Issues with the hound

[i7]

Issues with the hound

[ektemple]

Retaliation only works after hitting, correct? If so, this suggests a problem:

React>parry
You strike up a defensive pose.

Rolling 4 + 2 (concentration) - 2 (defender parrying) + 1 (tension) = 5, Miranda does not overcome your defence rating of 9.

Anticipating their every move, you respond instantly!

Act>

Also note the plural in the last line, when the combat is between the PC and Miranda only.

[VictorGijsbers]

Yes, the hound prose still needs to be fine-tuned.

The power should work after every attack, not just if the attack is successful, so that doesn't seem to be a bug.

[curiousdannii]

I wasn't keen on having a status line command text. My idea of the hound was definitely more about its preparation than its retaliation attacks. So maybe the status line text should be changed to "preparation" or something.

As to "their", they/their is the normal indefinite third person pronoun, not just the plural pronoun! But in this case we could use plurality to make it specific.

[ektemple]

I don't think that "preparation" says much about the nature of the power. If I'm getting extra attacks every time someone goes after me, that sounds like retaliation, or possibly feinting, or something.

I think that "their" can only function effectively non-plurally when it's already clear who is being referred to, so using Plurality does seem like the best option here. (It's almost always clear in spoken conversation who "they" singular is, but less often so in writing, and especially procedurally generated text like this. Most people in the US, by the way, probably think of "their" singular as either informal or just incorrect.)

[curiousdannii]

Most people aren't linguists and are therefore wrong. ;)

Retaliation is too emotive -- it makes it sound like like you're only attacking because you've been emotionally offended. How about counter-attack or instant response?

[ektemple]

Interesting, I don't have that association with retaliation. To me it simply means that I was attacked and responded with an attack.

Both of those alternatives are good descriptors, though I prefer retaliation to instant response. Counterstrike might be another option, though of course both that and counterattack suffer--in a minor way--from the fact that the player doesn't have to use the extra turn to attack. (In that sense, "instant response" is the best descriptor, though it's a bit clunky.)

[VictorGijsbers]

I've tried to keep the original feeling of the hound as a careful planner, while renaming the power to "counterstrike". This should be clearer to the player than what we had.

[curiousdannii]

I like the changes you made, they seem to fit nicely :)

Except that I did like the concentration message being random and not tied to the concentration level! It made it different from all the others. Oh well, consistency is probably better.

[ektemple]

One thing--the code for that concentration message seems to still retain an
"[at random]" at the end. Sorry, I will finish reading the git book and get
myself set up soon!

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 7:52 PM, Dannii Willis [email protected]:

I like the changes you made, they seem to fit nicely :)

Except that I did like the concentration message being random and not tied
to the concentration level! It made it different from all the others. Oh
well, consistency is probably better.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/11#issuecomment-10469220.

[curiousdannii]

Victor fixed that already.