Sea elf swimming

[Hellblazer]

I just thought about this as I was rping with some sea elves today.

It's a bit illogical that a sea elf would use a boat (association with mist) when they can swim to their destinations.

So I was thinking, if you put a marker, with the same destinations as the boat would go (put it at the end of a dock) then the sea elf could use it to swim. It would make more RP sense.

You culd even put a intermediary area of sea, with an auto port delay, to give the impression they were swimming

[INKachu]

Hurray for swimming If this isn't much work, it would be nice to have. Although there's only 2 sea elves on this server right now, and will probably only ever be 4-6, unless someone takes the challenge of writing up a bio.

[Dorganath]

Are you talking about the boats that need tickets or places like in the Dragon Isles or Corax Lake where it's a sort of transition between areas?

[LeoTheProverbial]

What would the speed diffence be between boats vs swimming? White sharks spurts for short distances, up to a speed of 40 km/h.
Other than the time delay you could have other things implented.
Maybe you could get fatigued when. or have randomspawned sea encounters while swimming. so there's a risk while swiming. So either you could pay the fee or risk getting in a fight.
Could there be a risk that a strong current gets the hold of you and pulls you away from your direction if you fail an ability check or swim skill check. leaving you stranded on a shore..
Makes me wonder is there a simular thing for ship travel?
Etc pirate boarding... or shipwrecking.

[EdTheKet]

Are you talking about the boats that need tickets or places like in the Dragon Isles or Corax Lake where it's a sort of transition between areas?

If so, it would not be worth our time and resources to implement this I'm afraid.

(And next to that, swimming hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles would be a bit much )

[twidget658]

Sea elves were also sorta kinda driven from the seas when Carocsa was slain by Yashilla and Mist got a bit more powerful. This is why we have sea elves on land today.
 
 Oh, almost anything and everything can be rp'd.

[Hellblazer]

Are you talking about the boats that need tickets or places like in the Dragon Isles or Corax Lake where it's a sort of transition between areas?

talking of boats that needs tikets, the other can be pretty much rpied out.

[Hellblazer]

What would the speed diffence be between boats vs swimming? White sharks spurts for short distances, up to a speed of 40 km/h.
Other than the time delay you could have other things implented.
Maybe you could get fatigued when. or have randomspawned sea encounters while swimming. so there's a risk while swiming. So either you could pay the fee or risk getting in a fight.
Could there be a risk that a strong current gets the hold of you and pulls you away from your direction if you fail an ability check or swim skill check. leaving you stranded on a shore..
Makes me wonder is there a simular thing for ship travel?
Etc pirate boarding... or shipwrecking.

there isn't but woudl be fun as hell if there was. Lets say you have a waiting time of 1 minute (enough time for the party to all be on it) on a boat area unless you roll badly and you get attacked by pirates.

[Hellblazer]

If so, it would not be worth our time and resources to implement this I'm afraid.

(And next to that, swimming hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles would be a bit much )

How so? many wales, fishes, and turtles doe so every year (see days sometimes for hundred of miles) to eat or to reproduce.

[LeoTheProverbial]

Hmm, yes. Well I believe the whole problem with pirate attacks would be getting a script that would work with that... I can't recall seeing anything that can move whole parties in one transiction...

Perhaps it could be controled by a dialouge that somehow stacks the people togeather, when they say that im going to this place. Which would place the a character at a time on a boat and when the people on the boat decides that everyone is on the boat. They talk to the first mate who transit the stacked group and removes them. to a boat and the whole roll thing takes place.

Perhaps a if you want to secure the players who couldn't be able fight themselves. You could make it trigger depending on how rich the players are or how many?

Pirates might not attack poor looking people?

[Hellblazer]

you don't have to move them all, they will end up there because of the in between transition. There is already a script on the vault that does exactly what I am describing, without the pirate attack though.

All at Sea - Realistic Boat Transitions -- Neverwinter Nights 2 Vault

But that is an other story. Talking of using the same kind of technique here, but applying it to an undersea area, so that sea elves can actually have a RP way of actually traveling underwater

Hurray for swimming If this isn't much work, it would be nice to have. Although there's only 2 sea elves on this server right now, and will probably only ever be 4-6, unless someone takes the challenge of writing up a bio.

