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NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

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Constenanto said:
Uh, no? The lightning damage is apart of the weapon. Sure, it helps, but it doesnt trivialise a fight like poison does. Meanwhile, poison takes no skill whatsoever, and can take down someone way more skilled than you from a lucky hit.
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Again, I imagine the distinction is doing it before hostilities have broken out, as opposed to afterwards.

If you can prepare something debilitating in the middle of combat, when the other guy is trying to kill you? That's a sign of your skill and strength, that you could T-Pose on them to such a degree. Might be a bit Odreng but you still displayed significant Skill to prepare that.

It's doing so beforehand that's Dishonorable. Any scrub can stack the deck to win a fight when they threw tenfold the amount of time into it that you did.
 
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Constenanto said:
and can take down someone way more skilled than you from a lucky hit.
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Luck is considered to be one of the things that makes one a mighty warrior. To the Norse, luck is an aspect of someone, like an inborn trait. You're not going to deride a pianist simply because they've got better fingers than you. You're not gonna shame a boxer simply because they've got longer arms than you. Luck is the same way. A fighter with poor skills taking down a stronger fighter with a lucky hit is perfectly valid, it's not shameful at all.

0~0~0

And voting is now closed
Scheduled vote count started by Imperial Fister on May 27, 2023 at 6:07 PM, finished with 33 posts and 7 votes.
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Alectai said:
Again, I imagine the distinction is doing it before hostilities have broken out, as opposed to afterwards.

If you can prepare something debilitating in the middle of combat, when the other guy is trying to kill you? That's a sign of your skill and strength, that you could T-Pose on them to such a degree. Might be a bit Odreng but you still displayed significant Skill to prepare that.

It's doing so beforehand that's Dishonorable. Any scrub can stack the deck to win a fight when they threw tenfold the amount of time into it that you did.
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I think this is wrong. Preparing for fights is explicitly part of Norse culture and, indeed, going in unprepared was mentioned as an example of odrengskapr. The distinction is debilitating enemies with things other than your own luck or skill.

Imperial Fister said:
Luck is considered to be one of the things that makes one a mighty warrior. To the Norse, luck is an aspect of someone, like an inborn trait. You're not going to deride a pianist simply because they've got better fingers than you. You're not gonna shame a boxer simply because they've got longer arms than you. Luck is the same way. A fighter with poor skills taking down a stronger fighter with a lucky hit is perfectly valid.
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That was my impression as well.

What would you say the reason poison is considered nid is?
 
I think the main problem with poison is that you can slip it in someone's food or use various other stealthy means to kill someone with it. Slathering it on a weapon is an edge case and probably part of the larger prejudice against it rather than the whole.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Not really? Those are actually pretty different...Storm Iron just adds damage, it doesn't debilitate. Complaining about it is like complaining about using weapons in the first place since all it does is make you hit a little harder.

Poison is another matter, and debilitates or kills without requiring much in the way of skill. It allows an incompetent coward to fell a mighty warrior, and that's what the culture objects to.
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Storm Iron makes it so that it does more damage if you hit.
Poison (applied to a weapon used in "honourable" fighting) makes it so that it does more damage if you hit.
If it was about a poisoned dagger used to stab someone unaware? Sure.
If it was about poisoning food? Sure.
But applied to a weapon that is used in open battle? That giving nid is culture having a stupid idea. (Not a criticism of IF, it is very believable (heck, kinda expected) for the idea to exist like that)

Constenanto said:
Uh, no? The lightning damage is apart of the weapon. Sure, it helps, but it doesnt trivialise a fight like poison does. Meanwhile, poison takes no skill whatsoever, and can take down someone way more skilled than you from a lucky hit.
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The idea of stuff like "being able to hit a threaded man" (for example) being trivial is a questionable. And luck is recognized as a skill.
 
Toboe said:
Poison (applied to a weapon used in "honourable" fighting) makes it so that it does more damage if you hit.
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Uh...no. This is flatly untrue as we just saw. Hasvir did not take 'more damage', he was taken out of the fight entirely purely by the poison itself. That's actually a big difference.

