocks with (his or her) vambrace!
Monster swings at (player), but (he or she) blocks with (his or her) buckler shield!
Monster swings at (player), but (he or she) block with (his or her) broadsword!
Monster swings at (player), but the attack is deflected off (his or her) steel spaulders!

I think also from a realism standard it would help explain why someone might see a deflect message while wearing cloth armor. Since an item like a quarterstaff could be given the ability and if that?s the only item in the list it would call that name when giving the deflect message.

This could also be expanded so that weapons like, rapiers that have specific moves like parry would have the proper related message.

TCA

[The Crazy Animal]

Secondary thought, if you set it up so that messages are set like the mmud attack messages you could make it easily customizable as well. The message number would then relate to the block abilities value.

So you might have the following variables active for the message data:
%attacker = name of attacking PC or NPC
%defender = name of defending PC or NPC
%Iname = item name
%gender1 = he or she
%gender2 = his or her

Block Message Number: #
As seen by player:
%attacker swings at you, but you block with your %Iname
As seen by others:
Ex1: %attacker swings at %defender, but %gender1 blocks with %gender2 %Iname!
Ex2: %attacker swings at %defender, but is blocked by %gender2 %Iname>!

TCA