Well I know of a few more, but the players don't play them any longer.

[Dorganath]

How so? many wales, fishes, and turtles doe so every year (see days sometimes for hundred of miles) to eat or to reproduce.

Yeah, but they do so once/year (each direction) and that's all they do.  That's a migration, not travel, and furthermore they are adapted to make such long trips, and some that do simply die afterward.  There's really no comparison between animal migrations and ship travel.  Not all aquatic creatures are suited for such long distance travel.  A clown fish is aquatic, but you won't see it migrating hundreds of miles to mate. I'm not completely sure, but I'm pretty sure that Sea Elves are not constructed for migrations.  They're more "reef dwellers" than open-water creatures.

Something similar has come up before regarding a more realistic boat travel system:

http://forums.layonara.com/nwn-ideas-suggestions-requests/95210-boating-system.html

In general, it's a spark of realism that ends up not really enhancing game play for anyone except for a very narrow group.  There's no reason why a Sea Elf can't RP jumping into the water and swimming along side the boat (though as has been said, they're no more safe from Mist in the water than on a boat)

Sea elves were also sorta kinda driven from the seas when Carocsa was slain by Yashilla and Mist got a bit more powerful. This is why we have sea elves on land today.
 
 Oh, almost anything and everything can be rp'd.

[LeoTheProverbial]

Hah, speaking of nice transportations the best server I remeber playing on. Had a dragon transiction were you would talk to a dragon.. and you would be transported to an area and polymorphed into a tiny dragon wyrmling and you would walk(fly) in a area that was a minature map of the world.and simply chose were to go. Same went for sailing you but it was bigger and you would be polymorphed to a boat instead. and beeing in a party you would be a convoy with everyone being its own ship. and you could also find hidden treasure coves.

[darkstorme]

The other thing to consider is that sailing vessels can maintain an average of 10 knots or so, day and night, without rest.  Even assuming that sea elves could reach the speed of dolphins (unlikely, given that the humanoid shape is not well-adapted to aquadynamics), they couldn't maintain it indefinitely.  Think of it as a human - a very fit human, of course - with flippers, hand-flippers, and a rebreather.  He could certainly swim quite a distance, but sooner or later, lactic acid buildup would require a rest, or a significant reduction in speed.

The trouble with pirate attacks (as any GM who's run a naval battle can tell you) is that the ship tilesets don't lend themselves well to combat.  Close quarters, some nasty walkmesh issues, and effective "spawn ambushes" that aren't at all fair to the players.  Either the enemy is easy to kill and therefore not worth the effort of making them, or they're lethal.   There really doesn't seem to be a middle ground, not without the option of pausing combat.

In single player, a shipboard ambush would be reasonable, because the player can pause when they've been jumped (something like the ambushes in transitions in the Baldur's Gate series) and prepare actions, assess the targets, etc.  In a PW, lacking that luxury, characters (and spellcasters in particular) don't do well with ambushes, in a large part due to idiosyncrasies with the engine.

[Hellblazer]

Thanks for the replies. I'm wondering though. Would really 1 minute of boat ride change so much in your gaming time? if it gives you more time to rp at the same time, as when on the boat. Could bring in some more flavor. Without the ambushes that is.

[Dorganath]

You can RP all you want on the boat before you talk to the captain to be transported to the destination.  One minute in some other transitional area isn't going to enhance RP in any significant way.

[Hellblazer]

well nah, I wrote 1 minute as an arbitrary number.

[Dorganath]

Fine, but more than that, and it becomes just an annoyance to traveling.  Sure, there can be RP, but unless we're going to enforce a longer period of time for travel (5+ minutes), it's just going to be a time for people to //afk bio and it won't really enhance anything.  

If an RP break is wanted for ship travel, then take one and sit there for a while before transitioning.

[LeoTheProverbial]

Nice, people who pass by could just be moving between on and bellow deck.