Like a curse or sleeping spell, poison makes the stakes of the fight false and unfair in a way the Norse disapprove of. Storm Iron doesn't even really make them unfair...it's nice, but if fighting a superior foe it's not gonna matter much.
 
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Toboe said:
The idea of stuff like "being able to hit a threaded man" (for example) being trivial is a questionable. And luck is recognized as a skill.
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I never said hitting a threaded man was trivial? Poison can do much more than just 'increase damage' as shown by how Horra's poison not only hurts, but greatly exhausted Hasvir and took him out of the fight. Storm iron doesn't do that.

I was wrong about the luck part, but I imagine the nid comes from the fact that the poison is external... it's not apart of your moveset, it's not apart of your weapon, etc.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
What would you say the reason poison is considered nid is?
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It's involving something other into the fight. It's like if you agreed to duel somebody but instead of coming with just the shield-bearer, you brought twenty of your buds and just killed your opponent then and there.

It's nid because you're saying to the world that you couldn't beat your opponent in a fair fight, so you had to resort to cheating to do it.
 
...y'know, that's probably one of the benefits of the "Norse don't necessarily die when they are killed" thing. Poison might take you out of the fight, but even if you're bodily killed, that only means the poison can't really make things any worse unless it's doing weird xianxia "the body immediately dissolves into goop" shit, and neither will whatever processes are used to expunge the poison. It's probably pretty expensive, on top of the costs of being revived in the first place, but...
 
Uh, by the way, can we make deposits scattered around the Hading with the hair/fingernails/extremities of our loved ones? I imagine the current bundle we had got destroyed during the trollmen attack, and I'd rather not take the chance of something like that happening again, in case Halla or one of our buddies experiences Bodily Death.
 
Constenanto said:
Uh, by the way, can we make deposits scattered around the Hading with the hair/fingernails/extremities of our loved ones? I imagine the current bundle we had got destroyed during the trollmen attack, and I'd rather not take the chance of something like that happening again, in case Halla or one of our buddies experiences Bodily Death.
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I'd assume we have a new bundle by now, it's been a while. Making multiple caches is a good idea, but clearly at least one is standard procedure and I doubt we just failed to do it in the several months since the Troll-Men attack.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
I'd assume we have a new bundle by now, it's been a while. Making multiple caches is a good idea, but clearly at least one is standard procedure and I doubt we just failed to do it in the several months since the Troll-Men attack.
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Well, yeah, I assumed that was a given. My point was that we should have multiple stores of them in case something ever happens to the bundle in our home. Would probably take an action, though.
 
Constenanto said:
I never said hitting a threaded man was trivial? Poison can do much more than just 'increase damage' as shown by how Horra's poison not only hurts, but greatly exhausted Hasvir and took him out of the fight. Storm iron doesn't do that.
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You said that poison "trivialises" a fight, that it "takes no skill whatsoever". When obviously you'd need to hit the enemy for a poisoned weapon to have an effect.
Constenanto said:
Uh, no? The lightning damage is apart of the weapon. Sure, it helps, but it doesnt trivialise a fight like poison does. Meanwhile, poison takes no skill whatsoever, and can take down someone way more skilled than you from a lucky hit.
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Except that's not how that works. Poison doesn't do damage, it imposes penalties and makes you unable to fight. Which is a very different thing.
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@Imperial Fister
If we had runes on our weapon that "imposes penalties" on enemies hit (like stealing strength from hit enemies, or even analogous stuff to the poison used against Hasvir) , or our weapon was so well made that we may be able to 1 hit Hasvir Horrason tier enemies, would that suddenly make using it nid?

Or would we stay at the arbitrarily drawn line that a weapon with its runes and blood/paint/whatever to activate the runes obviously is ok, a proper fight, but poison is considered to be obviously not part of the weapon and cheating?
 
Toboe said:
Or would we stay at the arbitrarily drawn line that a weapon with its runes and blood/paint/whatever to activate the runes obviously is ok, a proper fight, but poison is considered to be obviously not part of the weapon and cheating?
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To be clear, I'm not saying that the distinction between poison/not poison isn't arbitrary (it may well be), I'm saying that the example of comparing Storm Iron to Poison is comparing apples to rocks. They do not do the same thing and treating them differently is thus entirely reasonable.

