Discussion: Nether Taint

[Lun]

Hey all y'all! Wanted to hold a discussion about nether tainted individuals and to what extent ferrous metals should affect them. This has been a bit of a longstanding problem, but it's early alpha so whatever.

17:22:17 [CHAT - Mukluk Kent "Gunney" Gunderman]: anyone else think a tainted person's effect from touching a ferrous weapon
should be based on the material of the hilt or haft, not of the blade or head?
17:22:49 [CHAT - Turkeyslayer Amerine]: No, because it's the blade or the head that does the hitting, not the hilt or haft.
17:22:49 [CHAT - Mukluk Kent "Gunney" Gunderman]: much in the way a normal person can hold a lit torch and not be burned?

'Touching' any ferrous metals (iron and steel for the sake of this discussion) causes an tainted individual to immediately drop it and suffer damage. This includes iron bladed, bronze hilted weapons. Spears included! Tiny bit of metal at the tip, loooong pole.

As Kent and Amerine brought up, the actual blade of the weapon isn't touching the tainted individual. To what extent does the influence of ferrous metals have on tainted or nethrim? Another example is metal doors or objects i.e. ladders, doors, stairs. Tainted individuals can't approach or use them, even while wearing thick gloves or boots.

Could a glove-boot-hilt check be incorporated to determine whether or not a tainted gets hit with alchemical burns from approaching it? Or is this a 'balance' measure to counter the effects of being tainted?

Discussion go!

Oh, the feature request is to check the hilt of weapons for material. It's my understanding that the reason why weapons currently burn is because the weapon blade determines the attribute-- Hence why an iron spear with a bronze shaft burns to the touch. Would checking for a bronze-hilt be difficult to code in? (I think so...)

[Rias]

Simply wearing a pair of boots or gloves isn't enough to stop the burn (and that would make the whole thing rather pointless, being so easily bypassed). You get close enough, it's going to burn, even if it isn't directly touching you. Yes, I'd prefer it if ferrous items in worn containers caused pain/discomfort as well, but that'd be a lot of code and a lot of processing power spent, which is why I never implemented that and why I imagine Jirato probably won't.

The data for the hilt/haft of a weapon isn't stored, unfortunately. Items only store a single primary material. An update would require some finicky code, updates to a lot of stuff that involves material, and a good deal of guesswork. Holding a sword or dagger with a ferrous blade would still be close enough to burn your hand so that's out. Weapons with longer hafts could kinda work, but would be far from ideal. If you're swinging that thing around in combat, chances are high the ferrous head is going to be frequently getting close enough to you to affect you negatively.

[Elystole]

That's an interesting lore note: So it isn't direct physical contact but close proximity to ferrous materials that burns nether?

All of those anti-nethrim iron defenses got both more interesting and more feasible.

[jilliana]

So why doesn't a tainted individual get a reaction every time they get near someone wearing iron or steel armor? Or is this more a "lets overlook it because it's overkill" type thing?

[Kunren]

So why doesn't a tainted individual get a reaction every time they get near someone wearing iron or steel armor? Or is this more a "lets overlook it because it's overkill" type thing?

If grappling was ever overhauled, that would be an interesting point. New deadliest way to kill nethrim? Wrestle one in a suit of iron!

[Lun]

So why doesn't a tainted individual get a reaction every time they get near someone wearing iron or steel armor? Or is this more a "lets overlook it because it's overkill" type thing?

That does sound overkill...

[Akila]

So why doesn't a tainted individual get a reaction every time they get near someone wearing iron or steel armor? Or is this more a "lets overlook it because it's overkill" type thing?

I actually RP this out. Step back from characters using thaumaturgy, avoided Sona-hugs when she was decked in steel which eventually led to her making new armour and generally wary when she's around any ferrous metals because hey, who wants to be burned? It hurts!

Coded in I think would be overkill and make grouping up with someone wearing ferrous metals hard if we were always twitchy.

[Dorn]

Yep. And people wonder why Dorn doesn't like going into the Monk part of the Temples.

As it is, there are quite a couple of places ingame that Tainted can't enter because of metals. Plus, I think in general, if it was that strong a reaction some place like Mistral would just implode.

[Rias]

Yeah, it's not a wide proximity or anything. But having nothing but a glove (or gauntlet) between you and iron isn't enough to avoid the pain. A tainty person could stand a foot or so away from someone wearing iron and be fine, and I think most peoples' "Personal Bubble" tendencies make this mostly a non-issue. Things like hugging someone wearing iron and stuff should technically be an ouchie for tainty people, but I just never felt it overly necessary to get to (although I would have liked to, one day, despite the pain of coding it up for every single contact possibility).

So it's not like people could strategically put iron spikes in every town room and that'd keep all nethrim away from the town. They'd just not touch the spikes and continue merrily on their way.