That says nothing about the actual standards being reasonable one way or the other. I just think that example is awful and factually untrue.
 
Toboe said:
You said that poison "trivialises" a fight, that it "takes no skill whatsoever". When obviously you'd need to hit the enemy for a poisoned weapon to have an effect.
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Nothing I said was wrong, though? It can trivialise a fight and it doesn't require skill - imagine fighting Hasvir after he got poisoned, that certainly required no skill. My point was why poison itself was considered nid, not using it in a fight. Hitting someone is something else entirely, but it doesn't change the fact that poison can tri ialise a fight...

And either way, I was wrong. Or at least, that part is wrong. Poison is considered nid because it's an external factor. I imagine runes embedded into your weapon that debilitated your foe would be fine, since they're apart of the weapon, but applying poison isn't.

Although...

@Imperial Fister , would a weapon that naturally produces poison be considered nid?
 
Toboe said:
Or would we stay at the arbitrarily drawn line that a weapon with its runes and blood/paint/whatever to activate the runes obviously is ok, a proper fight, but poison is considered to be obviously not part of the weapon and cheating?
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Correct. Having runes on weapons is a very obvious thing that people will know about.

It's nid because it's undeclared and to do something in secret is nid. Weapons are implicit, poison is not.

If you declared, well before a battle began — like, say, in court — that you would be using poison, then there might be some grumbling about it and you'd likely have to make concessions, but it removes the nid factor. Once it's declared, then it is no longer an outside factor and no longer cheating.
Constenanto said:
@ImperialFister, would a weapon that naturally produces poison be considered nid?
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If it was known about, then it would not be nid.
 
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Constenanto said:
Nothing I said was wrong, though? It can trivialise a fight and it doesn't require skill - imagine fighting Hasvir after he got poisoned, that certainly required no skill. My point was why poison itself was considered nid, not using it in a fight. Hitting someone is something else entirely, but it doesn't change the fact that poison can tri ialise a fight...
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After hitting it doesn't take skill anymore, sure.
But after beheading him fighting him wouldn't take skill either. See: the runes on our backup sax.

Would you say that those runes trivialize the fight?
 
Toboe said:
After hitting it doesn't take skill anymore, sure.
But after beheading him fighting him wouldn't take skill either. See: the runes on our backup sax.

Would you say that those runes trivialize the fight?
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I mean, they wouldn't because they don't decapitate - they slit someone's throat. They probably can decapitate, but I doubt it'd be happening with only a single hit. And a Norseman can ignore a slit throat easily.

Not to mention it wouldn't matter, because runes are apart of the weapon, so even if they could one shot somebody, it wouldn't be nid. At least, not for the same reason as poison.
 
Constenanto said:
I mean, they wouldn't because they don't decapitate - they slit someone's throat. They probably can decapitate, but I doubt it'd be happening with only a single hit. And a Norseman can ignore a slit throat easily.
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I can't speak for Imperial Fister, but the way Ashen Kiss was intended to work is that whatever wound you'd inflict, you inflict it on the throat. So if you stab someone six inches deep in the leg, their throat now has a six inch deep stab wound in it.
 
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The reason we took the rune we did on Ashen Kiss was to disable verbal spellcasting or people making other kinds of noise. Which is a tad niche, but it is a backup weapon. It doesn't instantly behead people or do any more damage than it would without the Rune (though I could see it avoiding armor under some circumstances).
 
KreenWarrior said:
I can't speak for Imperial Fister, but the way Ashen Kiss is intended to work is that whatever wound you'd inflict, you inflict it on the throat. So if you stab someone six inches deep in the leg, their throat now has a six inch deep stab wound in it.
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I mean, yeah, I did acknowledge that it could decapitate someone, so fair enough. If you could hit a Norseman hard enough that it managed to decapitate them, then fair game, you've beat them. A particularly powerful Power-Chop might accomplish that. However until you actually do that, a Norseman with decent Hamr would be able to still go on fighting most likely, given how people like Tryggr can still fight with caved in chests, Halla is not affected by her heart stopping, etc.
 
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